I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. The shades are down and the darkened walls remind me of the great and terrible abyss that my life is going to become without Lexi and without my daughter.
Fuck, if only I hadn’t been such an irresponsible asshole. If only I hadn’t…. Well, if only I hadn’t done a lot of things. If only I’d been a different person all together, maybe everything would have turned out better. Maybe I’d be living with Lexi and waking up next to her sexy naked body. Maybe we’d be walking Mia together in the park in her stroller, talking to her in baby talk and playing Mozart on the speakers for her, so that she could become some kind of super genius baby. Well, that probably wouldn’t even be necessary, given how smart Lexi is. Mia’s sure to inherit some of her smarts, even if she’s got to deal with my cesspool-level DNA. I may be big and strong and good at throwing a ball, fighting, and fucking, but it doesn’t look like I’m good for much else.
22.
Lexi
“I’m sorry to hear you lost your job, Lexi,” says Joanne, taking a sip of tea. We’re sitting in my kitchen, which is full of dirty dishes and baby bottles that I haven’t gotten the chance to wash yet.
“I can’t believe I worked for those assholes for so long,” I say. “You must have known they were assholes all along, especially that Mr. Posh, right?”
“I heard rumors,” says Joanne. “But you know he’s hardly even ever in the office, so I didn’t see him much.”
“He’s always on vacation?”
“Yeah, or with his various mistresses.”
“I can’t believe a guy like that could even get a wife, let alone mistresses.”
“That’s a weird way to look at it, but I see what you mean. Well, I think he has a lot of money, so that probably has something to do with it.”
I nod my head, and take a look over at Mia, who’s resting on the floor, surrounded by toys.
I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but she looks kind of sad.
“Isn’t she supposed to be crawling now?” I say, thinking back to the dozens of baby books I’ve read.
“Every kid is a little different,” says Joanne, taking a look at Mia. “She looks healthy to me.”
“She doesn’t look sad to you?”
“What are you getting at, Lexi?”
I shrug my shoulder, and take another sip of my tea.
“So things are over with Jeff?”
I nod my head, and pause for a moment before speaking. “He knows he’s Mia’s father. I guess he pieced it together. But I told him I didn’t want to have anything to do with him and he’s not fit to be Mia’s father.”
Joann nods. “He seems like he means well,” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I feel like I can’t… I don’t know. I mean, part of me really wants to be with him, more than anyone else. But I just can’t get past him constantly getting arrested, getting into trouble, the legal battles. Over and over again, he shows he’s just not responsible. That’s why I didn’t want to tell him in the first place about Mia.”
“You think he’ll go after custody for Mia, or visitation?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Who knows.”
“I take it you saw the news about him in the paper?”
“What news?”
Joanne pulls out a folded newspaper from her massive pocket book.
“How’s Jason doing, by the way?”
“He’s good, but he still hasn’t gotten over the cold. He’s good enough for parenting, though.”
I nod. “He should really see a doctor,” I say.
Inside, though, I’m just screaming to know what happened with Jeff now. It’s not like I’ve lost interest entirely in him—quite the opposite, actually. I don’t know why I chose right now to ask about Jason. Maybe I want to seem like I’m less interested in Jeff than I really am.
“So here it is,” says Joanne, pushing her hair behind her ear and putting on her reading glasses as she unfolds the newspaper slowly.
The article is in the sports section.
“Jeff Tallborne temporarily suspended from The Tanks,” reads the headline.
“What’s it say?” I say. I don’t have the heart to read it myself, but my heart sinks at reading just the headline. What the hell did Jeff get into now?
“Well,” says Joanne. “From what I gather, reading between the lines, public opinion basically forced Jeff off the team temporarily. He’s such a good player but you know how the public gets with sports stars these days. They want them to be upstanding morally and all that, not just good football players.”
“The public and me both,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Lexi. I should have thought before I spoke.”
I shake it off. “It’s fine,” I say. “But what did Jeff do this time?”
“Nothing,” says Joanne.
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. I don’t believe it. “Nothing?”
“He plead guilty in his civil and criminal cases.”
“He what?”
Now I’m really surprised.
“Yeah,” she says. “The article says he’s been found guilty. If you keep reading it says he plead guilty.”
“But he didn’t do it,” I say.
Even though I think Jeff is a scandal unfit to be a father, let alone have a relationship with, I still believe he’s innocent. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad, in a way, to have lost my job. I don’t want to be the kind of lawyer who has to fight a fight I know is morally wrong.
Then again, I’m totally screwed without my job. So I would say I’m exactly glad to have lost it.
Basically, everything seems completely…fucked, I guess is the only word I can think of that really captures what I’m thinking.
“But he admitted he did it,” says Joanne. “I mean, do you really think he’s innocent?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice full of conviction, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from. “Trust me, he’s innocent.”
But Joanne goes on to read more details to me from the article, and by the end of the article I’m wondering myself whether Jeff really is innocent. After all, why would he choose to please guilty? There’s no reason to do it unless he’s struck some kind of deal. He must have known that he wouldn’t be able to play football, and I know how important the games are to him, even if he doesn’t talk about it much. It’s what he lives for.
“So that means he lied to me,” I say. “If he is guilty, as he admitted, he lied to me. And if he’s not, then he lied to either me or the courts. He lied to someone, that’s for sure, because both versions of the story can’t be true.”
“Maybe you’re better off without him,” says Joanne. “I really hate to say it. I mean, he seemed like a great guy for you in a lot of ways, but you can’t be with someone who’s pulling knives on people in parking lots or alleys or whoever it was. And Mia certainly can’t have a father like that.”
I nod my head. There are tears forming in my eyes, and I’m trying to fight them back.
“At least now that this has happened, there’s no way he’s going to get visitation rights for Mia,” says Joanne. “So you don’t have to worry about that.”
The news doesn’t make me happy at all. I feel a deep depression that threatens to swallow my whole being.
The tears are streaming down now, and I’m not making any effort to stop them.
Joanne offers me some tissues from her purse. Eventually, I stop crying, and Joanne goes home back to Jason.
The days pass and turn into weeks. I don’t hear anything from Jeff, and I don’t make any effort to contact him.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting anxiously for Mia to take her first steps. I’ve been reviewing my baby books now, with no job to go to, and they clearly say that each baby takes its own time and sets its own schedule, but I can’t help but feeling quite anxious.
After spending so much time pouring my life into the law firm that I now do
n’t respect at all, it’s very strange to have all this time to myself. It’s nice not having to drop Mia off at my mom’s or at Joanne’s, and I’m glad that as a mother I can spend more time with her, but at the same time there’s something missing in my life…and I think it’s Jeff.
But how can I be with someone like that?
I’m constantly replaying our times together in my head. The sex, of course, is a prominent memory, but more than that there are just the little things that I miss.
I don’t know exactly how many nights we spent together, but looking back it seems like there were far too few. The memories are growing fainter with each passing day, and even though I feel like I’ve already lost him for good, I now feel like I’m losing him even more—losing the memories of him.
23.
Jeff
Someone’s at the door, ringing the buzzer over and over.
Fuck them, I think to myself. I roll over in bed and reach for the bottle of whiskey that I’ve got with the cap off on the bedside table. I take a small sip and swish it around in my mouth.
No, I haven’t descended into alcoholism following the loss of my job (suspended until further notice), my woman and my daughter. But it’s nice to take a sip of whiskey every once in a while just for the flavor. Somehow, it makes me feel better because that’s what depressed people do: they drink. They drink, and I’m depressed, so I drink too—just a little.
There’s a nice pattern to it in my mind, even if it wouldn’t make any sense to anyone else.
The truth is, I’m just swallowing little mouthfuls of whiskey. I haven’t been drunk since, well, I can’t remember when.
Tom’s been stopping by once in awhile, and for all I know, that’s him at the door now. I haven’t let him in once, and basically I’ve been sequestering myself away in my darkened apartment with the shades down, living off of the canned tuna and boxes of noodles I’ve never used before.
I think about Lexi and Mia every single day, if not every hour. I hope against all hope that my plan worked at that Lexi didn’t lose her job. I hope she got promoted, actually, and that some day she’ll lead the firm, and continue to do great things. That’s what she deserves. She’s the most intelligent woman I’ve ever met, not to mention the hottest.
I pull her picture up once in a while on the internet. I do it by searching for her law firm and than navigating through their byzantine web site until I find the page that has the names and pictures of all the partners.
Finally, the doorbell buzzer stops. Good god whoever it was is a persistent son of a bitch. They must have been ringing it for five minutes straight. I make a mental note to look for my toolbox and dismantle that stupid buzzer once and for all.
When I get the chance, that is. Truth is, I haven’t done much of anything in a couple weeks. I haven’t been going to practice or to the games, even though I’m supposed to under my contract. But what can they do? Just suspend me for more time? Let them. The last thing I want to do right now is play football, or sit on the bench—that’s more realistic.
Yesterday, Lexi’s picture was up on the law firm’s site. She was looking as beautiful as ever. I mean, it’s a picture, and I know it doesn’t change, but each time I looked at it, I seemed to see something different in her face, in her expression. There’s so much beauty there that I need to discover, that I need to find myself. But I’m not going to have the chance.
She’s done with me, and I don’t blame her.
Her picture was there yesterday, but now it’s not. I can’t find it, no matter how much I click around.
I grab my phone without thinking. I dial the number from the website.
“Cremway and Posh,” says a young man, presumably the secretary, answering the phone.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m looking for a partner there. Her name’s Lexi Bell.”
He cuts me off before I can finish. “She no longer works here.”
“What?” I say, my voice growing somewhat caustic sounding, but I don’t care. “Are you sure? She’s a partner there.”
“I’m absolutely sure, sir,” says the young man, sounding quite snarky himself. “It’s my business to know who the partners are, and I can confirm without any doubt that she no longer works here.”
“What the hell happened?” I say.
Inside, my mind’s spinning a hundred revolutions per minute—just like the pistons of that car I crashed not too long ago. Is this my fault? Did I get her fired?
“I’m afraid I can’t say anything about that, sir,” says the young man, his voice taking on an unmistakably sharper edge than before.
“Listen you little punk,” I say. “You want me to come down there and beat the information out of you?”
“I’d say that sounds like a threat,” says the young man, not sounding in the least bit phased. “I’d encourage to come down here so that I can slap you with a lawsuit that would make your head spin.”
“You…” I start to throw some more insults at him, but at the last second I realize that even though I’ve given up on everything at this point, there are still worse decisions that I could be making, and they’re only going to only make things worse.
There’s no point in fighting this sarcastic kid on the phone. It’s not going to get anywhere.
“Thanks for your help,” I say calmly, and hang up the phone.
I lie back on my bed.
My first thought is a strange one: holy shit, am I maturing or something? Why don’t I want to fight him? This isn’t like me.
The next thought is a lot worse: holy shit, Lexi lost her job. And there’s no way it’s not because of me. It’s my fault she lost her job. How’s she going to care for Mia now?
My first instinct is to grab the phone and call her to… I don’t know—offer my condolences, maybe?
But what’s the point in that? I know she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.
If I want to be mature, I need to just let her get on with her own life. Maybe she can find happiness some other way.
The rest of the day goes by slowly, mostly because I’m doing nothing at all. I’m still inside, staring at the wall the entire day.
Finally, boredom and sadness drives me outside. Maybe there’s some type of project I can do in the yard of the apartment building.
I head out down the backstairs, in case that person at the doorbell is still there. Outside, it’s a classic crisp, clear, and cold Boston late afternoon. The sun is going to be setting in not tool long, but for now the light has a great quality to it.
It doesn’t do anything for my mood, though. Instead of enjoying the nice day, all of my weather-related thoughts are just: it’s going to be winter soon and everything’s going to be dying…dying just like your relationship died.
I kick a couple garden rocks with my foot, and manage to stub my toe in the process.
Shit, there’s nothing to do out here, I think to myself, after a couple minutes of looking around and getting lost in my own depressing thoughts.
Might as well head back inside. That’s enough of this outdoor business. There’s nothing for me out here.
I head back around to the front of the building, determine to finally check my mail after who knows how many days.
“Jeff Tallborne,” yells someone, appearing out of nowhere. It’s a man in his 40s, wearing a baseball cap and a t-shirt.
“Who the hell are you?” I say. “Were you hiding in the bushes?”
“Behind the cars,” he says, nodding rapidly. “I’m a reporter for the Boston Whale. Do you have a couple words about what happened?”
Oh, a reporter. Now it makes sense. I should have known. “Get lost creep,” I’m about to say, but I think better of it at the last moment. I also really want to just knock the guy on his ass right here, but I think better of that too. “I don’t want to give an interview,” I finally say.
There, that wasn’t so bad, was it, Jeff—talking to people who annoy you w
ithout threatening them?
“But, Jeff, this is important!”
I want to yell at him. I want to knock him down.
“Sorry,” I say. “But you’ve already written plenty of articles on me. I’m not interested in doing any more.”
“But this new news completely absolves you of all responsibility! Have The Tanks already contacted you? When will you start playing again?”
“New news?” I say, stopping dead in my tracks.
The Boston Whale reporter scurries up to me and shoves the microphone back in my face.
I calmly push the microphone with my hand until it’s at least not directly touching my nose.
“So you’ll do an interview?”
“What’s the news?” I say. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You mean you don’t know? But how could you not know? They must have contacted you already?”
I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
24.
Lexi
“I just don’t know what we’re going to do, Mia,” I say.
I’m sitting on the floor with her, hoping that she’s going to take her first steps. We’re playing a baby-safe variation on paddy-whack and I love watching her face light up each time our hands touch together.
Mia’s eyes are shining and bright. I’ve never seen a more beautiful or healthy baby, although I may be a little biased, of course.
There’s so much of Jeff in her, in her eyes, in her face. Even her nose reminds me of Jeff’s. There’s no pain when I look at Mia. But there’s pain in my heart when I think of Jeff.
Something was developing between us, something special. If only he wasn’t exactly who he is... But then again, maybe I need to not be exactly who I am too. Have I been too hard on him, for instance?
The week has been going by slowly. I’ve been leaving the house very little, devoting all of my time to Mia. I’ve completely given up the idea of looking for a new job, and the bills are already starting to pile up.
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