Players

by Rachel Cross

  “Well, to be blunt, nobody likes a jerk. No matter how smart or resourceful the jerk is. Most people vote for competence and likability, it’s just the way it is. When people think you’ve got a woman just waiting for you while you do as you please, it makes you look like a jerk,” Gretel shot back.

  “When it seems like you buy a property just to hide the women you fool around with from the voting public, it makes you look like a jerk,” Samantha, no longer so friendly, chimed in.

  “When regular everyday Chicagoans see that someone who already seems to have it all now wants their city, too, yet he’s too high and mighty to really talk to the people he wants to lead, it makes you look like a jerk,” Tess threw in.

  Stunned, Jake sat back, feeling every word spoken to him like the lash of a whip. They stung.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Guilty,” Jake finally said.

  “Guilty?” Gretel repeated.

  He closed his eyes briefly before opening them. “When Julia’s name is dragged into this, it makes me feel guilty. She’s a very private person, and she didn’t sign up to be heralded as this, I don’t know, martyr for me when that’s not who she is at all. To be honest, I don’t understand how people can be so quick to judge others yet at the same time completely ignore their own behavior, like how easily they believe a lie about someone they shouldn’t even be focusing on,” Jake finished, not having meant to sound so forceful.

  When he looked up to meet Tess’s eyes he saw she’d gotten what she’d wanted from him: emotion. He looked out at the audience and they were quiet now. Scanning their faces, he saw they were interested in hearing more. More about how he felt.

  “Now that you mention it,” Gretel, continued without pause. “Julia didn’t sign up for this, but you did, Jake. The public already knows what you want to do if you are elected, but our viewer’s want to know why, exactly, you decided to run for mayor.”

  Headlines about him being another wealthy man on a power-trip flashed in his mind. The last person to actually ask him this question instead of guessing at his motivations was Keila. Jake folded his hands between his legs, wondering if he was letting his anxiety show.

  “I want to be mayor because . . . ” he paused, because only canned words seemed to come to mind. Looking up, this time at Gretel, he decided to do what he did with Keila. Open up. “I don’t have a personal agenda. I know it’s hard for people to believe, but it’s not about some power-trip. It’s about how I’ve always felt about this city . . . as if it somehow helped raise the best part of who I am. Both the grit and glitter are a part of me. Yes, I was born wealthy, I can’t help that, but I spend my time in places here that, frankly, most people avoid. I care about neighborhoods that many have given up on. And I’m not trying to make others feel responsible because I know everyone has their own lives to worry about and that’s fine. That’s good. People should be productive. I’m just trying to let you know that I do want to take it all on. All of it. From the Gold Coast to the South Side, there are problems and opportunities and they are more interwoven than people think. I just want a chance to take them on.” Jake sat on the edge of his seat, looking at the audience, with a sinking feeling that he’d just bared his guts to people who thought it was just a speech.

  “Look at that, people, Jake Kelly isn’t a robot,” Samantha sang out. The audience laughed and someone began to sing the lyrics to Foreigner’s “Hot-Blooded.” People started to clap along and then, even Jake had to chuckle. A little. Something flew in the air and hit the stage again. Gretel picked it up with a pencil and twirled it a few times. It was a bra.

  “He’s sexy when he’s all worked up!” A female voice shouted from the back of the audience. “Hear that, Jake? You’re sexy when you’re all worked up,” Samantha teased.

  “I am not all worked up,” Jake smiled and sat back again.

  “We’re on to you, Jake. We’re going to a commercial break now, but when we come back, we’ve got a few questions guaranteed to let us know just how hot-blooded Jake can get,” Tess turned to camera one and, to Jake’s mind, promised viewers to barbecue him. Live.

  He looked at his watch. He thought he was doing pretty well, but damn it, only fifteen minutes had passed, and he had fifteen to go. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath, but Tess caught it and laughed. As music played just before they transitioned to the break, she hollered, “Hear that? Jake feels we’re messin’ with his mind!”

  • • •

  Keila, phone in one hand, her other hand to her mouth, watched as Jake began to let go. She smiled when he smiled and was so caught up in him that she didn’t hear when Tess’s personal assistant came back on the line.

  “Hello . . . Keila? Are you still there? Please still be there.”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m sorry about that, but I had to call Pete and confirm you really are who you say you are, and that he’d given you this number.”

  “It’s okay, I understand. Um, what happens now?”

  “I need you to stay on the line, okay? Stay on the line! I need to talk to Tess before the commercial break is over, and then, my best guess is that she’ll want you to wait until the perfect moment to patch you through to the speaker they have on stage. I’ll let you know soon. Stay on the line!”

  Silence again. Speaker? Crap! What was she doing? But as soon as she looked down at the newspaper again, she knew.

  • • •

  Jake watched as Tess quickly sat down again. She’d been called away and had left looking a little annoyed about it, but she came back with a new spring to her step and a nearly blinding gleam in her eye. The She Said, She Said theme song came on and the murmuring crowd shifted their attention back to them.

  “Where were we?” Tess asked.

  “You promised you’d make Jake’s blood boil!” Samantha answered.

  “Right. A squadron of questions awaits. Who wants to fire first this time?” Tess asked the audience. A slew of hands went up. It took all of Jake’s will power not to wipe his brow. Looking toward Tyrone, he saw his friend’s expression was strained.

  An older woman from the audience stood up. “Was the interior decorator you spent the weekend with just a fling, or did she mean more to you?” She started to sit down, but got up again. “Oh! And are you into older women?” she wiggled her hips.

  Clearing his throat, Jake again just coached himself to answer honestly. “I hired the decorator a while back to take a look at the house, to give me some ideas. We didn’t see eye to eye and I never saw her again. I don’t think she spent more than twenty minutes in the house—”

  “Twenty minutes is plenty of time!” someone from the audience shouted.

  “Sure it is,” Jake smiled again. “But nothing happened. No intimacy, not even a personal conversation.”

  “Well, we’ve heard your side before; your camp already denied this, so it really is just a matter of people deciding who they’ll believe, a case of ‘he said, she said,’ if you will,” Gretel stated.

  “Maybe not. Maybe new information has come up . . . but I’ll just save that for later,” Tess responded mysteriously. Samantha and Gretel quickly turned to her, eyes inquisitive.

  “Ooooooh,” the audience duly sang in unison.

  What the hell? Jake’s head snapped to Tyrone, who shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

  “You haven’t answered what you think about older women,” Tess reminded him, as if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb.

  Jake figured it was time to kiss up to the audience. Big time. Just in case. “There are many older women who I think are beautiful, sexy, and just incredibly smart and wise,” he said, serving up his best smile. And then, to add the icing, he truthfully added, “Starting with my mother.”

  That garnered more than a few “ahhs,” and one loud “bull!”

  “Well, I think that’s great,” Samantha clasped her hands as Gretel laughed, pointed to the audience, and said, “He’s putting the moves on you, people. He sens
es danger ahead.” Then, abruptly, she ordered. “Next question!” Jake sat up.

  Hands went up, and a young woman was chosen this time. “You’ve denied affairs with the decorator and Julia Hamilton, but what about the mystery woman?”

  Jake instantly shut down. “I’m sorry, but I won’t discuss her.”

  “You don’t have to give her name up, we understand that, but how do you explain her? You’re carrying her in one picture and kissing her in another. This was obviously more than a friend or someone you happened to hire,” Samantha nudged.

  “We’re not ninnies, Jake. You’re a single man and in my opinion, perfectly within your rights to pursue as many women as you’d like, but even I have to wonder if any of them have ever meant anything to you and if not, how much of a heart you have. I want my mayor to have a heart, dammit!” Gretel slapped her thigh and both Tess and Samantha chuckled.

  Jake stared at Gretel. Of course he had a heart, and right now, it was full of protectiveness for Keila. He was not offering her up to the public; he’d rather lose the campaign. “I know how it looks, but I’m not protecting myself; I swear it,” he finally said, again just going for heartfelt truth.

  “You’re protecting the woman in the picture. I think most people can respect that. What we want to know is what does she mean to you, Jake?” Tess prodded, gently.

  Jake sat back, his hand rubbing his temple, a headache beginning to thud there. What was he supposed to answer to that? What if Keila was watching?

  “Just say the truth,” Samantha prompted.

  “Or we can move on to the next question. For now,” Tess shrugged.

  “Move on? We’ve really got him squirming—” Samantha began to protest before being interrupted by an upset Gretel who asked, “Hey! When was the show renamed Tess Says? I didn’t get that memo.”

  Jake was grateful the bickering women had taken the attention off of him. Until Tess said, “I’m sorry, but something came up a few minutes ago. Just trust me and look at the screen behind us.” She gave someone offstage a signal and seconds later, the images of Jake and Keila dancing at Chicago SummerDance came on. A few exclamations from the audience that Keila might be the mystery woman after all reached him.

  As he sat there, his thoughts whirling, anxiety churning in his stomach, a comforting scent that immediately made him think of Filip surrounded him. A split-second later he realized what the smell was. He took a whiff. It was Vicks VapoRub and Bengay. They were messing with his mind in more ways than one, showing him pictures of Keila, making the set smell like Filip . . .

  “Which one of you is using Vicks and Bengay?” Jake turned to the women. They all stared back as if he’d gone mad.

  Many in the audience laughed and Gretel gave him a cutting look. “Now that is one lame distraction. Surely a politician can come up with something better than that.” She turned to Tess. “Why are we showing pictures of the violinist? Is she the mystery woman? I thought she had an alibi.”

  “Who’s hiding the Vicks and Bengay?” Jake tried again, not amused by the prank. Jake turned to Tyrone, who was sniffing around, too. Tyrone shrugged, signaling he couldn’t smell anything.

  He next wondered whether he was losing his mind or if Filip was somehow trying to reach out to him in his hour of desperation. He quickly decided he was losing his mind.

  Samantha looked into Jake’s eyes and apparently saw something there because, much to the audience’s amusement, she got up to smell both Tess and Gretel and look around the scant stage furnishings before settling down again and saying. “Absolutely nothing smells like Vicks and Bengay, Jake,” she chided. “Now, why are we showing the hot pictures of Keila Diaz and Jake again? To ask Jake about her? We’re only going to get another denial out of him.” Samantha turned to Tess.

  “Keila Diaz called my private line a little while ago. We’ve confirmed it’s her, and she has something she’d like to share with the people of Chicago,” Tess explained.

  Jake finally gave up. He didn’t know what was happening, why the set smelled like Filip, why Keila was calling in, or how it was all going to end, but things had spun out of his control.

  “Hello?” he heard Keila’s voice on the line. He swallowed hard.

  “Hello, Keila. You told me there’s something you need to share with our viewers?” Tess prompted.

  A sigh came over the line and Jake felt powerless because he couldn’t protect her. What was she doing?

  Keila cleared her throat. “Just that Jake hasn’t lied to you. Julia Hamilton and I are friends and I know for a fact that she and Jake really are just friends. She’d, well, actually like him to find someone.”

  A splatter of “So do we!” shouts from the audience quieted Keila, who laughed softly. “And then I’m also calling in about the interior decorator’s story.” There was a pause and Jake realized he was gripping his chair so tightly, his hands hurt. “She says she was worried about people seeing them through a bay window at the house in Kankakee, but there’s no bay window anywhere in that house. You’d think a decorator would have a good eye and not make that mistake, I think . . . no, I’m sure she made the whole story up, not just the part about the non-existent bay window.”

  “And how do you know there’s no bay window in that house?” Gretel, eyebrows raised, asked. Many in the audience were leaning forward.

  “I know because . . . ” Another sigh, this time deeper. “I’m the woman he’s carrying in the picture. Jake invited me to go up with him after I’d had a particularly bad day, but not because we were dating or anything. We never lied about that.” Keila now sounded nervous and unsure.

  “But you’re obviously kissing in the picture,” Gretel began, but she was cut off by Jake.

  “She said what she wanted to say, so just leave her alone now, she’s obviously uncomfortable.”

  “What about you, are you uncomfortable?” Gretel shot back.

  “Hell yeah!” Jake splayed his hands out. Everyone burst out laughing.

  The line above went dead. He couldn’t help wonder what Keila was thinking now. His heart was no longer in the show, it was with Keila. She’d called and put herself out there to help him. How was she feeling? Why would she do that for him? And why did it still smell like Vicks and Bengay? He felt like he was finally coming undone.

  “Fine, then let’s get back to where we were before Keila called in.” Tess quickly stepped in. “You were about to tell us how you feel about . . . the mystery woman.”

  Jake looked at Tess. Tess looked at Jake. The whole set went still and quiet. Not even Gretel or Samantha made a sound. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him.

  “I’d rather tell her in private. And in person.” He stood up, looked around at the cameras, trying to figure out which one was focused on him. “Keila, please meet me . . . ” God, how could he tell her where without half of Chicago showing up? He could call her or . . .

  Well, everyone already knew they’d kissed. “Meet me where we shared our first kiss. As soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.” Jake was about to take off his microphone but instead looked at a camera again and said, “Please show up.”

  He then ripped his microphone off and took off without a backward glance. Excited hoots and hollers followed him out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her heart thundering, Keila ran up the steps, two at a time, went to the closet and whipped out the first pair of jeans and sweater she saw, not caring that the jeans were too big and the sweater had a dorky snowman on it. She pulled them on, slipped her cell phone into her pocket, flew down the stairs, slipped her arm through her winter coat, opened the door, and saw a reporter already at her door. She’d probably come down as soon as Keila had spoken on TV.

  A stampede and clattering in the kitchen caught her attention. Slamming the front door, she ran to the back, where her mother, her Aunt Gina, Tania, Robbie, and Mia were scattering in through the back door. “We watched the whole thing. Que romántico!” her aunt Gina called out.

  �
�Come on, let’s go. The car’s in front of Mr. Patowski’s house. We cut through Robbie’s back yard. Don’t worry, we’ll lose the paps, hija!” her mother exclaimed.

  “The paps? There’s just one reporter, ma. This isn’t Hollywood, You’re overreacting.”

  “Where was your first kiss?” Robbie demanded as they cut through Robbie’s yard and entered his house.

  “I can’t believe you put yourself out there like that, Keila. I swear I wanted to strangle you,” Tania shook her head.

  “She really did want to strangle you. And Jake,” Aunt Gina said.

  “At The H,” she said to Robbie before turning to Tania. “You came to strangle me? ‘Cause let me tell you, I’m fighting back. I’ve had it with your gloom and doom when it comes to relationships.”

  “No. I didn’t come to strangle you. I came to talk, but they won’t let me. I need to talk to you, Keila, I really do.”

  Everyone began scolding and chastising Tania at the same time and they sounded like a bunch of squabbling hens. “Stop!” Keila called. And they stopped. “Just give us a moment, okay? I promise I won’t let her get to me.”

  Amid protests, she dragged her sister into Robbie’s living room. “You’re not going to talk me out of this, Tania. There’s no way, my heart’s made up.”

  “Just hush, okay?” Tania interrupted before putting her hand on her forehead and sitting down on a sofa arm. When she looked up, a big, fat tear was rolling down her cheek and Keila instantly sat beside her, taking her sister’s hand. Her sister hadn’t cried in years.

  “I don’t want to be like this, Keila. I really don’t. I don’t want to be negative. I just want to be the voice of reason. I love you so, so much and I don’t want you to ever feel so profoundly stupid that you just know you can never trust your judgment again. Or to ever question why you aren’t special enough to have the person you put so much trust in to love you enough. Just enough.” Tania trembled and Keila put her arm around her. “You have to be careful who you trust with your heart, Keila, you have to realize their inner thoughts and feelings can be wholly unknown to you, but their effects can end up hurting you badly.”