Jock: A Secret Baby Sports Romance

by Irons, Aubrey

  Because there was nothing for me here.

  And yet here I am, and I already know it was a mistake coming

  back here. I also know my being here puts Rowan in a tough spot. Besides that, there’s the guilt. I mean hell, the guy knows I dated his sister, but he doesn’t know how much deeper it got.

  None of the Hammonds know how “like family” we all really are.

  My hand makes one more phantom pass for the cigarettes in my pocket that aren’t there before I shake my head. I bring the same hand up instead, pushing my fingers through my hair as I watch the last of the light fade over the breakers on the other side of the harbor.

  Fuck it, this was a terrible idea. Because all it’s taken is one run-in with the girl whose heart I broke to know there really isn’t anything left for me here.

  The engine turns and the truck creaks into gear before I turn it around and head back downtown. I’m heading to O’Donnell’s to see Rowan, and then I should just keep on driving until I hit Boston.

  I’d also really like to ask him how it is Ivy had no idea I was going to be here.

  8

  Ivy

  “Hey babe.”

  Blaine’s ultra-surfer California accent mellows through the phone. He’s actually originally from Ohio, but the blonde, top-knot and tanned surfer look is kind of his thing - it’s his brand. And believe me, I get brands. So, even though I know the voice is fake, I guess I get it to a certain degree. He’s just owning his own image.

  The thought of what Silas would say about someone going through life with a carefully cultivated and fake accent enters my head, and I scowl momentarily. For one, because I know his reaction would be so typically childish, and two, that he’s even entering my head at all.

  I’ve gone eight years with forgetting Silas Hart as a full-time job. I am not quitting now.

  “Hey!” I say brightly into the phone, standing off to the side of the backyard garden watching Stella and Sierra setting dinner. “We’re just about to start dinner! Are you in?”

  “Aww damn, sounds so good! It’s just…” he trails off, and I frown.

  “What’s up?”

  He groans dramatically. “Ivy, promise you won’t be, like, mad at me?”

  I furrow my brow. “Blaine, what-”

  “I missed the last ferry, babe.”

  My face falls. “Oh.”

  “Aaaah, shit, I knew you’d be mad!”

  I shake my head. “No, I’m not mad, I just-” I look at my toes in the grass. “I just thought you’d be here soon.”

  “Yeah, well hey, I just thought I’d crash here for the night and come on up tomorrow.”

  I frown again. “Wait, what? You can just take the late train tonight you know, you’ll be here in like ninety min-”

  “Uh, yeah it just sounds like this whole big thing though, you know?”

  “What?”

  No, I don’t know. It’s quite simple, actually. You get on the train, you sit down, you arrive an hour and a half later in Shelter Harbor.

  “Blaine-” I sigh, bringing my hand up to run it through my hair. “I just sort of needed you here today.”

  He makes a strained sound into the phone. “Babe…”

  “What?”

  He makes a clicking sound with his tongue and his teeth. “Babe, you know that’s not really my thing. I mean, you gotta do you, you know? Thought we talked about this, Ivy.”

  And we did, too. Well, he talked about it, a few weeks back over dinner at Roman’s in Williamsburg. How we need to “maintain our own strong independence as a couple.”

  I frown, shaking my head. “Yeah, no, I know we did, I just-”

  I just what? I just saw the man who left me shattered and stuttering eight years ago, and I need to forget about him with you? Like I’ve done with every relationship ever since him?

  I don’t finish my sentence.

  “So, we’re good then?” he says brightly.

  “Yeah, yes,” I say quickly.

  “Rad.”

  Rad.

  “So, I’ll check you tomorrow, kay?”

  I nod, eyes closed and blowing air slowly through my lips. “Yeah, tomorrow.”

  “Awwwwesome. Great talk, babe, I knew you’d understand. Later!”

  The line goes dead.

  I stare at the phone in my hand another minute, blinking in confusion before I open up my texts and fire one off to Ainsley, letting her know. The phone buzzes instantly with her reply.

  “No worries! Major catch-up with my friend. I can crash here. See U tomorrow?”

  I shrug as I type a quick “thanks, I’ll let you know” back, before pocketing the phone and heading back to my family.

  * * *

  “I’m so happy you’re home, honey.” My mom squeezes my hand later after dinner, sitting next to me at the big wooden table beneath the Japanese maple tree out in the back yard. Cafe-style string lights illuminate the garden she and my dad have tended for more than thirty years - an oasis I’m definitely not mad at having grown up with.

  She lets go of my hand to pass me a plate of pie, cut from the lattice-top dish my dad apparently baked this afternoon.

  Yeah, welcome to the Hammond house - we seriously are this much of a Norman Rockwell painting.

  If I were back in Manhattan right now I’d be - I glance at the time - I probably wouldn’t have even had dinner yet. Maybe I’d be at Nomad at the Liberty Hotel getting cocktails, or calling a friend of a friend to get reservation hookups at Blue Hill. I’d be drinking an expensive, local craft-distilled all-potato vodka martini or a non-impact environmentally friendly, eco-farmed chardonnay.

  Not homemade raspberry pie.

  That said, after a day like today, I seriously need a drink, and the good Reverend Hammond isn’t exactly known to keep much in the house. Sure, Mom keeps a bottle of sweet, cheap, sauvignon blanc for occasions, but between her, Sierra, Stella and I, that was about a tenth of what I need right now.

  “So tell us about this new line!” Sierra beams at me across the table. “Are they seriously going to carry it at Lululemon?”

  Yes, they’re seriously going to carry the new line of sports bras and yoga pants at Lululemon, just like that coffee chain has been sniffing around for distribution rights on the new organically sourced anti-oxidant tea line we’ve been working on.

  But I don’t want to talk about that.

  I don’t want to talk about brand meetings and making sure the makeup I used on camera is fair trade and doesn’t contain anything terrible so I don’t get raked over the coals in some YouTube comment. I don’t want to talk about the fact that at some point while I’m here, I need to have pictures taken of me doing bikram yoga, or jogging or something here in quaint New England for the website.

  I want to talk about the fact that the ghost from my past just welcomed me home for the first time in eight years.

  I want to talk about the fact that my heart is still somewhere in my throat, or that I’ve been reliving and rewashing every damn memory I have of him in my head since the second I walked away.

  Every memory, from running around as kids, to him showing me how to pick locks with a pin. From first kisses, to, well, first much more than that. My cheeks flush at the thought, and I reach for the glass of wine next to my plate of pie only to remember the one glass I had is long gone.

  “Ivy?”

  I look up to see Mom, Stella, and Sierra all looking at me intently, waiting on an answer. Dad’s playing with Carter on his lap, not paying attention.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say quickly, clearing my throat. “It’s going into distribution.”

  “That is so exciting, honey!” Mom gushes.

  Five years ago, when the fashion and lifestyle blog I’d started in college started to take off, Mom and Dad thought I was insane to not pursue grad school.

  “What are you going to do with an undergraduate in psychology?” Dad had finally pointedly asked over dinner.

  Sell the fuck out, that’
s what.

  Because an Instagram account with 900 thousand follows is a goldmine, for the record. Wear that certain sports bra while I’m doing yoga at an eco-retreat in Mexico for $5,000 from the brand that makes it? No problem. Wear those certain shoes when I go for a run through Central Park? For $8,000, I’ll do it singing Britney fucking Spears at the top of my lungs.

  But it’s not the money that Mom and Dad are proud of, they’re just happy that I’m happy, which is so “parent” its nauseating.

  I’m doing dishes in the kitchen later, alone with Sierra, when she finally leans in close to me.

  “Stella filled me in while you and Dad were getting Carter ready for bed.” She gives me a sour look. “That’s shitty that Rowan didn’t tell you.”

  I shrug, drying a plate before sticking it up in the cabinets. “Eh, it’s fine.”

  It’s not fine, but I’m trying to go five minutes straight without stewing on it.

  And failing.

  “Look, I’m not trying to cover for him, but he was probably worried you wouldn’t come home if he mentioned it.”

  I raise a single brow. “I wouldn’t have.”

  “That’s fair.” Sierra leans her head on my shoulder. “I’m really glad you’re home, though.”

  I grin.

  “Any idea what the fuck he’s doing here? I mean, just Dad’s thing, or is there something else?”

  I shrug. “Who the hell knows. He was being really vague about it.”

  She makes a face. “Jesus, you guys really talked, huh? Not just like a passing thing?”

  I nod.

  “How’d that go?”

  Horrible, like a stab to the heart. Like everything I’ve been holding back and holding inside and drowning in work and plastic veneer relationships is coming rushing out like blood. Or wonderful, because its so hard to hate the man who stole your heart eight years ago.

  “It was fine,” I say as casually as I can.

  “Just fine?”

  “Just fine.” I shrug again. “It was eight years ago, I’m not still hung up on my high school boyfriend like a weirdo.”

  She wags her brow. “Okay.”

  “I’m not.”

  She groans and rolls her eyes. “Fine. So, speaking of boyfriends, how’s Blaine these days?”

  I slump my shoulders. “What if we picked a new topic entirely.”

  “That good, huh?”

  I turn flicking soapy water at my little sister. “Okay dork, how’s your love life?”

  Her face goes red as she snorts. “Hard pass.”

  “Oh that good, huh?” I say, mimicking her and tossing my hair exaggeratedly over my shoulder.

  She gives me a mock scandalized look and starts to dip her hand threateningly into the soapy water of the sink before the clearing of a throat behind us stops her.

  “Yeah, if you’re just going to flood the place, I can take over.”

  I turn, grinning at my dad. “Nah, we’ve got it. We’ll try to restrain ourselves.”

  “Did you bring your own organic free-trade dish soap you can use on those?”

  Sierra snorts and I turn and stick my tongue out at my dad.

  He chuckles. “Seriously, your mom and I have this. You two should go see Rowan, I know he’s missing that he wasn’t here tonight.”

  “Wow, is Reverend Hammond telling his daughters to go to the local dive bar?”

  This time Dad rolls his eyes as Sierra gasps dramatically. “Such scandal!”

  Dad folds his arms over his thick chest and raises a brow. “First, it’s not a ‘dive’ bar.”

  “Dad,” Sierra shakes her head, grinning, “it totally is.”

  “Not since your brother took over the place,” Dad insists.

  My sister and I glance at each other, smirking.

  Okay, it’s slightly less divey than it was. But O’Donnell’s is without question a true local’s spot. No cutesy “quaint New England” crap on the walls, no lobster roll special, no fish and chips, none of that. Guinness, Bud Light, and obviously Sam Adams on draught, and Jamesons - not Bushmills - on the back bar. That’s basically it.

  “It is not,” Dad mutters with a grin. “Besides, I should know.”

  “Oh and how’s that?”

  Sierra laughs. “Did you not know?”

  I look at her questioningly, but Dad just casually shrugs. “What, I’m an investor now.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “The scandal deepens! Should we bring this up at the park dedication?”

  Dad grins through his beard as he shakes a finger at us. “Get.”

  9

  Ivy

  The thought from earlier reiterates itself the second we’re looking up at O’Donnell’s.

  Slightly less of a dive bar than it was.

  The barn-red clapboard exterior has a fresh coat of paint - barn-red, of course. The single wide, cloudy window across the front of the building that offers little more than silhouettes is a little less opaque - a little less streaked with grime. Though the same flickering neon Red Sox sign still casts its glow around the frame. The sidewalk outside is a little cleaner - devoid of the remnants of smashed bottles and the mountain of cigarette butts that used to trail like breadcrumbs back through the front door.

  “Has dad actually been to this place?”

  Sierra snorts. “What do you think.”

  “An investor?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Don’t look at me.”

  Walking inside is yet another step back in time.

  This place is exactly the same - the memories of it all coming rushing back the second the lights and the smells and the sound of it all comes wafting over me.

  To be fair, the floor is less sticky than it was, and you can’t smoke here anymore. Massachusetts laws may have changed long before I left home, but the patrons of O’Donnell’s back then were hold-outs. The last stand at the Alamo, with their God-given right to chain smoke Parliaments and Marlboro Reds in a haze of smoke on the line.

  Things have obviously changed with Rowan running the place, but you can still get that linger of tobacco that’s seeped into the rafters and the walls.

  The same jukebox with the same bizarre mix of country, 90’s R&B, and classic rock on blasts through the bar from the corner. The same Sox baseball posters with players that retired forty years ago still adorn the walls at not-quite-right angles. Okay, there might actually be more Red Sox crap in here since our brother took over.

  There’s two giggling girls at the end of the bar, gushing with the bartender in the black t-shirt, the hair cut short on the sides and long on top, the tattoos on his arms, the charmer grin on his face.

  I roll my eyes.

  “Rowan!” Sierra snaps.

  The bartender slash owner slash our brother looks up from the townie girls who look about nineteen, locks eyes with us, and grins hugely.

  Oh, damnit, he’s going to-

  “Oy oy! Ladies and gentlemen!” Rowan crows over the noisy bar. He reaches back for the old brass bell that hangs above the liquor shelves and starts to clang the hell out of it as I cringe and drop my face into my hands.

  “Ivy Hammond is back in town!”

  There are some drunken cheers from around the room, a few eyes from people who do actually know who I am - if even just by last name recognition in this town.

  I cringe as Sierra rubs my shoulders.

  “I mean, you knew he was going to do that, right?”

  Rowan ducks under the service bar door and runs over, scooping me up and giving me a spinning hug.

  “Hey, Slimy!”

  I groan and punch him in the arm. “Ugh, don’t call me that.”

  It’s not the nickname I hate, it’s who came up with it when I was twelve and he was fourteen.

  Silas, of course.

  “So!” Rowan hauls back over to the bar and ducks back under it. “What are we drinking!”

  “Something that isn’t Mom’s God-awful sauvignon blanc, please.” Sierra
mutters.

  Rowan shakes his head with this dramatically contrite look on his face. “Sorry, Slimy, no fair trade free-union sun-warmed small distillery whatever here.”

  I flip him off with a grin.

  He laughs and holds up bottle of Jameson, and I make a face.

  “Uck, meet me halfway at least.”

  He laughs. “Beer, then? Or are you back to half-soy, non-gluten-”

  “Beer is fine, dick.”

  He chuckles as he reaches back for a cold glass from the fridge.

  “What do want, Si-Si,” he nods at our younger sister. “Shirley Temple?”

  “Har-har-har.” She rolls her eyes. “Vodka martini, dirty.”

  Rowan raise a brow at her. “Remind me if you’re even old enough to be here again?”

  Sierra turned twenty-one nine months ago, but I snort a laugh into the beer he slides in front of me at our brother’s inescapable need to get under people’s skin whenever he can.

  “Like you’ve ever been concerned with legal drinking age?”

  “Hey, I’m a responsible business owner now,” Rowan puts a serious face on as he straightens an imaginary tie.

  “Dick.”

  Rowan laughs as he grabs the mixing tins and starts to make her drink.

  “Hey, responsible business owner,” I raise a stern brow at him. “Are they old enough to be here?” I nod at the two girls in strappy tank tops with bare stomachs and pierced navels that he was flirting with when we walked in.

  Rowan nods seriously. “You know, that is a very good question, and I will certainly look into that.” His eyes twinkle as he grins.

  “I take it this means I won’t be seeing Sarah this trip?”

  “Sarah dumped him.”

  Rowan waves a hand at Sierra. “Mutual decision.”

  “His stuff was on the lawn,” she snickers.

  Rowan glares at Sierra and I laugh. “Same old, same old, huh?”

  He grins. “Yeah, well, you know how-”

  Rowan’s face suddenly goes dark. “Oh, fuck, actually…shit.”

  He looks at me. “Fuck, Ivy, I gotta tell you something.”

  I give him a sour look, the glee of seeing my brother for the first time in forever suddenly giving way to the dark cloud named Silas from earlier.