I chuckled, then picked up the water bottle I’d left beside my backpack at the base of the steps. Wil had exerted just enough energy to roll from her side to her back, so she couldn’t get smacked again, and I shook my head as I raised the bottle to my mouth and squeezed. Once I had a drink, I lowered the bottled… and squeezed again, spraying her with water.
“Ramsey!” she squealed, and immediately jumped up, but I was already gone, dropping the water bottle to the ground. I took the bleachers we were supposed to be running two at a time, then waited until she was three-quarters of the way up to move to the second set.
“I’m gonna kick your ass!” she shouted after me, and I grinned.
“Gotta catch me first! Come on, I thought you were fast? Thought you were Carla Ann Cunningham’s daughter, but not with those slow ass legs!”
Behind me, she let out what I could only describe as a growl, and when I glanced back again, she was decidedly closer than she’d been before. Up, over, down. Over, up, Over. Down, over, up. One by one, we ran the line of bleachers, finishing out the round that would bring our workout to a close. Total exhaustion was the goal, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to get her there.
At the top of the last set, I waited for her to reach me before heading back down. She didn’t work out as often as I did and even my legs were burning, so I didn’t tease her about how long it took to drag herself up the last three steps. I pulled my cell out of the pouch on my arm and navigated to my camera as she approached. I tapped the button that would activate the forward-facing camera and wrapped an arm around her neck, pulling her into me. I laughed at the scowl she was giving the screen, and snapped the picture, letting her go before I posted it to my Instagram with the #FromTheSidelines hashtag.
“How you feeling?” I asked her, returning my phone to my armband. She’d dropped down into one of the seats and had her head tilted back, sucking in deep breaths of air.
“Like I’m gonna puke,” she managed, then closed her eyes.
I sat down on the steps beside her seat. “Good. Proof you worked your ass off.”
Instead of responding, she flipped me off, which was a good sign – meant she was still mobile. I took a moment of my own to rest, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, Wil had pulled out her phone. Suddenly, there was tension in her shoulders that had nothing to do with our workout.
“What’s up?” I asked, sitting up to nudge her shoulder. “Why is your face all sour?”
She shook her head, then held up her phone, showing me the screen. “This.” All I saw on her screen was the picture I’d tagged her in and shared, which confused me. Despite her scowl, she looked good. Actually… the scowl was kinda sexy.
But then my gaze traveled lower.
I hadn’t been back to the picture to look at any comments from my own phone, but from here I could see that people were already being stupid. Not that it was surprising, or new, but still… damn.
“@jamochashake43: no wonder her man went and got him a white girl, she always on Instagram hugged up with you @RB_TheSledgehammer! Gonna start calling you RB the Homewrecker!”
I shook my head. The picture already had sixty-something comments, and if I had to bet, I would say at least a third of them were along those same lines, or worse.
This was the first time I’d been called a homewrecker though.
Nothing had ever happened between me and Wil. People gossiped and made shit up, sure, but the truth was that the only romance between us existed in people’s imaginations. From the time we’d met – back when she hated my guts – Wil had been seriously involved with the clown that ended up being her fiancé.
If that wasn’t the case… maybe things would’ve been different.
But they weren’t.
Nevermind that us being “always hugged up” was a blatant exaggeration, it was pretty fucked up to imply that our platonic relationship had anything to do with the clown not choosing to keep his dick in his pants.
I hope Wil doesn’t internalize this bullshit.
“What if she’s right though?”
Shit. Too late.
She’d tossed the phone into her lap and was looking up at the sky again.
“She’s not. And neither is anybody else who lets that dumb shit come out of their mouth.”
Wil pushed out a sigh. “Seriously, though.”
“I’m being serious,” I countered.
She opened her eyes, looking right at me when she responded. “He complained once. Last year, at the Connecticut Kings benefit ball. Me and you danced together that night, just one damn song. We were having fun, and there was nothing sexual about it, but he flipped out on me. Brought up us working out together, me being on your Instagram…”
“You’ve never said anything to me about it.”
“Because it was just that once, and he never mentioned it again. I’m friends with other guys, other athletes. Y’all all do the neck hug thing, and hell – I can’t count how many times Jordan Johnson has picked me up, tossed me over his shoulder, the whole nine. No complaints. But something about that night…” she trailed off with a faraway look that made me wonder if voices were the only things that got raised that night.
Nah.
Wil’s daddy was a boxer, and I knew from experience in the ring with her that Wil had inherited his hands. She would’ve set him straight with no problem.
“I wonder if she’d threatened him, you know?”
The gloss in her eyes was back, and I had to look somewhere else. If I watched her cry over that dude again, I was going to rock his skull the very next time I saw him.
“Like maybe he was on edge, looking for a reason to be upset with me, to justify what he knew he was doing. How can a friendship between coworkers be believable to you when you’re screwing your coworker?”
I scoffed. “Wil, his ass didn’t really think you were doing anything you shouldn’t. It was just like you said – him trying to pass around some blame, when it all rests with him. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to find logic where there isn’t any.”
“I just want to understand why though.” She whispered that, but I could still hear the lump building in her throat. “I tried to be a good girlfriend, a good fiancé. Show him I could be a good wife, and he—”
“Stop making his shit about you.” I pushed myself up from the steps to stand, then extended a hand to help her up too. “You can’t make a person be faithful by doing things for them, and not doing things for them isn’t gonna make them step out. There’s one reason – because they wanted to. And that’s about them. Not you.”
“That’s a nice sentiment, but this is real life. You’re really going to tell me consistent sex, keeping your appearance up, being encouraging, blah blah blah, doesn’t help a man’s dick stay in his pants?”
I chuckled. “I’m saying… maybe there are things that lead people to, and away from, wanting to step outside of their relationship, sure. But ultimately… we’re adults. It’s time out for calling the shit “a mistake”, or acting like we didn’t have the option of ending shit, or talking about it with the person we committed to. He had options. He made his choice. A bad one. And now… fuck him.”
“That’s so much easier said than done. My feelings aren’t controlled by some switch I can just flip to suddenly make everything okay.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You really think you need to explain that to me, Champ? Of all people?”
Immediately, her harsh expression softened. “No. I don’t. But… you should especially know – it’s not that easy.”
“I do. That’s why you work toward that shit every day. A week from now, two weeks, a month… you feel better, handle it better, than you did today. Maybe it takes a year, or five, for the shit to be okay. I don’t know, I’m still figuring it out myself. But I know I won’t get there blaming myself for shit that wasn’t in my control – like what a grown ass adult decided to do.”
I extended my hand again, and this time she took i
t, using it as leverage to pull herself up.
“I don’t think I’m there yet.”
“You don’t have to be. Hasn’t even been a week.”
When she looked up, there was a little bit of a smile on her face as she looked around. “I messed this up. Letting you kick my ass this morning was supposed to be an escape. A release. But… here I am, right back where I was.”
I shrugged, then started down the steps. “I mean… we could hit these bleachers a few more times.”
“The hell we can.”
Back down at the bottom, we gathered our things, and headed to my truck. Wil had taken a car service to her parent’s house in Stamford, so she was riding with me back to New York.
“You know what I need?” she asked, as she strapped her seatbelt. “A reason to get dressed up. Like, really dressed up, you know? Go somewhere and drink champagne in a cute dress.”
I laughed. “I might have an opportunity for you, but… not sure it’s the best idea in the world.”
“Tell me,” she insisted, as I pulled out of the parking lot of the small public stadium we’d used to work out. “Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?”
I sighed. “It’s a wedding. Trent Bailey’s,” I told her, then glanced over to see her face. “I have a plus-one, but…”
“I want to go,” she said, her voice soft but determined. “I love weddings.”
“But—”
“When is it?”
I peeked at her again before I pulled away from a traffic light. “A few weeks from now.”
“Then I definitely want to go. A few weeks from now, I’ll be completely fine.”
I raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Wil must’ve caught the change in my expression, because she shoved my arm a little and laughed.
“What kind of friend are you? This is the moment where you help me lie to myself. Of course, Champ, you’ve got this,” she said, in a deep voice that was obviously meant to mimic mine.
I chuckled. “That’s what I sound like?”
“That’s what you sound like,” she agreed, then stuck out her tongue.
“Okay then, you don’t need me to tell you shit. You’ve already got it covered.”
She laughed, and then neither of us said anything for several moments.
“You really think I’ll be okay?”
I glanced over to find her already looking at me, and held her gaze for a second before I returned my attention to the road.
“For the wedding?”
“For life. For both.”
“You’ll definitely be okay for life,” I laughed. “For the wedding… it’s debatable. Run that one by your homegirls first, then let me know.”
“They’re gonna say no.”
“Well then…”
“But I want to go. I want to be okay. I want to grab this thing by the horns.”
I blew out a sigh. “I’m not going to say no, but…”
“You reserve the right to say “I told you so”. I know.”
I grinned. “Then we’re cool.”
“Perfect. And if all else fails… alcohol.”
Three
“You do realize you could’ve started a fire, right? – Cheating Bastard.”
“You do realize I wouldn’t have given a damn, right?”
I typed that response, but then deleted it before I hit send, choosing instead to drop the phone on the bed, leaving it buried under the covers as I climbed out. I wasn’t – and didn’t plan to ever be – in the mood for dealing with Darius.
There was something about finding out that you narrowly escaped legally binding yourself to a lying cheater that drastically lowered your bullshit threshold.
Following my mother’s advice – because she’d rarely, if ever, led me wrong – I’d allowed him back into our shared home, but only because I wasn’t there. I’d removed everything that mattered to me already, and those boxes were in my parent’s garage. It had been just over a week since the news story broke, but there was nothing for me to wait around for. If it was at all possible, I wanted to expedite the process of moving on.
Hurt and betrayal sucked, and I wasn’t trying to linger.
Instead of showering, I pushed in the stopper on the deep, garden-style tub in the bathroom and turned the water on. After a quick rustle underneath the cabinet, I grabbed a plastic canister labeled “Epsom salt” and poured half of it into the tub. My muscles were screaming from the workout session with Ramsey the day before.
Small price to pay for the mind-clearing effect. It was incredibly hard to be wrapped up in your emotional problems when you were legitimately concerned you were going to puke up your lungs.
I sank into the tub and closed my eyes.
Maybe I should have saved yesterday’s session for today.
At this very moment, a week ago, I should have been waking up filled with the best kind of nervous butterflies. Should’ve been mentally preparing to marry the man I loved. My thoughts should’ve been consumed with last minute details, concerns about if my hair looked okay, if everybody would be able to find the venue, if my father would really contain himself at the reception and not do the butterfly in the middle of the dance floor.
I should’ve been fucking happy.
Instead… I was broken.
I was still broken, and I really, really could’ve used the distraction of yesterday’s workout. I knew better than to call – Ramsey would chew me out about not letting my body rest. And besides that… I didn’t have the energy for another one of his workouts anyway.
From my place in the bathtub, I could hear the buzz of my vibrating phone. I’d intended to silence it, because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not the liar, not my friends, not my cousin, not my parents. But they were the only ones I couldn’t temporarily ignore, not while I was staying in the same apartment I’d used in college. Their apartment, connected to their home.
I planned to rectify my living situation into something more suitable for an adult woman, but in the meantime, I grudgingly pulled myself out of the tub. I cursed the whole way, and cursed some more when I got to the phone and saw that none of the missed calls were from my parents, who, now that I thought about it, could have just come and knocked on the door if they were trying to reach me and I wasn’t answering my phone.
Several were from Darius, whose number I was sorely tempted to block. It started ringing again while it was in my hand – him again – and instead of ignoring it like I knew I should… I answered.
“What the hell do you want?” I snapped. The beginning of a headache was already starting, and he hadn’t even said anything yet.
“To talk to you, if that’s not too much to ask,” he responded, his tone tinged with an urgency that only served to turn my smoldering anger into a blaze. He had no right to be urgent with me.
“If it’s not too much to ask? If it’s not – Darius, you couldn’t even do something so simple as keeping your genitals to yourself and you have the nerve to ask me if talking is too much to ask? Anything is too much to ask, you lying, cheating, sonofabitch.”
“Eight years, Wil,” he said, calm and collected as ever. “We’re going to flush eight years down the drain without even talking?”
I scoffed. “Don’t you dare put this in my lap Darius! I’m not flushing anything – you did when you screwed someone else and then lied to me over and over and over. You didn’t respect me enough after eight years to not lie to my damn face, and put me in a position to be humiliated. So don’t you dare bring up “eight years” as a reason for me to hear anything you have to say. Fuck those eight years, and fuck you.”
I snatched the phone down from my ear and ended the call, cursing the fact that our house hadn’t actually burned down. At least that would have been a little bit of catharsis – the remaining symbol of our love destroyed in flames. Just the mental image felt so, so good.
He called back because of course he did, because he was never one for being denied something he wanted. I had
very little issue being the person to deliver his petulant ass a firm no. He wanted me back. He wanted me to bend to his will, to forget that this had happened, to take his hand and move forward. On the one-week anniversary of the day we didn’t get married because he - gleefully, repeatedly, and several other adverbs – stuck his dick in someone who was not me, his fiancé.
I was about to rock his world with disappointment.
I blocked his number and then went back to my bath, groaning when I stuck my fingers into lukewarm water. I drained the tub and took a shower instead, dressing in yoga pants and a tee-shirt, and pulling my hair into a ponytail.
I knew exactly where I could go for some encouragement.
&
“You can’t turn me away. I brought ice cream,” I said as soon as my cousin opened her door. I held up the bag of pints from a local shop, and a smile spread over Naima’s face as she stepped back to let me in.
“I wouldn’t have turned you away anyway, but that Dreamery bag in your hand damn sure doesn’t hurt.” Naima pulled me into a lingering hug, rubbing a few soothing circles into my back before she let go. “I called you earlier. Are you okay?”
I knew I didn’t have to lie to Naima, so I shrugged. “I just want to eat this ice cream and talk about anything except Darius.”
Naima nodded, and squeezed my hand. “Okay honey. Come on.”
We stopped in her massive gourmet kitchen for her to grab a stack of bowls and spoons, and then she led me outside to the pool, where several other women were gathered. One of them was her girlfriend, Ashley, and the other two I’d never met, but recognized because of their notoriety in sports world.
Margo, an agent with an impressive roster of the kind of superstar athletes other agents salivated over, and Nicole Richardson. Daughter of Eli Richardson who owned the Connecticut Kings, and girlfriend of Jordan Johnson, star wide-receiver for the Connecticut Kings. And most importantly, in my opinion – well-respected member of the Kings’ front-office staff.
Naima’s girlfriend, Ashley, was a physical therapist on the Kings’ staff, and Naima herself had just accepted a position as team chef. With Jordan Johnson being a key member of Margo’s professional roster, I was the only person who wasn’t connected to the Kings some way. It had me feeling something I didn’t feel often – nervous, like the odd person out.
Determining Possession (Connecticut Kings Book 3) Page 4
