Tiebreaker

by P. Dangelico

  “Stop––you could get hurt.” I know he’s right. In the back of my mind, where some of my faculties are still functioning and not polluted by a powerful cocktail of anger and lust, I know he is. But I’m way past the point of reasoning.

  He hugs me closer, his scent filling my lungs. I hate that I love how this jackass smells. “You won’t explain yourself, and yet you expect me to believe this bullshit!”

  Wedging my arms between us, I break free. “You must take me for a total fucking idiot.”

  “Cool your goddamn jets.”

  “You know what I wish, Noah––” I say, talking over him. “What my dream is? I wish I never met you.” The second the words are out of my mouth I regret them.

  I few seconds tick by in silence.

  “Do you really?” he eventually asks. I can hear the hurt in his quiet voice.

  “No,” I grunt because I can’t lie for shit.

  He huffs and I get the sense he’s laughing at me. “If you’re laughing at me I will murder you in your sleep.’’

  He huffs again and takes my face in his hands. His thumbs caress my jaw, skate down the side of my neck. I smack his hands away and stare into the darkness, straining to see what his face says, which is pointless since I can barely make out the silhouette of his jaw. It’s that dark. Dark enough that secrets are revealed and inhibitions disappear. Where it’s okay to kiss the man I once loved more than life itself.

  “Can you imagine––and I know it’s going be really hard with your worthless male brain––standing on the grass at Wimbledon a winner. A winner, Noah. A freaking winner! And yet not feeling like one because something was missing? Can you understand what that was like for me?”

  I get more of his noncommittal silence, which stokes my rage.

  “You’ve taken everything from me. Every accomplishment was hollow, every win bittersweet because I couldn’t share it with the one person I wanted there!”

  I smack his chest and he covers my hand, trapping it over his heart.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice is a breathy rasp, filled with remorse and resonating sincerity.

  He grabs me again, wraps me in his arms so tenderly it hurts my heart. But I’m not done venting. Not by a long shot. Years of repressed emotions come charging out of me at full speed. I struggle against him and the feelings I still have for him, pushing against a wall of muscle until I wear myself out. Tears of frustration I’m barely holding onto slide down my cheeks as I face-plant into his chest.

  Noah whispers platitudes and endearments, more apologies I’m not ready to accept. “I’ve dreamed about holding you like this for years,” he murmurs, lips pressed against the shell of my ear.

  I wrap my arms wrap around his waist and squeeze, needing to feel the weight of him, the tangible, solid truth that he’s really in my arms.

  He tips up my face and brushes his lips over mine. Gently, sweetly––as if he’s expecting me to stop him. But I don’t stop him. I couldn’t stop him even if I wanted to because one touch of his lips is all it takes for the longing to quiet and the sense of completion I’ve always felt when I was with him to come charging back on a white horse.

  This is for me. For all the years I pined for him, for all the time I wasted in anger.

  I take command of his mouth. Owning them, I lick the seam of his lips. They part, inviting me in. Our tongues touch and stroke, dance around each. With a competitive streak equal to mine, the pushback eventually happens and the kiss turns brutal, a fight for dominance. My fingers dig through his hair. He squeezes my butt and lifts me. I wrap my legs around his waist and he sways unsteadily.

  I won’t let him dictate what happens from here on out. I’m not the virgin he once knew. I’ve learned a thing or two since the last time we shared a kiss and he’s about to discover how much.

  Cast arm hooked around his neck for leverage, I shove my hand between us and grip his erection, stroke up and down over his shorts and cup his balls. He whimpers and shoves harder against my hand and a slow smile of satisfaction creeps up my face.

  “Tent,” I grunt. “Tent now.”

  Abruptly, he drops me, and grabbing my good wrist, drags me back to the tent. Once we’re back inside, however, the reality of what we’re about to do sinks in. His gaze is an open window into his thoughts. Desire, anticipation, it’s all there. So is a heavy dose of uncertainty.

  “I want this––for me. Do it for me.” My face is on lockdown, hiding everything I’m feeling while my thoughts silently beg him to say yes.

  “You won’t regret it in the morning?” He looks unsure. More like the broken boy that drove me away than the man he’s become. I can feel it, my heart beginning to soften toward him. Darn it.

  “I’m not the girl that chased after you when we were kids, Noah,” I rush to remind him before I lose the upper hand. Or better yet, myself. “I’m not the lovesick idiot you betrayed.”

  He stiffens, his gaze falling away from me.

  “I’m not in love with you anymore. This is just sex. I want it––” With undisguised hunger, my gaze slides to the wood pushing against his shorts. “Looks like you want it too. So let’s give each other what we both want.”

  His excitement dims. I watch him retreat, power down. His face goes perfectly still. Sometime during my little speech he made a decision and it’s not the one I was hoping for.

  “I can’t…” he says. Exhaling tiredly, he roughly rakes his fingers through his hair. “I can’t.”

  I can’t believe my ears. “You can’t?”

  “I can’t,” he repeats with greater force this time.

  And the hits keep coming. There is no earthly measurement for the amount of disbelief I’m experiencing at the moment. “You’re turning me down? Am I getting that right? You had sex with Crystal––but you can’t have sex with me?”

  “Mare––”

  I never understood what a crime of passion was until this very moment. I’m ready to eviscerate him with a twig if he says my name one more time in that tone, the one that implies love and intimacy. We haven’t been those people in a long, long time.

  “Don’t.”

  Grabbing my sleeping bag, I fight with the zipper. The material snags on my cast. He reaches for it to help me and I stop him with a look that should’ve turned him to stone. Sadly, he’s still breathing. Once I finally get it open, I step into it fully clothed and lie down with my back to him.

  “Maren––” I hear five minutes later.

  I don’t say a word in fear I will either completely lose it and bludgeon him to death with my cast, or worse explode into hysterics and beg him to touch me. The silence carries on and on, palpably dense with our collective emotions, cluttered with our thoughts. An eternity later I hear him get into his sleeping bag, feel the heavy presence of his body lying next to mine. Then the light turns off.

  A love bigger than time and distance…what a load of horse manure.

  Most people spend a lifetime searching for that one person who’s meant for them, their one true mate and all that junk, and never find him or her. I found mine when I was ten and a day doesn’t go by that I wish I hadn’t. Because it’s not a gift. It’s not even romantic. It’s a curse––one I’ll never be rid of.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maren

  The road to destruction is not a straight line. It begins as a subtle wobble and slowly evolves, picking up speed as it spirals downward. Two years of living in bliss. It couldn’t last. I knew it in my bones. We were too happy. Everything was too perfect. I wasn’t that lucky. Secretly, I was waiting for a shoe, or in this case, a cleat to drop.

  I chose to follow him to OU because nothing would’ve kept me from him. He was as essential to my health as gravity and oxygen.

  Noah was getting ready for the NFL combine. He was training like a man on a mission, like the man I knew him to be. All the scouts were saying first round. The question was, which team.

  It was a catastrophic non-contact injury. It happened
while he was working out with a highly sought-after trainer in Dallas. A knee dislocation and subsequent tears of ACL and MCL with nerve and arterial damage meant his football career was over. I tried everything. Dane and Jermaine tried everything. And still, he was sinking into depression at an alarming speed. It was one too many hits. First he was robbed of his family, then his dream. It’s enough to take down even the toughest among us.

  I watched it happen and couldn’t do a thing to stop it, powerless against the force of his insidiously quiet despair. True fear is watching the person you love in pain and destroying themselves. True agony is not being able to help.

  After surgery, painkillers of the prescription variety became a staple, as common as his protein shakes once were. Then he started drinking heavily. Whether he was functioning or not, he spent more time drunk than sober. Everyone was worried. Nobody could talk sense into him. He was unreachable, present in body but not much else. Then things went from bad to worse.

  Pep rallies are a big deal in my town. As big a deal as football, God, and American-made pickup trucks––not necessarily in that order. It was the first one held that fall, football season just underway. The mayor at the time got it in his head to have some of its local sports heroes say a few words and I was tasked with introducing the tennis team. Both the boys’ and girls’ teams showed promise that year to succeed at a national level and I was excited for them. Held at the high school stadium, under the lights, all the guest speakers were mic’ed up to be heard over the crowd and the band.

  Noah had promised to attend. We drove separately since I was coming from campus and he’d moved back into his house. The rally was well underway when I spotted him at the edge of the football field near the goal posts, leaning against the fence with a flat look on his face. I was pretty sure he was drunk but there was little I could say or do from where I was seated near the sideline bench with the other speakers.

  By the time the girls’ volleyball team was introduced Crystal was standing next to him, chatting animatedly. She was still as stunning as ever. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention, my gut agreed. And yet I brushed the feeling away, chalking it up to leftover jealousy.

  My attention was momentarily diverted to my sister, who had recently been released from the hospital after enduring yet another surgery. When my gaze returned to the spot where Noah and Crystal were standing, they were gone.

  It took only seconds for full-blown panic to set in and even less to make my legs move. Have you ever lost something important? A ride when you have to get to your SATs? A passport while traveling? A child in a store? It was that kind of panic.

  As I rose from my chair, a few of the other speakers gave me queer looks. I garnered even more attention from the student body, and yet nothing would’ve stopped me from going after him. Not wild horses––nothing.

  Walking quickly, I headed in the direction I last saw them. My heart beat faster and faster with each step I took, a riot growing inside my chest. I searched the school. Bathrooms, classrooms, closets.

  I couldn’t find hide nor hair of them. I doubled back, retraced my steps. His truck was in the parking lot so I knew he couldn’t have gone far. In a last-ditch effort I decided to check under the empty bleachers on the other end of the field.

  As soon as I stepped underneath them, I knew what I was going to find. The low murmur of voices hit me as hard as a ton of bricks. Noah’s voice, specifically. I could pick it out of a crowd with my eyes closed.

  Trembling, breathless, I stepped around the corner and found them against the opposite wall. His jeans hung low, his underwear with them. Her hand gripped his bare ass, short red nails digging into his skin. I don’t know how long I stood there shaking, my throat immobilized, unable to make a sound while I watched the horror before me play out.

  “Noah.”

  His body braced, stopped moving. Crystal opened her eyes and shock flashed in her blue gaze before she hid her face on his shoulder––a shoulder that belonged to me. That had carried my burdens the same way I had carried his.

  “Get the fuck out, Maren.” His voice was a low growl directed at the wall. Neither of them made an attempt to move apart.

  “Don’t do this, Noah. I know things are bad but don’t ruin this,” I sobbed, voice broken, heart shattered. I had no pride left. In hindsight it was already ruined but I would’ve said anything to keep him.

  “Get out!”

  “Come with me. Don’t do this to us! I love you!”

  His head came around for the first time and his glazed eyes drilled into mine. I’d never seen him look that way before, malicious, like he wanted to hurt someone––and that someone was me.

  “Just ’cause I fucked a couple of your holes doesn’t mean we’re forever.”

  When the words finally sunk in, I stumbled backward gasping for air. Death would’ve been preferable, the pain so all-consuming I never did recover from it.

  When I didn’t move fast enough for his liking, he snarled, “Get the fuck out. We’re over, done––you hear me!”

  The little self-preservation I had left made my legs move. Rubbery and weak and barely able to hold me up, they carried me out from beneath the bleachers with only the roar of blood rushing in my ears to reassure me that I hadn’t fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in hell.

  In a daze I managed to drag myself back to the field. It was eerily quiet. No music, no talking. Only hushed whispers––close to a thousand people perfectly quiet. And when I stepped onto the edge of the field, I realized why.

  My microphone had been on, broadcasting the entire, horrible event to a wide audience. Almost everyone in town, including my parents and Bebe, had borne witness to my humiliation. I don’t remember anything else about that night. My parents told me I’d promptly fainted.

  A week later I was on a flight headed to California, my transfer to UCLA expedited thanks to my father. After that I always found excuses not to come home. A teammate had invited me for Christmas. Too busy training for an important tournament to appear at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t always a lie, but more often than not it was.

  * * *

  The next day we’re up early, dressed and ready to hike back to the truck by seven. Mentally and emotionally drained, I’m ready to put this whole debacle behind me. It’s going to take a long time to get over the I-threw-my-pussy-at-him-and-he-said-no-thanks thing. Every time I think of it I dry heave.

  “Maren.”

  I can’t look at him. I’m still too raw from the night before and don’t trust myself not to say things I’ll regret. Hence, I quicken my pace down the trail.

  “Wanna stop and rest?” he says from somewhere behind me.

  “No.”

  “That’s three nos in the last hour. Can I get somethin’ else?”

  “How about––fuck off.”

  “I’ll stick with no. Maren, come on.”

  “Come on, what?”

  “I know you’re pissed at me but can we stop for a minute? My knee is killing me.”

  That stops me in my tracks. I turn and find him rubbing it and my stomach fills with concern. More than concern, I feel terrible. That was a dick move on my part, not remembering that he has to be careful with it.

  “I’m sorry. How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough I need a break.” He grimaces and bends over to rub it again.

  “You need painkillers?”

  “I’ll take some ibuprofen when we get back to the truck.”

  He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. In the past he hated to bring any attention to it and I wonder if he’s still touchy about it. Looks that way.

  He finds a fallen log and sits, straightens the leg, and rubs where the silver scar sickles around his kneecap. I sit next to him, open a fresh bottle of water I retrieved out of my backpack, and hand it to him. He takes a sip and hands it back.

  It’s then, looking out at the horizon crowded with conifers, that I recall why we’re even here and the last of my righteous indig
nation vanishes. “Taking care of Rowdy by yourself, when he was sick, that must have been hard.”

  “Nothing’s hard when you love someone.” He looks at me and my face gets hot. The look in his eyes makes me think he’s no longer speaking about my grandfather. “Once we get back you’re officially done…what are your plans?”

  I shake my head. More silence follows, verging on uncomfortable.

  “Maren…I miss you. I miss my best friend––so much it hurts.”

  His softly spoken words send me into a tailspin.

  I miss you too. So much.

  I want to scream it, scream it so loud they can hear me throughout the valley. And yet I don’t. My mind plucks the image of Crystal with her head on his shoulder right out of my memory bank and the words stop short and retreat, tucking themselves back onto the same dusty shelf I’ve crammed the rest of our story.

  “You had me, Noah.” I get up and pull on my backpack, adjust my straps for the second time. Anything to keep my hands busy. “All of me and you threw it away.”

  “I know,” he answers with a slow nod, gets up, and puts on his backpack.

  “That’s it? You know?” It’s the defeat I hear in his voice that prompts my reaction, the lack of willingness to explain himself. And the reaction which is on my face is ostensibly saying wtf!

  It never sat right with me and I need answers. His actions were so profoundly out of character that had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it.

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself? Are you even sorry?”

  “Sorry doesn’t even begin to describe it,” he responds without meeting my eyes. Turning away from me, he begins walking down the trail.