by Ruby Lang
“This from the woman who hates my current career. It will be different. You’ll probably end up making more money over the long term than me. Are you okay with that?”
She looked thunderous. “Is your dick going to shrink because your salary is smaller? Is that all this is about? Do you think I honestly care?”
God, they were fighting. He hated fighting. They both took long breaths.
After a moment, Helen said, “That was uncalled for. I’m sorry. For that matter, having a job hasn’t made me happy or particularly worthy of anything—”
“Helen.”
“No, let me finish. This whole thing about money, this isn’t you. The reason I lov—like you is because you let me be as much as I am. You even seem to like that I can get obsessive and that I can be aggressive and loud and disorganized and make mistakes.”
“But I still need to be something, to do something.”
“You are more than you know, Adam. Is this why you are doing all this stuff for the team? Why are they sending you everywhere? Why are they making you do the media rounds if they’re going to drop you? Are you doing this so you can play longer?”
She got up and searched around for her clothing, and he noticed that the fabric of the t-shirt she’d thrown on was clinging to her thighs and ass as she groped around on the floor. The shirt was his.
“I’m not doing this so I can play longer. Yevgeny is interested in having me in his organization, and he sort of wants me to prove myself.”
“In his organization as what?” she said.
He’d been given a temporary lift by seeing her in his tee. Now he felt his mood ebb again. “Well, he didn’t exactly say.”
“You’re a good spokesperson for the team,” Helen said slowly. “I can see why he’d want you to represent the Wolves. But I don’t know, Yevgeny Molotov? You know what they say about him. That he has a personal eyebrow wrangler? That he only hires assistants he can sleep with, for dual usage. That he keeps a 182-room mansion stocked with blondes, brunettes, redheads, and whatever you call women with black hair? Why isn’t there a name for women with black hair? Or is it better that we don’t have one so that they aren’t like products?”
Adam tried to decide which question to answer first. He decided to choose the easier one.
“So, you’re saying that you’re offended he didn’t choose you for one of the rooms?”
“No, I’m saying that all signs point to the fact that he treats people like spare parts. And like I said, you are—”
“More, I get it. You really think the lady-house rumor is true?”
She frowned. “No. Yes. I just think it’s telling that those are the kinds of thing people say about him. It’s not that surprising. If you get to that level in business, you probably do count people as capital. But this isn’t really about Molotov. I mean, it’s more about you. I’m just concerned that you’re just going to accept whatever crap job he decides to give you now so that in the future, he can give you another crap job to do because you don’t understand how much you’re worth.”
Well, what else was a guy going to do?
“I can hold my own against Molotov,” he said.
But maybe Helen was right. It was funny, in those first years, when he was still a hotshot player, Adam would have laughed at Molotov, coming to a party with his stupid bodyguards. Adam thought he was a big shot then. But he’d failed before—failed hard enough that he was no longer sure precisely what he was worth. And that doubt had colored his dealings in subsequent years.
Damn it.
“Listen, it’s not about holding your own and going toe to toe and all that masculine crap,” Helen said. “I can understand how hard it is to remake yourself. I had to when I was a teenager, and yes, I say it’s a relief now and that I’m happy now. But at the time, it was horrible. And I had to do a lot of thinking before I realized that I wasn’t limited. That I was free to figure out what I wanted to do—as long as I knew that it wouldn’t be what I was doing before. And it won’t be the same.”
“You’re happy now? That’s rich.”
It came out far more bitter than he meant it to, but instead of slapping him upside the head, Helen looked at him and pursed her lips. She might have been trying to hide a smile. “Maybe you’re right, but I’m not arguing with you while you’re hungry and naked,” she said, prowling out of the bedroom. “Let’s get takeout before you really start fixing for a fight.”
“Oh, I’m the one who’s fixing for a fight?” he asked, trailing after her. “You started it.”
Still, she wasn’t wearing underwear. And really, she should never, ever do that.
Thirty minutes later, Adam took a careful bite of chicken tikka masala.
“Is Yevgeny Molotov even this guy’s real name?” she asked. “It sounds made up. I’ll bet he’s not even Russian. His name is probably Stewart Klunk. He’s probably from Boise.”
It was a relatively primitive strategy she was employing. Distract the defensemen with noise and fancy stickwork. Please. He wasn’t Hall of Fame material, but he was entirely capable of dealing with that ruse. He was going to let her ride it out.
“Does his Russian accent sound real and overdone? Does he sort of play it up and do very stereotypical things, like drink vodka?”
“He claims he was the accent coach for Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October.”
Helen snorted. “I bet he has a caviar wench, someone who has to lie on the table while he eats it off of her with a tiny, tiny spoon.”
“Oh yeah, I was at that party.”
“Shut up! You were not!”
And then she looked down. And in that split second, he felt himself losing her again. “Helen, it’s your turn. What’s going on?”
“This whole thing scares me,” she said.
“Obviously. And you’re trying to scare me, too.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re sort of trying to regain a sense of control by jabbing at me.”
“Yep.”
She chewed slowly. “I guess I just don’t want to clarify things,” she said. “I like it a little amorphous and ambiguous. I mean, why can’t we go on as we are, just talking and having sex and never ever leaving this apartment and eating Indian food for the rest of our lives.”
“You aren’t actually eating much of it.”
“It’s supposed to last for the rest of our lives. Weren’t you paying attention?”
“A lesser man would point out that you just asked to move in with me.”
She swallowed and took a sip of water. “What I mean is, things are good here; they’re great, actually. But as soon as we go out into the real world again, I’m me and you’re you and bad things will inevitably happen.”
“What bad things?”
“This could break my heart.” She hurried on. “Molotov wants you to be the public face of the pro-arena, pro–brain injury deal. That puts us on different sides.”
“I think that part of the PR plays on our chemistry, though.”
“Please, I barely made an impact in the news. And I just don’t want to be part of it. My life is complicated enough already. In a way, those stupid radio and TV shows were good. It showed me I really didn’t want to be attracting the wrong side—I don’t want to become a photo op for the hospital chair and her slimy husband. I don’t want to be beaned by a bat at a softball game. I don’t want to be photographed in a pink baseball cap. So if we’re going to be together, I want you to keep me out of it. This has to remain a secret.”
He’d had just about enough. He stood up and picked her up.
He carried her to the bedroom. He dropped her on the bed, stripped the t-shirt off and threw it into a corner, and just stood looking at her. Her eyes were big and round, but after a brief pause, she managed to keep talking. “It’s not as if we’re totally sneaking around. My friends already probably know. I mean, I don’t think Sarah’s going to be able to keep her mouth shut about your appearance in the office.”
“We can keep it quiet,” he said, gruffly. “We don’t have to give each other pet names. But it makes a difference to me for you to say that we are together. And it makes a difference to you, otherwise you wouldn’t be making such a big deal about it. Whether you like to admit it or not, I mean something to you and you mean something to me. I want to think of you in my bed, in my life. I want you to miss me when I’m gone, and when I’m gone, I want to talk with you on the phone and make you come and listen to you moan in my ear. In the world beyond this city, I don’t think anyone cares about this little campaign or the arena that Molotov built. We’re not going to get hung up on Portland problems.”
“Portland problems?” she said, her eyes eating him up.
Her hand drifted up, and her fingers pulled gently and absently on the coarse hair on his thighs, each little tug making his balls heavy. If he and Helen were so out of sync, how could she do this to him, almost lazily, almost carelessly. How could he feel this much?
“Portland problems. You know, people who want reusable panic attack bags with all the comforting crinkle of brown paper. Or people who want to set the worms in their vermicomposter free. Declan Quail.” He stretched down beside her, and she brought him close. “No one else anywhere cares about this stuff. Portland problems. And we aren’t going to let Portland problems drive us apart.”
Her voice was husky. “I’m surprised you know what a vermicomposter is. Living here has turned you into a dirty hippie.”
“Very dirty.”
Her hand went behind him to squeeze his ass. She gazed at where their bodies were pressed together. She looked a little sad—or maybe it was the way her mouth was turned down. But when she glanced up, her eyes were full of mischief.
“I want this,” she said. She rolled her hips and kissed him until he couldn’t stand it anymore. “I want to be with you. But I don’t know what it is and maybe I should.”
He didn’t know whether to be gratified or annoyed. But at least it was some sort of relationship. So instead, he just took her to bed again.
• • •
She left again early in the morning. This time, at least she’d warned him that she would. She told him that she had morning rounds, but it didn’t make him less disappointed to find himself amorously entwined with a pillow instead of with her.
To be fair, the pillow was very soft. But the timing sucked. He’d be gone again this week, and soon, the state legislature would vote on the arena.
As he stalked to the shower, he consoled himself with that fact that at least she promised she would be there when he came back. There would be more dinners, more nights, more arguments, more admiration of the smooth workings of her legs and thighs, more lips and licking and sucking and kissing.
The shower was not cold enough.
Her skittishness hurt, just a little bit. He wanted to make her forget, to make her stop thinking, and to make her think that he was entirely worth forgetting everything for. But then, she wouldn’t be Helen.
It also worried him. Because if she was hesitant now, how would she really feel when this season was over and he was no longer playing hockey? She said she didn’t care about money, and she even hated that he was always getting knocked around for his job. But when he just became a big, unemployed lunk, then what would happen to them? He was happy to be the calm one in the face of her energy. He enjoyed her brain and her mouth. But that was because their footing, if not equal, had a give and take to it that seemed natural even when they were arguing. What happened when that changed, when he changed? Would he retreat completely? Would she expect him to cook meals, keep a spotless apartment? Would he have an apartment to live in? What if one day she wanted him out? Why was he being weird and sexist all of a sudden? It was going to be different.
He’d hoped that she would be there in Portland in summertime, that he would be holding hands with her and walking along the path next to the river. He could imagine sunshine and life. He wanted it with her. He wanted it so badly that his stomach hurt.
He had no choice if he wanted what he had with Helen to stay the same. He had to keep this thing with Yevgeny Molotov. And if he was on Molotov’s side now, then he had to stay away, at least in public, from her.
They would have to sneak around so that they could be together later. The image of Helen, clad in black leather, emerging from the shadows to fling herself at him, was enormously appealing. So was the idea of simply shutting themselves in his bedroom for days at a time to have sex.
Still, after he showered, he went to his computer to check his e-mail. He’d tried contacting old professors and former coaches for references for graduate programs in psychology and education that he’d begun applying to. It had been a long time since he’d been in a classroom, and while he hadn’t been a failure the first time around, he hadn’t been stellar. Finding most of his old teachers hadn’t responded, he started to jot down notes to define what he had with Yevgeny Molotov. Helen was right—Molotov could jerk him around, if he wasn’t careful. He needed something more solid. He needed something on paper. He needed something that Helen would approve.
After all, how was she supposed to respect him when he felt like he couldn’t respect himself?
• • •
She hadn’t been kidding last night when she’d told him she wanted to stay locked away with Indian food and his naked self—she had wanted to stay in his apartment forever and never leave. And he would’ve let her. He’d be happy about it.
Wasn’t that frightening?
Instead, she left Adam’s warm bed way too early that morning again. The rounds and notes and paperwork she completed bleary-eyed were little consolation for leaving. His bed was great, too, a real grown-up’s bed. It was huge—she supposed it had to be to hold his very large, very densely muscled, very grown-up body. His sheets were always crisp, too. And, well, there was Adam, and his warm arms and his perfect broad back and his strong, round ass. She wished she could loll around with him longer.
To make up for her laziness, she scoured the latest research extra attentively that evening. She uncovered a new monograph about a treatment for essential tremor in Parkinson’s. A small European company was taking the drug to phase two safety trials. She cross-checked the drug and found that it had been approved for use in Canada to treat—of all things—reflux. A heartburn drug was the best lead she’d found after months of looking.
If she could convince her father’s physician to prescribe it off-label, then maybe it would help.
She settled into her desk chair as she set out to research. She was on call for the rest of the night, but Adam was leaving for a few games on the road.
She was trying not to make a big deal about the fact that she would feel out of sorts when he was gone—that she missed him now—because making a big deal meant that she cared. She was already trying not to think about the fact that he occupied a space in her brain during her day, silent and submerged like a massive creature of the deep whose slightest movements could send ripples everywhere. But it was hard to forget he was there, quiet as he was. This morning, as she came out of the bathroom, she turned around to see him give her pillow a delicate, wistful stroke, as if she still lay there. He had thought she’d already left. She saw his eyes blaze to life as he realized that she hadn’t yet gone, and she felt a zing from her stomach, deep down to her heels. How could she not respond to that? How could she feel nothing? Later, when she really had left, he’d fallen asleep again and he was gripping that same pillow, his face pressed into it as if he needed to breathe her scent.
How was it that a part of her was already planning for the moment when he stopped playing, when he’d be able to sleep in with her, when they would sit in the grass somewhere with their shoes off happy and
relaxed. She could be lulled into seeing a future with him. She could be so happy.
Or was that some sort of illusion, too?
Her phone rang and she started.
It was her mother.
Helen’s heart sank. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “How is he?”
Damn it, she’d only gotten one stupid lead on one drug and already—
“He’s fine, Helen. He’s fine.”
“Oh.” Oh. “Good.”
She got up slowly. Her knees felt creaky, and her eyelids abraded her vision. She glanced at the clock. How long had she been sitting?
“We found a buyer for the house,” May Yin said.
It was not what Helen expected at all. It had hardly been on the market. “It’s the new doctor and her family,” May Yin explained. “They have a young son and daughter, just like we did. I talked to Dr. Rajpul on the phone. She wanted to know what the community was like, if it was welcoming.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I told her people’s attitudes and tolerance had changed a lot from when I started there,” May Yin said firmly. “And then she wanted to know about dance lessons for her daughter, and I told her about you.”
Her mother prattled on, sounding proud and happy. She was furnishing her new apartment in Vancouver and planning to visit her sister in Victoria. Helen realized, guiltily, that May Yin hadn’t been able to do that for a while. When was the last time she’d been able to leave her husband alone for more than a couple of hours? Even when home help came to help bathe Harry or prepare a meal, May Yin was tethered to the house. Of course, Helen had known that it wasn’t just about needing more help with dusting and sweeping and ferrying Harry to appointments. May Yin had to keep track of him during the night. She had to make sure he didn’t wander.
All of which Helen knew, intellectually, from working in the field.
But when it came to her own parents—when it came to her childhood—she had a blind spot about how things operated.
Maybe it hadn’t been as idyllic as she’d once imagined it was, all lush green apple orchards and townspeople who knew each other. And it wasn’t as harsh as her brother remembered it—although his memories were no doubt darker than hers. Her experience was different from her brother’s and it was different from her mother’s, and it would probably have been different had she been the same person in a different time. Her home was gone, but it had never really been there. Her life was here in Portland now.
