by Stacey Lynn
“You didn’t have time before you took over doing better things.”
“Shit. That was hot. Why’d you stop?”
“Dinner’s almost ready. And I was worried about your knee.”
He groans and his hands slide to my hips, pushing me off him. He unzips and yanks out of his coat and I notice the jerky movements make him flinch less, all good signs when it comes to his knee.
“Let me worry about my knee. I’ll stop if it hurts, okay?”
“I know, but I don’t want to be the cause of it.”
“And I like that you care, but it’s not necessary.” There’s a tightness in his tone I don’t understand, but I brush it aside.
“All right.” I lean in and give him a kiss before climbing off the couch. Once standing, I take his coat and drape it over a barstool at my island, and then head toward the front door where I get him the crutch he dropped. I bring it back to him and settle it against the couch.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “I like your home. It’s you.”
It was renovated a few years ago, an old apartment in Lincoln Park and I had to stay with Lizzie for two months while walls were torn down, and everything was upgraded. The end result is light gray wood plank flooring with gray painted cabinets on the bottom and island, white cabinets up top along the walls. The backsplash is white subway tiles and all the handles and hardware and lighting fixtures are stainless steel like the appliances. When I first got back into the place, it looked like a hospital and way too sterile, but thankfully I’ve been able to spice it up with bright fabrics on my barstools, a throw blanket I use as a tablecloth and change for seasons and holidays and lots of pillows. Many of which have been tossed to the floor near Jude’s feet where he’s resting them on a teal and white patterned three-inch thick floor rug.
“Thanks. It’s nothing special, but the location is fantastic.”
“It feels like a home. Not a place.” He gives it another look and I frown but move to the kitchen. Is that what’s bothering him tonight? Not being home?
“Do you miss yours?” I’m in the kitchen with my back to him, checking on the pasta bake when I hear the clink of his crutch.
“Sometimes. But it’s not decorated like this. It’s plain. Hell, I haven’t painted a thing since I bought it.”
“A house?”
“Yeah, now. When I first got to Charlotte, I had a condo loft downtown but I wanted more space a couple years ago. Moved to a suburb a few miles south of the city where some other players live. Good area. People who let you live your life.”
“You wish you were there?” We’ve talked about this, but I’m missing something. He’s not as happy tonight as he was even at lunch earlier.
Out of nowhere, Whiskers jumps onto the counter and hisses at Jude. He jumps back and in all honesty, I’m surprised she’s waited until now to make her appearance. Usually she’s right at the door, scoping out her next victim as soon as they enter. It took her a year to warm up to Lizzie.
“You have a cat?” Jude asks, but it’s quite obvious, so I don’t answer. I grab the water bottle I keep on the island and squirt her. She scurries off and ducks under my couch, comes out the other side and leaps onto the back of it, ears up, eyes on Jude, a pissed off expression on her cat face.
“That’s Whiskers. She hates everybody for at least a year. In fact, I’m not all that sure she likes me a whole lot yet.” I shrug and pull out a loaf of bread from the pantry and grab the butter.
“Wow… I didn’t… you have a pet.”
“It’s a cat, not a horse, why do you look so confused or surprised?”
He scrubs his chin with a hand and drops it. “Sometimes it surprises me how little we know each other but how easy it is to be together.”
I slather butter on the loaf of bread and sprinkle on garlic salt. “I have some beer and wine. Water if that’s all you can have. Didn’t know what you’d want.”
“Shit. A beer would be great.” I move to grab one for him, but he holds up a hand, stopping me. “I can get it. If I don’t move too far, I can get away without the crutch.”
He’s not my patient, but it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. One slip could set him back. “Okay.”
He shakes his head, smiling at my hesitation, like he knows what I’m thinking. Fridge door open, he sets a beer on the counter and without looking asks, “Red wine or white?”
“White, please. There’s an open bottle in there.”
My cabinets right next to the fridge have glass fronts, making my wineglasses visible so he helps himself to one, pours me a drink and returns the bottle to the fridge.
“You like to cook?” As he asks, he slides the glass in my direction, grabs his beer and does a slow shuffle-limp walk back to the other side of the island where he takes a spot on a stool.
“I love it actually. Took me a while to learn and Lizzie can attest to that fact, but yeah, I like it. Feels… I don’t know… homey.”
He twists off the beer top and takes a slow drink. “Something you never had growing up.”
We haven’t talked about my mom much or my life, and in college, I never really told him everything. He got the CliffNote’s version, but I shouldn’t be surprised he remembers. “Yeah. Probably. I guess I like to be normal. Your average girl who goes to work, cooks a decent meal, watches a lot of television. Goes to yoga occasionally.”
He’s shaking his head and I think he’s laughing with me, not at me, but stuns me to my wood floor when he says, “Katie, you could never be normal or average. You’re too damn beautiful.”
You can hear a pin drop in my apartment for the silence I give him. His bold compliments always undo me.
“Thank you,” I say when I find my voice again. He has a way of leaving me speechless.
“So, tell me about your mom and growing up.”
I don’t talk about it much, and it takes me a minute to think about it. “There were pros,” I say quietly, finishing the bread. I set it on the stove and move to the sink to brush crumbs off my hands. “I got to see the entire western coastline some years, which was great, but Mom. Well, Caroline isn’t exactly someone who likes to live anywhere too long. She was kind and she cared about me, but I think she’s always cared about herself more.” The time on the oven beeps and I lift a finger, telling him to hold on, while I pull out the pasta and slide the bread in. “She was a free spirit. I know that she was born and raised in San Clemente in Southern California, but she never really talked about her life much. Or her parents really. She goofed off when she was young, and I was born shortly after. She was kind and fun and silly. I think, if she’d been my aunt, I would have thought she was the best person in the whole world. But as a mom?” I struggle to find the right way to describe her. “She wasn’t… I don’t know… all there. She was flighty, always looking for the next big adventure. Always smiling and laughing and thought life was one big party which was fun when I was little, but as I grew older, it was frustrating. She always seemed to chase her next high without giving much thought to me.”
“That must have been hard.” He has his hands cupping the beer bottle, head tilted in a way that makes his longish black hair fall across his forehead. “What about school?”
“I skipped around a lot. She enrolled me in every town we stopped even if she didn’t know we’d be there a few weeks or months. Eventually, I convinced her to let me home school, but when I hit high school, I refused to leave with her. I wanted a diploma. I wanted college.”
I used to read books I checked out in libraries and devoured young adult romances, the stories of the preppy girls falling in love with the bad boy or the jock dating the nerd girl. I’d fantasized of that kind of normalcy where the biggest deal was someone you hated wearing a matching outfit versus wondering if we’d be staying in a hotel, a shelter, or her rusted Buick.
“You still talk to her?”
“I call. A few times a year. Sometimes she doesn’t have cell service. Sometimes she
does.”
“So for Christmas, you going to be alone?”
“I usually spend it with Lizzie’s family, or yeah… alone.”
His face twists into something ugly. Something that feels a lot like pity and I don’t like it.
The oven timer goes off again and I take a sip of wine before taking out the bread. I slice it up and keep my back to him. “It’s not what you know, Jude, but it’s all I know. Some people have large families and loud craziness, some people have themselves. It’s not a big deal.”
Except, for my entire life, all I’ve wanted is more of the former and less of the latter. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve done much to foster that and I don’t like realizing if something doesn’t change, all I’m going to have is myself. I grab plates and silverware and then the salad I made earlier from the fridge. Once everything’s assembled, I lay it out on the island and slide the dishes closer to Jude so he doesn’t have to stand to fill his plate.
“Want to do Christmas with me next week? Meet my family? Although warning, they’re all going to be in town, so there will be a whole lot of that craziness.”
My arm, reaching for the salad tongs freezes and I twist my neck. “You want me to spend Christmas with your family?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs and scoops up a serving of the chicken bacon pasta that’s four sizes larger than any serving I’ve ever attempted. Good thing I doubled the recipe in anticipation of an athlete’s appetite. “Why not? My two sister-in-laws will be there, my niece and nephew too. Should be fun. We mostly sit around and drink, play some games, give each other shit about who’s better on the ice.”
“Who’s the winner?”
“Me. Obviously.” He gives me a look that says I shouldn’t question it and I laugh.
“So I get to sit around and listen to a bunch of jocks be completely arrogant and egotistical while getting drunk with the important women in your life?”
“Sounds like a blast, right?”
I swallow the bite I have and something warm ruffles through me so beautifully I fight shivering against it. “Yeah. Actually, it does.”
He grins at me, that soft grin of his that’s too sexy to be sweet, too caring to be arrogant. “Good.” He leans forward and kisses my cheek, grunting as he shifts awkwardly to do so. “I’m glad you can be with us. It’ll be a blast.”
13
Jude
A tightness in my chest eases as she accepts my offer and I can’t help but touch her. Katie’s always been skittish, but when she says she’ll come to my parents’ house for Christmas, it’s like I can actively see her trying to fight through that and I’m so damn proud of her.
So damn happy she’s giving me a chance.
“So, your brothers. You’ve already told me about Jake and I knew he was married, but now two are?”
“Yeah, Kiera’s the teacher. They’ve got two kids, Harper and Asher. And Joey just got married last spring to Lenora. He’s out playing in Las Vegas, so we don’t see him much.”
“The only one to head west?”
“Yeah, he was moved there from Pittsburgh when their expansion team started a few years ago. He’s doing well. I follow him, but we don’t play them but maybe once a year. Definitely seems to like the weather and he’ll be bitching all week about the cold, so you’ve been warned. Lenora’s born and raised in Vegas, so neither of them like coming back here.”
“Noted.” She laughs and takes a sip of her drink. “But really, who can blame them. The winter’s here are brutal.”
They sure as hell are and it’s only December. It’s amazing how you can be gone for only a year or two and then be smacked in the face with the biting chill of the Windy City. It’s almost enough to make me wish I would have sucked it up and stayed in Charlotte for rehab. But then I would have missed seeing Katie and having this time with her. I’ll take the cold so brutal it makes my balls shrivel.
“Charlotte’s not bad in the winter, though,” I say, teasing her, but also meaning it. If she hates the cold enough, maybe she’ll consider visiting me, or more, but we’re way too new and there’s too much uncertainty to spring that on her.
“What’s it like there?”
“Gorgeous.” It was the first thing I thought when I flew down there. I’d been from the airport to the arena and hotels before to see Jason play on the rare trip my family took back when I was in college, but suddenly living there was different. “It took about two weeks for me to fall in love with everything about the city and the area. The fall is incredible. I can take weekend trips to the ocean or the mountains. I don’t think there’s anything more spectacular than the Blue Ridge Parkway at sunset.”
She’s soaking in every word, brows raised, blinking slowly with long eyelashes that accentuate her light brown eyes. “Do you live near Jason?”
I can’t tell if she’s changing the subject or not, but I’ve already told her about the house I bought which in all honesty is way too big for me even if it’s not a mansion or anything. But I got sick of living in a building without space to be outside and enjoy the weather all times of the year.
“No. Jason still lives in a condo downtown. He likes the ease of it and the city life. I like it more quiet, but he comes to my place and we hang out a lot.”
She peppers me with more questions about my family, when they’re arriving. Joey and Lenora get in on the twenty-third, but Jason won’t until Christmas Eve. He has a home game on the twenty-third, the first home game after their ten day road trip but I’ve already got a text from him in our family’s text string saying he plans to stay with me.
I haven’t told him yet there’s no way in hell that’s going to happen.
My guess is he wants the time to see where my head’s at, but he can do that at Mom and Dad’s. If Katie’s coming to Christmas with me, I want the nights alone with her. No way am I having Jason cockblock me now.
We finish dinner, making easy conversation and I grit my teeth when Katie gets up and starts cleaning the kitchen. She insists I don’t have to help, even though I’m fully capable of doing something, so I take the opportunity to grab a second beer for me and refill her glass. I leave hers on the counter and shuffle-limp to the living room where I collapse on the couch.
There are games on tonight, and my instinct is to grab the remote and turn them on. Behind me, the clatter and clink of Katie loading dishes and cleaning the dinner echoes though, so I leave the television off, content to sip my beer and memorize the feel of her place.
I think decorating is a gift God gives only to women. I have no idea what to do with my house except frame and hang jerseys and memorabilia from sports, but even though I love the game, sometimes I still want a break from it. And yet whenever I step into a store to buy anything for my place, I have no fucking clue what to do. Katie’s clearly good at it with the pillows and artwork on her walls. She has a bookshelf that matches the TV stand and on it is a variety of knick-knacks that on further inspection, look pretty and cool, but there isn’t a single personal memento of anything in her life. Not a picture with her and Lizzie.
Not a single photo of her mom. All of it looks like it could come from a design catalog and yet it shows nothing about her.
I’m not sure that matters, but it’s interesting. I’m not sure if Katie has ever truly lived and experienced life or if she’s been so busy trying to create something comfortable and safe, she’s missed the mark completely.
“You got really quiet.”
She appears in front of me, slides to my side and when she sits on the couch, she doesn’t keep space. Instead she curls her body up next to me, feet tucked beneath her, her knees resting on my thigh. Her shoulder is at the back of the couch and she’s at the perfect distance where I can run my fingers through her dark brown hair. I take advantage of that, and touch her like I want, one hand on her knees, the other playing with her hair.
“I was just thinking of how nice your place looks, and I don’t want to piss you off, but there’s nothing personal
in here.”
“Hm.” Her lips press together and she gives the room a quick scan. Bringing her amber-colored eyes back to me and shrugs. “I guess there’s not. I have pics in my room. Of Nora, some of Lizzie and I, though. But I don’t know… I think maybe I’m starting to see I haven’t experienced too much.”
Odd that we’re on the same page.
“Who’s Nora?”
“Oh!” Her eyes light up and she scrambles off the couch. “I’ll be back.” She scurries out of the living room and her voice, almost shouting so I can hear her, calls out, “Remember when I did Big Sisters back in college? Nora was my little sister.”
Vaguely. She’d once told me she couldn’t come to my game because of it, but then she’d shown. We didn’t talk much that night so I never learned a lot about what she did.
She comes back and in her hand is a small frame that looks like something my five-year-old niece Harper would make. Fake, plastic rhinestones surround the wood frame, messily glued together and there’s a hell of a lot of glitter in the spaces.
“Here.” She scrambles back onto the couch where she was sitting before and points to the teenage girl, long black hair in braids, shining white teeth show in her huge smile on her African-American face. The girl is squeezing Katie hard to her. “This was Nora’s fourteenth birthday last year. We still hang out but I quit the program after I graduated. There were rules to follow, which are safeguards, but well, I don’t know… I really loved Nora and her mom Tara.”
They’re at the entrance to the Lincoln Park Zoo, a place I know well and one that isn’t too far from here.
“So you quit Big Sisters, but you still keep in contact?”
“Well, yeah.” She shrugs and picks up her wine. “I met Nora and Tara when I first joined, the summer after my sophomore year. She was nine then and Tara was a single mom. She worked two jobs, ran herself ragged, and mostly she just wanted some older good influences for Nora because they didn’t live in the best area. But she worked her butt off for her daughter, and they were good people. So Nora and I started hanging out, just a weekend a month or something like that, but then I started helping them out more. Some nights I’d take my books to their house to study if Tara had to work and well, like I said, there were rules in place for us. Like, we were supposed to get to the know the kids, help them out, but we couldn’t get too close which didn’t really make sense. So anyway, I quit after Nora got some pre-teen attitude with me one day, saying I was only with her to make my resume look good or something and that I didn’t really care about her or her mom.”
