Tori blew out a relieved breath. “Okay, good.”
“I think he’ll call you again,” Lydia said. “Or email you. Or show up with some romantic gesture to show you how much he loves you.”
“The only gesture that boy better show up with is receipts from a therapist,” Tori added.
I smiled at the two women reacting so differently to this first heartbreak of mine. “Lydia, I didn’t know you were such a romantic.”
“I’m not,” she protested weakly. Then she rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret is safe with us.”
My little sister sighed. “Should we go see if Dad will make us some pancakes?”
“Yes.” Tori stood from the floor. “I like this plan. Maybe after we eat, we could go to the zoo and feed some babies?”
Lydia clapped. “I’m in! Am I allowed to film it?”
Tori shrugged. “Don’t think the kangaroos will care. Go for it.”
It took me a second to drag my exhausted ass from the bed, and when I did, my sister gave me a quick hug. “I still think he’s going to call soon,” she whispered.
I smiled at my sister. “I’ll be right up.”
Once I was alone, I sat back down on her bed and pulled up Dominic’s name.
Me: Please don’t answer when I call. Just wanted you to hear my voice when I say this.
Dominic: I won’t. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
Me: I know, Dominic.
When the call connected, I said a quick prayer that he’d respect this little boundary I’d erected. His first hurdle, at least in my head. His voicemail picked up almost immediately, and I breathed a quick sigh of relief.
My nerves were lit like firecrackers, popping all along the surface of my skin because I hadn’t even thought about what I wanted to say. When his automated message was done, and the beep to record sounded in my ear, I took a deep inhale.
“Thank you for your message last night,” I said quietly. “I told my sister this morning that I feel a little lost, Dominic. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Or what’s helpful for you—helpful for me—in navigating all this. You hurt me so badly,” I whispered, tears crowding my throat. “And I do accept your apology. I’m relieved that you can see how … how fucked up it is that you lied to me like that. You’re the first man I’ve ever wanted to be with, Dominic. The first man I’ve fallen in love with. And I wish I was saying this to your face too, but it’s too hard. Because as much as I want to save you from your own worst tendencies, I can’t. I can’t take on that responsibility. Only you can do that. And I hope you do because I miss my friend. And I miss the man who convinced me to take a chance on him.”
I sniffed noisily.
“I forgive you for lying to me, hotshot, I do. But if you want to be with me, I need you to figure out how to live in that … that tension of the in-between. Where something scares you, something worries you, but you don’t take it out on everyone else, just so you can stay in control of what happens next. Because that’s what you did. Even if you didn’t intend to manipulate me, that’s how I feel. I trusted you, and because you were scared of what might happen if you trusted me in return, you set off a ticking time bomb under this really great thing we were building. I won’t be that person in your life. I respect myself too much.” I stopped, wiping my endless tears. “But I miss you. And I hope you can hear how much I care about you in this message. I would never say these things if I didn’t. And I hope that makes sense.”
After that, my words just dried up. There was nothing else I could say to him, at least for now. And even as I disconnected the call and left my phone on Lydia’s bed, a huge chunk of my heart hoped Lydia was right. That he’d call. He’d show up and sweep me off my feet with some huge gesture showing that he could change this one side of him.
That I’d get that chick flick ending I’d imagined when I found out who he was.
But for the next week, my phone stayed silent. And I promised myself I’d be okay with him respecting what I’d said. But my heart, it still didn’t get the memo because each night, I lay awake and thought of him.
Dominic
“You’ve been quiet today.”
James appeared next to me on the deck as I stared out at the crashing ocean waves. We’d been at his place all week, a trip I wasn’t sure I could handle making until I realized I couldn’t stand the sight of my shiny fucking apartment. I saw her in every inch of it. I’d wandered around my family room, studying each piece simply because she’d done the same, wanting glimpses of who I was.
Before I knew it, I’d shoved clothes and some deodorant in a bag, and I was climbing onto a private plane with James and the other guys he’d invited.
Maybe I’d gone because it would keep me from going crazy, beating myself up for what I’d done, and maybe I’d gone because Faith had encouraged me to. But either way, once those plane doors shut, there was no going back.
And with each day that passed, yet again, she was proven right.
I didn’t approach them with a chip on my shoulder. Didn’t expect the worst, bracing for impact on each interaction I had.
But they could all sense that something was wrong. James was just the first who was willing to ask.
“Yeah, had a rough couple of days before I got here,” I told him. “Been thinking about it more since we’re leaving tomorrow.”
James folded his big body into a teak chaise lounge next to where I was sitting, and he sighed. “This is my favorite place in the world.”
“I can see why.”
For a few minutes, we sat in silence, the roar of the powerful water churning along the coast the only sound between us.
“You wanna talk about it?”
At first, I shook my head.
“No problem,” he said easily. “But you can, if you want.”
Turning slightly on the deck, I gave him a curious look. “You play counselor to every guy on the team?”
James laughed. “No. But there’s something about you, Walker.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that a time or two,” I muttered. “Usually, it’s not meant as a compliment.”
Down in the grassy yard area underneath the second-story deck, three of the other guys were sitting in the hot tub. Christiansen—a fifth-year running back—tried to dunk the rookie, and the other guy—Washington, the all-pro receiver, with more catches than almost anyone in the league—laughed so loudly at the wrestling that ensued that it echoed up to where we sat.
Maybe I’d been quiet, but now I knew more than their names.
I knew that John Cartwright, the rookie from Florida, had a mom sick at home with terminal cancer. Hence the tequila on the day he signed because she might never get to see him play a single game.
Christiansen was a third-generation professional football player, had three kids under the age of three, and a wife he met in high school.
Washington had a similar background to mine. A walk-on in college, he ended up destroying every school record at Michigan State. Like Christiansen, he was married. No kids yet, but they were trying. We heard all about the shots and the hormones and the ovulation sticks, whatever the hell those were.
Everyone there was nice. They were friendly. And the thing I’d noticed was that they relaxed immediately around me when they saw that I was approaching without clenched fists and a scowl. We hadn’t cried together in a trust circle or anything, but it was a really good start.
I kept thinking about what Faith had said in her voicemail to me. She’d trusted me fully from the moment we had our first date. But I hadn’t trusted her at all.
I wanted her. That wasn’t the problem. Fell in love with her. Could’ve spent all my free time with her. The way I felt about Faith, as a person, was never the issue. But trusting how she’d react to me was in an entirely separate category. But I still couldn’t figure out what to do about it. How to fix it.
With another glance back at James, I left my spot on the deck and joined h
im on one of the chairs.
“How’d you know I wouldn’t come this week and make a mess of everything?”
He smiled. “I didn’t.”
My brows lowered at the ease in his answer.
“You think you’re the first guy I’ve played with who’s mad at the world?”
“I’m not mad at the world,” I corrected. “Well … sometimes I am. I played for someone who wanted us all that way, and it, I don’t know, brought out all the worst sides of me.”
“I’ve met those kinds of coaches.” He set his hands on his stomach and stared out at the water again. “That kind of leadership is the quickest way to ruin really good players. They piss me off, Walker.”
I smiled. “You’re the calmest pissed-off guy I’ve ever met.”
“Tell me a situation where you got really angry, and it actually solved anything.” His gaze came to rest on me, and I saw the challenge there. “If you can.”
Resting my head back on the chair, I thought about it. I’d been angry about a lot. Ivy getting sick. Her treatments not doing what we’d hoped. My parents not wanting to discuss her after she was gone. People’s expectations about what kind of player I was, my ability to do something great in Washington because of it. And now … I was really fucking angry with myself for how I’d handled things with Faith.
Separately, each situation fell flat when I tried to hold it up under what James had asked. Nothing had changed because of whatever was happening inside me. Didn’t matter if the burn of my reaction was quick or slow or if I had time to second-guess it or not. Didn’t matter that I knew I had two options of how to react, opposing forces whispering into my ear trying to sway me one way or the other.
It didn’t even really matter if my reaction to that thing had been valid. The validity of my anger, the ability to rationalize why I felt it, didn’t really change my ability to answer his question.
“It’s okay if you can’t.”
“You gonna tell me how to fix that, master of the Zen?”
James cracked a wry smile. As he did, I couldn’t help but marvel at this side of him, when I had seen firsthand his intensity on the field, his ability to manage the offense with efficiency and ruthless intelligence. But never with anger. Never with heavy-handed dominance.
“We get angry, defensive, self-destructive for the same reason we worry ourselves to death, Walker.” He closed his eyes. His entire body relaxed as he spoke. “It tricks our brain into thinking we’re in control of whatever that situation is. You’re doing something if your reaction is big enough. But that reaction? Probably makes no difference on the outcome, other than to make you feel a false sense of control.”
Self-destructive, he’d said. That phrase made my skin feel two sizes too small, shrunk tight to my body until it was uncomfortable. I wanted to shuck it off me with brisk movements of my hand, so it didn’t settle for too long.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “Something I said hits wrong, judging by the look on your face.”
Before I could speak, I thought of my parents and how they’d dealt with Ivy. My completely opposite reaction. All of it was a way of managing this giant thing that we couldn’t actually control. I thought of the press conference on my first day in Washington. The choices I made that tipped over an endless line of dominoes. Even now, they were still falling in a winding line that I couldn’t slow. The result of where they’d fall wasn’t in sight, and I hated that too.
And at the end of the day, none of the things I’d done to keep a tight grip on those situations had actually helped at all. My teammates had only started warming up to me when I approached them, hands raised and defenses down. No matter where it was, what jersey I wore, my ability to play the game I loved wasn’t enhanced because I let my anger take the wheel. And worst of all, I’d still broken the heart of the woman I fell in love with because everything I’d done to protect my own fragile fucking ego only served to break something precious—her trust in me.
“Settle in, James,” I told him on a sigh. “I’ve got a story for you.”
With infinite patience and no interruptions, he listened as I told him.
After a few minutes, we were joined by the rookie and Christiansen, and they listened, eyes wide, as I told them about my sister. About Faith. How everything came to a head at the ball.
By the time I finished talking, my throat was dry and my chest ached from the reliving of all the separate pieces. They weren’t separate, though. Not really. That was the thing that was hard to see when you were in the middle of shit, no matter what it was.
It was almost impossible to see how it all weaved together, how it formed the net that we fell back into day to day. It was in our reactions, our thoughts, the stories we told in our head of what other people were thinking. I wasn’t even aware how tangled up in that net I was until Faith started showing me what it was like to be free of it.
The rookie shook his head slowly. “You need some serious therapy, dude.”
Christiansen knocked him upside the back of his head.
“Ouch,” Cartwright muttered, rubbing his scalp. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
James smiled.
I did too. “You’re probably not wrong.”
Washington, who’d joined us about halfway through, along with the other two receivers, gave me a sympathetic look. “What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I admitted. Frustration bled into every syllable. But I did everything in my power not to let that frustration turn to anger. “She’s right. She can’t fix all that shit for me. And I don’t expect her to. But how am I supposed to even know what that means?” I dropped my head back on the chair and swiped a rough hand over my face. “Live in the fucking tension,” I muttered.
“It means you let it be uncomfortable,” the rookie said. “Your parents don’t talk about Ivy because it makes them sad. So they do everything in their power to avoid that feeling, when really, if they admitted it and stayed there for a while, they’d probably find some sort of healing. You avoided helping those little girls because they reminded you of your sister, so you’re really not much different than your parents in how you avoid it. And you can be afraid to admit something to Faith, but don’t make some rash decision to make that fear go away because you’re not actually solving it. You face her like a man and say, I love you and I’m afraid to lose you by telling you this. Then you wait and trust she’ll believe you.”
My eyes popped open. Every head swiveled in his direction.
Cartwright glanced around at us. “What?”
“The hell, man,” Washington said. “Where’d that come from?”
He shrugged. “Therapy. That was my agreement with Allie when we met in her office. I told her about my mom and why I got so trashed after signing my contract that I puked on the field.”
Now every eye swung in my direction.
I glared at the rookie.
“It’s fine, Walker,” he said. “You didn’t need to take that rap then, and you sure don’t need to take it now. I’m okay if they know that I did something stupid because I’ve already had to work through the shit that made me do it in the first place, and I’ll never do it again.” He held his arms out wide. “Living in the tension, motherfuckers.”
After a beat of silence, I was the first to start laughing. By the time they joined, my whole frame shook with it. I still didn’t know exactly what it all meant, but it was the first time since I’d walked away from Faith that there was a new small burning feeling buried deep in my gut.
Hope.
Dominic
Trying to mold yourself into a person who wasn’t constantly waiting for someone to take a wrecking ball to their life was hard fucking work.
Not that things were always that dramatic, but in the couple of weeks that followed the retreat with James and the guys, it was hard to swallow all the warning signs I’d had along the way. Some of the things that had been said to me at the beginning.
Coach Ward, in th
e weight room, had told me if I failed here, there was only one person to blame, and I looked him in the mirror every single day. I remembered those words as I showed up to practice every day and worked harder than I’d ever worked in my entire life. As I slowly got to know my teammates, my coaches.
I remembered things Faith had told me as I sold that ugly-ass apartment and found something that was at a less impressive address and a significant reduction in reflective surfaces. As I started laying the foundation for the kind of life I really wanted to have, instead of shoving myself into a role that never really fit me in the first place.
And because I owed it to her, I forced myself to remember all the things my sister had told me. At nine, she’d been so much smarter, more intuitive than I ever was. Even though I’d lived more than half of my life without her in it, before she was born, and now after her death, I knew that Ivy’s purpose was so much bigger than just to leave a silent hole in our family.
Once a year, I could still do something to honor her, but as I drove to my parents’ house for dinner, I wasn’t willing to let it only be that.
After parking my truck in the driveway behind my dad’s, I tucked my laptop underneath my arm and grabbed the bag on the floor of the passenger seat.
“Young man, you got a set of spare hands for me?” Miss Rose called from across the street.
I straightened, grinning in her direction. “For you, always.” I set the computer and bag down on the ground and waited for a car to pass before crossing the street to her driveway.
She was trying to set up a ladder by the side of her house, where some gutters were hanging at an angle.
I gave her a chiding look. “I know you weren’t going to get up there on your own, Miss Rose.”
The Lie : a bad boy sports romance Page 22
