Hard to Love

by K. Bromberg

“Hundred?” I ask, my eyes narrowing. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  But even before the words are out, I have a sinking feeling.

  “The hundred dollars your dad offered me.”

  My dad?

  “Offered you to do what?”

  Her face is a myriad of emotions as she stares at me—amusement turned to confusion, guilt meshed with time passed. “I’m sorry. Never mind I said anything.” Her smile is tight and the laugh she gives is fake as fuck.

  It’s my hand on her bicep now. “Molly.” Her name is an exhausted sigh. “What did he offer you one hundred dollars for?”

  “You really don’t know?” Her voice is soft, and I shake my head in response. “He told me that you were cheating on me and that you needed to be taught a lesson.” She shrugs as if to try and play it off. “He offered me one hundred dollars to make out with whoever I wanted so long as I was outside the gym at a certain time.”

  But she was the rich girl and I was the broke boy. Her parents gave her everything she wanted . . . and yet the lure of one hundred dollars was more important to her than simply asking me for the truth.

  “And you just believed him?” I ask. “You never thought to ask me? To confront me to see if—you know what?” I take a step back. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  You don’t matter.

  With another shake of my head, I walk away from her feeling a million things, but two in particular stand out more than anything. My dad is definitely the bastard I know him to be—I just didn’t know how much.

  And . . . he was right. Women will take or do anything to screw you over.

  Life lesson learned.

  Take everything at face value. Even women.

  FINN

  JUST GET ME ON THE fucking plane.

  I’m done with this city. With the smoke and the raspy-voiced waitresses who come on too strong, and the people who choose not to sleep or bathe for days in a quest to earn the almighty dollar.

  I want to earn that same dollar but do it while sitting at my house on the beach and negotiating for my clients over the phone.

  I want to do it away from Stevie and all the errant thoughts that she caused while sitting in my hotel room last night.

  The airport crowd isn’t bad for Vegas. People are dotted here and there, most sitting at the sports bar at the far end of the terminal, desperate to get one more drink, one more hand at electronic poker, one more connection, before returning to their boring, normal, everyday lives.

  The news is on the TVs positioned randomly throughout the seating area. I half-heartedly watch it as I balance my coffee, my carry-on, and my backpack. My phone is vibrating inside my backpack somewhere, probably the last place I shoved it as I went through security, but I just don’t have enough hands to grab it yet.

  “In the sports world today,” the anchor on the twenty-four-hour news station says, the opening line, always grabbing my attention. “It seems tennis superstar Stevie Lancaster just can’t seem to catch her breaks. Worldwide News hasn’t independently confirmed any of the source material yet, but—”

  “American Airlines flight forty-four is now boarding . . .” drones over the intercom and knocks out the sound on the televisions.

  But I can still see the images on the screen. Stevie leaving the Vegas hotel surrounded by press five- to six-people deep. They shove microphones in her face and shout questions at her. She lowers her head without speaking and her bodyguards help push her back into the hotel.

  What the hell?

  It’s not your problem, Finn. Not a fucking one. Whatever she caused or is in the middle of isn’t your fucking issue to deal with. And yet I stand, staring at the TV screen long after the story has moved on, unable to get the image of her standing there out of my head.

  The woman is used to the media. Hell, she’s lived her life under its scrutiny for most of it, but there was something about the look on her face—shell-shocked, overwhelmed, vulnerable—that says this is out of her control.

  My phone vibrates again against my back, prompting me to find a seat so I can drop my shit and grab it.

  It vibrates as my fingers close around it and I’m already dreading what I’m going to see on its screen. There are five missed texts from Carson as I google Stevie’s name on my browser to see what the hell is going on.

  After years of living in silence, Mary Johnson steps forward to speak about her tennis superstar daughter, the man who paid her off for years, and if that man, is in fact, Stevie’s real father . . .

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I mutter after reading the opening line of the article. I stand there, my stuff on the seat beside me, and skim the rest of the article. Cash payments made regularly to keep her away. A mother desperate to connect with her estranged daughter. A woman who was promiscuous in her early twenties who put Liam Lancaster’s name on the birth certificate without knowing who Stevie’s real father was.

  I silence a call from Carson that comes in, needing to read this again and see what other sites say. Needing to think first before I respond to him.

  Greed.

  That’s what this whole interview, all of these interviews that seem way too coordinated for me, screams of. They’re unfounded claims from a woman desperate for attention or money.

  But why now? Because Stevie’s fiercest protector, Liam, is now gone? Or is there something more sinister here? An opponent trying to mess with a competitor they’re fearful—or jealous—of?

  I twist my lips and stare out the window to the runway and know the opponent theory is far-fetched, but I’ve seen it happen before.

  But this? This screams a plea for money. This sounds like a desperate woman got advice from a smart person who knows Stevie is at her most vulnerable right now. That she won’t want all this noise heading into training for the US Open and therefore her advisors will tell her to make the payment with a heavily clad NDA to quiet the noise so she can concentrate.

  It’s amazing when you’re famous who comes out of the woodwork to stake their claim. And it’s sad that I’ve seen it more times than I thought I would in my ten years of being an agent.

  They announce first class boarding and I grab my stuff. This is not where I’m needed. Yes, Stevie Lancaster is going through more shit, but she has the strength and fire to beat it. She’s proven that.

  Despite the look on her face I’m trying to forget.

  My phone rings again when I’m one person back from the ticket counter and I know Carson will keep calling until I answer.

  “I’m boarding my flight, Car. I’ll call you back when I land.”

  “Finn.” Stevie’s voice is so soft, I can barely hear her say my name.

  My stomach twists at how lost she sounds.

  I wait to go numb. For my ears to hear the buzz of indifference that I choose to listen to when it comes to women. For the fight or flight to kick in that always opts for flight. For my emotions to fall flat.

  But they don’t.

  They feel.

  They don’t harden, they intensify.

  And what the fuck is up with that?

  The man in the line behind me taps my shoulder to tell me to give the airline worker my boarding pass and for a moment I forget what I was doing.

  “Finn? Are you there?” she asks again.

  “Yes . . .” I hesitate between stepping out of line and hanging up the phone because, these feelings are so fucking foreign and I honestly don’t know how to handle them.

  “I need you.”

  STEVIE

  THE DESERT PASSES LIKE A blur outside of the window of Finn’s rental car. Endless dirt and trees interspersed with small towns where I could never imagine living.

  But I don’t really see them. All I see is the woman’s face who claims to be my mother. All I hear are her words saying my father might not be my father. All I feel is hollow and confused and simply put, devastated.

  “Stevester? Where are you?” my daddy shouts down the hall as I bury my face i
n my pillow to hide my sobs. “Stevie?”

  My door opens and his sigh fills my room moments before the bed dips beside me and his massive hand spreads over the whole of my back in comfort.

  “Do you want to tell me why you’re upset?”

  “I’m not.” My breath hitches, but I think he’ll believe me.

  “Mrs. Martin called and said something happened at school today.”

  “I don’t like school.” I bite my bottom lip to fight back the tears that threaten to fall again.

  “Yes, you do.” He presses a kiss to the back of my head and that only makes me want to cry harder.

  “No, I don’t. Everyone is mean.”

  “What happened?” he asks again.

  “Jill told me that I couldn’t go to the Mother’s Day Tea tomorrow because I didn’t have a mom. That my mom hated me so much she ran away from me.” I promised myself I wasn’t going to tell him. That I was going to keep this a secret so he wouldn’t be sad, but it burned a hole right through my chest.

  His hand stills on my back and I know I’ve hurt his feelings, but I don’t know how to make it better.

  “Stevester. Look at me.” Those giant hands of his pick me up and set me in his lap so that his arms are wrapped around me squeezing me tight, letting me know whatever it is that it’ll be okay. He puts his finger under my chin to guide my head up so I’m forced to look in eyes the same color as mine. “Your mom leaving had nothing to do with you. Do you hear me? Mary Johnson’s missing out on knowing her incredibly special daughter, Stevie. She doesn’t know just how special you are, and that is her fault. But it’s not because she didn’t want you. I know you want a mommy and it hurts that you don’t have one, but I promise to do everything I can so you don’t feel left out.”

  I nod but the hurt doesn’t go away.

  I nodded and then laughed till my tummy hurt when he walked into my class for the Mother’s Day Tea the next morning with a pink, sparkly wig on, a muumuu over his usual tennis shorts and polo shirt, a wand that he used to sprinkle fairy dust (aka glitter) with, and a platter of the most atrocious-looking homemade cookies I’ve ever seen. But he sat on the floor crisscross applesauce with us kids showing us how to drink with our pinkies out while the other moms were too stuffy to be like him.

  And he might have made sure to sprinkle Jill with fairy dust a few times for good measure.

  The car stops. Finn asks me if I need anything. I respond in silence, his sigh heavy as I assume he stares at me before getting out to pump gas without me ever responding. People walk to and from the McDonalds across the street. A tumbleweed is stuck between a telephone pole and transformer box. A semi pulls its Jake Brake somewhere on the highway next to us.

  Is it true?

  Has my mother been trying to be a part of my life and my dad paid her off to keep her away? Why? Why would he do that to a little girl who was starving for a mother and the affection only a mother can give?

  “Dammit, Stevie. You can do better than that!” My dad paces from one side of the court to the next. His racket is in one hand while he adjusts his ball cap with his other, frustration evident in his posture and the way he swings his racket as if he’s talking to me and not on the other side of the net.

  I sigh and roll my head back, the hangover pounding like a drumbeat in my head. I thought I was hiding it better than I obviously am.

  “You want to tell me what the hell has gotten into you this morning? Why you’re late to the ball? Why your backhand is weak? Why you’re huffing and puffing like a chain-smoker?”

  “I didn’t sleep well,” I lie, hands on my hips, temper firing.

  “Didn’t sleep well?” He serves the ball hard and fast at me. I’m unprepared and give a half-assed attempt to reach it. “Or snuck out and got drunk with Jordan and Vivi even though you’re only sixteen years old?”

  He rockets another serve at me before I can even recover from the shock that he knows about last night. The ball hits my leg and I grunt in response, refusing to show any sign of weakness, because isn’t that what he’s getting at?

  “You don’t think I didn’t hear you?” Another ball to the far corner of the court. “You don’t think I don’t know where you are all the time for your own safety?” One that has me running back the other way. “Maybe I let you go so I could teach you a lesson.” An ace that whooshes right past me. “Maybe I wanted to show you how being careless affects your game.”

  I put my hands on my knees, my chest burning, my head pounding, and my gut churning.

  “Maybe I thought—”

  “God forbid I’m a normal teenager,” I scream at him, not caring who is on other courts nearby or what they hear. “God forbid I have a life outside of—”

  “You don’t get to be a normal teenager when you’re one of the best goddamn tennis players in the world,” he shouts back followed by another ball that gets past me.

  Tyrant.

  And I’m well aware what the balls on the ground, the missed balls on the court, behind me mean—wind sprints. A sprint for each one missed. A way to drill into my head that we don’t miss.

  Asshole.

  “Fuck you,” I mutter under my breath, hating him with everything I am. The missed school dances and football games and trips to hang out at the mall. All the rites of passage that most other teenagers in America get that I don’t.

  It’s always one more game. One more session. One more mile. One more fucking everything because it’s never good enough for him.

  “What was that?” he asks, his chuckle a low hum that says he knows exactly what it was. “Athletes like you don’t get to be careless. Champions like you don’t get days off. Once-in-a-lifetime players like you need to always be at their best.”

  I hate you.

  Am I really his flesh and blood? Have I lived a life believing one thing and now am all but begging fate for it to be true? Because he’s all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever loved, and I need to feel that unbroken bond right now. I need to know that my smile is in fact his, and that weird birthmark on my thigh isn’t just a coincidence because he has one there too. Had. He had one just like me.

  That connection was my tether. My north star.

  I hiccup back the sob that threatens from realizing that all I’ve ever thought was true, just might not be.

  The sun is blazing hot and the one thing that stands out to me besides the absolute silence is the feel of a lone bead of sweat trickling down the length of my spine.

  I don’t see the people packed in the grandstands.

  I don’t notice the cameras or hear the click of their shutters as I walk toward the service line and take a deep, measured breath.

  This is it.

  This is my chance to serve and win a point.

  This is when I earn my spot in history as one of the few to win a Calendar Year Grand Slam—four consecutive Grand Slams in a row.

  “Game on, Stevester. Let’s go.”

  I hear his voice from his place in the stands and the crowd around me chuckles. I hear it then I drown it out, but I’m more settled now. The words my father has uttered to me before every huge match point have become a thing the audience expects—and something I need to hear.

  I don’t glance his way, but I adjust my visor in my unspoken way to let him know I heard him.

  The chair umpire says, “Quiet, please,” in his hushed tone as I bounce the ball once, then twice.

  Another deep breath as I glance up to see my opponent, Marvela, bouncing back and forth on her feet, anticipating the location of my serve.

  I toss the ball up with one hand and swing my racket overhead with the other. The ball launches across the net and Marvela is caught flatfooted, thinking I was going to serve the opposite way. Ace.

  The crowd explodes in a cacophony of sound that I can’t so much as hear as I can feel in the rumbling in my chest.

  It’s over.

  It’s done.

  I did it.

  No, we did it.

&n
bsp; And as much as I want to drop to my knees in sheer exhaustion, I need to find him. I need to find the man who pushed me when I didn’t think I could go any further. Who loved me when my mother decided she didn’t. And who has been my everything my entire life.

  I look up through the sea of people to find my dad grinning from ear to ear. There are tears in his eyes. Tears I used to think made him a silly man when I was little but have now learned are charged with pride. In me.

  He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him. “You did it. Unbelievable. You did it.”

  There’s an odd sense of amnesia at this point. A forgiveness of all the pain, the sweat, and the tears that got me to this point. Of the resentment over how hard he pushed me. Of the anger I had over all the things I’ve missed out on.

  It’s a temporary amnesia.

  One that comes with each win, with each victory achieved, before I return to reality to feel it again and again.

  “I’m so proud of you, Stevester.”

  The anger comes in waves as the car brakes with the afternoon flow of traffic. At the woman who might be my mom. At how she might have tricked my dad my entire life into believing he’s something to me that he’s not. At how I might not belong to anybody.

  The tears slide slowly and solemnly down my cheeks. One after another, each one etching through the path of the one before it. Each one a reminder how quickly life can change.

  My chest hurts and my head swims with thoughts that seem clear and then grow cloudy just as quickly.

  The only thing I take solace in is that even though Liam Lancaster might not be my father by blood, he still fathered me. He was still the one who taught me how to tie my shoes, to ride a bike. The man who kissed my owies when they happened and who laid down the law, even though I still resent him for it.

  He is the reason I’m here today even when he’s not, and I struggle with how I can love him as much as I begrudge him.

  Finn asks questions that I don’t respond to. Do I need to use the bathroom? Am I hungry or thirsty? Do I need anything from him?