by Erica Hobbs
But my heart disagreed. My emotions were all for it now. I was in love with Jake – I didn’t even try to deny it anymore – and no matter how many times I ran through the ‘what ifs,’ the ‘maybes’ and the ‘why or why not’s,’ I couldn’t find it in me to fear where I was now.
I liked being Jake’s girlfriend. I loved that he’d mustered up enough courage to ask me, even if it had been in a very roundabout kind of way.
Jake didn’t know what love was. He just knew the game, he knew nothing else. A part of me was touched that I was the one he’d chosen to explore that with.
“You’re back,” my mom said, walking into the kitchen in her yoga pants and tank. “I wasn’t sure how long you would be gone.”
I nodded, shrugged with one shoulder. “I said I would be back.”
My mom smiled at me. “I know.”
She looked at me intently. She knew there was news. If she didn’t see it on my face – I felt like I was an ember, glowing from the inside out – then I was sure she was curious in the least. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell everybody.
“Did you have a good time?” she prodded.
I grinned from ear to ear like an idiot. I wanted to tell her everything. But when James had wrecked me he’d wrecked my family, too. I wasn’t going to do that to them again. Not until I was sure.
“I really did, mom.”
I hugged her in passing and made my way to my room, holding onto my secret just a while longer.
I dumped my bag in the corner and collapsed on my bed. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out. Tanya had been silent long enough.
‘And!?!? I want details!’
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. If I could tell anyone about something going on in my life, it was Tanya and Grace. I typed a quick text in response.
An hour later Tanya and Grace were both on my bed, watching me intently. I sat cross-legged in front of them, hugging a pillow, bracing myself for the Inquisition.
“Start from the beginning,” Tanya said. “And don’t you dare leave anything out.”
I smiled. “Well, we’re dating now.”
Tanya and Grace both blinked at me.
“That’s not the beginning at all,” Grace pointed out.
“Shut up, let her speak.” Tanya nudged her. I laughed and fell back onto the other pillows behind me. Where was I going to start? How could I explain to my friends how happy I was? How being with Jake had somehow set me free from all the baggage I’d been dragging along from the past?
“He took me over to his place,” I started. “For dinner.”
“Is it grand?” Tanya asked. Grace’s phone beeped, and she picked it up, reading whatever came through.
“It’s amazing. A place in a penthouse.”
Tanya smiled, looking at Grace. Grace was still staring at her phone. Tanya flicked her eyes to the phone and then back at me, urging me to go on. Grace didn’t exactly seem interested, but Tanya was.
I told them about the night – the food he’d cooked, the way dessert had run into other things, the way I’d realized I’d fallen for him after the fact. And how he’d asked me to be his girlfriend in the morning without asking me at all as he had no idea what he was doing.
“That’s beautiful,” Tanya said when I finished. “It’s like a fairytale.”
“It’s cliché. As much as James was a horror story, this is a fantasy.”
“You’re a cliché,” Tanya said and pulled a face, but she was smiling. She was happy for me. She approved. It made me ecstatic. We both looked at Grace who hadn’t said much at all. She was still staring at her phone, her fingers flying over the screen, a silly smile on her lips.
“Who are you talking to?” Tanya asked.
Grace snapped her head up and looked at Tanya and then at me. She looked guilty.
“No one.”
Tanya narrowed her eyes. “You don’t smile like that at no one,” she said.
Grace shrugged. “It’s nothing. A joke sent through on a group.”
We both stared at her for a moment. What was she hiding? Tanya shook her head, irritated. I was too happy to care if Grace was interested in my love story. We looked back at each other and Tanya launched into a million questions that covered everything I had already told her. Again.
***
Monday morning I was back to work, and the fantasy was slowly fading. I woke up feeling nervous and edgy. I hadn’t heard from Jake all weekend. I didn’t want to be the clingy new girlfriend and text him all the time until he replied.
It felt like I was the woman he’d been with the one night and now I was waiting for a call that was never going to come. But one night stands were the same as being asked to commit to a real relationship. And this was Jake, the guy who had literally been hunting me the moment he’d seen me.
“It’s no big deal, right?” I asked Tanya as we unlocked the shop. I walked around the counter and fired up the computer. It came to life with a hum.
“He’s probably busy with fame-related things,” Tanya said. She was busy with the printers.
“You don’t sound worried at all,” I said.
She shrugged. “What’s there to be worried about? I’m more curious about Grace. What’s up with her lately? Have you heard from her?”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t talk to me as often as she talks to you, though.”
I typed in the user password and opened the shop’s email to check for any messages. The mailbox pinged three times, and I opened the top one, asking for an immediate response. After hours. Well, that would never have happened.
“Well, she’s not talking to me, so something’s going on.”
I turned to Tanya and leaned against the counter, hunching against the chill of the weekend that still hung in the shop.
“I’m sure she’ll talk to us when the time is right. We all have our secrets.”
Tanya snorted. “Yeah, well you always take it to a new level.”
We chuckled. I couldn’t keep the happiness for long. Anxiety clawed at me, making my stomach turn.
“He’ll call,” Tanya said, reading my mind.
My phone rang just as she said it and she pulled an ‘I-told-you-so’ face. I answered it.
“I’m sorry I’ve been MIA, babe. Coach scheduled a random training and I was dead.”
“It’s okay,” I said, toeing at a bent staple that lay on the floor. “As long as we’re okay.”
“Of course,” he said. I smiled, and all the panic and anxiety bled away. “I’ll see you later?”
“For sure.”
He ended the conversation, and I hung up. Tanya stood in front of me, hands planted on her hips.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You were right. You win.”
She looked smug before walking around the counter to unlock the door.
The third client through the door was a woman with thick black hair and a face that told me she was used to getting what she wanted. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place it.
“Your response time isn’t very good,” she said. “I sent an email a while ago, and you never got back to me.”
I glanced at Tanya who rolled her eyes without letting the customer see it. Right. The email. Maybe I recognized her because she’d been a customer before.
“I only got it this morning. It’s on my to-do list for the day.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m here in person now – can we do some designs together?”
Her whole attitude changed. She went from bitch to all smiles, and I glanced at Tanya again, wondering if she’d noticed. I would have remembered her if she’d been a customer before. She had an impressive way about her – I wasn’t sure if I liked her or if she irritated me.
“Sure,” I said and produced a form. “What did you have in mind?”
She took out a piece of paper and drew a few sketches. I raised my eyebrows.
“That’s not something we’ll be able to help you with,” I sa
id.
She looked up at me and frowned. “You can’t do something like this?”
I shook my head. “No, sorry. Well… I can. But not with any of the software we run at the shop. It’s just not part of the services we offer.”
She looked at me for a beat before she leaned in like she was letting me in on a secret.
“Can I hire you, then? As a freelancer?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if this was against the rules. I would be freelancing, right? I wasn’t going to do anything illegal.
“Just to help out a… friend?”
She beamed at me, and I smiled. Why not? It had been a while since I’d designed something great and my creativity was starting to hibernate.
“Sure,” I said. “Give me your number, and I’ll contact you after shop hours so we can chat.” I slid a piece of paper across the counter. She wrote down her number in big loopy digits and handed it to me with a smile.
“I look forward to hearing from you… ?”
“Alyssa,” I said and took her number.
She smiled at me, a dazzling smile.
“I’ll speak to you later then,” she said.
“Your name?” I asked her as he turned away. She looked over her shoulder at me, flashing white teeth.
“Amanda.”
Chapter 26
Jake
“I would really love to see you later,” I said over the phone. Alyssa and I hadn’t had a lot of free time to hang out lately – it felt like since we’d started dating, life had become a madhouse. Still, we spoke over the phone a lot, and even though we barely saw each other, this was going well.
I hadn’t had a real girlfriend. Alyssa was my first. You would think the way I’d been painted in the tabloids I’d dated a hundred girls, but none of those had meant anything to me. I couldn’t remember most of their names now if I thought about it.
Alyssa was different. She had become the focus point of my universe. The sensation was new and something I loved.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to come through, I’ll have to see,” she said.
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me.
“I’m home today, you can come over when you get a chance.”
I could almost hear her smiling over the phone.
“Oh, I wanted to ask,” she said just before we hung up. “I told you about that design job I was offered by a woman in the shop, right?”
She’d told me she’d been approached by someone who would need her design flair. She could do so much more, she told me, and I believed her.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been invited to the event the designs were for. Apparently, some important people are going, and I might be able to network in my field. Do you want to come with me? It’s this Friday.”
I breathed out a sigh. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I can’t. I have a game. It’s not a big thing – a warm up kind of thing with a team that needs a bit of extra legwork – but I can’t miss it.”
“It’s okay,” she said brightly. She was trying not to sound disappointed. This was what I loved about her – compromise was almost a cornerstone in our relationship so far.
“You go do what you do best,” I said. “Once they meet you, they’ll scoop you up. I know I did.”
I knew she would be blushing. Her cheeks would go red, and she would look at the floor. Maybe she would turn her toes in or interlink her fingers depending on how shy she got. I wished I could be with her to see it.
We ended the conversation, and I hung up, reluctant. I had to make a plan to see her again. I hoped she could come through later.
The idea of a relationship always scared me. I had never settled down because I couldn’t imagine wanting to commit to someone who already tried to take over my life before a connection had been made. Women, in general, were needy, clingy and high-maintenance. Maybe I’d been looking in the wrong places my whole life.
With Alyssa, it was different. She was different. I didn’t feel trapped when I was with her. When she walked away I felt like a part of me was missing, I wasn’t relieved she was gone. And she made me feel like I wanted to try harder, go further, be better than I’ve ever been before.
With her everything was easy. Maybe that was what it felt like when you met the right person.
Everything else in my life was going well now, too. I wasn’t sure if it was just coincidence or if Alyssa was the person who had brought so much goodness to my life. I was willing to bet on the former. Everything changed as soon as I met her.
Damien was showing progress. He was still a pain in the ass, and he would always be that way, but we had managed to form a kind of friendship. We wouldn’t be best buddies by a long shot – he was way too moody for me to want to spend a lot of time with – but we weren’t enemies anymore. That was a feat in itself. Damien hated the world.
Games went well, too. Coach Clay was happy with the team’s progress, he was proud of my performance, and now that Damien was doing better he wasn’t so sour during training. Things were looking up. Way up.
I walked into the living room and sat down on the couch facing the window. The view of the city was breathtaking. It had been a long time since I’d noticed. All the money and luxury in the world meant nothing when you didn’t have someone to share it with. I leaned back my head and closed my eyes.
***
I must have dozed off. The shrill ring of the phone by the door snapped me out of the darkness that had surrounded me, and I scrambled off the couch.
“Yes?”
“A young lady is here, asking for you, sir.”
My stomach turned. Alyssa had managed to make it, after all.
“I’ll come down,” I said and hung up. I checked myself in the mirror of the foyer – I didn’t look like I’d been sleeping on the couch just a few minutes ago. I pressed the button for the elevator, and it pinged almost immediately as if it had been waiting for me.
When the door slid open in the big, glass lobby, it wasn’t Alyssa waiting for me. Long dark hair swung over her shoulder as Amanda turned around, a smile on her face. Shit. I’d forgotten she was still in the picture when I’d bought the place. She’d been a problem back then, but I hadn’t thought to move to get away from her.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said, taking quick steps toward me. I wasn’t fast enough to ward her off. She was slippery and cunning, and she stepped right up against me, going in for a kiss. She planted one on my cheek, but it was so close to my mouth it was almost like a real kiss. Camera flashes went off just as she did and to my horror, three camera men stood just inside the door to the lobby.
“What the fuck?” I cried out and pushed Amanda away from me. Security appeared and ushered the cameramen through the door. The whole was over in just a couple of seconds, but the photos had been taken. Amanda was here. And I was in trouble.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “And why are you always causing shit in my life?”
“Jake, I didn’t mean…”
“I don’t care what you meant. You know I don’t want you here. What did you do? Call up the paparazzi before you came?”
“It’s unfair that you think I’m like this,” she said and pouted. Maybe there were people in the world that face worked on. I wasn’t one of them.
“You’re not welcome here. Get the hell away from me. I don’t want to see you again.”
“Jake…” She looked hurt, and I felt a twinge inside of me. I shook it off. Manipulation – this was the name of Amanda’s game, and I wasn’t falling for it.
“Leave, Amanda,” I said. I looked over my shoulder, looking for security. A man in a black suit and a tie stepped up and reached out his hand to her. Amanda yanked her arm away like he’d already touched her.
“I can do it myself, you don’t have to put your gorillas on me.”
She turned around and stormed out of the lobby in a flurry, leaving chaos in her wake.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, turnin
g my anger on the doorman. It was a young guy, someone I hadn’t seen before. Probably new.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. He looked terrified. I had no patience.
“You’re sorry? My life might just fall apart now, and you’re sorry? Management will hear about this.”
I stormed away, hammering the elevator button. Why was the damn thing so far away when it had been at my disposal just seconds before? Finally, it arrived, and the doors swooshed closed silently behind me. No slamming – so unsatisfying.