by Erica Hobbs
“Thank for taking the time to see me, Mr. Rosenblatt,” I said.
“Oh, no, thank you. And you can call me Douglas. Follow me.”
I walked behind him, through the door he’d come from and down a short corridor with doors on both sides. We passed through a small communal area with an open plan kitchen corner. Douglas opened a door opposite and let me walk in first.
“Take a seat,” he said. I sat in one of the chairs facing his desk, and he walked around it, sitting down to face me.
“I was impressed with what you did for Amanda,” he said. “We’re always looking for fresh talent, and you have loads of it.”
I smiled, feeling shy. “Thank you,” I said.
“Tell me about your studies. Did you enjoy them? What made you decide to become a graphic designer?”
I swallowed. “I’ve always been a little different than my friends,” I started. That sounded bad. “I mean, I could never see myself as a lawyer or an accountant or a computer specialist. I decided on design because it is creative. I love being creative – it gives me stability in a way I don’t think any other job would have.”
Douglas nodded. “What do you think you’ll be able to offer me that’s unique if you do work here?”
I thought about it for a second.
“Well, I can follow guidelines and requirements well, but I don’t believe in doing just that. Everything I do has an element of who I am in it, and that keeps growing, so I know it keeps getting better and better.”
I swallowed. Had that sounded too vain?
Douglas smiled. “That’s what I like about you,” he said. “Even at the afternoon get together, you weren’t afraid to show yourself. It’s not easy in this world. That’s exactly what we’re looking for. I want you to work for me as a designer in my marketing department. I’m looking for excellent visual design and typography, something different than what’s already out there. Do you think you’ll be able to do that? Is it a job that’s interesting enough for you?”
I blinked at Douglas Rosenblatt, trying to catch up to what he was saying. Had he just offered me a job? I thought I would get experience in interviewing, at last, and nothing more. Was that it?
I nodded, slowly.
“Good,” he said. “When can you start?”
I hesitated. “I have to give a month’s notice at the shop where I’m currently working.” Would he wait for me? I couldn’t just leave.
“Of course, I’ll put you down for the first of the new month, then.”
He made a note and nodded as if confirming it to himself.
“I need you to arrange with Sonya at the front desk to come back in and read through the terms and conditions and have a look at the contract I’m going to offer you. You’ll have a week to think about it. By the end of the month, I need the contract signed so we can kick off first thing in the new month. How does that sound?”
It sounded like I was crashing down hill so fast I couldn’t even enjoy the scenery. I nodded again, apparently the only thing I was able to do when my brain stopped functioning.
“Good,” he said, extending a hand across the desk. “I look forward to working with you, Alyssa.”
I took his hand, and he smiled at me. I smiled back. He followed me to his office door and opened it for me. I said I would find my own way back and retraced my steps until I stood in front of Sonya. It only took a minute to finalize a date to come in for the paperwork and then I was walking through the glass doors again, into the late afternoon sun. I stood in front of the building, trying to grasp what the hell had just happened.
I had just gotten a job! With a real corporate company. I turned around and read the sign above the door. GLOBEPOINT. I had no idea what the company did, but I was going to be a designer in their marketing department.
Excitement built in my chest until I felt like I was going to explode. I grabbed my phone and scrolled down the contacts’ list. I froze when I realized I had my thumb hovering over Jake’s number. After everything that had happened, he was the first one I wanted to tell about my new job. He was the one I wanted to share my happy news with.
My excitement died down as quickly as it had hit me, and my stomach turned to stone. I went home feeling heavy. My mom waited for me in the kitchen.
“How did it go?” she asked.
I smiled at her, a sliver of the elation returning.
“I got the job!”
“Alyssa!” My mom grabbed me and hugged me. “I knew you would make it. Well done!”
She kissed me on the forehead. “We have to celebrate it. Tonight, we’re going out to dinner. I’m going to call your dad.”
She walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with the soup of emotions that swirled inside me. I sat down at the breakfast booth and side, pulling my phone out again. I stared at the dark screen for a long time.
I didn’t know what was real anymore. Jake had really hurt me. The more I thought about it, though, the less I knew. That woman had been Amanda, but she’d looked for me. She’d sought me about. It hadn’t been a coincidence that we’d gotten to know each other at all and I wasn’t sure how much of what had happened was real anymore. I hadn’t once let Jake tell me his side of the story, let him explain.
Maybe that had been rash of me. I had been unfair even though I had been sure it was the right thing. I was so quick to compare Jake to James because the situations looked the same.
I felt lost. I was starting to wonder if I’d made a mistake, after all.
Chapter 41
Damien
This was ridiculous. No matter how far Jake fell, Coach Clay was willing to forgive him. I’d caught a bit of their conversation after training. It was bullshit. Why did Jake get a pass? If I’d been struggling with my game, why Coach had been so hard on me?
None of this was fair.
And Jake made me sick. God, what an asshole. He took it all in his stride like nothing had even happened, and I had gone out of my way to make his life a living hell. He’d lost his woman, his career had gotten a dent in it, and he was starting to create a bad name for himself. And now? Everyone was just forgetting.
What about me? What about how well I’d done when Jake had fucked out on the field? Sure, Coach had commended me for that. Once. And now it was all over like it had never happened.
To make matters worse, Jake knew something about what Amanda and I had been up to, now. I couldn’t figure out how much he knew. He’d jumped to all sorts of conclusions, but he knew Amanda well enough for me to think that his conclusions were right. What now? He looked ready to commit murder at the car, and for a moment I’d thought he would attack me. But he’d gotten into his car and driven away, leaving me with that crazy.
Whatever.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t still do something about it. Surely, the fans remembered his fighting. If I could get him to that again, it might still make a change. All I had to do was bring up the things that rubbed him the wrong way. The topic of his parents had always been a touchy one, but bringing up that dolly of his might just pushed him over the edge again.
If I played it right maybe, I could get one of the other players – someone from a team we would be playing – to mention something on the field to get Jake to lose his cool. I could even pay someone to do it.
God, I was a real son of a bitch. I was considering giving someone money to go at Jake about something that really hit him deep so that he would lose his temper on the field. I was disgusting.
And I was going to do it. I’d tried being straightforward and honest, giving my game my all. That didn’t work. I tried ripping everything away from Jake that mattered to him. That hadn’t worked either. I had to break him, somehow. There was no way for me to contact any other players until the day of the game. I would have to bide my time until then. I just had to keep my own nose clean, stay out of trouble with Coach and do a bit of homework on this girl Jake had been with to find out what would really knock him hard.
It didn’t ta
ke me very long to find Alyssa Ryan – the tabloids had found out her name for me and Google had done the rest. She lived in a nondescript neighborhood and did a nondescript job. So nondescript, in fact, that I came up with nothing. There was nothing I could find about her that made her remotely interesting. It was annoying. What was I going to do no?
I leaned back in my chair and pushed my hands into my hair. I had nothing I could use to piss Jake off. The Internet had literally coughed up nothing interesting.
I picked up my phone and dialed Amanda’s number.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“That’s a nice way to greet your partner in crime.”
She didn’t answer me. She wasn’t very happy with me. I wasn’t sure why – people generally felt that way about me, and I could never pinpoint it. Sure, I could be a dick, but was that grounds for being hated?
“Where does that dolly live?” I asked.
“Which one?”
I rolled my eyes. “The one you’ve been after to get to Jake.”
She sighed.
“I don’t know which house it is, just the street.”
That would have to be enough.
“Send it to me.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“Because I’m not done with my game. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t know. It has everything to do with me.”
I hung up the phone. Why did she want to know what I was doing? Why did it matter? I waited for my phone to beep. I was just starting to worry Amanda had suddenly developed a conscience when a message came through with a street name and suburb.
My GPS took me there in less than twenty minutes. The neighborhood was the kind of place you saw in movies – the happy families everything-is-perfect kind of place with average size houses and perfect lawns. They had to have pride in something. I drove down the road, looking at every house. There were a lot of them, and I had no idea how I would know which was hers. A car drove very slowly in front of me, in the middle of the road so I couldn’t overtake. I was just about to hoot when it pulled to the curb – skew – and a man stumbled out like he’d been drinking.
“Alyssa!” he shouted toward the house of which he’d missed the driveway. I stopped and got out.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked.
He turned to me, and his eyes were blurry. He had a shiner on his left cheekbone and a split lip. Well, well.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Are you looking for Alyssa?” I asked.
He eyed me. “How many of you are there?” he asked.
He’d been drinking. It was too early for alcohol but judging by the way this guy couldn’t balance properly, he’d had a head start already.
“I don’t think she’s home,” I said when I looked toward the house. Everything was quiet, and no one had come out when the jackass had started shouting.
He pointed a finger in my direction, waving it around, unable to aim properly.
“You stay away from my girlfriend,” he said. “I’ll beat you up just like the other guy.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who beat other guys up – he didn’t have a lot of muscle, and he dressed like he wanted attention, not like he knew who he was. The bruises on his face suggested he’d been the one to take a beating, too, but I didn’t know what the other guy looked like.
The first bit of information registered.
“Alyssa’s your girlfriend?” I asked.
The guy nodded. “Don’t forget it,” he said, “Or James will haunt you.”
James. Well, well. This was something I could work with. If he was here, looking trouble for Alyssa, what were the chances Jake knew who he was? I was willing to bet Jake had decorated this guy’s face, but I couldn’t be sure. With his attitude, I wanted to deck him, too. I was sure I wasn’t the only one.
“Did you hear what I said?” he asked when I didn’t respond. “I said stay away.”
For a moment, I thought about knocking him, too. It would be too easy. But I wasn’t here to fight. All I wanted was some dirt, and this was so much better than snooping around.
“I’m going, I’m going,” I said, hands up as if I was intimidated by shit-for-brains. He was still waving around on the front lawn like an idiot. He wasn’t my problem.
I got back into my car, started it up and drove away. I had just what I needed, and I would sit on it until our next game.
Two days later we were back at training. Something felt wrong, though. I felt the way I used to before Jake had taken me under his wing to train me. I shook off the thought. I was better off without him – I was going to use what he’d taught me and move on. I owed him nothing. I pushed away the echo of guilt. I didn’t need that shit in my life. That feeling, though. It was like an itch that I couldn’t scratch. When we were done warming up my hands trembled slightly. I wiped my palms on my pants. I didn’t like where this was going. Next step: fumbling the ball and looking like an ass-wipe in front of the rest of the team.
We did a hell of a lot of fitness. It was like Coach Clay was out to kill us off one by one. After an hour of running around on the field doing suicide squats and pushups and everything else the sporting world had created to torture its players, I felt like I was going to throw up. My muscles screamed at me, and the irritation hadn’t gone away. No matter how much energy I’d burned, I still had the goddamn itch in my chest.
“Damien!” Coach shouted at me. “You’re slacking!”
God, I was about to punch this guy. I ran toward the line.
“Come one, Damien,” Clyde said. “You’re not going to hold us back all day, are you?”
My blood rushed in my ears. I saw white. I could attack him right now, but I had no energy left to fight, and he was twice my size, to begin with. I wouldn’t even get one swing in today.
I joined the line.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jake said to me. He stood next to me looking cool and comfortable as if the grueling training was only a warmup for him.
“Shut up,” I snapped. He was my least favorite person.
“Hey, I was just being nice,” he said.
I turned to him, my anger taking over. “You know what? That’s my problem. You’re always just being nice. You’re so nice you can get away with anything, and everyone else has to step back and let you pass.”
Jake frowned at me.
“That’s enough!” Coach shouted, but I was done listening to him.
“Don’t stand there looking like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said to Jake, getting up in his face a little. I was aching for a fight, anything to get rid of this feeling inside me. If I could take it out on Jake and get a two-for-one from it, I would be a happy man. “You know well enough that everyone has to bow to you otherwise, you’re not happy. Jake has a little shit fit when he doesn’t get what he wants.”
“What are you talking about?” Jake asked.
“Oh, have you forgotten your outburst on the field already?”
I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, but it looked like Jake paled a little.
“I said that’s enough!” Coach shouted. I pretended he didn’t exist.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said to Jake. “You’re the nicest person in the world when you get what you want, but the moment you lose, you throw tantrums like a child. No wonder Alyssa didn’t want to stick around.”
Jake pressed his lips into a thin line, his green eyes going so dark I would have mistaken them for brown if I hadn’t known better. I was getting to him. Fuck the game, if he lost his shit now, it would still do a bit of damage. I was on a roll, and he was getting angry. This was right where I wanted him.
“Yeah, I know how hard it is to live with you. We all do. We have to walk in your shadow every day, but we can’t quit it the way she did because this is our career, too. It’s not all about you, Jake. Alyssa seemed to know that.”
“Don’t you talk about her,
” Jake said. His rage was just beneath the surface. I could almost taste it myself. Sure, he would beat the shit out of me. I didn’t care – if he beat me up, it would make him that much worse. Beating up another player was one thing, but one on your own team? We were supposed to be tight as a family. Jake just needed a little more.
“Yeah, she’s so over your shit she’s already with another man.”
Jake’s face was white, two bright red spots on his cheeks. His chest pumped up and down as he panted for air. His hands balled into fists. This was what I was waiting for. Just one more push.