The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

by Mariana Zapata

  The ride home was pretty quiet. I made sure not to watch as he slowly hobbled inside and made his way to the couch where the comforter I’d brought downstairs the night before was neatly folded, stacked under his pillow. Leaving the crutches I’d bought propped against the couch, I hesitated for a second by the stairs as I watched him settle in.

  “I’ll be upstairs,” I said.

  He nodded stiffly, palming the remote in one of his hands, his head turned toward me. “Thanks for taking me.”

  “Yeah.” I shuffled my feet. “What are friends for?” I teased him in a small voice, unsure of how he’d react.

  “For that, Van.”

  The man I’d seen kind of, sort of, maybe smile a couple of times, had a tentative grin crack across his mouth. The expression on his face completely caught me off guard. For a man who never, ever physically reacted even when he won a game, his smile…

  Heaven help me.

  It was beautiful. There was no other word to describe it. It was like a double rainbow. Better than a double rainbow.

  I felt stunned. Rooted in place forever.

  His features didn’t necessarily soften, but the way his entire face seemed to lighten…

  I touched my mouth to make sure it was closed and not wide open.

  I couldn’t respond. I could only stand there nodding in place with something that was pretty close to a deranged smile making an appearance on my face.

  “Holler if you need me. I, uh, have work to do.” Yeah, I tucked my imaginary tail in and ran upstairs.

  Good lord. My heart pounded as I sat at the chair behind my desk, and I set my palm over it. What the hell was that? That smile was like a nuclear bomb he had within his reach. I mean, I knew Aiden was attractive, obviously, but when he smiled, there was nothing to prepare you for that weapon of mass destruction.

  Hello, I had eyes. Even if I had become mostly desensitized to those muscles on top of carefully sculpted muscles, I knew they were there. I knew his face was handsome despite how unyielding it usually was.

  I sucked in a breath and let it out, trying to clear my head. But it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. When I was looking for photographs of male models for an e-book cover, I thought about Aiden one or two times more than necessary.

  Good grief, he needed to keep that thing in check.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A couple of weeks later, after Aiden had completely recovered from his sprain, I was in my room working on a paperback cover for one of my favorite clients when I heard the garage open and close, followed by the beeping of the alarm, and finalized by the loud slap of the door being slammed shut. Lowering the volume on my computer speakers, I sat there a minute.

  I didn’t need to look at the culprit to confirm who it was. Aiden wasn’t the slamming-the-door-shut-out-of-anger type of person. He tended to stick to venting his grievances with words or on the field or gym, or more often than not, he went into his room and stayed there doing who knows what. I’d never figured out what he did in there for hours.

  That was what alarmed me. It had to be Zac, and Zac was usually too laid back to react to anything like that… unless he had a reason to be really pissed.

  I stayed in my room and faintly listened to the angry noises coming from the first floor: the cupboards being forcefully closed, the loud clatter of plates on the counter, and the “Goddammit!” that was shouted twice. It all wafted up the stairs and wrapped around me in my room. But I stayed where I was.

  If Zac was angry, he needed space to cool off. At least that was the best way to deal with my sisters when they were pissed.

  So I left him alone, despite wanting to know what happened.

  Sometime later, stomps echoed their way up the stairs and down the hall.

  And that was how I knew something was really wrong. Zac always told me hi. Then his bedroom door closed with a bang just down the hall from my room.

  For one brief second, I thought about texting Aiden to ask if he knew what was going on, but if he didn’t text me back, it would just make me mad. So I waited instead.

  * * *

  Zac didn’t come out of his room the rest of the day.

  I didn’t hear him in his room either, and that was when I started to worry.

  The following afternoon, I made my way downstairs after he still hadn’t come out. I found Aiden in the kitchen, fiddling with the knobs for the stove while he held a pan in one hand. He briefly peeked at me over his shoulder before muttering a “Hello” that seemed almost natural.

  “Hi,” I greeted him back, not getting hung up on the ‘H’ word as I tried to decide how to best go about asking him about my main concern: Big Texas.

  It must have been apparent I wanted something, because not a few seconds later, Aiden spoke up. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think there’s something wrong with Zac.”

  He said, “Oh,” so casually I wasn’t anticipating what came out of his mouth next. “The team released him yesterday,” he explained like the news wasn’t the most devastating thing to happen to Zac ever. Hell, it would be the worst thing just about any professional athlete on any team could ever hear. Even I found myself sucking in a breath.

  “Why?”

  He’d turned to face the stove again, those mountainous shoulders and wide lateral muscles greeting me through the thick, white T-shirt he had on. “He’s been too inconsistent. He hasn’t been listening.” Aiden lifted his shoulders. “I told him it was going to happen.”

  I blinked. “You knew?”

  “He hasn’t been taking his training seriously enough and it’s noticeable. The other QBs have been playing better.” He made a humming noise as he moved toward the refrigerator. “He’s pissed off, but it’s his fault and he knows it.”

  I winced, feeling bad for Zac’s situation but understanding the point Aiden was trying to make, despite how brutal the truth was. Even I had brought up how much time he took off when he should have been working out during the offseason. Hurt for him clung to edges of my soul though. Just a couple months ago, he’d been the one telling me how happy he was that I would be joining the ‘do what you love’ team. Now?

  “Have you talked to him?” I asked.

  “No.”

  Of course not. When a normal person would try to commiserate with a friend after something crappy happened to them, Aiden wouldn’t. I sighed and scratched at my temple. Damn it, I couldn’t believe it.

  I wondered what Zac was going to do now, but it was still too soon to ask. Figuring he probably needed a little more time to stew on what happened, I made myself let it go. Maybe he’d gotten a little complacent, but that didn’t mean he had to get his dreams ripped away from him.

  I wanted to talk to him, but I couldn’t help but think about how terribly some people handled disappointment in their lives. I’d grown up with three of them. It wouldn’t hurt to wait.

  Toeing the floor with my sock-covered foot, I glanced at Aiden to find him spreading hummus all over two tortillas on the counter. “You doing okay?”

  “Yes,” he answered quickly.

  “That’s good.” I stared at his broad back and bit the inside of my cheek, that same uncertainty with talking to him filling my guts. Did he want me to leave him alone? Should I try to make more of a conversation with him?

  “How’s the running going?” he asked suddenly.

  Small talk. Heaven help us, he was trying to make small talk. “Good. I’m getting faster.” I puffed my cheeks up with air and gave the fridge a side look. “Why? Do you want to go with me again?”

  His snicker was soft and it made me laugh.

  Rome hadn’t been built in a day.

  “No? Okay. I’m going back to my room. Let me know if you talk to Zac though, would you?”

  * * *

  Two days passed and I didn’t see Zac once. I wasn’t sure when he ate because I never saw him, and if it wouldn’t have been for his car in the driveway and the occasional flush of the toilet from the bathro
om adjacent to his room, I wouldn’t have known he was home.

  I knocked on his door once, but he didn’t respond.

  But by the third full day of not seeing him, I figured he’d had enough time to stew in his pot of pity. Finishing the two projects I’d assigned myself for the day, I headed across the hall to his bedroom and gave the door two raps.

  Nothing.

  So I knocked again a little harder.

  Still nothing.

  “Zac Attack?”

  And nothing.

  “I know you’re in there. Open up.” I pressed my ear to the door and listened. “Zac, come on. Open the door or I’ll pick the lock.”

  No response.

  “I know how. Don’t tempt me.” I waited a beat and then kept going. “I used to break into my boyfriend’s locker in high school.” Not necessarily my most mature moment, but it had come in handy a couple of times.

  He wasn’t biting.

  “Zac, buddy. Come on. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but let’s go get some Mexican food.”

  The mattress creaked loudly enough for me to hear and I smiled.

  “If you’re a nice boy, I’ll take you to do some two-step at that honky-tonk place you like. What do you think?” I tried to bribe him.

  He definitely made some stirring noises. It took what felt like a couple minutes before he finally spoke up like I had hoped he would. He’d never say no to going to a country-western club. Which I guess worked out in his favor because if he had the kind of status that Aiden had, he wouldn’t be able to do that sort of thing without getting hounded and now wasn’t the time for that. In that kind of club, he wouldn’t stand out.

  Then finally, he answered, “You’ll drive?”

  “I’ll drive.”

  “Give me an hour to get ready.”

  I couldn’t help but snort. “It doesn’t even take me that long to put on my makeup.”

  There was a pause and what sounded like his bed springs squeaking confirmed he really was moving around. “I gotta straighten my hair too, sugar. Gimme a break.”

  I smiled at the door. “That’s my girl.”

  * * *

  “I hate to be the one to say this to you, but you need to go on a diet.”

  Zac managed to take a step forward before he swayed so much most of his weight ended up on me. Again.

  He was no Aiden, but he definitely wasn’t anywhere near underweight either. Good grief. I started panting as we took another two steps closer to the house, seriously reconsidering the big guy’s suggestion that I start doing some weight training. I’d been walking, jogging, and running nearly five days a week for the last two months so I could begin training for a marathon, but that didn’t prepare me for carting around Big Texas. I was planning on starting to do some cross-training soon but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  To make matters worse, like an idiot, I’d parked on the street like I usually did, but the difference was that I didn’t usually have a two-hundred-pound drunk man hanging off my arm for dear life.

  Instead of drinking away his sorrows with margaritas like I’d originally suggested, Zac had gone straight for the Coronas. Many, many Coronas. So many I’d lost count even though my wallet hadn’t.

  But I wasn’t going to say anything because the moment he’d arrived at the doorway to my room, dressed, I saw ‘devastation’ in the flesh.

  Zac, who was normally a vision of health, vitality, and friendliness, looked like shit.

  I didn’t comment, and I had to settle for smiling in his direction and giving him a slap on the butt as we headed down the stairs and toward my car for our evening. Sure enough, he hadn’t wanted to talk about getting let go from the team and instead he’d slapped on a somewhat bright smile after a few minutes and made every effort to have fun.

  Up until he’d gotten wasted.

  “Hey, hold on to the wall a second so I can get the door unlocked,” I ordered, poking him in the side at the same time I tried to angle him so he could grab ahold.

  “Sure, Vanny,” Zac muttered, smiling at me dreamily, lips pressed tight, and his eyes closed.

  I snickered, made sure he had one hand firmly planted on the wall, and then slipped under his arm. It didn’t take me long to unlock the door and turn off the alarm. With Zac’s arm over my shoulder again, I shuffled him three feet inside before he started tilting sideways, one clumsy foot in front of the other until he crashed into the side table next to the couch. The lamp on top teetered as Zac tried to right himself, but it lost the battle with gravity and clattered to the floor, the shade flying off, the bulb cracking into a thousand pieces.

  Damn it.

  I sighed. One, two, three. “All right. You’re done for the night, buddy.” Grabbing Zac’s arm, I led him onto the couch like he was a little kid. Opening them just as his butt hit the cushion, his eyes were glassy, wide, and so completely guileless I couldn’t even be irritated with him longer than a second. “Sit here.” He did. “Let me go get you some water, but don’t move, okay?”

  He forced himself to blink up at me, totally dazed, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me even though he was obviously trying. He smacked his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ma’am? It took everything inside of me not to crack up. “I’ll be right back,” I croaked, pinching my nose and taking a couple steps back to avoid the broken pieces of light bulb before heading toward the kitchen. I flicked on the lights, filled up a plastic cup with water, because I wasn’t about to trust him with glass, and grabbed the broom and dustpan from the pantry closet.

  Zac sat on the couch where I’d left him, his boots kicked off in the middle of the room, and his butt scooted up to the edge. His eyes were closed.

  But it was the big smile on his face that killed me.

  This surge of affection filled my heart as I squatted down to poke him in the shoulder. The second he lazily cracked those blue eyes open, I held the cup of water toward him. “Drink up, buddy.”

  He took the cup without argument, and I went over to the mess on the floor. I swept up what I could, poured the shards in a small cardboard box I’d found in the recyclable bin, and tossed it all into the trash. Taking the vacuum from the pantry, I pulled it after me and into the living room, where I moved the suction all over the floor just to be on the safe side.

  I’d barely unplugged the vacuum and turned around to put everything back when I sucked in a breath and let out the girliest, most pathetic squeak in the universe. It wasn’t “ahh” or “eep. It just sounded, well, I’m not sure what it sounded like, but I would never take credit for it.

  Aiden stood there, not even two feet away, literally cloaked in the darkness of the hallway like a damn serial killer.

  “You scared the hell out of me!” My heart… I was going to have a heart attack. I had to slap my hand over my chest like that would help it stay in place. “Oh my God.”

  “What are you doing?” His voice was raspy and low.

  Hand still over my chest, I panted. “Somebody broke a light bulb.” I gestured toward the drunk Texan on the couch oblivious to everything and everyone around him at that point.

  I eyed Aiden, his sleepy face, the wrinkled white T-shirt he had on, the thin lounge pants I know he’d thrown on to come down the stairs, because in the two years I’d been responsible for doing his laundry, I’d only washed them a handful of times, and I immediately felt guilty. The big guy usually went to bed at the earliest possible time he could to ensure he got a minimum of eight hours of sleep, and here I’d been vacuuming, waking him up.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered, even though I was sure I could have walked around the living room banging pots and pans and Zac wouldn’t have woken up.

  He shrugged one of those big shoulders, his eyes going from me to his now ex-teammate. I didn’t need to look at Zac to know he was more than likely passed out on the couch by that point, especially not when Aiden’s stray gaze stayed on the spot behind me. “How m
uch did he have to drink?” he asked, yawning.

  A pang of guilt hit my belly. “Too much.” As if to explain, I added, “I just wanted to get him out of his room for a little while. I thought it would be good for him.” Maybe too good for him, but it was too late to take the evening back by the time I figured getting shit-faced wasn’t the best thing for him to do.

  To be fair, it had been a lot of fun.

  A loud, rough snore ripped through the air and the sharp, sudden rumble of Zac snoring had me glancing over my shoulder. “I need to go grab something. I’m sorry if I woke you. “

  Before he could say anything else—or not say anything else—I hauled ass upstairs and into Zac’s room, internally cringing at the mess he’d made since he began locking himself in, and the smell, it was bad. Real bad.

  Grabbing the corner of the wrinkled comforter on the bed and his pillow, I ran down the stairs and found Aiden standing next to the couch talking to Zac in a low voice and…

  Was he patting the armrest?

  “Here.” I handed over the pillow.

  Aiden took it, his attention still on Zac, and set it alongside the armrest I’m pretty sure he’d been petting a second ago. “Lay down,” he ordered the drunk one in a quiet, no-nonsense voice that obviously left no room for argument to even someone who was mostly out of it.

  Sure enough, Zac lay down without opening his eyes. His arms crossed over his chest, one shoulder cocooned into the couch cushions. I tossed the comforter over his long body and smiled at Aiden who was still standing over the couch, looking extremely, ridiculously serious at what was essentially us tucking a grown man in.

  Zac made some funny kind of puttering sound that made his lips flutter, and I snorted. “He looks like a little kid, doesn’t he?” I whispered.

  “He acts like a little kid,” Aiden grunted, shaking his head in total disapproval.

  “What is he going to do now?” I found myself blurting the question out.