The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

by Mariana Zapata

  Not long after I settled into my spot on the far side of the room, and after I’d waved at a few of the women who had been friendly with me in the past, a couple of players started trickling out of the locker room. More minutes passed and more men came out. But none of them were Aiden.

  Rubbing my hands over my pants, I started messing with my phone, checking to see nothing really. I just hated standing there by myself. Shuffling from foot to foot, my thumb rubbed at the side of my wedding ring set, the slightly rounded edge of the stone an easy distraction as more guys came out, some of them glancing in my corner, but most of them heading straight toward their loved ones. As the minutes passed, the room emptied out, and I was left trying to decide how long to wait until I called a cab. Ten more minutes maybe? Zac had to be long gone by then, and I definitely wasn’t going to call Diana to come pick me up. According to her last text message two hours ago, she was spending time with her boyfriend. Yuck.

  Rubbing my hands on my jeans again, I swallowed and waited. Then I started messing with the zipper of my jacket. Up and down. Up and down.

  Ten minutes and still no Aiden. Three-fourths of the room had to have cleared out by that point.

  I pulled out my phone and searched for the number to the taxi company. With a sigh, I glanced up just as I was about to hit the call icon on the screen, and spotted the big, dark-haired man coming down the hallway. His face was a cool mask that said, ‘Get out of my fucking way and don’t talk to me.’ The way he held his shoulders and the stern purse of his mouth said the same thing.

  Well, shit.

  For a second, I thought about keeping my mouth shut and hitting that call button but… I was there, wasn’t I? And I trusted him not to embarrass me.

  I thought.

  “Aiden?” I called out, a lot softer than I expected, and wanted.

  Those dark eyes flicked from the floor to eye level before his even stride faltered and he paused in the hallway. He’d worn a suit to the game that day and the two-piece charcoal gray looked great. It was only the duffel hanging off his shoulder making him look like the Aiden Graves I knew—the one who didn’t feel comfortable in anything other than his favorite ten-year-old hoodie, shorts, and runners. A crease formed between those thick slashes called his eyebrows for only a second, before I could think twice about what I was doing, I waved.

  More waving. Help me.

  The corner of his mouth twitched, and I knew I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. I should have left with Zac.

  His nostrils flared at the same time he took another step forward, and another, no words coming out of his mouth.

  I was so dumb. So damn dumb. What had I done thinking that all those little things he’d been saying and doing actually might have meant something? Just because we’d told each other things that I was sure we hadn’t told anyone else, didn’t mean we were more than friends. You could trust someone and not be their friend… couldn’t you?

  At the last second, he stopped in front of me. A foot taller than me, so much wider, Aiden was… he was huge. His presence was overpowering.

  His body radiated heat and that wonderful clean scent of his skin; I swallowed as he stood in front of me. The swallow turned into a shaky, uncertain smile. “Hi, big guy. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come back or not, but—”

  “Stop.” Aiden ducked his face at the same time those massive hands came up. One went to my cheek, the other went to cup the back of my neck. He kissed me.

  Aiden kissed me.

  His bottom lip went to my top one, his grip reassuring and unyielding as he dragged his mouth to kiss me fully. And I did what any sane person would have done: I let him, and I pressed my lips to his instinctively. Our mouths met in a peck that was followed by a big, guttural sigh fanning over my neck for a moment, his forehead pressing against mine.

  Okay. All right.

  Okay.

  I didn’t know what the hell had just happened, but I wasn’t about to let myself overthink it.

  My heart beating, I tipped my mouth up to kiss him the same way he had me, my hand reaching to touch the side of his neck. Dropping back to my heels, his forehead followed mine down. I drew my hand over to knead his thick trapezius muscles, copping a feel for what may or may not be the first and last time I would ever be able to.

  I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but I knew the answer.

  The deep sigh coming out of his chest told me what I needed to know. So I reached up with my other hand and began kneading the other side of his neck. Sure, he had trainers who did this, and he had enough money to pay a professional, but I massaged the tops of his traps anyway. The people surrounding us seemed so insignificant and small in that moment, in life in general, that I didn’t care they were around.

  “That’s nice,” Aiden kind of whispered.

  I only dug in harder with my thumbs, earning a small smile from the man who passed them out like they were golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I swore he was grumbling with pleasure like a big bear. “Better?” I asked once my fingers began to get tired, drawing my palms across his shoulders.

  He nodded. “Much.”

  “I’ll make you dinner when we get home. What do you say?”

  “I’ll say okay.”

  “Are you ready to go?”

  He nodded once more, the small amount of pleasure on his face slowly draining.

  Stepping back, I hesitated. Had I done too much? Was he already regretting kissing me? Which was stupid because if I gave myself the chance to think about it, I’d know Aiden didn’t do things he would regret…. Unless it was what he’d done to me before I quit. But I didn’t let myself think about it. “Do you mind giving me a ride, big guy? Zac took off.”

  “He brought you?” he asked as he raised his chin, his gaze meeting my face.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll take you.” I smiled distractedly and let him lead me through the hallway, blatantly ignoring the teammates we passed, and nodding only at the venue’s employees who greeted him or wished him a good night.

  Reaching his SUV, he unlocked the doors and opened the front passenger door, waving me in and closing the door behind me. By some miracle, I managed to keep my level of dumb-face to a minimum. Afterward, he threw his bag into the back and got inside. The silence wasn’t necessarily heavy on the drive home. I knew he must have had a hundred different things going on in his head, and I wanted to let him have his space.

  Leaning my head against the window, I yawned and thought about all the things I needed to do when I got home, so that I wouldn’t think about the things I had no business putting too much thought into. Like that kiss in front of his teammates’ families and Three Hundreds’ staff.

  “What are you thinking about?” Aiden asked out of the blue.

  “I was just thinking about everything I need to pack for my trip to Toronto. Remember I told you I was going to that convention?” I explained. “What about you? What are you thinking of?” I asked before I could think twice about why I would ask him something I didn’t actually expect him to answer.

  But he did.

  “How ready I am to move on with my life.”

  “You mean switch teams?” I grasped onto that with two hands. I could easily imagine how hard it was for him to be such a good player on such an inconsistent team. How could it not be discouraging?

  He made a noise deep in his throat, his attention focused on the road ahead of him.

  “Have you talked to Trevor about it anymore?”

  “No. Last time we talked, he said there wasn’t a point in making plans until the season was over. He knows what I want to do. I don’t want to keep repeating myself. If he wants to pay attention, he can; if he doesn’t want to, he knows my contract with him is going to end right before I’m eligible to sign with another team.”

  Huh. “Do you… know where you want to go?” I realized why we hadn’t talked about this topic before. He wanted to focus on the season, not on the what-ifs tha
t would all take place afterward. But suddenly, there seemed to be so much pressure and focus on all the possibilities. The moving. The future.

  Casually, casually, casually, he raised a shoulder. “How do you feel about heading up north?”

  North? “How far north are we talking about?”

  Those coffee-colored eyes peered at me over his shoulder. “Indiana… Wisconsin…” he threw out.

  “Ah.” I looked forward to collect my words and put them in an order I wouldn’t regret. “I can live just about anywhere. I’ll just have to buy better winter clothes.”

  “You think so?” Why did his voice sound so amused all of a sudden?

  I snorted. “Yeah. Some winter boots, a scarf, and some gloves, and I’ll be fine. I think.”

  “I’ll buy you a dozen jackets and winter boots, if that’s what you need,” he threw out there in a tone that was getting more amused by the second.

  It made me perk up a little bit. “You don’t need to do that. You do enough for me as it is, big guy.”

  His fingers drummed the steering wheel and he seemed to shake his head. “Van, I’ll buy you a jacket or ten if I want. We’re in this together.”

  Ovaries. Where were my ovaries?

  “Aren’t we?” Aiden suddenly asked in a hesitant voice.

  I lifted my head off the window and really turned to look at him. There was something so devastating about his profile it was annoying. There was something about him that was so great it was annoying. He was so dumb sometimes I couldn’t handle it. “Yeah. Of course. We’re Team Graves.”

  He made an amused sound and I suddenly remembered what I’d kept making myself put off asking him. “Hey, are you… when are you going to Colorado?” I mean, the season was over. The last two years, he’d left as soon as he was able to, yet this year, he hadn’t said a word to me. Then again, why would he? I wasn’t the one leasing out a house or making plans to rent a car or anything.

  Just like that, his body language completely changed. He went rigid. His fingers curled over the steering wheel. His tongue poked at his cheek. “I’m supposed to leave the second week of February.”

  “Oh.” That was about three weeks away. “Are you still going for two months?”

  He didn’t vocalize his answer; he simply nodded.

  But the response still hit my heart like a sledgehammer. He’d be gone for two months. Sure we didn’t have in-depth talks every day, but at least in the last month and a half, I couldn’t remember a day where I hadn’t spent some time with him, even if all we did was watch television quietly or sit on the floor with Leo between us.

  “Cool,” I kind of mumbled, but it wasn’t cool at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tossing the fifth shirt over my shoulder, I groaned. It wasn’t until I had to pack that I ever thought I didn’t have enough clothes. It was like a ninja snuck into my closet and drawers and stole everything that fit me well and looked good.

  “What are you doing?” Aiden’s low, grumbling voice asked from behind me.

  I turned around to spot him leaning against the doorframe, hands in the pockets of his gray sweatpants, one ankle over the other. I blew a lock of pink hair that had fallen into my eyes away in frustration. “I’m trying to pack for my trip tomorrow.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  Damn it. I sighed. He really did know me, and that only made me feel sheepish. “I can’t find anything I want to wear.” That was mostly the truth. The other half of the truth was that I’d been pretty grumpy since his last game when he’d admitted he was going to Colorado after kissing me like it was no big deal. He was leaving in two weeks. For two months.

  He raised his eyebrows as if telling me to continue, only egging on my nerves.

  “I feel like I’m going to the first day of school tomorrow. I’m so nervous,” I admitted the other tiny part of it.

  Aiden frowned as he uncrossed his legs and took a step inside my room. “About what?” he asked, bending down to pick up two of the shirts that had landed on the floor. Setting them on the bed, he took a spot right next to them on the mattress facing me.

  “The convention.” This was exactly how I’d get before the first day of school. The nerves. The nausea. The dread. The worry about who I would sit with. If anyone would actually come by my table. What the hell had I been thinking registering? It wasn’t like I was starving for business. I got a steady flow of new customers, on top of my returning, loyal clientele.

  “It’s a book convention. What are you worried about?” He picked up the last shirt I’d tossed on the bed and held it up, looking over the long sleeves and royal blue color. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  Nerves were eating up my chest and my soul, and he had no idea or any way to comprehend what I was going through. I didn’t think Aiden knew what insecurity was. I ignored his comment about the shirt. “What if everyone hates me and no one talks to me? What if someone throws something at me?”

  Aiden snorted, setting the shirt he’d been holding aside and picking up the next one on the pile. “What are they going to throw? Bookmarks?”

  That had me groaning. “You don’t understand…”

  Aiden peeked at me from over the collar of the blouse, and from the wrinkles around his eyes, I could tell he was smiling just a little bit before he put it on the other side from where he’d left the blue one. “No one is going to throw anything at you. Relax.”

  I swallowed and went to take a seat on the bed next to him, his thigh touching mine. “Okay, probably not, but what if… no one comes by my booth? Can you imagine how awkward that would be? Me sitting there all alone?” Just thinking about it was making me anxious.

  Shifting on the mattress, he reached over and touched my thigh with his fingertips. The smile on his face melted completely off and he stared at me with that hard, serious face. “If no one goes by your booth, it’s because they’re stupid—”

  I couldn’t help but crack a little smile.

  “—and they don’t have any taste,” he added, giving me a squeeze.

  My smile might have grown a little more.

  “I looked at your website. I saw the before and after images of what you’ve done. You’re good, Van.”

  “I know I’m good—”

  His chuckle cut me off. “And people think I’m cocky.”

  I elbowed him in the arm with a laugh. “What? I am. There’s not a lot of things I’m really good at, but this is the one thing no one can take away from me. I’ve worked hard at it.”

  The expression on Aiden’s face hinted at amusement as he held up the blue shirt he’d previously set aside. “Then you know you have nothing to worry about. Take this one with you.”

  I grabbed the shirt he held with a huff and nodded, quietly folding it. I moved around the room and collected the other things I wanted to take with me. I was only spending two nights, I didn’t need a whole bunch, but I was still taking more than enough just in case. I’d rather have too many shirts than not enough.

  I kneeled down to grab my carry-on luggage from beneath the bed, casting a glance at him as he folded the shirts I’d set aside that I wasn’t taking.

  He caught me looking at him and only slightly raised his eyebrows. “Stop looking like you’re going to be sick, Van. You’ll be fine.”

  “You keep saying that, but then again you’re not intimidated by anything, big guy. You run at guys the same size as you or bigger for a living.”

  His eyebrows crawled up even higher on his forehead. “Fear is all in your head.”

  “I hate it when people say that.”

  “It’s true. What’s the worst that will happen? People won’t talk to you? They won’t like you? People who really know you like you.”

  “Trevor doesn’t.”

  Aiden gave me that flat, exasperated look of his. “Since when do you care what he thinks? Trevor is an idiot when it comes to anything that won’t make him money. So what if there’s a chance some people that you don�
�t know don’t like you? Their opinion shouldn’t matter. At the end of the day, you’re still going to be you—the you I know who would flip me off in the middle of a stadium—and no one’s opinion will change that.”

  Oh brother.

  This huge knot filled my throat and I couldn’t do a thing but kneel there awkwardly and look at him. To a certain extent, he was right. I didn’t usually care what other people thought. Of course, I didn’t like to be embarrassed, who did? But for Aiden “The Wall of Winnipeg” Graves, the hardest working, most dedicated person I had ever met, to think so highly of me? Well, it meant more to me than it should have.

  Way more.

  He finished folding the rest of my clothes and patted the stack next to him. “Am I driving you to the airport?

  * * *

  I really should have stayed home.

  Two days later, I’d been at the convention behind my table for almost three hours. My table, which I had reserved at the last minute, was located in the furthest corner away from the entrance. My banners were set up; I had a few paperbacks propped up, and bookmarks, pins, and pens with my logo scattered across an electric pink tablecloth I had dyed over and over again in the garage until it reached the perfect shade. I’d even brought a light-up sign that Zac, who was apparently extremely handy, had helped me build over the course of the last week after we had our training runs.

  I’d sent him, Aiden, and Diana all a picture text of my booth when I’d set it up that morning. Only Zac and Di had responded, which wasn’t entirely surprising I guess. But I wasn’t going to let myself worry about it too much.

  I knew I wasn’t delusional thinking that my table looked pretty damn neat. Everything popped and the jewel tones of the books I’d brought and the giveaways all fit really well together. It was nice, but nice didn’t do anything when everyone seemed to smile at it and then walk right on by to get in line to get their books signed.

  Even the author next to me, who had told me she only had one novel out, had people stopping by to talk to her. I thought the fact she had a semi-attractive man, who was apparently the cover model for her novel, definitely helped bring people over.