by Jessica Ashe
Milton landed on my back just as I was about to step out the door. We went flying through and landed on a heap on the floor in front of everyone. He got me with two punches while I was dazed. I landed a punch of my own, but stopped when I noticed the flashing of lights from smartphones surrounding us.
This was not going to help my image.
Chapter 32
Kristi
I couldn’t sit indoors all night. I tried watching television, I tried catching up with friends, and I tried sulking. None of it made me feel any better.
Why had Barton stormed off like that? Him not apologizing had been bad enough, but to just outright fucking abandon me was a real crappy thing to do. My mind tried to convince me that he wasn’t worth it and that I shouldn’t wallow in pity over a guy who was so quick to run off.
In the end, I settled for ruining Tasha’s evening with Clyde. I’d been an awful sister lately, and she’d handled it all without complaint. Make no mistake though, she wouldn’t hesitate to remind me of it when this mess was in the past.
I showed up at the bar just as Clyde was coming back with a couple of drinks.
“Mind if I join you?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Tasha said. “Is Barton with you?”
“No,” I replied curtly. “No, he’s not.”
“Ah.”
“Tell you what ladies,” Clyde said, “why don’t I let you two talk it out. Kristi, you can have my drink.”
“You don’t have to leave,” I replied, secretly hoping he would.
“It’s okay, I know you sisters like to talk. And talk. And talk.”
“Wait up for me,” Tasha said before he left.
“Oh, I will. You’d better make it worth my while though.”
Tasha’s smile made it clear she most definitely would.
I took a sip of what had been Clyde’s beer. At least, I thought it was beer. The dark black concoction tasted thick and heavy, with none of the refreshing taste I usually got from beer. That’s why I stuck to a good pale ale.
“So what happened tonight?” Tasha asked. “I take it things didn’t go well.”
“No, they didn’t.”
I explained the stand-off between Barton and I, and how he had just up and left without saying why.
“Neither of you apologized?” Tasha asked.
“No. I’m not apologizing after what he did, and he’s too stubborn.”
“You’re both like a couple of kids sometimes. You messed up, and you should apologize. He messed up, so he should too. If you’d both done that, you could be screwing each other’s brains out right now.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going first.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Tasha said with a sigh and exaggerated roll of the eyes. “One of you has to go first, and unless you subscribe to all that sexist bullshit, then it can just as easily be you as him.”
“Well, it’s too late now anyway. He disappeared. I have no idea where he went or why.”
“Maybe he remembered he left the oven on?”
“It’s not funny, Tasha,” I snapped.
“Oh come on, it kind of is. Look, you feel bad about what you did and you don’t really care about him telling his teammates. You’re just using that as an excuse to be mad at him. And he’s not really mad with you, otherwise he wouldn’t have come over to see you.”
“When did you become the expert in relationships?”
“I’ve got a lot of relationship experience, thank you very much. Okay, fair enough, most of that experience centers around avoiding them, but still… it all counts.”
“They shouldn’t be this difficult. Not in the early stages.”
“You can’t apply your logic to this one, sis. You both feel strongly for each other, and that means your brains are all over the place. Maybe this is a good thing.”
“How?” I asked. No way could this feeling ever be contrived as a good thing. There was a constant tension in the pit of my stomach that had me on the verge of throwing up at any second and my heart was literally aching. Cheesy, I know, but that’s how it felt.
“It’s best to get your first big fight out of the way early on. Then you can have makeup sex. Trust me, you want the makeup sex.”
“I’m not going to get into fights just for makeup sex.” The regular sex was plenty good enough for me.
“Not just makeup sex,” Tasha replied. “There’s also angry sex. Angry sex is fucking awesome. Look, why don’t you just go and see him.”
“Because I don’t know where he is.”
“I’m sure he’s just at home sulking and missing you.” Tasha paused, her attention distracted by something behind me.
“What is it?” I asked, without looking round. Barton? Was he here? Had he come to see me?
“Nothing. He might be at home. Or he might be in a bar with women draped all over him.”
“What?” I yelled. I turned around expecting to see my nightmare come true, but he wasn’t there. The bar was quiet, so I would have noticed.
“Look at the screen above the bar,” Tasha said, pointing to one of the monitors.
I looked up and saw Barton’s picture on the screen. He was in a bar with women flocking all over him. The scene didn’t look that different to our first meeting back in his apartment. That felt like a lifetime ago now.
The photo of Barton showed him looking down at what appeared to be a man lying on the floor in front of him, although the image wasn’t that clear. Eventually, the closed captioning caught up and a bad night got a hell of a lot worse.
“Milton Patton is a teammate, isn’t he?” Tasha asked, after we’d worked out that Barton had been in a fight.
I nodded. “This is not good. In fact, this is bad. Very, very bad.”
All that work improving Barton’s image had been thrown down the toilet with one swing of his fist. Leona had finally got what she wanted; a client who generated the wrong kind of headlines.
Was this why he’d run out on me? Just to go and get in a fight with a teammate? Not just any teammate; the quarterback who stood to take his place once he was back from injury. There was no way to do damage control on this. That wasn’t my responsibility now anyway.
Barton was on his own, just when he needed me most.
Chapter 33
Barton
Hundreds of photos must have taken of me that night, but the one all the news sites were using was me standing with my foot on Milton’s chest and a flock of women either side of me. I looked like a boxer celebrating a victory.
I looked like a complete jackass; like the old me before Kristi cleaned me up. I hated it.
The photo didn’t show that I pushed all the women to one side—including sending one to the floor by mistake—and then left the bar alone. I went straight home, but no one reported that.
Punching Milton had done little to quench my anger. I knew why; I wasn’t angry at him, I was angry at myself. May had been right. I had someone brilliant, but I’d taken her for granted. Now she was probably at home watching the news, looking at me surrounded by women having just beaten up a teammate. Even I wouldn’t accept my apology now. It was too late.
A knock at my door gave me a moment of hope until I heard Clyde’s voice.
“What do you want?” I asked. I opened the door and let him in. “I’m not really in the mood for a lecture.”
“Is that what Milton did to earn a beating?”
“No, he fucked over Kristi.”
“Milton told her boss about your relationship?”
I nodded. “He’s a little more nervous about getting his position back than he let on.”
“What a scumbag. I assumed it was Doug.”
“Me too.”
“What happens now?” Clyde asked. “I assume you’ll be in trouble with your coach.”
“I think it’s safe to say I’m fucked. Those photos made it look like I kicked the shit out of him.”
“Isn’t that what happened?”
I shrugg
ed. “I suppose. He had it coming. The team needs me more than ever now; I can’t imagine his injury will heal any quicker after that beating.”
“Think that logic will work with the boss?”
“Probably not.” I passed Clyde a beer and collapsed down onto the sofa. I struggled to find the enthusiasm to care about my job. One day it might sink in that I’d fucked up my career, but right now I only cared about hurting Kristi. “What do I do now?”
“I have no idea,” Clyde replied. “Get in touch with your coach as soon as possible. Don’t wait for him to contact you.”
“I don’t mean about the job. What do I do about Kristi?”
“Oh.” Clyde smiled. “I knew you cared.”
“Of course I fucking care. You can rail on me for that later. For now, give me some of that expert relationship advice you’ve built up over all those years of being a lovesick puppy.”
“I will. You could go meet her in the bar. She’s having a drink with Tasha.” Clyde stopped to look at his phone which had just vibrated. “Scratch that. She’s on her way home. They saw your picture on television.”
“Shit. Shit, shit shit.”
“It’s not too late, but you might have to grovel.”
“Tell me about it.” I closed my eyes and groaned loudly. There has to be a way to fix this mess. “Clyde, do you have a key to their place?”
“No, but they keep a spare under the mat, even though I’ve told them it’s dangerous.”
“Can you keep the girls distracted?”
“Um, I guess. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just get in touch with Tasha and stop them going home. I need an hour. Actually, make it two.”
“I did actually have plans tonight, you know.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to fuck the night away,” I promised. “Just give me those two hours.”
“Fine, but if you ever do play professional football, I want VIP tickets.”
“Deal.”
Clyde left, and I went to work searching through the kitchen cupboards.
Damn, I should have asked for three hours.
Clyde had managed to delay the girls. Kristi’s apartment was empty when I got there, but no sooner had I stepped through the door than my phone rang.
Gordon.
I should have called him, like Clyde told me to, but I’d put Kristi first for once. Now I had to face the music.
“Hi boss,” I said defeatedly as I answered the phone.
“Before I fire you, do you have any kind of excuse for what the hell you did tonight? Were you drugged? Hypnotized? Anything that can explain your actions?”
I could tell Gordon the whole story, but he wouldn’t care. Actually, he might care. He wasn’t a heartless bastard. But that wouldn’t matter. He had a job to do, and there was no way he could keep me in the team after what I did.
“No excuses, boss. We had a falling out and I lost my temper. I’m ready to accept the consequences.”
“Fucking hell,” Gordon cursed. That was the first time I’d heard him swear and I knew it came from frustration and not anger. Well, maybe a bit of both. “You’ve let us down. The time, effort, and money we’ve spent on you… fuck. You’re off the team effective immediately, and you’ll be hearing from the lawyers in the morning. Don’t bother showing up to training again.”
“Fair enough,” I replied.
What else was there to say? Gordon hung on for a few seconds, hoping I would be able to offer up some explanation. He hadn’t been my coach for long, but he’d taken a punt on me and I knew he had high expectations. I’d let him down. He hung up without a goodbye.
I briefly dwelled on never becoming a professional NFL quarterback, and then I went back to think about Kristi. I might have left it too late, but there was a chance—no matter how slim—and I had to take it.
It was now or never.
Chapter 34
Kristi
“Is it just me, or is Clyde acting kind of strange?” I asked Tasha while Clyde lined up for frozen yogurt.
“Not just you,” Tasha replied. “No offense, but I want to go home and fuck right now, not hang out with you eating bowls of sugar. Sugar makes me gassy, which is rarely conducive to good sex.”
“Clyde’s a lucky man, sis.”
Clyde came back with our desserts, which were loaded with toppings from strawberries to lumps of Oreo cookie. I didn’t have much of an appetite. I just wanted to get home and sulk by myself, but Clyde had insisted we all hang out together. He didn’t want to leave me alone, which was noble, but completely unnecessary.
“Not to sound ungrateful, Clyde, but can I just take this and eat it on the walk home? I’m kind of exhausted right now. It’s been a long night and I just want to get into bed and watch some television.”
Clyde looked at the time on his phone before responding. He must realize it was getting late, and Tasha kept looking at him impatiently. She wanted to leave as much as I did, and when Tasha wanted something she didn’t tend to be all that subtle about it.
“Let’s hang out for a bit,” Clyde replied. “It’s nice here. You can forget about all the stresses of adult life and eat like a child again. I find it helps me get my mind off things.”
With perfect timing, a loud group of drunk men wandered in and started talking at the tops of their voices about Barton.
“Apparently he knocked Milton unconscious,” one man said.
“I heard they were fighting over a woman, and after the fight was over, Barton just fucked her right in front of Milton and made him watch.”
“Bullshit,” the first man exclaimed. “There’d be photos. He probably took her to a back room and fucked her there.”
I momentarily blocked out their conversation by swallowing a huge mouthful of frozen yogurt and getting four painful seconds of brain freeze as a result.
“This isn’t going to take her mind off things, Clyde,” Tasha said. “Let’s just go.”
“No,” Clyde insisted. “Let’s just stay for….” He trailed off as his phone vibrated. After checking his phone, he quickly stood up and grabbed Tasha’s hand. “Okay, we can leave. Come on, Tasha. Have a nice night, Kristi.”
Tasha didn’t put up much of a fight, but she did shrug her shoulders to indicate she was as confused as I was. I walked the short trip home, doing my best to ignore the drunken gossip about Barton. He was the talk of the town. He had been ever since he signed, but this time not for the right reasons.
I heard anger. Word had got out that he’d probably been fired, and that left the team without a quarterback. Barton would go from hero to villain in the space of one news cycle. I didn’t even care that all my work had been undone. I hadn’t been doing it for myself or for Leona. Well, maybe at first, but I really wanted the public to see the real Barton. The one I saw, not the ass who screws loads of women and gets in fights. Now I had to face reality.
I walked towards my apartment in a daze, but snapped out of it when the smell of pesto hit my nose at the far end of the hall. It got stronger as I reached my apartment. I opened the door cautiously, not wanting to leave the tantalizing smell behind. I’d eaten frozen yogurt and it was late, but the smell reminded me that I hadn’t had a proper meal that night.
My apartment was suffocatingly hot. We hadn’t turned the air conditioning on because it wasn’t warm outside. Had Tasha accidentally turned on some heaters?
I jumped back as a voice called out at me from the kitchen.
“Take a seat. Dinner’s nearly ready.”
“Barton? Is that you?”
Barton appeared in the kitchen doorway. “You expecting any other men around here to cook you dinner?” He’d slipped on an old apron that Mom had bought us as a joke, knowing we didn’t cook enough to need one.
“I wasn’t expecting any men around here to cook me dinner,” I replied.
“I’ve made a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. I wasn’t lying when I said I could only cook this meal in my parent’s kitchen.”
If Barton was using the food to invoke memories of happier times then he had succeeded. I couldn’t take a bite of the pasta without remembering being in his parents’ kitchen when we’d been happy together.
“I take it you saw the news tonight?” Barton asked.
I nodded. “Managed to let off some steam?”
“Not really. I thought it would help, but I was focusing my energies on the wrong problem. I’m trying to change that.”
“You’re not going to punch me too, are you?” I joked.
“I think it’s more likely you’d punch me. I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have told anyone about our relationship. If I’d kept it a secret then you’d still have a job.”
“Thank you, but we both know it wasn’t a job worth keeping. The things they wanted me to do… well, it wasn’t worth it. I’m sorry my job caused you so many problems.”
“My short temper caused the problems. I’ve been fired.”
“Shit,” I exclaimed. I tried to sound surprised, but it had been inevitable. Punching a teammate was pretty much unforgivable for any sports team. “You didn’t need to do that for me.”
“I know. I’m a fucking idiot. This is what happens when you’re not my advisor.”
“Do you really need me to tell you that punching a teammate is a bad idea?”
“Yes. I need you, Kristi. Listen, I know I’ve fucked up, but I’ve learned from my mistakes.”
“What have you learned?”
“That I don’t want to be without you. Not just because you keep me on the straight and narrow. That doesn’t matter anymore anyway; not now I don’t have a career. I just want you to be a part of my life. These last few days have been lousy. I love you, Kristi, and whatever the future holds, I want us to figure it out together.”