Forced Play for Libby (Men of Baseball #3)

by Hayley Faiman

  Afterward, I go back to the gym and puke for fifteen minutes. The guilt eats away at my soul. Guilt over my greed, my need for fame and fortune. My guilt about taking Libby as my wife without knowing her true self. My guilt at still wanting her body but denying myself the pleasure.

  I hate that I was given everything I thought I wanted and it feels like shit. It feels nothing like I thought it would. I haven’t been happy since I signed that dotted line. I’ve been a miserable asshole for seven long years. I curse myself before I stand up. Pent up energy that I couldn’t get rid of by fucking flows through me. I need to wear my body out. I run for a few miles, trying to punish myself for being a douchebag, then shower the cheap smell of knockoff from my body before I go home to the real thing.

  I expect the smell of whatever gourmet meal Libby has on the stove to assault my senses when I walk through the door, but it doesn’t. The apartment is eerily quiet and it worries me. Libby is a homebody. She doesn’t go too many places; the spa in the mornings for her nails, and maybe a little shopping, but she is always home by five in the evening and cooking dinner for me. I only eat her food about half of the time, but she always makes it without fail. A fleeting thought passes through my head; she will make someone a wonderful wife and mother one day – that is, if any part of her is genuine.

  I walk through the apartment and make my way into her room. I have only been in the space once. It is warm and inviting and I don’t understand it. It should be cold and unfeeling. It should be posh and perfect, but it’s nothing like that. Her headboard is an off white fabric; an ice blue comforter covers her bed with a bunch of cream and yellow pillows littering the back.

  The rest of her furniture is a light grey; and though it is feminine, it isn’t abundantly so. I can imagine spending time in the space, if our marriage had been different.

  I call her name, but don’t hear an answer. I walk into her bathroom, but it is empty. For some reason, I decide to walk into her closet. Call it instinct, but when I open the door and walk inside of the massive space, my lungs seize.

  Empty.

  It is completely, fucking empty. Everything that Libby owns, from designer jeans to designer ball gowns, is just gone.

  In the past seven years, never did I think that she would be the one to leave me. The center island inside of the huge walk in calls to me. When I step up to the granite counter, I notice a piece of paper under a bright turquoise paperweight.

  A note.

  A fucking dear-goddamned-John note.

  Love – she loves me?

  I treat her like complete shit for seven fucking years and she wants me to be happy? And she loves me?

  All these things she’s been doing for me, they’ve been genuine?

  She loves me and she’s been taking care of me for seven years, changing her body—for me?

  I can’t begin to understand it. Accepting it is a whole other thing. She loves me and that in and of itself if fucking mind-blowing.

  I close my eyes and think about our wedding day. The smile that lit up her face, it was real, all of it. The way she looked into my eyes and vowed to love me for eternity. I didn’t believe it then but it was all real.

  My knees give out and I fall to the plush carpet beneath me.

  My chest aches.

  It hurts so fucking badly.

  My Libby is gone and it is my fault.

  If I hate her so goddamned bad then why does this hurt so fucking much?

  Picking up my phone, I call my friend. My only true friend; a man that will set my shit straight and hold nothing back. I call Jarrod Harrison.

  “Harrison,” his gruff voice answers.

  “I … I think I fucked up. Libby’s gone and I need you, brother,” I croak into the phone.

  “Be there in five.”

  Jarrod finds me five minutes later, two beers down, with my ass to the wall in my fucking wife’s empty as shit closet.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m a pussy and an asshole.” For the first time in my life—I admit the truth.

  Then I tell Jarrod a story.

  A story about a punk ass kid with a fucking wild ass dream to be somebody. A man dangled that carrot and the kid snapped it up without truly thinking of the consequences. Here he was, seven years later, still avoiding the way that snap decision made him feel, and hurting the one person who had ever truly cared for him.

  Elizabeth Lillian Montgomery-McGrath.

  MY HEAD IS POUNDING, MY throat feels so raw I can’t even swallow without whimpering, and my body feels heavy. I attempt to open one eye, but the bright light of the sun streaming through assaults my senses. Where the hell am I? I wrack my brain before attempting to open my eyes again, and then it all comes back to me.

  When I got the notification on my phone, I thought for sure that it was another harassing text message saying—Pete doesn’t love you. He loves me, bitch. But it wasn’t. I remember seeing the photo that Pete’s publicist e-mailed me. She told me to fix whatever was wrong with my marriage before the situation escalated. I didn’t understand what she had meant until I clicked on the attached file.

  There, in color, was a photo of Pete with a woman wrapped around him—a woman that, eerily, looked a little too much like me. She had long dark hair with a slim body and big breasts. The time stamp showed it had been earlier that day. I crumpled to the ground, unable to hold myself together.

  Pete doesn’t want me, but he apparently wants the cheaper version of me. The woman isn’t ugly, but she looked like a whore, with skintight clothes that hugged her body in an almost vulgar manner. Her makeup was too dark and her hair was teased too high. She looked cheap, and not just because she was wrapped around my husband and I’m not allowed to be. I couldn’t stop the jealously from swirling inside of me. He told me when we were first married that he wasn’t planning on being faithful. I never thought for a moment that he was, but seeing the evidence with my own two eyes is more than I could handle.

  The publicist informed me that she had paid a pretty penny of Pete’s money to keep this photo hidden, but the next one wouldn’t be bought. I screw my eyes tightly closed, thinking about the embarrassment and repercussions of a photo like this being released.

  I sat down with the phone in my hand, the photo blown up to see Pete’s hand cupping the whore’s ass, and I started to shake. All of my emotions came to the surface and I cried, I threw up, I cried some more, and then it was like a light went off in my brain.

  If I wasn’t around, then I couldn’t hurt anymore. It was if, suddenly, it all made perfect sense. Why hadn’t I thought of this seven years ago? Nothing except for my own masochist self was keeping me there in that apartment. I ran to my closet and started pulling everything off of the shelves, throwing it into suitcases. I had those bitches packed down, but it didn’t even put a dent in my closet. I took a deep breath and called the first packing company I found on Google—offering them an obscene amount of money to pack my shit. Within an hour, my entire closet was packed and on its way to The Plaza.

  I was so fucking tired.

  Tired of the game.

  Tired of being lonely.

  Just tired.

  I want him to be happy.

  I want him to be free.

  I want him to know that I love him. I always have loved him, from the moment I saw him across that stupid frat party. I knew he was the one for me; too bad I’m not the one for him.

  It is time to end the charade of a marriage.

  Seven years without getting laid is ridiculous.

  He obviously isn't abstaining. Even though he told me in the beginning that he would get his somewhere else, my stupid brain wouldn’t accept it. I held out hope that he would realize how much he loved me and he would just be mine. I had been such a girl about it all these years, living on hopes and prayers. Not anymore. I was finally fed-up.

  The Plaza isn't the fanciest place I have ever stayed, but it is still plush. When I called the butler and demanded copious a
mounts of vodka, he agreed, returning within twenty minutes. I drank until I blacked out.

  Now, I’m on the floor of my suite in only my bra and panties. Drool and an opened snickers wrapper are stuck to my face, along with God only knows what tangled in my hair.

  My phone starts ringing from the night stand and I slowly crawl over to the highly offensive noise. Without looking, because I am apparently still drunk as fuck and wouldn’t be able to make out the name on the screen no matter how hard I tried, I answer.

  “Hello,” I croak, my voice sounding harsh and gross.

  “Libby.”

  Oh, God. It’s him.

  Pete’s voice washes over me and, unfortunately, I’m not as disgusted as I hoped I would be. My traitorous nipples grow to points and my belly clenches like it always does at the sound of my name in his voice. My body is such a slut for him. I mean, I fucked him the night we met, doesn’t get much sluttier than that.

  Why does he have to be so fucking sexy?

  “Libby,” he chokes again, sounding almost concerned.

  “Pete,” I rasp, my voice hoarse.

  “Where are you, Libby Baby?”

  Oh, god. Libby Baby. Libby-fucking-Baby. He hasn’t called me that in over seven years. I close my eyes and a tear trickles down my cheek. I am sure if I tasted it that it, would be straight vodka. But he’s too late. Too many tears have been shed and that e-mail with him wrapped around that whore is now burned into my brain. No amount of Libby Baby’s will erase that image.

  “Away,” I say sharply. Too fucking sharp, because my own voice makes my head ache a little bit more.

  “Yeah, baby, I think I figured that shit out when I walked into your closet to find it cleared the-fuck-out. Also, I think you were pretty clear that you left when you wouldn’t answer your phone all goddamned night long and I sat in your empty as fuck closet redialing every fifteen minutes. Yeah, baby, I get that you’re fucking away,” he growls. My mouth opens involuntarily and I rise to sit, in complete shock at his words.

  “I think you maybe just beat the record for how many times someone can say fuck in a paragraph,” I point out.

  “Christ, baby, you cannot be fucking cute right now. Where the hell are you?”

  Cute? He thought I was being cute? I’ll show him cute.

  “I left your cheating ass,” I yell. Never, ever, have I yelled at Pete. I always try to please him.

  Well, pleasing time is over.

  “What?” He has the audacity to sound surprised. He probably is, he probably thought that I would never find out about his women or maybe he thought I wouldn’t care? Odds are, this girl isn’t the first; she probably isn’t even the twentieth one he’s been fucking over the past seven years. Just thinking about how many others there could be makes my stomach lurch. It’s all suddenly too damn real.

  “Jolene, your ever so helpful publicist, sent me a picture of you and your whore; told me to fix my problem with you because she wasn’t going to keep the next one under wraps,” I continue to yell, unable to stay calm. My cool is so far gone, I don't think it will ever come back. Adrenaline now replaces my hangover.

  “Oh, fuck,” he whispers.

  “Yeah, oh, fuck is right. I know for whatever reason our marriage is shit, and I’m sure you’ve been out screwing hundreds of cleat chasing whores, but I don’t need photographic evidence shoved in my face, Pete. I don’t have to live this way and I refuse to do so for a moment longer.” My last words are just above a whisper, but the man hears me loud and clear.

  “I need to see you. I need to talk to you in person, Libby Baby, please. Please, let me see you,” he pleads. Some part of me gets a sick satisfaction at hearing him beg.

  How many times have I begged and pleaded to him? Begging him to tell me how to fix us; pleading with him for more; shamelessly vying for his attention anyway I could get it? Dozens—no, hundreds of times. It is his turn—and yet, I don’t really want that. It makes me feel hollow.

  “I don’t need, nor do I want to see you, Peter,” I state, my voice firm. Inside, I’m a mess, seconds from breaking apart.

  “I love you, too, Libby Baby. I’ll be waiting whenever you’re ready to talk,” he murmurs.

  I stare at the phone after the call has ended in shocked, stunned silence.

  He loves me?

  Pete loves me?

  The man who said he hated me, who was sleeping with a cheap carbon copy of me—he loves me? I crawl to the bathroom in a drunken haze and shower the stink of liquor and chocolate from my body and hair, trying to get myself together.

  An hour later, I find myself in a pair of leggings and a crop top, staring at my phone. It has been bouncing across the floor, vibrating with every call. Amalie, Maggie, Victoria, and even my sister, Annette. I ignore them all; but when Amalie calls again, I give up and I answer.

  “Amalie,” I say curtly.

  “Holy hell, woman, where are you?” Amalie practically yells into the phone.

  “The Plaza,” I state softly. She curses.

  “We’ll be there in five minutes.” I open my mouth to tell her no, but she’s already hung up. Again, I am left staring speechless at my damn phone.

  Fifteen minutes later, there is a pounding on my hotel room door. I quickly run toward it. The last thing I need is for security to be called up here because three nosey bitches can’t keep their loud mouths shut.

  I yank the door open and look into the very confused eyes of my friends. Well, all are confused except for Maggie; she’s looking at me with understanding and possibly pity. She has always seemed to be able to look right through my façade.

  “This place is the shit, girl. When you get pissed, you go all out,” Victoria announces. She then turns to me, her face completely serious. “It’s time for you to do some fucking talking, dime mujer.”

  “First, room service,” Amalie announces, making herself comfortable at the desk as she pulls out the menu and picks up the phone.

  I watch in shock and awe as Amalie orders about fifteen hundred dollars worth of room service, along with cocktails. Maggie takes my arm, steering me toward the sitting room, and we all get comfortable on the sofas. Apparently, its story time and I’m the narrator.

  “The butler will bring it all in when it’s ready, so you can start talking now,” Amalie informs me, as if this is student-teacher lesson time.

  “I have nothing to say. Pete is an ass, so I left,” I announce.

  Maggie makes an indescribable sound in the back of her throat and Victoria looks at me with one eyebrow lifted, as if she isn’t buying a second of my bullshit. Amalie just stares at me, looking gorgeous as always. No one says a word and the silence is fucking deafening. I can’t handle it.

  “Fine. His publicist sent me an e-mail with a picture of him and some cheap whore hugging, with his hand on her ass. I shouldn’t be surprised; I mean, we haven’t had sex since our honeymoon and he told me he would get his elsewhere. Seeing it, though—it killed me,” I admit, unable to handle the quiet room or their fucking screaming stares.

  “What in the hell?” Victoria screeches.

  “I knew something was up with you two,” Amalie adds. I want to be a smartass in response, but I refrain, opting for the truth.

  “I think my father made him marry me and now he resents me,” I admit out loud—for the first time ever.

  “What do you mean, made him?” Maggie asks, speaking since arriving.

  “I don’t know. It was a whirlwind. We met and were together right from the beginning, but when my father heard rumors about him, he demanded to meet Pete. He was livid that Pete and I had been together intimately and was afraid no man of proper breeding would want me anymore.

  “I took him home to my parents and, shortly afterward, Pete proposed. I asked my dad if he had a part in it and he staunchly denied any involvement. I let myself believe that Pete had just instantly fallen in love with me, and had to have me for his wife. Once we had the honeymoon, Pete informed me our marriage was in
name only,” I babble, unable to stop my hands from trembling.

  God, my heart hurts admitting my sad existence. It tears me apart to verbally confess how much of a failure my life has become. I need to own it. I need to change it. I need to find my happiness.

  I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO pissed in all of my life—and it is all my fault.

  I bought into the glittery package her father offered without a second thought. Once the ink was dry, I realized how incredibly stupid it was, how it made me feel worthless, and then I took it out on the person closest to me. Libby.

  I may have neglected her and I definitely cheated on her, but a part of me loves her—has always loved her. Yeah, I told her I hated her but really, I hated myself and pushing her away seemed like the only way I could deal with my affection for her. Libby is so sweet at home; loud and hilarious with our friends; and she takes care of me no matter how moody or pissed off I am. She is faithful and loyal, something I’m not. I’m not sure how I know, but she is. If she weren’t, would she be as hurt over the picture? I don't think so.

  I am a worthless piece of shit.

  I don’t deserve her.

  I have been calling Libby’s parents since she left, specifically her father, trying to get a meet with him. I want this contract shit gone. It’s poisoning me from the inside out. I want my wife back in my home, but I don’t want this hanging over me—over us. I want to love her on my terms; to be inside her without feeling like some stud mare fucking her to keep my job—to keep everybody else happy. The only person that matters is Libby, and this whole contract shit clouds and poisons the ring I put on her finger. I can’t deal with it a second longer.

  Since Mr. Joseph Montgomery won’t meet with me, I decide to just show up. That asshole thinks because he has money he’s above every single person on earth. To be honest, I’d rather surround myself with the dregs of society then look into his fucking face ever again.

  I walk straight into her father’s study and pull the fat Cuban cigar out of the bastard’s mouth, leaving him sputtering in shock. Not many men have ever stood up to Joseph Montgomery, but I’m not a regular guy. I am a dirty dog. I am from the ghetto, and I have no qualms about showing him just what kind of trash I fucking come from if he tries to stonewall me again.