On the other nights, I get a babysitter, the most responsible high school senior I could find. She’s 19, a year older than her peers, and she’s not into partying or anything like that. She hopes to be some kind of professional in child care development when she grows up, so she sees this all as a great opportunity to learn and mature in her understanding of children. My only problem with her is that I can’t seem to talk to her without her staring at her phone and nodding her head without really listening to me, but I figure that’s just how kids are these days.
Listen to me, saying “that’s how kids are these days.” Just a year ago, I was a kid myself. But having Will changed me, made me more mature. I can still have fun with Jane here and there, but there’s something separating us, some kind of veil between us. We’re still best friends, but sometimes I feel like she just doesn’t understand how hard I truly have it. After all, I’m a single mother working at a bar… no chance of returning to college.
It just wasn’t practical to think that I could have gone to get my PhD while pregnant with Will, and now I don’t have the money to pay for the courses.
My parents are still in Mexico, and they seem so content there that I don’t think they’ll ever return. For a while, I was under the strange delusion that my mother might return for Will’s birth, since she seemed to take the news of my pregnancy as having reached some kind of personal milestone. She’s a grandmother now, and she tells me that she tells everyone about her cute little grandson. But the truth is that he’s not important enough for her to fly back to Pennsylvania to see him. She’s only ever met him on Skype, where she cooed and awed at him and waved endlessly at him.
I can’t blame my parents totally, though, even though I do feel a lot of resentment towards them for not having visited Will, for not coming up to at least see how I’m doing as a single mother…
They don’t have much money, which is the main reason that they retired to Mexico. Down there, things cost about a fifth of what they do in the US. The rent for a beautiful little casita in the rich part of town costs $200. They’re living the high life on a shoestring budget. They have a beautiful garden, and gardeners to take care of it. They have a maid who comes three times a week. My parents’ financial worries are long gone. Most of their worries are long gone. My mother’s biggest current worry is that my father thinks the maid is cute and occasionally will watch her as she bends over to clean something on the ground.
I still think about Shane almost constantly. I can’t get him off my mind. But he didn’t want to have anything to do with me after I left him in his room that day. I assume he’s still the cocky bastard that he was back in school. After all, why would he change? He doesn’t need to, and simply seems unlikely that he would have had some kind of huge personality transformation when there’s simply no reason for him to have one.
I tried to call him to let him know I was pregnant, and he couldn’t even be bothered to pick up. I left him a voicemail, explaining the situation to him, and he couldn’t even be bothered to return my call. Not even a text message or an email. Who treats a woman like that?
I simply don’t want him in my life at all. That’s how I feel about him. It sounds harsh, but what’s harsher than simply shutting out the woman that you got pregnant? Apparently he has no interest in seeing his son.
I see him on TV occasionally, when the guys want to watch the sports channel, or the football game, and I can’t help but watching him. He’s even hotter now than before, and he looks insanely good in that football gear, his muscular, taut ass in those tight pants that they make them wear. I think they must design football gear with the wives of the fans in mind. I mean, sure, a lot of women like football for the game itself. But a lot of women also can’t be bothered with it—they only watch it because on game days, the only way to be near their husbands is to feign some interest in the sport. And what keeps them occupied in those long hours of the game? The tight clothes, the pads that exaggerate the muscular frames of the players. That’s what. Of course, that’s just a theory of mine.
“Another round, Jimmy?” I say, eyeing a regular named Frank, but for some reason everyone calls him Jimmy. He doesn’t even respond to the name “Frank” anymore.
“Yup,” he grunts.
I pour him another double whiskey, which he always takes on the rocks.
But he won’t tolerate just any ice cubes. No, he likes the smallest ice cubes available. That means I have to hunt around in the ice bucket for cubes small enough to satisfy him.
“Here you go,” I say, plunking the drink down on the cheap wooden bar.
He grunts something that might be a “thanks,” but there’s really no way to tell.
“Did you mop the bathroom yet?” says Jim, my boss, looking up from his barstool. He’s chowing down on some disgusting mess that passes for a hamburger under the restaurant’s incredibly low standards.
“I’ll get right to it,” I say.
It’s better to keep my responses light and easy. There’s no point in replying sarcastically. That just gets me into trouble. But I miss being able to speak freely, to say what I want to whom I want. But here, at the restaurant, if a customer speaks to me crudely, I have to apologize. Or else I’ll lose my job and there won’t be any way to provide for Will.
I swallow my frustration, and walk through the kitchen in order to get to the disgusting mop that must be 20 years old.
I take the mop from where it stands in the corner and examine it. It’s so dirty that it probably just makes the floors dirtier.
“Hey, Jamie,” I say to the cook, who’s coming out of the walk-in carrying a couple pounds of hamburger that she’s supposed to fry up for Jim.
She nods at me.
She’s an older woman who’s a little overweight. She’s nice as hell, but she’s so busy cooking up hamburgers and deep-frying potatoes that we hardly ever get a chance to talk.
The bathroom is right off of the kitchen, which must be some kind of health hazard. I dip the mop into an old bucket and set to work. With the door open, Jamie and I have a brief chance to chat.
“So how’s Will doing?” she says.
“Good,” I say. “He’s really into exploring right now. I’ve had everything in the apartment childproofed for months, but now that he’s more active, I’m really starting to get worried.”
Jamie chuckles, her laugh almost drowned out by the sound of sizzling oil from the grill.
“They get like that. He’s about a year old?”
“Yeah,” I say. I have to concentrate too much on mopping up a particularly disgusting brown spot on the floor to tell her Will’s exact age in months.
“Don’t worry, though, honey,” says Jamie, speaking loudly so I can hear her. “I know you’re cautious about everything. He’s going to be fine.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so. I just get worried, you know.”
“That’s normal for new moms,” says Jamie. “By the time you have your third one, though, you realize that there’s only so much you can worry about them.”
“How are your kids doing?”
“Good, at least I think so. They hardly ever call me. The youngest is still in college, but my oldest are busy carving out lives for themselves.”
Jamie has all boys, who are now grown men. I know she wanted at least a girl, which is one of the reason they kept having kids, but things don’t always work out the way you want them to, as I know very well.
“That sucks,” I say.
“Well, that’s just the way it is sometimes. You’ll understand once your son gets older.”
I don’t really know what to say that and to be honest, it upsets me a little bit. I don’t like to think of Will eventually growing up and not wanting to have anything to do with me. But that won’t happen. Once he’s older, he’ll understand everything I went through for him.
Either way, it’s going to be a long, long time before he’s an adult. 17 more years. And in my opinion, parenthood doesn’t end when the
kid reaches 18. That’s what my parents think, though.
I finish mopping up, and set about doing the other chores necessary to close up the restaurant. I count out the till and make the marks in the book, depositing the money where it belongs in the safe.
My boss just grunts at me as I leave. He’s staying behind to drink with his buddies. I see them watching me through the glass on the front door. They’re eyeing me and it makes me feel uncomfortable. One of them says something and they all chuckle. Eww. Gross. Better not to think about what they could have said. No point in getting myself all worked up about something that I can’t change.
There’s my car in the mostly deserted parking lot, a ‘98 Camry that’s seen better days. The paint on one side of the car is completely worn away, and whoever owned the car before me (I bought it cheap at a police auction) tried to repaint it orange with common spray paint. The car was originally beige, so it beats me why they chose orange as a means of covering up the existing damage. But that’s the way it is, I guess. The car has orange streaks all over the side of it. Whatever, I can live with that. I don’t need a nice car to be happy, or even a normal looking car. That’s my whole thing—I’m doing what I need to do and eventually I’ll get to a stable enough place financially that I can start taking classes again and somehow… somehow I’ll eventually be a physical therapist with that coveted PhD and certification.
I still study physical therapy in my spare time. I guess I’m just a huge nerd. That’s what people would say about me if they knew about it. That’s what Jane says, obviously, but she’s just poking some light fun my way, just teasing me. In reality, I think she’s impressed with it and my dedication. But in my mind it’s nothing like dedication. It’s just interest. Just a true fascination with how the human body works and the problems that can arise with it.
In my car, I pull out my phone to see if for some reason Jane called. I still check my phone often, in case there was some kind of emergency and somehow I missed the ringer, even though I have it set to vibrate. When I bought the phone, I wanted the phone with the absolute loudest ringer possible, knowing that I’d have to leave Will in the care of others. I guess I’m just cut out to be an anxious mother. Or an attentive and conscientious mother—depending on how you look at it.
There haven’t been any phone calls, but there’s an email.
I gasp in shock when I see the name.
It’s from Shane.
Will’s father? The Shane I think about all the time?
That’s completely crazy. He hasn’t contacted me at all… not once…
12
Shane
I still haven’t heard back from Lia.
The email I got was so strange. That video was so strange. I never recorded myself jacking off. From the looks of the video, I was having a blast. I had my eyes closed and was concentrating hard as hell. Even though I used to get laid all the time, I still had such a high sex drive that I had to jack off just to keep it in check. In reality, my sex drive hasn’t diminished. Not one bit.
I wrote to Lia asking if she had anything to do with the video. I forwarded her the original email, adding my message at the bottom, to see if she would know anything about it.
I didn’t outright accuse her of anything, but I think the message was pretty clear. What I really think is that she somehow secretly recorded me and then sent out the video. Why do I think it’s her?
Because who else in college was named Lia? I never came across another chick with the same name. And while her last name isn’t Leone, it sure sounds a hell of a lot like her last name.
The whole thing is weird. It’s like she’s using a really bad pseudonym, as if she wants people to know who she is, but doesn’t want an official record of herself doing it.
So is this some kind delayed payback for my perceived crimes against her? She was pissed I didn’t wear a condom. But so what? It’s not like anything bad came of that. It was one day, and that was it. No babies. No STDs.
Can’t she just let it go?
After all, that was two years ago.
What a weird time to exact revenge.
Then again, I’m becoming quite the household name. And certainly everyone who follows football knows about me.
Maybe she’s jealous of what’s going on with me. Maybe she just wants to get back at me. If it was some sort of ransom strategy, then she screwed it up royally. She’s supposed to ask for money first and then send the video if I don’t give the money.
Not that I’m pleased about having the video out there or anything, but I certainly wouldn’t be willing to pay someone money to get them not to show it. I mean, maybe five dollars would be my maximum bid. I’m just not shy and I’m not shy about my body, so whoever wants to see it, I guess it’s fair game.
My agent hears about the video somehow.
“How the hell did you hear about it?” I say.
I’m sitting across from him at an annoyingly upscale restaurant downtown.
“I’ve got my ears to the ground, buddy,” he says.
His name is Tommy Duggins, and he looks how you would expect someone named Tommy Duggins to look.
He’s kind of slimy, with his hair slicked back. He always wears expensive suits that don’t seem to fit him well. But I figure that’s how agents are supposed to look. He looks just like any sports agent, and maybe that’s good.
“You didn’t go to my school,” I say. “Are you spying on my email or something?”
He chuckles. “Not yet,” he says. “If you start causing problems, maybe I’ll buy some of that spyware software that parents use to spy on their children.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I say coldly.
That shuts his laughter down.
“Just for legal reasons,” he says. “I want to state clearly that I do not actually intend to illegally install spyware on any of your computational devices.”
“Cut the bullshit,” I say, tired already of his agent double talk, his legal mumbo jumbo. “I don’t really care how you heard about it, just tell me what you wanted to tell me. You called me to lunch for a reason.”
“Well,” he says, taking a big hulking slice off of his rare steak. “The video is getting out. I heard about it today, because a friend of a friend got a copy of it. You know how these things are, people start forwarding funny shit to their friends and pretty soon the whole world has it. That’s what the internet is for.”
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t designed for sharing videos of my cock,” I say.
“By the way, you’re really packing,” he says, giving me a wink.
I don’t bother even responding to that.
“Hey, take it as a compliment, buddy,” he says. “Everyone’s talking about how well endowed you are.”
“Just tell me what you want to tell me,” I say.
“Well, as you probably know, clandestine sex tapes are a real thing with celebrities. They can make or break a career. Now if you were an actor, that’d be one thing… But as an athlete, you’re supposed to be a role model…”
“This isn’t a sex tape,” I say. “It’s me jacking off. Something that every single man has done, and continues to do. Probably really frequently.”
“You’re telling me,” says Tommy. “Shit, I can’t get through most days without choking the old chicken at least once.”
An elderly man from the next table gives us a dirty look.
“Damn it, man,” I say. “Shut up. You can’t be talking about that here in a restaurant.”
But Tommy has never been known for his subtlety.
“Basically,” he continues, ignoring me. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with it, but it could be a big deal. Might cost you your career. Might not.”
He takes a big bite of his salad, chewing the lettuce in the most annoying way possible.
“That’s what you wanted to tell me?” I say. “That you don’t know if it’ll ruin my career, but that it might, and that there’s nothing I can do about i
t?”
“Uh, basically,” he says, with his mouth full of munched-up salad.
“Don’t you see how stupid that is?”
“No. Should I?”
“I’m done here,” I say, pushing my plate forward and getting up from the table.
“You’re leaving just like that?”
“Yup,” I say, walking calmly away towards my car. I don’t have time for this kind of shit. I’ve got a job to do, which as far as I’m concerned is to play football. I can’t be wading through the mire of what could happen and what might happen to my public image. That’ll be for the league and the fans to decide, if the time comes to it.
What’s the big deal? I jerked off once and someone recorded it without my knowledge. That doesn’t make me a bad guy, does it?
If it does, then screw me.
I check my phone, still no email.
I stare out the window of my car, not yet turning it on.
The trees are starting to turn. They aren’t blossoming yet into their glorious fall colors, but I can sense that they’re on the verge of a new cycle.
This isn’t just fall for me. This is football season. This is what I live for.
The first game of the season is rapidly approaching. It’s a home game. We’ve got to win it. We’ve just got to. It’s going to propel us forward, not just in the ranks of wins and losses, but mentally and energetically too. The guys are going to be pumped if we win that first game.
Without really thinking about what I’m doing, I check my phone again before turning on the Jeep.
There’s an email from Lia. I find myself holding my breath as I open it up.
I guess I’m nervous. Because despite the argument we had, and the lack of communication, I’ve always… I’ve always held her in some impossibly high place. On a pedestal, I guess, which is where they always say you’re not supposed to put women. But I put her there and in my mind no other woman can ever approach her. No other woman is ever going to be as beautiful as she is. No other woman is going to have that special spark that she has.
Quarterback's Baby: A Secret Baby Romance Page 7