I lick at the bitter smile festering on my lips.
“We would go bad.”
I shrug and shiver, pulling the sheet tighter around me. “I would say he wasn’t trying hard enough. He would say I didn’t understand. We’d . . . fight. We stopped . . .”
My voice dies in the dark. I dip my head to hide my face, ashamed to hear my part in this tragedy spoken aloud.
“You stopped what, Ave?” Deck probes gently, kissing my forehead and encouraging me to go on. “You can tell me.”
“We stopped . . .” I glance up at him through a dampened veil of eyelashes. “We stopped making love. We were like roommates, miserable more often than not, but determined to keep trying. I loved him. I did, but I’m not sure for the last year or so that I was in love with him.”
My harsh laugh puffs across our lips, just inches apart.
“Hell, he probably wasn’t in love with me either there at the end,” I say. “He went on a business trip and he cheated.”
Deck’s hard body goes still, and his thumb caresses under my chin, urging my eyes up to meet his.
“He was a fool,” Deck says. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but anyone who isn’t satisfied with you is a fool.”
“No, I was a shrew.” I wince, replaying some of our arguments. “We both wanted it to work so badly. We loved who we were in the beginning, but we weren’t those people anymore. At least not to each other.”
I always knew Will had . . . spells. Seasons when he would withdraw because life felt too hard, and nothing, not even our closeness, could pull him out. I didn’t realize how bad it was until last year, and even then, I never imagined he’d harm himself. He stopped going to work. Stopped eating and showering regularly. Stopped making love to me. Stopped everything that made him happy. Stopped everything that made him . . . Will. He stopped everything that made us . . . us, and it broke my heart. Long before anonymous out-of-town hook up ho, my heart had been broken in minutes and hours and over days. We drifted out of love, into heartbreak, and settled into a terrible indifference. We were unrecognizable, and I didn’t know if it would have happened eventually anyway, or if his depression, the wall it erected between us, forced us to it.
“So, what happened?” Decker prompts.
“When he told me he’d cheated, I. . .” I want to cover my ears against the memory of our raised voices; of our hurtful words. “I gave him his ring back. I told him it was over and went to a hotel.”
Guilt assails me, fresh and wrenching. My heartbeat accelerates and my pulse pounds in my ears.
“That was the last time I saw him alive.” I struggle to get the words out. “How could I do that, Deck? I knew he was depressed, was struggling, but I never thought he’d do something like that.”
“Not your fault, Ave.” He squeezes my chin between his fingers firmly. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
Doing that to myself has become a habit I’m not sure I can break. Blaming myself for what happened.
“When I broke it off, he thought I would reconsider, and asked that we not tell our friends and family yet so no one knew that just days before, I’d . . .”
Abandoned him. Left him on his own. Left him to die.
The details of that night overtake what I see, what I hear, hurling me back into that cold bathroom. All the sounds and images and horrors flood my memory. I’d gone to the apartment to tell him I was sure; that we should go ahead and tell everyone it was over. Not just because of him cheating, but because we weren’t working anymore and hadn’t for a long time. As soon as I let myself into the apartment, I’d heard the music drifting from the back to the entrance.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on your troubles will be out of sight
The closer I’d gotten to the bathroom, the louder the music became and the more I was sure something was wrong. The air trembled with it. Each lyric ached with the pain I’d seen in Will for years, ebbing, flowing, sometimes less, sometimes more—always there, but finally too much.
“He was in the tub,” I whisper, my eyes unfocused on the room I’m in now, but seeing that other room; seeing Will in water turned scarlet with his blood. Seeing the deep lines sliced in his wrists, perpendicular to his pain; intersecting with the misery I’d seen in his eyes for months, but been helpless to soothe. I hadn’t known his despair went that deep.
I still see that note, my name scrawled in Will’s loopy penmanship. I still see the ring I had returned to him there on the counter.
“Avery, I tried,” I say, my mouth trembling, an unsteady messenger for Will’s last words. “That’s all the note said. That he tried.”
Was it an apology? For cheating? For giving up? Was it a condemnation of me, for underestimating his despair? For pushing too hard? For wanting too much? Always more from him, or for him? The questions make well-worn laps in my mind, round and round, dizzying me with the finality of Will’s one-sided farewell.
The song. The tub. The blood. The ring. The note.
Second after painful second, I manage to drag myself out, like I’ve had to do so many times since that night. I focus on Decker, pleading for him to understand, or maybe to help me understand.
“Sometimes I’d say he wasn’t trying because that’s all I know how to do,” I say. “I’ve spent my whole life trying. Achieving. Making things happen for myself, and on some level, I didn’t understand that it wasn’t that easy for him. That it wasn’t about trying. It was deeper than that. For him it was harder than that. Maybe he was trying until he just couldn’t try anymore. And I saw that too late, Deck, and now he’s gone.”
My shoulders shake with the emotion I’ve been hiding from for a year.
“When I saw the note, it had my name on it. No one else’s.” I shrug helplessly. “There was no message for anyone else, so I kept it to myself.”
My laugh comes out hollow, barely a laugh at all.
“And if I’m honest, I didn’t want anyone to know. To blame me like I blamed myself.” I swipe trembling fingers over my wet cheeks. “God, I didn’t want his mother to blame me like I blame myself. For her to think he did that because of me.”
The words slip-slide on my tears, barely discernible, but Deck understands. He pulls me close, one hand stroking at the small of my back and one hand cupping my face as he kisses the wetness on my cheeks.
“Listen to me.” His voice falls soft and firm over my hiccupping. “I don’t know what you could have done differently in your relationship. When a relationship fails, we look backward with much more perspective than when we’re in it. Believe me. I learned that after my divorce.”
I sniff and nod against his chest for him to go on.
“And replaying our arguments and rehearsing our mistakes won’t change how we handled things,” he says. “But in a situation like that, you aren’t responsible for someone making that decision. Our lives are just that.”
He dips his head to catch and hold my eyes with his.
“Ours.” He frowns, pressing his lips together over a sigh. “You remember that Sports Illustrated party a couple years ago?”
“Yeah.”
We hadn’t spoken, but I remember that lightning strike of seeing Deck again after so long. How my palms went sweaty and my heart went haywire and my stomach went all fluttery. I had seen him from time to time over the years from a distance, but that night, he’d been so close. Closer than he had been for a long time, and as much as I made sure nobody knew, it affected me. He affected me.
“I wanted your fiancé out of the way.” His voice is gruff, prompting me to pull back just enough to see his face. “And I didn’t care that I was there with Tara. I didn’t care that you were with him. I’d wanted you for years, since the first time I saw you, and I resented him touching you. Resented his ring on your finger. I resented him having you when I never got my chance.”
He pauses, a deep swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple.
“I
thought about that when I heard he had died,” Decker says. “I felt guilty for even wishing him out of the way.”
“But you didn’t . . .” I pause to sort my thoughts and find the right words. “You had nothing to feel guilty about. Your desire for me didn’t kill Will. He did that.”
“Exactly, Avery.” He brushes my hair back from my face. “Exactly.”
His words sink in and I try to put myself in that place where I’m absolved of guilt. I can’t quite do it yet. I know he’s right theoretically, but that night I found Will wasn’t theoretical. It happened to me, and I haven’t gone a day without seeing him that way. Without asking if he was there because of me.
“I can’t imagine how much pain Will was in to do something like that,” Decker continues. “I assume it’s something he wrestled with at other points in his life.”
“All through college.” I pause, before sharing another thing I haven’t even told Sadie yet. “His mother actually told me his first attempt was in high school, and then again in college. I had no idea.”
I shake my head, overwhelmed with how much I missed. “How did I live with him, share my life with him, wear his ring, plan our future and not know he’d tried to take his own life? Twice?”
“How would you have known if he didn’t tell you?” Decker asks. “We hide in the open. We cover our scars so we can move on. Sometimes we hide because we’re ashamed. Because we’re afraid people won’t accept us or love us or understand. No matter the reason, you didn’t know. But even if you did, would you have stayed in a broken relationship for the rest of your life from fear that he would do something like this? These were demons he’d wrestled with before he even knew you, Avery. You can’t take responsibility for his life, for his decision. You couldn’t do it while he was alive, and you can’t do it now that he’s gone.”
My therapist has said these things to me. I’ve replayed them to myself on days when I thought the guilt, the weight of his death would drive me mad. But there’s a ring of truth when Decker says it that I haven’t allowed myself to hear before. Maybe I thought I was letting myself off easy. In situations like this, you need someone to blame, and it feels wrong to blame Will. If I allow myself to place the responsibility with him for even a second, I become furious. I get livid with him for leaving me and his mother and his friends who care about him. Who love him and miss him and will live the rest of their lives asking the same questions I do.
Why?
How could you?
What didn’t I do?
Could I have been enough to keep you here?
I want to throw things at the wall and I want to punch him in the face. More than anything, I want to rewind to an illuminating moment when I could have made a difference. I replay our years together over and over, watching from an objective distance, searching for that second when I could have looked in his eyes, seen how truly miserable he was with this life, and fixed it.
And maybe that’s the problem. I’ve accomplished all my goals and created the destiny I envisioned for myself. A woman accomplishing what I have in sports and television is rare, much less a woman of color. I rose above expectations and limitations at every turn. I defied the odds. Every hurdle, I’ve jumped. Every problem, I’ve fixed. But I could never solve Will.
If you can’t come through when it’s life or death, when it counts, then what good are you?
I finally drift off to sleep in the rare comfort of someone else’s arms and realize that is the question that’s been haunting me. I may find no peace until I have an answer.
12
Decker
I’m making French toast when she enters the kitchen the next morning.
She’s not exactly shy, but she has trouble meeting my eyes. I hope it’s just morning-after awkwardness, not regret. Last night was the best sex of my life. One of the best nights of my life period, even though there were tears and pain and it was hard.
It was her.
It was my chance to unwind the labyrinth that has been Avery all these years. To understand her and get a glimpse of what’s beneath all that control. It’s beautiful. So beautiful that now I’m addicted to her honesty and her vulnerability and her boldness and her brand of brokenness. If last night was my only hit, she’s a high I might chase the rest of my life.
“Morning.” I glance up from the toast sizzling in the pan.
“Morning.” She toys with the belt of my silk robe she’s wearing. The hem trails the floor behind her because there’s more material than her much shorter body knows what to do with. It still looks really good on her, gaping in front, hinting at two high, perfectly round breasts and copper-toned skin stretched over a taut plane of feminine muscle in her stomach. Her hair, tousled around her shoulders, rests dark against the maroon-colored silk. She runs a self-conscious hand over the tangled strands, combing her fingers through and pushing them behind her ear.
“You look beautiful,” I reassure her.
Her fingers freeze in the process of setting her hair to whatever rights she’s attempting. She climbs up onto the high stool, leaning her elbows on the counter.
“Breakfast?” she asks unnecessarily.
I turn the toast with a laugh. “Looks that way.”
She grimaces over my answer before surrendering a grateful smile when I pass her a cup of coffee.
“Sorry it’s not your cold brew.”
“It’s fine.” She takes a long sip. “Oh, God. Thank you.”
She clears her throat, shifting a little uneasily on the stool.
“And thanks for the ibuprofen you left.” She rims the lip of the mug with her finger, not looking up. “That was very thoughtful.”
“You had a good bit to drink last night.” I turn off the toast and start scrambling eggs in a second pan. “Thought you might be a little hungover.”
A wicked smile starts in her eyes and then creeps its way to her lips.
“It’s not my head that’s sore.”
I pause in the preparations, processing what she is saying. My laugh bounces off the kitchen walls and I walk over to her, notching my hips between her knees. My hands stroke her back through the silk. She’s soft and warm and smells fresh.
“You showered?” I whisper kisses behind her ear.
“Yeah.” Her answer is breathy. “Hope that’s okay.”
“I only hate that I missed it,” I rasp at the fragrant, silky skin of her neck where my teeth marked her. “Sorry about this.”
“My neck isn’t sore either.” She laughs, a liberated sound I want her to keep making.
“Oh.” My hand wanders over her nipple and it beads under the silk. “Here?”
The slightest hitch of her breath is the only indication she’s feeling this.
“No, not there.”
“Hmmm.” I pucker my eyebrows into a frown. “I’m running out of options.”
I step deeper into the vee of her thighs until the robe splits and falls away, baring the toned length of her legs.
“Maybe it’s here.” I run one exploring finger from her calf, over her knee and inside her thigh, just shy of her pussy.
“You are getting so close,” she says, eyes not leaving my face.
I slide a finger along either side of her clit, trapping it between the digits and then stroking it with my thumb.
“Shit,” she mutters, her hips moving in the rhythm my fingers set. “That’s it. Right there. Not a hangover. A fuckover.”
I chuckle and stop my fingers, move my hand away.
“Oh, I’m sorry. If you’re sore, maybe I shouldn’t—”
“You should,” she cuts in, returning my hand to her center. “Believe me you should.”
And while our breakfast gets cold, I do.
Stretched out naked on my pillows, Avery licks sticky vestiges of syrup from her fingers, an empty plate in her lap and a sheet haphazardly covering her.
“That was good,” she says, purring like a contented cat.
“Breakfast or . . .” I let
my words trail off and I glance at the well-used bed where she writhed under me not too long ago.
“Both. Breakfast. Last night. This morning. All of it.” She bites into the grin that graces her kiss-swollen lips until it fades with the careful look she angles up at me. “Thank you for everything. It was perfect.”
We spent last night together, and half of today since breakfast became brunch the more we kissed and touched. And fucked.
Man, did we fuck.
And after just a day having her, it has been more intimate and more perfect than anything I experienced in years of marriage to Tara.
So the finality in Avery’s voice wears on my nerves.
“You sound really grateful.” I leave the bed, pulling on a pair of gray sweats from the floor and tying them at the waist. “What? You gonna send me a fruit basket or some shit?”
I meet her eyes head on, silently challenging her to tell me she regrets last night, this morning. That we won’t pursue more. That it . . . that we . . .won’t happen again.
“Decker,” she starts softly, staring at her fingers toying with the sheets bunched at her waist. “We talked about this, about—”
“That was before,” I butt in. “Before everything happened. Before we made love and we talked and we . . .”
I claw frustrated fingers through my hair. “Dammit, Ave, that was before and you know it.”
“Nothing’s changed.” She scoots up to sit straighter against the headboard, gathering the sheet around her like forgotten armor. “I’m still as emotionally unavailable as I was at that party last night.”
“Liar.” The one word blasts into the chilling air separating us. “You were more available to me last night than any woman I’ve ever been with.”
“I’m not talking about sexually, Deck.”
“Neither the hell am I, Avery.”
We glare at one another, our breath coming quicker with our mutual frustration. It’s not totally unexpected, her withdrawal, but I thought I would have a little more time to convince her that we should try.
Team Player: A Sports Romance Anthology Page 53