And he does. He hates the media, loves the fans.
Sharon and Marie chat for a few more minutes while I sit there mute, trying to look engaged, and then Sharon’s off to greet the next booth. More customers come by, more pictures are taken, and with each passing minute, I feel like more pieces of my heart are blowing away with the wind.
This sucks.
Across the lane from us, a couple of squirrels dart out as if they’re going to come our way, but then they suddenly stop and stare up at me with their beady little black eyes. A gasp escapes me, and when I reach over and grab Marie’s arm, she starts to laugh.
“It’s like the universe is conspiring against me! Why? Why are they staring at me? Look at them.” I point, and she laughs harder. They bob up and down as they look over our whole booth, and I pull my feet up into my chair.
“The universe is not conspiring against you. Stop it.” She yanks her arm out of my death grip.
“It is. Oh my God! They’re coming closer. Marie! Do something!”
“Fine!” Still laughing, she gets up and moves to the front of the booth. The squirrels watch her, and as she gets closer to them, I swear they look at me one more time in a We’re coming for you kind of way and then take off.
“I just don’t understand. As if things aren’t bad enough, now the squirrels are plotting against me.”
“They are not.” Marie rolls her eyes as she moves to stand next to the booth and chat with people as they pass by.
Letting out a deep sigh, I lean back in my chair and reach for my phone. I know I shouldn’t be looking for news notifications of him, but I can’t help myself. A new picture has gone viral. He’s in a navy suit, he’s had a haircut, and he’s wearing a pair of AirPods. He carries a large tan leather overnight bag, and he’s boarding the team plane. His face is devoid of emotions, but the muscles in his jaw are strained; it’s clenched shut. He doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t look sad either. He looks indifferent, and that makes me feel even more foolish.
Did he ever care for me like I did for him? Or was I just a distraction? A good one, until I became a bad one?
“Seriously, though, I still think you’re overreacting,” Marie says. She’s watching me stare at my phone; of course she knows who I’m looking at. “If there was ever a time for him to be stressed out to the max, it’s now. This is everything he’s worked for, he hasn’t been playing very well, and the people closest always get the brunt of someone’s emotions. They have to be taken out on someone, and well, you were his person. You know this.”
“Maybe, but you didn’t see him. You didn’t hear him.” I think back to how disconnected from me he was. There wasn’t much remorse in his eyes—if any—and he was adamant that this is what he wants. He made me feel bad, not only for being there, but for thinking we were actually headed somewhere. He made me feel stupid, like I should have known better.
“No, not that day. But, I’ve heard enough from you about before, and I know what I’ve seen while you’ve been with him. I don’t think you should write him off just yet. Let him get through these next two games, and then we’ll see what happens.”
“Why are you defending him? Just a few weeks ago you were warning me against him.”
She shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve had time to reconsider things.”
“Reconsider things.” I shake my head like she’s lost her mind. What’s there to reconsider? The problem now is, the more I think about it, the more I don’t know. I tried to be with him. I did—with our different lives, in different cities, with different life problems—and I don’t think we fit. I don’t think I fit, and after last weekend, I feel pretty confident I’m not what he needs.
In reality, he’s left me twice now, and I’m not sure I could handle it a third time.
When we were graduating from high school, I knew he and James were headed to college early, but what no one but Bryan and I know is that he didn’t even bother to say goodbye to me.
I thought we were friends—hell, he had to have known he was more than a friend to me, but even that didn’t matter. He had put the flashlight on, and like the lovesick girl I was, I went. After wrapping himself around me for the entire night, he was gone when I woke. He left a note in the kitchen and surprised all of us by deciding to leave a week earlier than James. GiGi seemed okay with his eagerness to get started. James just shrugged his shoulders; he didn’t care, because it wasn’t goodbye for him. But me—I was devastated. After all that time, all those years, clearly he didn’t think I was important enough to tell in person. A wave, a look, something . . . confirmation that he held me in some kind of higher regard—nope.
He broke my heart that day, and you’d think I would have learned my lesson. Sure, over time, the sting hurt less. I told myself he’d done it to make things easier, but it wasn’t easier for me, just for him—just like now. At some point I have to accept that this is the way things are. No matter how much or how long I’ve loved him, he’s never going to love me back like I deserve to be loved, and I have to tell myself that’s not okay. I deserve to get in return what I give, someone’s whole heart, because that’s what I’m offering. It’s who I am, and as much as it pains me to finally admit this . . . we just aren’t meant to be.
Kumquat Refrigerator Pie
THE PLANE IS loud as teammate after teammate boards and takes a seat. The conversations are animated, the laughter is boisterous, but as hard as I try, I can’t find it in me to feel even an ounce of what they are feeling. All I see in my head is her face after I broke her heart, and all I hear is her telling me she loves me.
I knew she loved me the way you do when you care for someone you’ve known for a long time, but I should have paid closer attention. Every day, whether it was something she did or something she said, she was wholeheartedly loving me, and I’m the dumbass who was too self-absorbed to notice. If I had, maybe I would have handled things differently, or maybe I wouldn’t have. I’ll never know. Instead, I pushed away the one and only person I’ve ever wanted love from.
She told me she loved me.
I shake my head and look down at my phone.
I’ve dreamt of hearing her saying those three little words more times than I care to admit, but not once did it play out with sad tears in her eyes, tears that were because of me, not for me. My heart aches, and I reach up to rub my chest.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to smile a little. After all, we just won our conference championship game and are headed to the Super Bowl. The. Super. Bowl,” Jack howls as he stops at my row, grins, and punches me in the arm. I wince at the slight pain he’s caused, which makes him laugh.
“I know we’re going to the Super Bowl—I’m just still in the zone. I’m thinking.”
He looks past me at the guys farther back, to the front at the guys horsing around, and then back at me. His eyes narrow and his brows draw down. Over the last week, I’ve caught him watching me curiously, just like at Reid’s for New Year’s Eve. He’s never asked or even hinted that he suspects something is up, but I’m pretty sure he does.
“Thinking about what, exactly?” He tilts his head.
Everyone is celebrating. It’s not lost on me that I’m the only one who’s not, and as he looks at me, he’s definitely seeing there’s more going on in my head than just the game, the win, and what’s coming up next. I haven’t told him about Lexi and me, but I’m certain he knows now, and as much as I know I shouldn’t be thinking about her right now, should be celebrating with my teammates, I can’t help it. My heart’s not in it like it should be.
“What’s coming next,” I semi-lie to him. Yes, I am thinking about the next game, the game, but I’m also wondering what’s next for her and me. After all these years, all this time of wanting her from afar, is this really how I’m going to let us end? I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything.
Well, except for the fact that I broke the heart of the only girl I’ve ever loved. Yes, I am man enough to admit that I love her, be
cause I do; I’m just the idiot who never told her. Instead, I told her I loved something else more.
I am such an asshole.
Seriously, I’m as dumb as a post.
“Bro, tonight you just need to turn it off and enjoy this with your friends. This is everything all of us have ever worked for. It’s okay to be happy. You deserve it.”
“I will.” I look up at him. “I promise. I just need to decompress more.”
“Decompress.” He lets the word hang in the air between us and then flattens his lips together while shaking his head. “You’re lying to me right now. You forget I know you.”
I let out a sigh, break eye contact, touch the screen of my phone—which I’ve been gripping like a lifeline—and stare down at the photo of Lexi and me from New Year’s Eve. “Have you ever wanted something so bad you feel mentally and emotionally stunted?” I raise my eyes to look at him again. He’s watching me closely, and I don’t even care. “Well, that’s me right now. I just need to process, if you know what I mean.”
He nods, but his gaze is sharp and thoughtful at the same time. I can see he’s wondering the same thing I am: am I talking about the big game or her? I’m not going to clarify, so on that note, I lean my head back against the headrest and close my eyes, hoping he’ll leave me be and sit somewhere else. I want him to enjoy this. He should be enjoying it, and with me, he won’t be.
After a few seconds, the sound of him patting the seat in front of me twice tells me he’s leaving, and I let out another sigh . . . only the seat next to me wobbles immediately after, and this time I feel the impact as a heavy weight lands in it. I crack my eyes and see that it’s Reid. He tosses a homemade granola bar in my lap and proceeds to open one of his own.
“Oh man, do I wish Camille were here right now.” He leans back in the chair and sprawls his legs out underneath the seat in front of him while grinning from ear to ear.
I give him the side eye to let him know he’s officially crossing over into too-much-information territory, and he laughs. He’s so happy, just like the rest of them, and I desperately wish I felt the same.
“Not for that, asshole. Because I’m overjoyed, thrilled, and I want to share this with her.” He shoves a third of the bar into his mouth and starts chewing.
“Why didn’t she come?” I ask. Camille always comes to the games, rain or shine, and her missing this one is almost alarming. My stomach growls at the recognition of what it’s about to eat. Reid’s granola bars are the best.
“She’s sick and was worried about me or someone on the team catching it,” he answers while chewing the next third.
“That sucks. Flu?” My mouth waters as I take my first bite and internally groan in satisfaction.
“Yeah, it does, and no, I think it’s just a cold, but she spiked a fever, which meant au revoir playoff game. Sucks about your girl’s house, too. Camille feels really bad for her.”
Lexi’s house?
What?
“What do you mean?” I turn to face him, suddenly losing interest in the snack.
“You know, with all the repairs over the last couple of months. Camille’s house in Savannah is old too, so we deal with it a little bit, but not like this, not like Lexi has had to. I can’t even imagine how much cash she’s had to fork over.”
He finishes off the bar as I think back through the conversations Lexi and I have had recently, and I don’t know what he’s talking about. She hasn’t mentioned anything else, and I’m pretty sure I would remember if she did. Maybe Camille heard her wrong.
“Yeah, the fireplace was unfortunate,” I tell him. “You should have seen the smoke pouring out of the house when I got there. I thought it was on fire.” Visions of Lexi coughing and waving her arms through the air as she busted through the front door flash behind my eyes. I remember thinking she had grown up to be an incredible woman, and also thinking that I would die if something happened to her.
“Well, I think I’d take smoke any day over all the water. Water is such a fucking disaster all on its own, and it’s seriously my biggest fear when it comes to being a homeowner. I can’t even imagine how she’s dealt with it all, from the termites to the AC unit last summer, the roof, the leaks, the inside damage, the well pump cracking, and that eighty-gallon hot water heater flooding her floors just two weekends ago.” He shakes his head. “Camille said she was surprised Lexi even made it to the game.”
I repeat to myself what he’s just said. Termites. The AC unit. The roof. The leaks. The well pump. The hot water heater. Last weekend. Other than the roofer I saw that very first day, it never occurred to me what the inside damage would have looked like, and a passing comment about the well pump was the only thing she chose to say to me about the issues. Maybe I only knew about the fireplace because I saw it firsthand. I’ve never given much thought to what she might be going through outside of me.
“Yeah, she’s always been amazing like that. It meant a lot to me that she made it,” I mumble, because it seems like the right thing to say. The truth is, I took for granted that she’s the most selfless, caring person there is, and then I went out of my way to vocalize how simple her chosen life was compared to mine. My chest aches at the guilt I feel about the things I said when now I can’t help but wonder if I know much about her life at all.
He closes his eyes, and a small smile tilts his lips. “Just a few more hours now, and we’ll both be home and with the girls of our dreams. Doesn’t get much better than that.”
Home.
Only for me, that’s not what I’m going home to. Mine will be empty, just like it’s always been. It’s funny how quickly home felt less like a place and more like it belonged to her. I didn’t care where we were, as long as she was there. That was when I felt the best, like I was right where I should be.
Except, she must not have felt the same. Why wouldn’t she have shared with me all the problems she’s been having? Yeah, I’ve been busy with the team, but she’s had so many opportunities to tell me. All those nights we talked on the phone, during the holidays, and over dinners we’ve shared . . . it just doesn’t make sense.
I know we aren’t in a good place at the moment, but I thought we were before. Weren’t we?
How could she not tell me? How could I not see it if she was struggling? Oh, wait, I know—because I’ve made the last few months all about me.
I scrub my hand over my face and shake my head.
Finishing the season, squeezing in time when I was available, trying to stay in the right mindset as we entered the playoffs, I forced us to ignore outside influences when they were saying she was the reason I wasn’t on top of my game. The truth is, she isn’t the reason; I am. Things that happen on the field have nothing to do with her. All she ever wanted to do was make my life happier, easier, but what was I doing for her life?
Did she think I had one foot out the door the entire time? Did I have one foot out the door? I don’t think I did, but my attention was divided in two, between her and the game. I tried overlapping them, I really did, but as she well knows—hell, as the world knows—I didn’t do a very good job of it. And look at us now.
I again chose the sport and didn’t choose her.
Who chooses her? No one. That’s why she chooses herself, why she holds her cards close. I’ve always admired how strong and independent she is, but she hasn’t really been given any other choice, and I suddenly feel so much worse.
Maybe she knew this was going to be our fate. After all, history repeats itself, right?
And who can blame her for keeping things from me? She’s always known I was in it to win it, just not with her. She’s always taken the scraps I’ve tossed her way, even when we were kids, and she’s never asked for anything in return.
But . . . I tried.
I did try.
Didn’t I?
I guess like everything in my life, if I’m ever given the opportunity again, I’m just going to have to try harder.
For her, I can try—no, I will try
harder.
Homemade Granola Bars
SHUTTING OFF THE television, I sit still as silence fills my bedroom, and it echoes the sound inside my chest. Well, the sound is silent, but the pain is loud.
With being gone over the weekend and not having any time, I recorded Bryan’s game because, no matter what, I wouldn’t miss it. I already knew they won, but I wouldn’t forgive myself down the road if I didn’t watch one of the biggest games of his career. Despite our current relationship, he’s still important to me, and I desperately want the best for him. He deserves it. He deserves it all.
The change in him from the division playoff game to this one was night and day. His level of focus was laser sharp, to the point where even the announcers commented on it. The concentration lines in his forehead; his narrowed, all-seeing eyes; his pinched lips; the tension across his shoulders—they ate it up, whereas all I felt was guilt. They also commented on how I wasn’t seen at the game.
Headlines involving him this morning all revolved around the jinx and if it’s finally over. Turns out, they were right all along. Clearly, I was a distraction, and I did affect his ability to do his job. You can’t hide the truth, and there it is in plain sight for the world to see. I jinxed him.
I was bad for him.
Placing the remote on my nightstand, I lean back against the headrest and pull the covers up. My eyes find the fireplace mantle, and I can’t help but stare at the picture of James, myself, and Bryan. It’s the same photo from the television interview he did at the beginning of the season, the one that’s been splashed across screens for the world to see, and it’s also one of my favorites. I’m standing in between the two of them after they won the state title, their last game as high school seniors, and Bryan had reached over and grabbed my hand. Both of them are towering over me, dripping with sweat, and both of them are smiling from ear to ear. I love this photo not just because the three of us are in it together or because it was printed in our high school yearbook, but because there is a true, genuine smile on Bryan’s face, a rare sight.
Last Slice of Pie (Starving for Southern Book 2) Page 19