The Wrong Game

by Steiner, Kandi

  Zach made fun of Micah while he ate the hot dog with a grimace of pain on his face, and I ate mine in silence, digesting it along with everything Micah had said.

  All this time, I’d been so focused on me, on not getting my heart broken again.

  I hadn’t even considered that I could do the same to Zach.

  The past two weeks had been blissful, living inside a world where we didn’t ask questions, didn’t think of consequences. The game we’d been playing was over, and we’d let ourselves just have fun, just enjoy being together.

  But how long could that last?

  If we didn’t talk about what we wanted, about what each of us expected, one of us was guaranteed to get hurt. That was just easy science. Micah asked me what my intentions were with Zach as a joke, but the truth was, he’d lifted a curtain I didn’t even know I was hiding behind and revealed the truth.

  I didn’t know what I wanted.

  I didn’t know what my intentions were with Zach, not completely, anyway. I knew I liked him. I knew I cared for him. I knew he made me feel safe and comfortable, that he was pushing me, that he gave me the space to open up to him in a way I never thought I could open up to any man ever again.

  But after the last home game, all we’d agreed to was to see what happened. We were just having fun. We were just being together.

  And it didn’t occur to me until that game how stupid we were being.

  We needed to talk. We needed to have a conversation about what came next, about what all of this meant. He was introducing me to important people in his life, and I was letting him inside my past — showing him my bruised, bleeding heart and letting him hold it in his hands.

  I didn’t ask Zach what his intentions were after the last home game, and I never asked myself what mine was, either.

  The question now was, how long could I stay on my little cloud before I had to return to solid ground and figure it out?

  The next day at work was a shit show.

  My anxiety had been triggered at the game, and when I was back in my condo alone, it drove itself right into high gear, keeping me up all night. I’d been late waking up, which meant I hadn’t had coffee ready for Belle or myself — not that Belle minded, but I did. I was her assistant, and she relied on me to have things ready. Coffee might have seemed trivial and not like a big deal to her, but it mattered to me.

  And that’s how the entire day went.

  I couldn’t find folders that I knew I’d organized and filed away correctly. I couldn’t find words to convey what I wanted in our morning meeting. I couldn’t get our scheduling system to work so I could set up consultations for the week.

  I couldn’t do anything except think about Zach, about us, and about everything I’d jumped into with him without thinking it through.

  “Do you have the file for the Marlow account?” Gemma asked, breezing into my office after lunch. Her hair was pulled back in a clip, and she tapped away on her phone from the doorway of my office.

  I didn’t need an office — a simple desk and filing area would have done. I tried to tell Belle that when we first secured the prime location in one of the hottest buildings on the river walk. But, Belle was Belle — she got what she wanted. And she wanted me to have an office.

  “Um, yes. I have it. I have it,” I repeated, spinning in my chair and looking at the cabinets behind me. The sunlight streamed in through the office windows, filling the room, and my eyes bounced to a couple holding hands and walking alongside one of the riverside restaurants.

  Belle cleared her throat. “So… can I get it, then?”

  I shook my head, snapping myself out of my daze. “Yes. Yeah. Um… Hang on, I know I have it.”

  I started filtering through the files, but for some reason, I couldn’t even think about where I would have put it. Everything was in its place — alphabetically, by category — depending on if they were residential, commercial, or something in-between. But the Marlow file wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and I panicked, heart picking up speed as my fingers flipped through the files again.

  “It’s here,” I said, more to myself than to Belle.

  “Well, it’s okay. We have the files digitally. I’ll just look it up in the system.”

  “You can’t,” I ground out, slamming the cabinet door shut. “Because the system is down, and I’ve been on the phone all morning with IT trying to get them to figure it out, but they’re moving about as fast as the last ten minutes of a work day.”

  I huffed, flipping through more files as Belle crossed the room and sat on the corner of my desk. She tucked her phone away, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched me. “Hey. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I spat, chest tight. “I just need to find these files and everything is just going wrong today and…” I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’ll find it and bring it to you.”

  “Gemma.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Right. And I’m a football fan.”

  I groaned, flopping back in my chair and slinking down until my butt was hanging off the bottom cushion. My hair fell in my face, and Belle smirked from where she watched me.

  “What’s going on?”

  I wiggled my way back up to sit, letting out a long exhale. “You know how I went to the game with Zach yesterday, and he brought his brother?”

  “Yes. You said you had a great time, that his little brother was refreshing and fun.”

  “And all that’s true,” I said. “But… it’s serious, right? Meeting his family? And Micah was saying some stuff about Zach, about how he’s been hurt and I need to be careful. And I just realized that we never set up any kind of rules when we started this whole…” I waved my hands. “Thing.”

  “And so you’re freaking out.”

  “Basically.”

  Belle smiled, sliding herself around the desk until she was right beside me. “Okay, look. It’s going to be okay. Honestly, I’m surprised it took you this long to freak out.”

  “We’ve just been having so much fun,” I said, exasperated. “I didn’t have time to think about what it all meant.”

  “And now you do, and this is classic Gemma, okay? This is your anxiety and your need for control sparking and saying that you need to grab the reins again.”

  “Maybe I should break up with him. Just save us both the hurt that will come later.”

  Belle laughed, snatching my phone from my hands before I could slide to unlock it. “Oh, no you don’t. This is what I mean. When you feel out of control, you resort to the crazy. Just… pause for a second. Take a breath.”

  I stared at her.

  “Inhale, you bitch.”

  At that, I laughed, but then I did as she said, and when I let the breath go, the grip around my chest loosened a bit.

  “Now, call Zach, and tell him how you’re feeling. Say that it’s been a couple of weeks now, and you just would like to set up some boundaries and define what you guys are a little more. He will understand and he will definitely talk to you about it. And then, you’ll feel better, and you can get a little control back.” She looked around my office, uncharacteristically messy from my haphazard morning. “And maybe a little cleanliness, too, because this is just so not you.”

  I chuckled, holding out my hand as a long sigh left my lips. Belle plopped my phone in my palm, tapping my cheek with her knuckle before she stood. “Okay, I’m going to go make a few calls before I do this consultation at one.”

  “Wait!” I said, standing and filtering through a stack of files on the corner of my desk. I handed her the Marlow one, remembering I was entering information from it into our system before it crashed. “The Marlow file.”

  Belle held it in one hand and smacked it against her other, smiling at me with a wink. “There’s my girl.”

  “Thank you, Belle.”

  “Always. Come talk to me after the call.”

  She left my office, and I sat back down with my heart beating hard and fast in m
y ears. I dialed Zach’s number before I could change my mind, and when he answered, I couldn’t even find it in me to start with small talk.

  “Hey there, beautiful,” he greeted.

  “Zach, we need to talk. We never talked. We never said what we were, and what we weren’t, and what we both expect out of this… whatever this is. And now I’m meeting your brother, and you’ve been hurt and I’ve been hurt and I love hanging out with you but like when does it start to get hard and messy? And when do you start telling your friends how annoying I am and how you don’t know how to tell me that you don’t want to do this anymore? And since we aren’t like, official, or whatever, do you even have to tell me? Can you just ghost me? And how do we decide when things happen, like when we meet certain people or open up about certain things. Like, are we moving too fast, is this all too soon? I just—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Zach said, and I took my first breath, cringing and dropping my face into my free hand. “Hey, it’s okay. Slow down. We can figure this out.”

  “I’m a mess today, Zach. I just… I don’t know what happened but my anxiety is out of control.”

  There was shuffling on the other end of the phone, and I realized it was late enough in the day now that Zach would be at the bar, getting ready for the Monday night football crowd. “It’s okay,” he said, voice softer now that the background noise was muted. “Look, you’re right. We never did talk about any of that. So, let’s talk about it.”

  “Really?” I sat up, heart squeezing.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, really. Look, in my eyes, you’re my girlfriend. I’m not seeing anyone else, and I don’t want you seeing anyone else. I care about you. I’m not just dating you to hook up or be entertained. I’m dating you because I potentially see a future with you.”

  My stomach was somewhere in my throat instead of where it should have been anatomically, and I tried to swallow past it without success. “Okay. Yeah. I agree with that.” I sighed. “But, I don’t want to move too fast. Okay? I just… I need some guidelines here. Some rules.”

  Zach laughed. “You and your rules. Okay. Tell me what would make you feel comfortable.”

  “No promises we can’t keep.”

  “That’s fair. What else?”

  I thought about it, realizing that I hadn’t actually taken the time to figure out what guidelines I needed. “I don’t know,” I confessed, pulling my hair over one shoulder. “I guess I don’t really need guidelines, but…”

  “You’re scared.”

  I sighed. “Ugh, it’s like a repeat of the first night we hooked up.”

  Zach laughed again. “Look, it’s okay to be scared. I am, too. We’ve both been hurt, and we both are still getting to know each other. We’re trying to figure out what works, and if the other person is safe. But… can I tell you something?”

  I nodded before realizing he couldn’t see me. “Yes.”

  “I like you, Gemma. A lot. I care about you, I want you to succeed, I want to hang out with you all the time. I want to introduce you to everyone I love because I want them to know how amazing you are, too. I want to watch football with you and take you to fancy dinners and make memories I’ll never forget, even if this doesn’t work out in the end.”

  My chest squeezed at that.

  “So, what if we just start with that?” he proposed. “What if we start with the fact that we’re dating, we’re exclusive, and neither of us are going to make any promises we can’t keep. Okay? We’ll go slow, take it easy, and just… enjoy each other.”

  I smiled. “I like that.”

  “It’s like when you go camping,” Zach continued. “Did you ever camp when you were younger?”

  “A few times, with my grandpa.”

  “Well, my dad would always say that we needed to leave our camp site in the same or better condition than what we found it in. I think dating is kind of like that, too. No matter what, I want us both to walk away from this in better condition than we walked into it — if we have to walk away at all.” He paused. “But, if I’m being honest… I hope that isn’t the case.”

  I covered my smile with one hand, shaking my head as I took a deep breath. It was exactly what I needed to hear. It was everything I didn’t realize I wanted to know.

  “You saying you might want to set up permanent camp?”

  Zach chuckled, letting out a breath of his own. “I mean, maybe. We’ll see how long I can squat without getting arrested.”

  I laughed a little, and relief washed through me like a tidal wave. “Thank you. I know it was a little out of nowhere and a little crazy but…”

  “It’s not crazy,” he corrected. “And you don’t have to thank me. Any time you feel like that, you just call me, okay? Anytime. I’m always here to talk. Always.”

  Always.

  I liked the way that word sounded.

  Even if I didn’t trust it yet.

  Zach

  “You look like that cartoon character,” Mrs. Rudder said, swirling the merlot in her glass before taking a sip of it Friday night. She waved her other hand in the air as she tried to recall. “Oh, what’s his name. The love-drunk skunk.”

  “Pepe Le Pew,” Doc chimed from the back.

  Mrs. Rudder snapped her fingers. “That’s the one!” She shook her head, big, dangly pearl earrings swinging with the motion. “You might as well have hearts popping out of your eyeballs, and be floating on a pink cloud of whatever it is this girl has you drunk on.”

  I smiled, popping the cash register open with the push of a button. I counted out the change for the group down at the end of the bar and shut the drawer again. “You sound jealous, Mrs. Rudder.”

  “Jealous!” she scoffed, taking a larger sip of her wine as I handed the group their change, thanking them for coming in. “Ha. More like grossed out. I liked you better when you were kind of grumpy.”

  “Like Doc?”

  He humphed from the back, and Mrs. Rudder and I shared a smile.

  “Well, it is part of the appeal of this place,” she said.

  “I can’t argue that.”

  I also couldn’t argue her point about me being like a cartoon. With how happy I’d been lately, I felt like one — bebopping along, smiling at every stranger I passed, handing out drinks on me to the patrons.

  Doc had especially hated that one.

  But, I couldn’t help it. Gemma had me under a spell, one I didn’t want to come out of.

  The game on Sunday had been even better than I’d expected. Gemma fit into mine and Micah’s banter like she’d always been there, and when we left, Micah couldn’t stop talking about how great Gemma was. He was hard to impress, even though he liked to joke like he was attracted to anything that had boobs. I knew more than anyone else that he was a hard sell, and after just one night with her, Gemma had earned his approval.

  It was a huge nod in her favor for me.

  And even though I hadn’t seen her much since, other than one dinner date this week, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She’d called me in a vulnerable state the day after the game, and we’d finally talked about the purple elephant in the room.

  We were official. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Exclusively dating.

  She was mine, and I was hers.

  We texted every day and called each other every night. She told me about the big residential client she and Belle had just landed and I filled her in on the musings at the bar. We started and ended every day with each other, and we had plans with each other all weekend long.

  The most important of which being that, tomorrow night she was meeting the rest of my family.

  I hadn’t brought a woman to family dinner since… well, ever. They hadn’t really started to be a thing until after I’d quit football, and my ex had quit me. My mom was over-the-moon excited, probably planning a four-course meal that was way too over the top, but I couldn’t help but feel the excitement, too.

  I was falling for her.

  More and more, with every passing day that w
e spent together, I saw how she could fit into my life. I’d known she was fun since the night I met her. I’d known she was witty, beautiful, and that she could hold her own when we went tit for tat. I knew she loved football and could rock the hell out of a Bears jersey.

  But over the last few weeks, I’d also come to know that she was afraid of heights. I’d learned that those little lists and plans she loved to make not only made her happy, but also helped make her best friend successful. I’d learned that she loved to cook, that she was actually pretty damn great at it, and that her OCD came out when she folded her laundry.

  I’d tried to help her, and learned very quickly that I would never properly understand her particular way to fold her underwear.

  Or to fold any underwear. Period.

  I’d discovered the way her eyes shine when she watched an emotional movie, seen the gentle curves of her face when the morning light stretched through her windows. I’d heard her stories about how she’d never had a pet as a kid, but how she wanted one so desperately — when she was ready. I’d seen her hand five-dollar bills to not just one, but multiple homeless men and women on the streets of Chicago as we passed them, never once giving them a judgmental look or leaning away from them like they scared her.

  I was far from knowing everything I wanted to know about her, but I knew enough to know that I wanted more, that I was just getting started, and that I didn’t give a damn if I looked like a love-drunk skunk from my childhood cartoons.

  Because for the first time in a long time, I was happy — truly happy — and she was the reason why.

  “Alright, Mrs. Rudder,” Doc said, emerging from the back to do a sweep of the bar. “Finish up that glass and then I think we’re going to call it a night.”

  “But it’s so early,” she pouted.

  “It’s almost one,” he pointed out. “And we’ve been dead as a doorknob all night. I only kept the place open for you.”

  He wasn’t wrong. We were usually steady on a Friday night, not quite as busy as we were on Saturdays or Sundays, but steady. Tonight, however, we’d had the same miserable, freezing rain that had pelted us at the home game on Sunday. Everyone was staying in, spending their night watching movies or reading or whatever they could do to not be out in the rain.