Getting Played

by Mia Storm

  “Everybody in the pool,” Marcus says with a clap of his hands. “Four warm up laps.”

  They file in and Corinne gives me one more glare over her shoulder before she follows. I’ve got a bad feeling about this in the pit of my stomach, even though there’s nothing sordid happening between Marcus and me. All the sordidness is in my dreams, and Corinne can’t see into those. But just the fact I’m dreaming those things, and now he’s made me captain, is enough to make me feel self-conscious and exposed.

  Sixth key to invisibility: Don’t crush on your hot water polo coach.

  Marcus’s fingertips brush my arm and I jump as sparklers ignite under my skin. “If there are any offensive drills you know that might help, feel free to run them. Without you in the pool, that’s our weakness.”

  I look at him as the team starts on laps. “You’re sure this is a good idea? I don’t really think they’re feeling it.”

  “They start feeling it or they don’t play.” He shrugs. “Their choice.”

  “You’d bench them for not listening to me?”

  He walks over to the bleachers and settles his long frame onto the bottom row, looking out over his team. “If they’re not listening to you, then by extension they’re not listening to me, so, yeah.”

  I’m living in a nightmare. Invisibility keys two and four just went up in a plume of smoke that can be seen for miles. I drop onto the bench next to him. “I really don’t want this, Marcus.”

  He must hear something in my voice, probably the panic I feel rising up inside me like a monsoon, because he turns and those eyes I can’t seem to hide from lock on mine. “I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re dealing with, Addie, but what I do know is this is the right move. Whatever it is, being out here in your element is only going to help.”

  I shake my head. “But part of being captain is leading the team. They’d have to respect me for that.” I glance at Corinne. “Or at least fear me. They don’t do any of those things.”

  He rests his elbows on his knees and leans closer. “You’re right about not fearing you, but they admire your ability.”

  I shake my head again. “They ignore me.”

  His gaze softens and melts through another layer of my armor. “Because you’ve wanted them to, Addie. But if you let them see the part of you I see…share yourself with them just the tiniest bit, you’ll find you’ve got friends here.”

  I take a deep breath. “I think you’re going to regret this when you have a full-blown mutiny on your hands.”

  A smile lightens his eyes, and a gleam dances there. “When you have a mutiny, oh captain, my captain.”

  I glare at him. “You’re seriously quoting Walt Whitman? You’re aware the captain dies in that one, right?”

  His smile widens as he pushes off the bench and heads toward the pool. “Got meself a right fine crew, ay!” he calls out to the team in surprisingly good pirate. “Ye smell like ye been swimmin' in the bilge!”

  I catch myself laughing despite myself.

  The ones who hear him give him funny looks and I duck my head when some of their baffled gazes flick to me for answers.

  I mostly keep my mouth shut during practice, even though Marcus pushes me into running scrimmage rotations. I put Corinne on left wing hoping she’ll stop glaring at me. It doesn’t work.

  “You need a ride home?” Marcus asks me at the end of practice, as everyone else is dragging their soggy bodies into the locker room.

  “Sure, thanks.”

  “I need to lock up the cage, if you’re good with waiting a few,” he says.

  “No problem,” I say, going to my bag and pulling out my calculus homework. “I’ll just be over here.”

  I sit on the bleachers and work on homework while Marcus drops onto a starting block and looks over the lineup we decided on. My teammates straggle through the gate in small groups. Corinne and Melanie are the last two out of the locker room. I watch out of the corner of my eye as Corinne tugs Melanie to her by the arm and says something in her ear. Then they split, Melanie heading for the gate and Corinne coming over to me. I pretend not to notice her, hoping she’ll just keep moving.

  “Hey, Addie,” she says, forcing me to look up.

  “Good practice,” I say, because it seems like the captainly thing to do.

  “I just wanted to tell you congrats. Sorry about being such a bitch earlier.”

  “Oh…” So not what I expected. “Okay, well… thanks.”

  “There’s a party Saturday at Melanie’s, you know, in case you want to come or whatever.”

  I sit here staring, not quite sure what’s happening. “Why would I come?”

  She shrugs, like she invites me to parties every day. “So we could hang out, or whatever.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I lie, my mind racing through all sorts of gruesome Carrie scenarios.

  “Good.” She turns for Marcus and gives me a wave over her shoulder.

  He looks up when she reaches him. She leans in and says something too low for me to hear. Marcus responds by standing and making some space between them. But when he replies, he keeps his voice low, and I can’t make out anything he says. They talk for a few more minutes, then Corinne turns for the gate. And I don’t miss her smile. She glances over shoulder and waves at the gate, and Marcus lifts a hand in return.

  I duck my head into my book when Corinne’s glance turns my direction and pretend the cold stab of jealousy didn’t just gut me. My mind is turning faster than I can keep up as I try to sort out what that was. Was I out of my mind to think Marcus only spent “quality time” with me? Maybe he takes all his players out individually for burgers or pizza.

  “You ready?” he says and wrenches me from my agony. When I look up, the pool deck is deserted.

  “What was that?” I ask, unable to help myself.

  He looks around. “What?”

  “With Corinne?”

  When he realizes what I’m talking about, he rolls his eyes. “She invited me to a party Saturday.”

  “Are you going?” I ask.

  He looks at me like I’ve just sprouted a second head. “Seriously?”

  And now I feel like a moron for being jealous. I pack up my books and head to the gate. “Let’s go.”

  “So, I didn’t see any major mutiny. I think even Corinne’s on board with the captain choice,” he says as we cross to the faculty lot.

  “Because she invited me to a party? That makes her on board?”

  He shrugs my sarcasm off. “She doesn’t need to be on board. You’ve earned the spot. I wouldn’t have put this on you if I didn’t know you could handle it, Addie.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do.”

  He blows out a laugh. “You’ve been talking to my sister, haven’t you?”

  I just look at him, confused. “You lost me.”

  “She’s always saying that to me.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and watches the sidewalk unroll in front of us. “But, in this case, I know I’m right. I made the right choice.”

  “If you say so.”

  We reach his truck and his eyes flick uneasily around the parking lot before he unlocks it for us. As we pull out of the lot, I wait for his hand to stray onto the center console, or maybe all the way to me, just so I know I wasn’t imagining the connection I felt last night. But he keeps both hands glued to the wheel and his eyes pinned to the road ahead. When he glides up to the curb in front of my house, I see the blinds part.

  Dad’s home, which should be a huge relief, but I feel a tendril of dread creep through my stomach, knowing he might have seen me out here with Marcus.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I say, shouldering open my door.

  He glances at me and I realize his light complexion is a little paler than usual. “No problem.”

  “Everything’s okay?” I ask, my brow creasing with the growing sense of unease.

  He nods. “I’ll see you at practice tomorrow.”

 
“Okay.”

  I shut the door and he pulls away. I watch from the sidewalk until his tail lights disappear around the corner.

  Dad’s in the kitchen when I walk in. The kitchen trashcan is sitting near the front door, and in it are three empty whiskey bottles.

  He turns when he hears the door close. “Who was that?”

  He looks horrible; bloodshot eyes set in sallow skin with a gray tinge and three day stubble over hollow cheeks. But he’s sober.

  I sidestep his question with one of my own. “You’re really doing this?” I ask, gesturing at the trashcan.

  He comes to the arched opening between the kitchen and the family room and leans his shoulder onto the wall. “I’m sure as hell going to try, Addie.”

  I go to him and wrap an arm around his shoulder. I can’t even remember the last time I hugged Dad. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  Under my arm, I feel the tremor that’s not obvious enough to see yet and wonder how bad this is for him.

  He gives me an awkward pat on the back, like he’s forgotten how to do this too. “The AA group leader gave me a number for a rehab program. It’s subsidized so it won’t cost anything.”

  “You’re going?” I ask tentatively.

  “I’m going to wait until Becky gets back from her trip. Then I’ll check in.”

  I pull away and look at him. “If you’re ready now, I don’t think you should wait.”

  He gives his head a shake. “I’m not going to leave you here alone, Addie.”

  I want to tell him being alone will be easier than what I’ve been dealing with for the last year, since he fell into the bottle. But that wouldn’t be productive. So instead I say, “You know I can take care of myself, Dad. And the sooner you go, the sooner we can get our lives back.”

  “It’s only another week and a half. I’ll be fine.”

  “So you’re just going to go cold turkey until then?” I say with a glance at the dead soldiers in the trashcan.

  He must register the panicked disbelief in my voice because his eyes find mine again and he stares into them for long time before saying, “I really want to do this for you, Addie. I want us to be a family again. They say that’s three quarters of the battle—wanting to change. I know I can do this.”

  “Then don’t wait,” I beg.

  His gaze brushes over the side of my head and he lifts his hand as if he’s going to touch my bandages before thinking better of it. “I haven’t been a parent to you for a while now.” He tugs at a curl at the side of my head and gives me a sad smile. “I’ll see if they can take me sooner.”

  I hug him again. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  He turns back to the kitchen. “Thought I’d rustle us up some grub.”

  I feel a tug in my gut, like maybe I swallowed someone’s fishhook.

  When I was little and Mom was on deadline, or just absorbed in her character’s world, which happened often, I would walk into the kitchen and find Dad at the stove with his sleeves rolled up. He wasn’t a cook, so dinner on those nights generally consisted of mac and cheese from a box, or grilled cheese sandwiches and soup from a can, but we’d bring plates into Mom’s office and coax her away from her laptop. Dad would sit on the armchair, and I’d push things aside to sit on her desk. Then we’d eat and she’d tell us all about where she’d spent her day: Moscow, Istanbul, Copenhagen. It all sounded so exotic. Those were some of the best dinners I ever had.

  “You’re sure?” I ask.

  “I think there’s a jar of Ragu and a box of spaghetti in there,” he answers with a wave of his hand and a shaky smile.

  “Okay…but holler if you need help.”

  I walk down the hall to my room and look back at the door. He’s shuffling into the kitchen and part of me wants to spy to see if he’s got another bottle stashed. But he seems sincere and I need to trust he wants this. So I slip into my room and close the door. I go to my bed and pull Mom’s laptop from underneath. Little by little we sold or pawned everything we had that we could get anything for, but I hid this so Dad wouldn’t sell it. I stare at it for a long time. I hated this thing when she was alive. As far as I was concerned, it was the bane of our family.

  The irony? It turned out to be me that destroyed us. Not Mom’s characters or deadlines. Not her publishers or book tours.

  Me.

  I plug it in, because it’s been months since I opened it and I’m sure the battery is long dead, and pull up the file. The summer before Mom died, we went on this incredible two week trip to Europe. She said it was for book research, but to me, it felt like I found my parents again. Mom and Dad seemed truly happy for the first time I could remember, and she and I hardly fought the entire trip.

  Last summer, I found the manuscript she was working on when she died, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read past the first few pages. It’s set at a castle in Ireland that we stayed in on that trip.

  I open the file and take a deep breath, but as soon as Mom’s words flash on the screen my throat closes.

  I shut the top and gasp for breath.

  Part of me that wants to throw the laptop against the wall. But a deeper part needs to read these words. Whether it’s just to hear Mom one final time, or whether it’s to punish myself for what I did, I really don’t know. I thought I was ready, but I was wrong. I slip the computer back under my bed.

  But when I feel the ghost of Mom slipping into my dreams, I don’t try to stop it. And when the nightmare comes, I embrace it.

  Chapter 11

  Marcus

  It wasn’t until I was in the parking lot with Addie that it occurred to me giving a team member a ride home might be exactly the kind of thing Principal Monroe was counseling me to avoid. But it seems rude to make her walk when I’m driving by anyway.

  As I think it, I realize I’m sitting here trying to justify it. Because it has nothing to do with being rude. It has everything to do with how much I really like spending time with Addie.

  I pull into a parking spot at my apartment and rest my forehead on the steering wheel. Do I have feelings for her beyond wanting to help her? The ball of nervous energy sitting in the pit of my stomach is all the answer I need. Christ…what am I doing? I can’t be falling for a student…a goddamn member of the team I coach.

  I breathe deeply and hold it before exhaling. I have to rein this back. Whatever I’m feeling can’t happen. It’s wrong on so many levels.

  I set my resolve.

  No more rides. No pizza. No being alone with Addie anymore.

  When I have my shit together, I head inside…and find Blaire sitting on the couch.

  “Hey,” she says, setting the bag of Doritos in her hand aside and licking her fingers. “Bran let me in before he left for the bar. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Hell, no,” I say, yanking her off the couch into a one armed hug. “You alone?”

  She doesn’t miss the derision in my voice. She shoves out of my grasp and scowls at me. “He’s your brother-in-law now, Marcus. Can you at least pretend to like him?”

  I think about the root of all this animosity. There is the very real possibility that have feelings for Addie. But that’s what makes Caiden and me different. I’m keeping it in my pants. “Probably not.”

  She shakes her head at me. “You should have let this go years ago, Marcus. I love Caiden. I always have. You don’t get to choose who you fall in love with. That’s why it’s called falling. It’s out of anyone’s control.”

  Addie’s face flashes in my mind and I know Blaire’s right. I have no control over what I’m feeling. It’s only my actions that I can control. I’m not going to let myself ruin that girl. “What are you doing here?”

  She sinks back into the couch. “Caiden dropped me off on his way up to Sierra State. He’s petitioning the dissertation board.”

  I feel my eyes widen. When Caiden was arrested on statutory rape charges, it was because his faculty advisor caught him screwing my seventeen-year-old sister in the university library. He was
only a few weeks away from defending his dissertation and finishing his PhD in Comparative Lit when he was thrown off campus and out of the program.

  “It’s been four years.”

  She nods. “But he completed all his coursework and his dissertation was finished. He just never got the opportunity to present. He’s hoping now that Dr. Duncan has retired and there’s a new chairperson, they’ll consider letting him finish.”

  “I thought he liked his job…even though I’ve never really got what he does,” I say.

  “Knowledge management¸” she says with a nod, “and he does. He would have been fine just letting it go. I’m making him do this. He worked so hard for that degree.”

  As she talks, the creases around her eyes deepen. She’s carried that guilt around for so long—the belief that she ruined Caiden’s future.

  “Everything that happened was his fault, Blaire. He made those choices.”

  She shakes her head. “There was no stopping it. Believe me, he tried.”

  “Not hard enough,” I grumble.

  “So you’re going to hold this against him forever? Even though we’re married and I’m happier than I’ve ever been?”

  I blow out a breath and drop onto the couch next to her. “You’re really happy?”

  “Ecstatic,” she says. “And you know that’s totally against my religion.”

  I’ve always believed it was a function of our absentee parents that Blaire and I were forced to grow up too fast. Maybe because of our lost youth, she’s always had a sadness about her that’s bordered on depression at times. Like after Caiden went to jail. I’ve never seen her more...empty, for lack of a better word. She seemed to withdraw into herself. I thought it was because of what Caiden did to her, but the longer I’ve had to reflect, the more I think it had to do with Nate. I’ve never dared ask Blaire, though. I know I’m being a coward, but if he did something to her, I don’t think I could handle it.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Blaire says, scrunching herself into a ball in the corner of the couch.

  “That’s never how anything I want to hear starts,” I say warily.