Getting Played

by Mia Storm

  “They’re open for us.”

  I just look at him as he pulls into a spot up front. There’s a small group of people hanging around the gate. Marcus grabs his duffel from the back and takes my hand. We walk up to a woman with a Discovery Kingdom vest on.

  “Leon,” he tells her.

  She looks at a list on her iPad. “You have two?”

  “Yes,” he says with a grin at me.

  “We’re waiting for two more, then we’ll head in,” she says.

  He drags me around the corner of the ticket booth, where he pins me against the wall and kisses me again. “Because I want to,” he says with a cocky smile as if answering my question from before about his reason.

  It’s only a minute later that we’re being called back by the staff. The woman leads the group through the park to the Dolphin Theater and Marcus grins like a school boy. We all take seats in the section she directs us to.

  “Welcome to the Dolphin Experience,” she says. “My name is Donna and I’m one of the dolphin trainers here at Discovery Kingdom. We’re going to spend the first part of our program on land getting to know the animals and what to expect before we all jump into the water with them.”

  My jaw drops. “Swimming with the dolphins.”

  “Got to chip away at that bucket list,” Marcus says with a grin the size of California.

  When Donna tells us to suit up for the swim, I squint at Marcus. “I don’t have a suit.”

  He zips open his duffel and produces the Speedo from my locker at school.

  “How did you get this?” I ask, ripping it out of his hand.

  He gives me a sly smile. “Told the custodian you’d quit the team and I needed your locker.”

  I give him a parting glare and spin for the locker room.

  When we get to the tank and jump in, Marcus snatches me up in his arms and we spend the next half hour moving together through the water while the dolphins swim around us.

  “And if I can get the newlyweds’ attention,” Donna calls.

  It’s only when an older woman in our group nudges my elbow that I realize she’s talking about us.

  “Would you like to do the dorsal swim?” she asks.

  “Absolutely,” Marcus answers.

  Donna tosses a sardine in the water to call over one of the dolphins. “Lace your fingers over her dorsal fin and hold on,” she says. “She’ll pull you across the surface of the water. Ready?”

  I nod and she gives the dolphin some signal. She takes off and it’s amazing to be flying over the surface of the water as she pulls me along. When it’s Marcus’s turn, he puts his head down, and it’s almost as if he’s swimming. There’s a pang in my heart as I remember watching him swim, almost as if he had fish in his gene pool.

  An hour later, we’re changed and on dry land again. When we get to his truck, Marcus pulls out his phone. “Swim with the dolphins, check.” He looks at me. “You hungry? I’m a little behind on my new foods.”

  “Sorry,” I say, holding my hands up. “I’m fresh out of chocolate covered things.”

  “I’m on it.”

  He steps on the gas and drives us back the way we came, but instead of getting on the highway, he heads to the coast. He parks at the wharf and shepherds me into a restaurant there. We’re seated and when the hostess offers us menu, he waves his hand.

  “I heard you have the best abalone around,” he says.

  She smiles. “We do. Won three awards last year for our abalone.”

  “New food?” he asks me with questioning raised eyebrows.

  I smile and nod.

  He looks back at the hostess. “Sold. Abalone all around.”

  “How are you affording all this, Marcus?” I ask when she leaves.

  He winks. “Sold a kidney.”

  Abalone doesn’t taste like much. This is what we discover when our food comes. Because the restaurant isn’t in full swing yet at eleven on a Saturday morning, the chef comes out and explains to us that it’s all in the preparation. He describes how he pan fries it, then hand sets each piece in artichoke foam and barigoule. It’s all Greek to me, but Marcus (literally) eats it up.

  The chef brings us coffee and dessert on the house, and I’m pretty sure he and Marcus exchange phone numbers.

  It’s early afternoon when we leave the restaurant and climb into Marcus’s truck.

  “This was nice,” I say, tucking myself into his side as he pulls onto the highway.

  “Not what you deserve,” he says, enclosing me under his arm.

  “You’re more than I deserve.”

  I feel his chin move against the crown of my head as he shakes his. “I can’t wait for the day when you finally realize that you aren’t a bad person, Addie. I want to be there to see you finally start living.”

  I lift my head and look at him. “Last I checked my pulse, I was alive.”

  “Being alive isn’t the same thing as living your life.” He trails a fingertip over the scar on my shoulder and a sick feeling rolls through my stomach. “Sometimes I get the feeling your mother wasn’t the only one who died that day.”

  My insides go from fire to ice in the second it takes for those words to exit his mouth. I shake out of his grasp. “If you’re going to go all pop psychology on me, I can save you the trouble: Post-depression survivor’s guilt with a mild PTSD component. I’ve gotten it directly from the professionals.”

  He shakes his head. “They think they’ve got all the answers, but the only one with answers is you, Addie.” He pulls me to his side again. “I’m not going to tell you to let it go. That would be ridiculous. You can’t ever let something like what happened go. And I’m not going to tell you to stop blaming yourself, because that’s not likely to happen. All I’m asking is that you let yourself be okay with not being dead.” The hint of a smile pulls at one corner of his mouth. “Because I’m glad as hell you’re not.”

  I can’t breathe. I can’t even move.

  He presses his mouth to my temple then glides it to my ear. “There is a whole lot of life inside you, Addie, and it would really suck to waste it not living.”

  When we finally exit the highway, he pulls to the side of the road and lifts my chin. When he kisses me, I let myself really feel it. I let myself acknowledge more than just the physical sensations. I open my heart up to everything Marcus is communicating on every level with his kiss. The sudden ache in my chest is deep and intense, a hole in my soul that Marcus’s kiss has tapped into. He pulls back and his dark gaze settles into mine, seeing everything.

  He thumbs my cheek, and I realize it’s damp with tears. “I can’t make it go away, Addie, but I can promise that you won’t have to face it alone. I’ll be here for you in any way you’ll let me.”

  I press against him and kiss him and he kisses me back, slow and gentle at first, but becoming deeper and more desperate with every twist of our tongues.

  There’s something about the way he’s holding me that makes me feel safer than I’ve ever been. Protective, yet tender, as though he’s afraid of breaking me.

  Or maybe he’s just afraid of me.

  I feel him smile against my temple. “When is your birthday?”

  The question comes out of nowhere and seems pretty random until I realize he wants to know exactly how illegal I am.

  “January sixth.”

  “Two months,” he says, lowering his forehead to rest on mine.

  I feel my cringe before I can stop it. “Sorry.”

  He lifts my face and looks into my eyes. “Never say that to me again. Never be sorry for anything you are, Addie. I’m falling for you precisely because you’re you.” He cracks a sexy smile that makes my groin tingle. “Totally against my better judgment, I might add.”

  I buzz all over, both from his proximity and his admission. I pull him tighter against me. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to see each other every chance we get,” he kisses my forehead, “which would never be enough no matter the situa
tion, and we’re going to wait. It’s not going to be like this forever. Just a few more months.”

  “So, you’re thinking we can just, what? Be all, ‘yeah, we’re dating’ after I turn eighteen? What about your job?”

  He cups my cheek and thumbs my chin, staring so deeply into my eyes that I feel him in my toes. But when he says, “At the moment, I’m more worried about your father,” I see the struggle behind his eyes.

  He pulls back onto the road and I sit tucked under his arm the rest of the ride back. Everything feels so natural—so right. I brush his fingers across my lips and think about what he said. I feel more alive than I ever remember feeling. And it’s all because Marcus cared enough to see the glimmer of life under my shroud of invisibility.

  Chapter 19

  Marcus

  When I call Principal Monroe’s office Monday before school to fill him in on the Corinne situation, I fully expect him to tell me he hasn’t heard anything from her and not to worry about coming in.

  What he says instead is, “How quickly can you get here, Marcus?”

  “Um…hold on.”

  I look around the gym. There are a few people on the circuit weights and Brenda’s just getting ready to start her morning class.

  “I need to run into school,” I tell her. “Can you handle things here for a few minutes?”

  She nods. “Everything okay?”

  I take a deep breath. “Probably not.”

  She gives me a concerned look as I lift the phone back to my ear. “I’ll be right there.”

  When I walk into his office, I’m expecting Corinne and maybe Melanie. What I’m not expecting is the pretty middle-aged Hispanic woman sitting in the chair across from Principal Monroe to stand and flash me a badge.

  “Hello, Marcus,” she says. “I’m not sure if you remember me. My name is Detective Diaz”

  I know exactly who she is, and my insides turn to cement at the sight of her. “You sent my brother-in-law to jail.”

  She smoothes her hands down her slacks. “You saved me a trip. I was on my way to your address next.”

  I glance at the principal, but he drops his gaze and stands. “I’ll give you two the office.”

  He closes the door on his way out without ever looking at me, and I know it’s bad.

  “Take a seat,” she says, gesturing to the chair she just vacated.

  I drop into it, feeling as though gravity itself is trying to crush me.

  She leans against the corner of the desk and fixes me in her gaze. “There’s a girl from your team who claims you coerced her into having sexual relations.”

  My heart skids to a stop. “Who?” I ask, weakly.

  “Corinne Pratt.”

  When my jaw drops, her gaze becomes more focused, and I get the feeling she doesn’t miss much.

  “I’d like to hear your side of the story, Marcus.”

  “My side of the story is that her side of the story is bullshit,” I spit.

  In the back of my mind, I know getting angry isn’t helping my cause, but all I can think of is that I’m sitting here being accused of touching a girl who propositioned me. And the one every instinct I have is telling me I need like oxygen, I’ve fought to stay away from.

  But I haven’t been able to.

  “I need a little more detail, Marcus.” She scrolls to something on her phone and reads. “Tell me about any interaction you had with Corinne Pratt on Friday evening after practice.”

  I take a deep breath and hang my head. “She came up to me after practice and propositioned me. When I refused, she said she’d turn me in unless I took her home.”

  “Turn you in? For what?”

  I lift my head and look at her. There’s no point lying. I’m sure she already has Corinne’s pictures. “She had two pictures she was threatening to take to the principal.” I let out a bitter laugh. “Looks like she made good on that.”

  She shakes her head. “She came into the police department yesterday.”

  I blow out another breath. “Guess she decided to cut out the middle man.”

  “What were these images of that she was allegedly threatening you with, Marcus?”

  “One was of my truck parked in front of another teammate’s house, and the other was of me grabbing that same teammate’s arm.”

  The way her head bobs slowly as I describe them, I know I’m right. She’s already seen them. I can only hope there aren’t others that are more compromising.

  “How did you respond to Miss Pratt’s threat?”

  “I told her that if she wanted to continue the conversation, we could do it here, this morning.” I shake my head. “That’s why I thought Principal Monroe wanted me here.”

  “So you’re contending that it was Miss Pratt who made the inappropriate advance?”

  I nod. “Since I started coaching at the beginning of her junior year, she’s been laying the innuendo on pretty thick. I never really thought she’d cross that line, though.”

  “Are you denying having any sexual contact with Miss Pratt?” she asks.

  “I never touched her, and the times she’s tried to touch me, I’ve dodged her.”

  She looks back at her phone and scratches the top of her head. “So, would you like to explain what you were doing grabbing another student’s arm, and why you were parked at her house?”

  At this point, I’ve got nothing to lose by telling the truth, more or less, on both counts. “The student is Addaline Grace. She tried to quit the team and I got a little…upset. She’s incredibly talented and I feel strongly that staying on this team is in her best interest. Should I have grabbed her? Of course not. But I know the reasons she quit and I had issues with them.”

  “What were those reasons?”

  “She has some medical bills. She quit to get a job to pay them because her father let their health insurance lapse. Which is the reason I was at her house. I’ve got a drunk dad too, so I guess I empathize. I like to know things are okay there.”

  “So your interest in Addaline Grace is purely altruistic?”

  I shake my head. “Hell, no. I need her in the pool to win the State Championship. It’s purely selfish.”

  She looks again at her phone and stands. “Thank you for your cooperation. That’s all I need for now.” She turns toward the door and pulls it open. “If I need anything else, I’ll be in touch.”

  I sit here staring after her, then drop my head onto the back of the armchair, trying to wrap my mind around how it’s the thing I didn’t do that’s going to lose me my job and possibly land me in jail. It’s a long time before I can move, and when I finally stand and walk through the outer office, Principal Monroe is nowhere in sight.

  When you live in a small town, scandal spreads like wildfire. It’s been two days since my interview with Detective Diaz, and I got the warning call from Principal Monroe this morning that the school board had called a special session to discuss how to handle my “situation.”

  Which means this is the last place I should be.

  Part of me knows I deserve everything that’s happening to me, but, Christ. I’ve held back with Addie. Did I cross lines? Absolutely. But not with Corinne. It feels like the universe is shitting on me.

  I sit at the bar and watch Addie move around Vicky’s kitchen through the tiny porthole in the swinging kitchen door. I can’t see as much as I want to, but here and there, I catch glimpses. And when she passes the small window and looks my way, her smile is so sad and beautiful it devastates me.

  “Something in there you like, bro?” Bran asks, topping off my beer.

  I realize I’m still staring at the place she was with my jaw dangling long after she’s gone.

  “Yeah. Another burger,” I say, turning back to him.

  He pulls his head back in surprise. “You’ve already had two, man.”

  “There a point you’re trying to make?”

  “Mom’s gonna be sorry she decided you were one of hers,” he says, jotting the order on his pad.
r />   “I’ll pay for this one,” I say, pulling a ten from my pocket.

  He scowls at it. “Put it away, man.”

  Carol swoops past on her way to the kitchen and Bran holds out the slip with my order on it.

  She grabs it on her way by and when the door swings open, I see Addie at the counter in the back. It’s her first week of work, but she looks like a pro, moving from one task to the next like she’s worked here for years. She’s way too smart for something like this, and it occurs to me that in all our talk about a bucket list, I’ve never gotten a sense of what she wants to do with her life.

  I’m trying not to be obvious, but I realize I’m failing miserably when Bran nudges my arm. “So, looks like you’re over that blonde from the gym?”

  I pull my eyes away from Addie and find Bran has followed my gaze.

  “It’s complicated, but, yeah.”

  He gives me a pensive nod. “Why is it Mom insists on hiring all this jail bait?”

  My finger is in his chest in a heartbeat. “You keep your fucking hands off her.”

  “Sorry, man,” he says, holding his hands up in surrender. “How do you know Bruce’s daughter, anyway?”

  “Because your mom hired her right off my water polo team, which blows because with her in the pool I think we had a legit shot at a State Championship.”

  His eyes widen. “She’s the one who reported you?”

  I sip my beer and shake my head. “She sort of got dragged into it, but no. Someone else made the report.”

  “So…” He glances over his shoulder toward the kitchen door as Carol comes through with several plates. “If she’s that good, what the hell’s she doing in Mom’s kitchen?”

  “Let’s just say that Bruce hasn’t been a great provider. She needs cash for some bills.”

  I stopped by the hospital this morning and made another payment. Considering everything, it was probably almost as stupid as sitting here staring at her through the porthole. They still won’t tell me the total due, but I got the impression the payments I’m making are a drop in the bucket. Still, I feel like I have to do what I can. Especially with Addie giving up water polo to get it paid off.