Mary decided to start over, simply and directly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t offend me.”
Michael’s black, bottomless gaze held hers and communicated his sincerity. She hadn’t offended him. He had been genuinely curious why she assumed poring over games, plays, and calls wasn’t fun or wasn’t the way he would opt to spend his free time on a Friday night.
“Well? Is it? Fun for you, I mean?”
Michael seemed to think about the question before offering his answer.
“It’s something that has to be done.”
“Do the other players do it too? Spend their Friday nights with old game tapes?”
“I don’t know what they do in their free time. Why? You wanna date one? Make sure he’s available?”
Mary looked stricken, but quickly recovered.
“No. Not at all. I wondered if all professional athletes, including your teammates, work as hard as you do. That’s all.”
Mary cleared her throat and unfolded her legs. “Are you ready for dessert?”
Michael’s eyes brightened momentarily, but then quickly dimmed.
“No, I need to be going.” He struggled with saying anything more as he picked up his plate and followed her into the kitchen.
“Here, let me take your plate,” she said as she reached to take the plate and silverware from him. Max awakened at the sound of plates hitting the sink, undoubtedly looking for the table scraps he received every night.
Michael was already making his way to the door as though he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough before she’d even finished placing all of the dishes in the sink. While he was being rude, Mary refused to do the same.
“Well, thanks a lot for coming over tonight and thank you again for speaking the other day. It meant a lot to Walker.”
~ * ~ * ~
Meant a lot to Walker.
Mary didn’t say it meant a lot to her. Fair enough. What the fuck did he care if it meant a lot to her or not? It didn’t matter. He’d done it. He’d come over for dinner. Obligation fulfilled. Game over.
“Thanks for dinner,” he murmured, letting himself out the door.
Michael rushed away from Mary’s apartment in his car as though he were chasing a wide-out headed for a touchdown. As if Mary needed any more assurance he was a complete and utter prick, his behavior tonight confirmed it. When he’d made that nasty crack about her and his teammates…she’d looked as though he’d struck her.
Then afterwards, the awkward silence would have compelled a more rational, more decent man to fill in the space. But he wasn’t inclined to breach the gap that had sprung up between them even though he was responsible for it in the first place. At times like these, he was reminded that in spite of the physical separation in time, distance, and miles, he was still Don Santiago’s son. A mean motherfucker with a nasty mouth and an even worse disposition. He could outrun numerous professional wide-outs, but he couldn’t outrun his DNA.
It served Mary right. He wasn’t fit to sit on her couch or eat the food she’d prepared. Better for her sake she reached the realization now rather than later.
He’d known the first time he met her that Mary was what Coach Carmichael would have termed a “good soul.” She was a classic do-gooder, from tutoring struggling students, like him, for minimum wage, to giving up what was seemingly a cushy teaching job near her parents in order to teach at Walker, a school he’d learned was struggling on the verge of closure due to failing test scores.
People like Mary only looked for the good in others, never having been touched by or exposed to the filth, the dirt, the abuse, and the utter lack of humanity in the majority of people. Better for Mary to learn he was a part of that group now so she didn’t falsely credit him with qualities that were whipped out of him long ago.
Instead of making nice or even apologizing like any well-mannered, adult man in his situation would undoubtedly do, he remained silent, letting Mary sit awkwardly, vainly trying to steer the conversation back to standard, neutral dinner topics. Then he’d rushed out.
Yeah, great guy that he was.
Chapter 4
The following day, Mary had just returned from her standard set of Saturday errands of groceries, dry cleaning, gas, and Target when her cell phone jingled.
Muscling her groceries, twelve pack of diet soda and her purse into her apartment, she dropped everything on the stove and kitchen counter and dug in her shoulder bag for her phone. Finding it and seeing that it was Calleigh calling in, she flipped it open.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself. How was it?”
Knowing exactly what Calleigh was fishing for, Mary wanted to have a little fun and sought to make Calleigh work for it before she gave in.
“How was what?”
Calleigh laughed, telegraphing that she knew Mary knew exactly what they were talking about.
“Don’t be coy, Mary. You know what I’m talking about. How was he?”
“Michael? He was fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine.”
“Let me get this straight.” Calleigh paused as though she was gearing up for something significant. Something that required a lot of air and a fair amount of steam.
“Last night you had Michael Santiago over for dinner. The same Michael Santiago who looks like a walking, talking sex machine, prior NFL MVP who is by all accounts, straight, single, and hot. And all you have to say is he was fine?”
“Yep. He was fine.”
A part of Mary yearned to open up with Calleigh so they could mutually analyze and dissect every word, every nuance, every action, and every gesture through Calleigh’s perspective. While Calleigh wasn’t a total man-eater, she certainly had a lot more experience with men. What would she say about Michael’s behavior? Why he’d inexplicably become such a jerk? Calleigh was a veritable warrior in the love-is-a-battlefield department and would undoubtedly have some intuition and ask insightful questions that would yield clues as to what was on Michael’s mind and why he reacted the way he had.
Unless he was a jerk. Wasn’t that the easiest answer?
For reasons Mary didn’t want to identify, she was reluctant to expose his behavior to Calleigh. She felt oddly protective about what others thought about Michael--especially those who didn’t know him well.
“Yes, Calleigh. It was fine. He came. I cooked. We ate. He left. That’s it. End of story. Nothing to report.”
A beat of silence.
“Well, color me disappointed.”
After what felt like forever but in reality was probably no more than five seconds, Mary audibly sighed, cursed internally, but wasn’t able to stop herself. “Why are you disappointed?”
Calleigh coughed and responded softly, with not a little trepidation.
“I had high hopes this could be something,” she said with a sigh. “Look, Mary, you haven’t dated anyone since you’ve moved out here. I thought maybe this could turn into something since you know him and you must mean something to him since he didn’t do anything in Portland before you convinced him to come to Walker. Besides, what man would come over on a Friday night if he wasn’t interested? Not one. Unless he’s gay.”
“He’s not gay.”
“Oh, I know that’s true. That man is the embodiment of the word ‘virile’. Until meeting him, I always thought that term was simply a phrase used in romance novels and never applied to real, live flesh and blood men.”
Mary wasn’t ready to examine and discuss the other elements of Calleigh’s comments. She had no desire to analyze why she wasn’t dating, nor how she was going to remedy the situation.
“Look, I put him in a tough predicament by asking him over. He did it to humor me.”
“He didn’t come over and give up his Friday night to humor you. He could have easily said no.”
Mary exhaled. “It’s done. It’s over.”
“Okay. Fine. You’re not interested in, n
or are you going to date Michael Santiago. Who are you going to date?”
Wasn’t that the $64,000 question?
“I don’t know. You have any candidates in mind?” Mary asked, eager to leave the topic of Michael and their disastrous interlude before Calleigh could delve further into the details.
“I wish, for you and me both. For what it’s worth, I thought Michael was not only ridiculously male, but for someone who was initially reluctant to speak at College Career Day, he pulled it off like a champ. He was a natural with the students and I thought Dr. Boxer was going to pass out afterwards. I’d swear. You’d think that woman has never been around a professional athlete in her life.”
Walker’s principal had practically swooned all over Michael, gushing over his interactions with the students, his professional performance last year, and even the cut of his suit.
“I didn’t think Boxer was even aware of men,” Mary commented.
“Well, if anyone’s going to remind her of the existence of the other sex, it’s Michael Santiago.”
Calleigh was clearly in no mood to shift the conversation away from Michael so Mary knew at this point, there were two forks in the road. She could forcibly tell Calleigh that the continuing topic of her former tutee was killing her Saturday morning buzz or simply ignore her and hope that she took the hint and ran with it. But the second option was unlikely since Calleigh was as dogged as a pit bull with a bone when she wanted to discuss a topic, particularly one involving the opposite sex.
“I guess so,” Mary said. “Look, Calleigh, I’m not trying to be rude, but I think I’m still processing what happened last night and what my feelings are, if any, about it. Can we talk about something else?”
“I thought you didn’t have any feelings for him.”
“I don’t. I don’t know. I’m kind of jumbled up this morning. Discombobulated and not in a good way. When we discuss the evening in its full glory, I want to do it in person, not over the phone.”
“Agreed,” Calleigh capitulated. “Let’s get together soon outside of school.”
“It’s a date.”
~ * ~ * ~
The problem with living in a city, Mary realized, was that in order to drive her problems away, she had to head to the suburbs. The small town where she’d grown up or the bigger city she’d worked in up in Northern Michigan allowed her to hit the open road whenever the urge struck. In Portland, however, she couldn’t simply slip in the car, fire up the ignition and head out for a long drive. The section of the city that she’d made her home was a blend of residential streets dotted with businesses. Every other corner was a four-way stop or a two-way stop and given the bikers, joggers, baby strollers and shoppers, driving anywhere over twenty miles per hour was a dangerous proposition.
As soon as she’d earned her driver’s license, any time she wanted to get away to think, she’d hop in her car and drive. She’d crank up the radio, play her tapes and cd’s as loud as she could bear and drive until she’d worked through whatever issue prompted the drive in the first place.
This afternoon, the walls of her generally sunny apartment threatened to close off the air to her lungs and the oxygen to her brain. Her apartment felt constrained, as though it was squeezing her. Finding any open road outside the city would take up too much time to be of any real practical benefit.
If physical ambition flowed through her veins the way it did Calleigh’s, she’d throw on her sneakers and take off for a long run until she’d exhausted the thoughts scrambling around her head, all of which centered on a certain man. Unfortunately, the thought of running contained as much allure as a root canal, so that wasn’t an option. Hitting the gym for a solid forty-five minutes of cardio to release some endorphins appealed to her nature to shed some of the pent-up anxiety and frustration that had steadily built since speaking with Calleigh.
Nothing about the prior night with Michael sat well with her. Everything started out fine, with a modicum of promise, at least a promise of an enjoyable evening spent in the company of an attractive man who was smart and, if not charming, at least a decent conversationalist. Then, like a stink-bomb ignited by one of her students in class, the night morphed into something ugly and unpleasant, awkward in both things said and unsaid.
Before she could search for her under-used running shoes, her house phone rang. Since a whole two people had her number, she knew it had to be one of her parents before she even checked out caller ID.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Well, hello there. I was hoping to catch you.”
“You caught me. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing. Dad and I ran to the grocery store this morning and then we had to head over to the pharmacy since it’s the only store in town that carries those footpads your father’s so partial to. Then we went over to Ray’s and grabbed a burger. He’s taking a nap right now because we’ve got the Dukes coming over for euchre tonight and you know how hard it is for that man to stay up past ten o’clock. That’s us. What are you up to?”
Her mom’s dulcet, slightly husky tones were the balm to her frayed nerves. Hearing her voice released tension Mary wasn’t even aware she was holding in her shoulders and reminded her that she’d been delinquent in her check-ins with her parents. Never intrusive nor nosy, her parents tended to wait for her calls, but if she didn’t call at least twice a week, one of them, usually her mother, called her to make sure everything was alright.
“Nothing, much.” Nothing other than pining after a man who will likely never give me the time of day and was a rude prick to me last night. But nothing other than that. “I ran my errands this morning and I’m trying to figure out the rest of my day.”
“Are you going out tonight?”
“No, probably not. I had a long week so it’ll be good for me to stay in tonight and chillax with Max.”
“How is my boy?” her mother asked, her affection apparent in her voice. Her parents were about as upset as Max moving as they were to see her move.
“He’s great. Loving life.”
“Is everything okay, honey? You sound tense.”
Trust her mother to pick up on her anxiety from three thousand miles away. A lot of parents were great at a lot of things. One of her mother’s many gifts was intuition, particularly when it came to her only child, although Mary rarely confided in her about romantic topics. Men, sex, and her mother didn’t mix.
“I’m alright, just tired, Mom,” she hedged.
After saying their goodbyes and promising her mom she’d be the one to place the next call, she determined the only way to excise Michael from her mind was to push her body to physical exhaustion and hit the gym.
~ * ~ * ~
Across the country in Philadelphia that same afternoon, Michael shredded his arms with the free weights, gritting through the pain as he tried to run away from thoughts that circled in his head like sharks, striking as soon as he thought he was safe. Then, all of a sudden, he’d be struck again by what a complete and utter dick he’d been the night before to a lovely woman who’d given him way more attention and time than an ass like him deserved. Having a sense of decency was so not who he was, on any level, and certainly not where women were concerned.
His conscience rearing its dormant head was like being splashed in the face by a drunk fan. Completely unexpected and unwanted. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he woke up in the morning had stayed with him all day, like a virus he could neither ignore nor shake despite his best efforts. The more he tried to rationalize his behavior and forget about it, the more images of Mary’s smile and her kind eyes filled him and gutted him with shame.
Unlike him, Mary had probably never done a blame-worthy thing in her entire life. She’d probably never lost her patience with anyone, or lashed out at an undeserving recipient. Maybe he was putting her on a pedestal, but next to him, she was a saint. A paragon of virtue to his grim reaper.
“How the hell did I know to find you here?”
Murray’s voice boo
med across the gym. Great. Just fucking great. One of the two people he didn’t want to see the most right now.
“You know, I’m not Shalvington or any of the other office staff, so I’m not going to wait around until you deign to acknowledge me, Your Highness,” Murray quipped, settling in across from Michael.
“What do you want?”
“I’d like world peace. I’d like to end all childhood diseases and find a cure for cancer. I’d like to find woman with a centerfold’s body, a CEO’s brain, and an inheritance to rival Bill Gates. But I’ll settle for five minutes of your fucking time.”
Michael set the weights down, studied his captain, and contemplated his options. He could maintain his silence until Murray disclosed the reason for his pre-dinner visit. They were at the hotel and most of his teammates had undoubtedly made dinner plans or were already off. Murray was likely already late for joining them. He could politely ask him what he wanted. Or he could tell him to fuck off.
“Yeah?” he sneered, eager for this little visit to end. The sooner Murray got off his chest whatever compelled him to break his away-game dinner routine, the better off they’d both be.
“I’m worried about Campbell. He’s not exploding off the line like he used to.”
Campbell, the Tide’s other defensive end, worked in tandem with Michael, wreaking havoc on opposing offenses.
“He’ not twenty-two any longer, Murray. I’d think a seasoned veteran like yourself would appreciate the experience Campbell brings to the position.”
Murray tightened his lips and crossed his arms. “You know this has got absolutely nothing to do with Campbell’s age or experience. Is something else going on with him that I don’t know about?”
“Well, Dr. Phil, I’m not exactly sure how he’s feeling these days, but I’m sure if you ask him, you two can have a real heart-to-heart.”
“You know, Santiago, you’re a real prick, but I don’t give a shit because you make up for it on the field and you don’t cause me any grief. Usually. But for your information, I could give less than a flying fuck about Campbell’s, as you put it, ‘feelings.’ What I was inquiring about, if you’d think with the pea-size brain the good lord bestowed on your sorry ass, was whether physically there’s something going on that you’ve noticed. If he’s got problems, you and I need to make sure we cover for him with our calls. Philly is fucking fast on the draw and the last thing we need is Campbell having delayed reactions on the field. Our hands will be full as is and the last thing we both want is giving that fuck Johnson any opportunity to play.”
Hail Mary Page 5