I sighed. “Yeah, that’s a bunch of bull. Bullshit.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Did you just say...bullshit?”
“Yeah. So?” I returned, still disgruntled.
“So, you don’t swear. You’re the wholesome Tennessee girl. Wow. You must be pretty pissed if you are using that kind of language.”
“Apparently hanging out with a baseball player who swears like a sailor is rubbing off on me.”
Amy’s already wide eyes bugged out. “You’ve been hanging out with The Big Unit? Oh my God, it all makes sense now why you’ve been cutting out of here early. Tell me! I’ve been missing our happy hour together.”
“Oh, it’s not like that,” I said, trying to deflect. “Just been putting in some extra hours, brushing up on my old undergraduate texts, that kind of thing.”
What was I even saying? It was funny that I hadn’t minded sharing details about my relationship with Jake back when we’d just been this casual, undefined thing. But now that I was starting to really care about him, it didn’t seem right to go kissing and telling. There was also the part about us basically raising a foster kid together for the past two weeks. Tate’s aunt was still in a coma, and we’d been visiting her a few times a week. Jake and I had been discussing a long-term plan concerning Tate, but we couldn’t keep Tate indefinitely. So far, we were friends of the family, and that was working, for now.
Amy cleared her throat to get my attention and rolled her eyes at me. She tilted her head toward one shoulder.
“All right. So, if you haven’t been stepping up your relationship with Jake, then who are you seeing?”
That took me by surprise. “What do you mean?” I asked, cautiously. “There’s no one else…”
She motioned to my right hand, at the ring I was wearing.
“Your claddagh ring. The point of the heart is pointed toward your wrist.” She raised a brow and smiled. “Or was that a fashion oversight this morning?”
I blushed. The way I’d unconsciously put it on this morning indicated that I was in a relationship. I didn’t wear much jewelry other than my cross pendant, but the ring had been my mother’s. She’d given it to me when I was young, before the divorce, when she still believed in love. I hadn’t worn it since Grant and I broke up, and I’d started wearing it again after meeting Jake. I guess I was feeling…romantic, or something.
“Look, Andrea, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble here. I’m just asking for you to throw me a little true-life romance.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve been reading enough romance novels lately to get my book boyfriend fix, but I need something real.”
I nodded. “Sorry. I should know better than to bullshit a bullshitter.”
She smiled at that.
“Well, how about this,” I started, trying to suppress a huge grin. “I hardly get any sleep these days because The Big Unit keeps me up all night.”
Amy looked up at the ceiling, as if saying a silent prayer.
“Doesn’t he have any brothers? Anything?” she asked, pleading with me. I thought for a moment. Jake had told me about the seventeen children his father had, but that was for my ears only.
“Sorry, he’s only got a sister. She sounds pretty badass though, from what I’ve heard.”
Amy nodded and pursed her lips.
“A sister? Hmm. Well, maybe...” She looked at me, gauging my reaction.
“You thinking about playing for the other team?” I ribbed. By now, I knew her tricks.
“Just kidding around. Although with my boy problems, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to deal with men. But what can I say? I do like them for some reason, God only knows why. Anyway, I gotta run,” Amy said. “Let me know when you can finally have a happy hour and tell me about how perfect Jake’s abs are again. Bring pics. And videos.”
I rolled my eyes. She was shameless, and in a way, her honesty was refreshing to someone like me who came from such a repressed background. Maybe I was a free spirit at heart.
My phone buzzed on my desk. I slid my finger over the screen to open it. My stomach dropped when I saw the name on the screen.
Grant: Hey. How’s your new boyfriend?
I hesitated. I thought I’d blocked him. And this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be having.
Me: How’s your new girlfriend?
Grant: Don’t evade the question. So you think you know him pretty well?
Me: Why are you even talking to me? You know we’re done.
Grant: I thought that was what you would say. Go to The Yawper Sports Gossip site.
Me: Why should I?
Grant: Fine. Don’t. You’ll have to deal with it eventually though…
Hesitantly, I pulled up the site in my browser. The headline I saw made me want to jump out of my skin.
Jake “The Big Unit” Napleton: Community Hero, or Child Kidnapper? The byline underneath was, The answer might surprise you.
The page view counter was 500,000 and rising every second.
On the main page, there was a picture of Jake dropping Tate off at school in the morning. There wasn’t even any substantive content in the short paragraph. Something about Tate’s aunt and that his family was looking for him. His family? Since when? Tate hadn’t been able to recall any other family members other than his cousin. Marissa had been helping us locate that cousin and his aunt’s boyfriend for information, but she had found nothing so far.
My phone buzzed. It was Grant’s number. As much as I didn’t want to talk with him, I had to pick up and find out what he was up to. I slid my hand across the touchscreen and put the phone to my ear.
“Grant, you’re a fucking asshole,” I said, seething.
“Honey. Baby. Don’t say that. You know we’re destined to be together. And I’m not an asshole—Jake’s the asshole. You don’t believe he really enjoys doing any of that community service shit, do you? It’s all an act. The guy’s a scumbag gangbanger.”
My blood boiled at Grant’s nerve. “You wouldn’t know jack shit about Jake. Just like you don’t know jack shit about me.”
“Whoa, honey. I don’t think you should be talking like that. That’s not very ladylike of you.”
“I don’t understand why you think I still give a damn what you think, Grant.”
Still on the phone, I scrolled farther down the article, trying to find the author’s name. These damn Yawper articles were the worst. They pretended they were above the tabloids, but no reputable journalist would ever put their name on them. Finally, I saw a source name.
Frankie F.
Where had I seen that name before?
My blood suddenly ran cold.
One of Grant’s fraternity brothers in college was named Frank Feathers. They’d been tight for years. The guy was as obnoxious as Grant.
“Grant, did you…was this your doing?”
I heard him chuckle through the phone, a low, maniacal laugh.
“Andrea, honey, you haven’t been seeing things my way for a while. So I used some of the connections I had to make you see things my way. Jake Napleton is a fraud. You need to face the facts. I’m the guy you’re meant to be with, not him.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I whispered, horrified at how truly delusional Grant was, that he’d destroy another man’s reputation, his life. And with it, mine.
“Just come back to me, Andrea, and we won’t release any more dirt,” he cajoled. “What are you doing next week? I’m going to be in town for my—”
I hung up the phone, vibrating with anger, but also with helplessness. If I didn’t go back to Grant, he’d make up more bullshit about Jake and make sure everyone knew about it. There had to be a way to fix this. But how?
Fuck him.
Fuck Grant Newman.
I stood up when I started hearing a loud murmur break out in the office and phones starting to ring like crazy. I peered over the wall of my cubicle, catching Amy’s shocked gaze from where her cubicle was on the other end of the office. S
he pointed behind me. I turned and saw Steve, face redder and angrier than I’d ever witnessed, literally running toward me.
“Andrea, what the hell is this! Are these pictures for real?” he shouted. “Child kidnapper? And is that you and Jake kissing?!”
What? I tried to remain calm, but I was just as panicked as Steve, and still reeling from my conversation with Grant. “I can explain…” I leaned over my computer and scrolled down to the bottom of the page. I hadn’t thought this could get any worse, but it did. There was a picture of Jake and me from our night at Charlie’s Bar.
And it didn’t show a professional setting at all. Not to mention the fact that my outfit the next morning had been noted by my co-workers, and now they knew why I’d dressed so sexy when I usually dressed conservatively for work. The image itself was clearly from a phone camera and shot at a weird angle.
I knew there was something out of place with that asshole sitting at Charlie’s Bar that night.
Had he been trailing me for a picture? How had he even known I’d be there with Jake? Could it have been Charlie? Somehow I knew it wasn’t. This was deliberate. And the fact that Grant had texted me about this…
“Well?” Steve said, impatient.
I looked Steve right in the eye. “You’re not going to believe this, but—”
“You’re right, I won’t. This is pointless,” Steve said, cutting me off. “I’m done listening to you. You’re done here. I want you gone immediately.”
I sat down, stunned, still trying to process all of this. “Seriously, Steve, I—”
“This is an utter disaster,” Steve went on, shouting at me and drawing the attention of everyone on the floor. “Not only are you done here at Green PR, good luck finding a PR firm in this city that’ll hire you.”
Steve rubbed his face, still livid. “Like I said, I want you out of this office, effective immediately. Or I’ll have security escort you down.”
I nodded at his retreating back, the wind completely knocked out of me.
30
I cleared out the few things I had accumulated during the couple of months that I’d been working. There was a mug, and a couple pairs of free sunglasses; it wasn’t much.
I had Amy’s number, and she was really the only person I’d be staying in contact with. I couldn’t remember leaving or how everyone watched me leave. I couldn’t remember walking to get on the “L.” The only thing I could think about was how to fix all of this. Not only had Grant ruined Jake, he’d screwed me over. There was no way I was going to live this down in this city when it all came out.
As soon as I found an empty seat in the emptiest car of the train, I called my mother, the decision made. There was only one solution I could come up with that lessened the damage to just me. I didn’t explain anything, just told her I was moving out, leaving Chicago, and that I needed her help. Then I made the toughest call yet.
Jake answered after one ring.
“Hey,” he said tonelessly, not giving me much to work with.
“Hey,” I returned, equally verbal as the city whirled past me. “You see Yawper?”
“Hard for me to miss. It just got picked up by mainstream media a few minutes ago… My agent and manager both reamed me. I’m about to get reamed by Yerac soon, probably after today’s game.” He sighed. “We really got fucked on this, Andrea.”
To think that this morning, I was on top of the world, and within the span of a few hours, my world had come crashing down.
“How’s Tate?”
I heard loud breathing on the other side of the phone, as though he were trying to control his emotions, or his anger. Both, I’d guess. “DCFS called. They’re picking Tate up from school today. Apparently, the boy’s long-lost father called them and ‘wants to be involved in the child’s life’ all of a sudden. I mean seriously, what the fuck? They can’t just do this.”
I recalled the brief paragraph that accompanied the picture of Jake and Tate. His “family,” I mused, shaking my head. How convenient. All of it. Was Grant behind that, too? Would he go that far to get me back? I knew he was controlling, but it was even worse than that; he was absolutely crazy.
“I think they can, Jake. Dammit,” I said, wishing Jake and I had thought this through better. “I knew we should have gone to DCFS, figured out a way to keep Tate in our custody while his aunt recovered.”
Jake scoffed at that. “Doesn’t work that way. This gets even worse though. Tate’s father—he’s a drug addict. The guy is as skinny as a stick and blows all of his money on meth,” he added. “I have no idea how this guy even came into the picture when he hadn’t been around since Tate was a baby.”
“Probably a money grab.” When you made as much money as Jake did, lawyers would use any excuse to sue him if it meant they had a shot at his millions.
“I’m just—I’m pissed. The worst part of the whole thing is about how this will affect Tate.”
My heart lurched. I needed to come clean about the reason the attack was launched in the first place. “Jake, I have to tell you something.”
“What? Are you okay?”
“Well, no, but this isn’t about me right now. I feel awful about everything that has happened to you, because it’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. Don’t say that.”
“Yes it is. You don’t understand. The only reason those pictures got posted was because Grant isn’t over me. I’m pretty sure he’s been looking for dirt on me, you, and us together ever since that night in the bar.”
Silence on the other end of the phone.
“Jake? You there?”
“Yeah. I’m here. I’m just picturing what I’ll do to that motherfucker the next time I see him. I’m gonna fucking kill him. Fuck it, I’m going to give Fred on the South Side a call and see if he can put a group together to go after him. I’m gonna—”
Jake kept talking about how badly he wanted to harm Grant. I thought about his gang tattoos and his dark past and how—at his core—he did self-identify as a sort of vigilante. He was a good man, but a man who pushed boundaries and didn’t always follow the rules. He was a calm man, but if someone crossed his path and threatened Jake’s friends or loved ones, God help them. Because he would bring the wrath. And now, his whole future was at stake because of my own past demons that I’d yet to put to rest.
“No! Stop! This whole thing stops here,” I shouted, cutting him off in the middle of his angry rant. “This is my fault. And I’ve decided that the best thing for everyone at this point will be if I just move back home to Tennessee.”
“Andrea! No! What about everything we’ve started here? You and me? You’re just going to throw the last few weeks away? Fuck that. I won’t let you.”
“There is no other way. I got fired from my job today, and I already called my mother to come pick me up to drive me back to Tennessee. I’m sorry, Jake. I knew I should have never dated players.”
I didn’t wait for Jake to make his case. I just hung up the phone.
Tears streamed down my face as I stared out the window of the empty train car. Jake would get over me, I reasoned. I’d move back to Tennessee and do a great freaking job running the social media campaign for Barnes’ Bar. And if Grant knew I was leaving Chicago, he might leave Jake alone. There were no other options left. Grant played to win—he played dirty—and I wasn’t the type of girl to stoop to his level. As much as I wished I was, I just wasn’t.
I hated to admit it, but my mother was dead right: I wasn’t cut out for the big-city life. It hurt now, but I might as well cut my losses and get the hell out of Chicago.
I leaned my head against the window, looking outside at the big-city skyscrapers. They would soon become a distant memory of a fun summer internship I once had.
31
Even in September, Chicago day games always held the possibility of being steamy and hot.
Today was exactly that. My Friday afternoon game started at 2 p.m., and it was a rough one. We’d already clinched
the division, so the outcome of the game didn’t really matter.
Good thing, because I was getting my ass kicked on the mound today. Arizona had just smacked another double, and Don was making a slow walk to the mound.
I took a deep breath and fanned myself with my cap. There were a dozen things on my mind, and baseball was not at the top of the list for a change.
Tate was gone, off to live with a druggie father.
And Andrea. Because of me, she’d gotten fired and was heading back to Tennessee.
My own boss had told me before the game that he and I needed to have “a very frank sit-down” in his office.
To make things even worse, I was getting rocked on the mound by fucking Arizona, who had the worst offense in the entire league. I was playing terribly, like a rookie, like I’d never thrown the ball. The crowd was getting pissed and had even started booing at me or chanting to bring in Hugo.
Don arrived at the mound at the same time Dwayne did.
“Napleton, you ain’t got it today,” Don said, shaking his head.
“That’s for damn sure,” Dwayne retorted, shoving his catcher’s mask up on to the top of his head. Even though he, like the other guys, had been supportive and sympathetic to my personal life being an epic clusterfuck, he still expected me to do my job. And I was failing them all magnificently.
Baseball is a mental game, and I was inside my head, my brain’s energy consumed by everything but the game. I didn’t even know why I was here. There was so much shit going on, and everyone knew about it. Andrea needed her space to clear her head. I needed to play baseball to clear mine, but it wasn’t working this time. “I don’t know what to tell you, Coach.”
Don looked down at the ground and hocked a big loogie. “I’m gonna be honest. I’m just buying time for Hugo to warm up in the bullpen. You’re done after this batter.”
I nodded. I’ve never been a man to say superfluous words, and there was nothing I could say about today’s performance. I was legitimately getting my ass rocked.
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