by Claire Adams
“Oh God,” she groaned. “Do you honestly think that a cheesy line is going to get me to jump out of a plane? You have much to learn, young Padawan.”
“Nope, didn’t think it would work, but I had to give it a try. And I know plenty, I’ll have you know. I’m just desperate.” Ryder eyed me curiously. I had to get off the phone. He was never going to let it go as things were. I didn’t need to give him more ammunition.
She laughed. “Please, you’ve never been desperate for a day in your life.”
“That might have been true, until today. Look, I gotta go. We still on for tonight? We can talk about it then.” I avoided Ryder’s piercing gaze.
“Yes, we’re on for hanging out tonight. I’ll meet you at the beach at 9? But only if we don’t keep talking about it then.” A teammate had told me about a little Spanish place that I knew Gabrielle was going to love.
“We’ll see about that. Have fun studying.” I ended the call and threw my phone into my bag.
“What’s up, man?” I slapped Ryder’s palm.
He tilted his head as he studied me. “Who was that?”
“Just some chick.” I gave him my best ‘you know how it is’ shrug.
He shook his head and swapped out his weights, wiping his brow with his towel. “Didn’t fucking sound like just some chick.”
“What is this, the fucking inquisition? I gotta go change. I’ll meet you back here in two.” I stripped off in the locker room, changed into my gear, and racked my brain for a way out of the conversation that I was about to have.
“I’m having a party tonight,” Ryder grunted, curling a weight in each arm. He already dripped with sweat.
Talking to Gabrielle had distracted me. I was way behind on today’s routine.
“Okay, have fun, son. Don’t stay out too late.” I shot him a shit-eating grin. I didn’t want to have explain that the reason I was skipping one of his parties was to hang out with Gabrielle.
Ryder stopped his workout and asked his question pointedly. “What’s up with you lately?”
I studied the fading sunset painted on the wall in front of me and shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“You’re... different. You skipped the party on Saturday and the one the week before. Now you’re trying to dodge the one tonight. The one that I’m throwing. You turned down Luke for golf and Big Dave for that party cruise.” He launched into a list of a bunch of other stuff that I’d skipped out on to spend time with Gabrielle.
Have we really been spending that much time together? It didn’t feel like it. I didn’t think that I’d ever spent so much time with a woman and not gotten bored out of my mind. Why wasn’t I bored yet?
I kept my voice even, mentally trying to calculate if he was right about the amount of time we’d spent together. “I’ve just been busy. There’s nothing going on with me. I already have plans tonight. Maybe if you didn’t plan like a fifth grader and gave me a heads up in advance—”
“A fucking heads up in advance? Up until a couple of weeks ago, you were always down to party at the drop of a hat. Now you need notice? Do you really expect me to believe that?” Ryder was getting riled up.
No. “Yes. Like I said, bro. I’ve been busy.”
“Is it this girl? The one you were talking to just now?” His accusatory tone rubbed me the wrong way.
Yes. “No. Well, maybe some of it.”
Try all of it.
I wanted to come clean to him, but I wasn’t in the mood for the metaphorical pineapple he was sure to shove up my ass for getting involved with her.
Plus, the fewer people who knew about Gabbi and me, the less the chances were of it ever getting back to Richard. Ryder would keep the secret, but shit happened.
He contemplated my answer, apparently finding it unsatisfactory. “Who is she?”
“She’s nobody. Just a girl that I’ve been hanging out with.” I lied through my teeth.
“Hanging out with?” His voice was incredulous. “Do you mean fucking?”
“Both.” There, I could give him that much.
As it turned out, it wasn’t enough. “Since when do you hang out with women for longer than it takes you to get their panties to hit the floor?”
His tone was seriously rubbing me the wrong way. I hardly ever snapped at Ryder, but I did then. “Why don’t you get your panties out of their twist? I’m just having some fun, okay?”
“Consider them untwisted, asshole. Who is she? Her pussy must be made of gold if you’re willing to hang out with her to get it.” It was, but I wasn’t only hanging out with her to get some.
I could get some from just about any straight single girl by doing little more than smiling at her. Maybe even some of the married ones if I was that kind of man, which I wasn’t.
“You do realize that I am a human being who happens to enjoy good conversation from time to time. There is a body with a brain attached to my dick.” My fuse got shorter by the second.
“Yeah, but you used to separate the two. Why won’t you just tell me who she is?” Pushy motherfucker.
I’d had enough of his shit. “Why do you want to know so fucking badly? You don’t know her. I enjoy talking to her. End of story.”
He completely ignored the venom in my tone and returned it with ice and determination in his. “It is not the end of the fucking story. There’s a lot more to this. Is it serious?”
“Fuck no,” I answered without hesitation. Ryder knew me better than that. I didn’t do serious.
Even if Gabrielle was fun to be around. Even if she did make me feel shit that I didn’t know what to do with. At worst, I had a fucking crush or something. It would pass, probably sooner rather than later.
His eyebrows raised all the way to his dark dreads. “You sure?”
“Who’re you talking to, Ry? ‘Cause I’m sure that Ryder, the guy who’s known me for years, knows that I don’t do serious.” We both thawed out a little, allowing our frustration with each other to flow to our muscles and into our workout.
“James, the guy who I’ve known for years, has never blown off just about everything for some girl.” He threw my shitty reasoning right back at me.
“I told you, I’m just having some fun.” My brow was covered in sweat, and I was so far over this conversation that I was coming up on Timbuktu. “Since when do we gossip like teenagers about girls?”
“Since now, apparently. Who is she, James?” The man was tenacious; I had to give him that. Grudgingly.
A deep sigh ran through me. He wasn’t going to let me off the hook. It was time to get it over with. “It’s Gabrielle, okay. Gabrielle Ralls.”
Ryder went rigid. His jaw hit the ground as he turned to me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No,” I admitted. “We met. Shit happened. We’re having fun.”
“Does she know that?” It would be an understatement to say that he looked doubtful.
“Yeah, of course.” We hadn’t talked about it, necessarily. Not in so many words, but I was sure that we were on the same page.
In fact, I was convinced that she’d only had dinner with me that first night to piss off her father.
The thought made me, I don’t know, uneasy maybe? But I was sure that her hanging out with me wasn’t about that anymore. Now it was something else.
“So you’re telling me that you’re potentially sacrificing your spot on our team for a fling?”
“What are you talking about?” It was my turn to stop and stare, though I knew exactly what he meant.
“You know what I’m fucking talking about. Don’t play dumb, Jamie. Not with me, cause I ain’t falling for your bullshit.” He was full-blown annoyed if his twitching jaw and harsh tone were anything to go by.
“Come on. Richard might not be happy about it, if he even finds out, but he’s not going to kick me off the team.” I’d dialed down my own irritation.
“No, maybe not. The restructuring of your contract, on the other hand, that might be in trouble.” His jaw c
lenched, and his dark eyes radiated a seriousness that he didn’t display too often. “I’m not going to say anything, but shit like this tends to get out. You said yourself that you’re not serious about this Gabrielle. So is it really worth it to risk your future over a fling?”
“If I agree to think about it, can we drop it?” I huffed. I was done with his shit.
He cast a last worried look my way, then broke out a grin. “Sure, man. Let me spot you.”
We grunted through our workout, hit the showers, and were out the door without another word about Gabrielle.
Thoughts swirled around in my head as I drove around, not wanting to head home just yet. Harper’s eyes flashed in my mind, as did the kind of life that I wanted for her.
Next was the Super Bowl and how shitty I had felt watching it on Ryder’s flat screen when it should’ve been us on that field. The ring that had eluded me for so long.
As much as I liked spending time with Gabrielle, maybe Ryder was right. Maybe she wasn’t worth risking my future.
Chapter Twenty
Gabrielle
“That’s it. I’m calling it a day.” I snapped my copy of the professional code of ethics shut and leaned back on Heather’s couch. I ran my hand over the cool leather of the armrest and let my head fall back, closing my tired eyes.
“Thank God. I’ve been rereading the same paragraph for the last 20 minutes.” Heather groaned from her perch at the ex-dining table.
“I think we made enough headway for today. There’s no use in carrying on when my brain feels like a sieve.” If my brain had been a bucket of water, it would have been leakier than a broken tap by that point.
“Try a rusty sieve with nothing left but frayed edges, in my case.” Heather pushed her textbook back and stretched her arms above her head. “I’m in serious need of more caffeine. You want some?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?” It was lame, but it was the best answer I could come up with. I had thrown myself into studying more and more that week, trying to ignore the fact that the man I was falling in love with was inexplicably pulling away from me.
I had known that he would, of course, but after last Saturday, I had allowed myself to believe what he’d said. Believed that he wasn’t going to get bored of me. That maybe he felt something, too.
He hadn’t only stayed the night, but had woken me in the early hours of the morning with an erection that meant business. Twice. He’d whispered about how he hadn’t gone bareback with a girl in years, and then proceeded to whisper all kinds of sweet nothings to me in the pre-dawn hours.
In the morning, we’d cooked breakfast together, bantering back and forth like an old married couple before he finally had to go.
We’d texted almost the whole of the previous Sunday, ending it with a phone call so hot that my sex still clenched when I thought about it. We had made plans for Monday night as he was headed to the gym that morning.
After that, things changed. He changed. First, he called to tell that he couldn’t make it to our dinner, citing that “something had come up.”
There were pictures of him in the entertainment section of the paper on Tuesday morning, apparently taken at some club the night before with the infamous Ryder. At least I finally had a face to put to the name.
I had expected him to call when he finally returned to the land of the living. He didn’t. He returned one of the texts on Tuesday night, saying that he’d been busy with the team.
No shit. I didn’t tell him that I’d seen the pictures. Or how deeply it had cut me.
He didn’t call or text on Wednesday, so I didn’t either. I’d received a text from him the night before with a picture of a parachute. No words.
Apparently, he’d gone skydiving without me. Not that I’d had any intention of joining him on that particular adventure; heights were the one thing that scared me. I just didn’t know what to make of it.
Heather clamored around the kitchen, singing along off-tune to some new Ed Sheeran song as she made our coffees.
“Need any help?” I offered. I had to get out of my head.
“I’m done. Since when do either of us need help making coffee?” She set my steaming mug on the table, wrapped her long fingers around hers, and settled on the couch beside me.
“Ugh, since never. I just offered so that I would have something to focus on.”
She stayed quiet as her eyes swept my face, a worried look setting in. “What aren’t you telling me? You’ve been so quiet all week.”
“I thought you’d appreciate the quiet.” She still didn’t know who I’d been seeing, and I didn’t want to talk about James anyway.
“I don’t. I mean, I would. If it were a ‘we’re studying’ quiet, but this isn’t that. Talk to me, friend. How are things with the relationship?” She was ridiculously intuitive. Although, maybe it was obvious. I didn’t know anymore.
“It was never a relationship really.” Even though I’d found myself wishing that it was on more than one occasion.
“Okay, but you know who I’m talking about. How’re things going there?”
I knew exactly who she was talking about, but James was kind of a sore subject.
Then I remembered wishing that I’d talked to Heather more about not taking the bar exam, and everything just came tumbling out. “If I’m being honest, I don’t know. I don’t think that it’s going well, though.”
“Why not? You seem really into him.” She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
“He’s just gotten really distant this week, you know? Last weekend everything was great. Perfect, really. Then he canceled our plans Monday night, and I’ve hardly heard from him since.”
“Maybe you should go see him? Find out what’s going on?” She blew on her coffee and took a large sip.
“I don’t want to do that. I think that maybe he’s gotten what he wanted from our so-called relationship. I’m not the needy girl who’s going to go pushing his boundaries.” My heart broke a little as I said the words, but I meant every last one.
“If that is true and he has gotten what he wanted, the least he could do is to tell you that himself, instead of leaving you hanging like a coward would.” I bristled at Heather calling James a coward. He might be many things, but he wasn’t that. Heather, of course, didn’t know that.
“He’s not a coward, Heather. He’s the furthest thing from it.” God knew why I felt the need to defend him.
Especially given that he had left me hanging, essentially taking the coward’s way out, if that was what he was doing. The evidence sure pointed that way.
“Well, then he should man up and tell you to your face so that you can be done with him. Move on to bigger and better things.”
Bigger and better things might have been out there, but bigger and better men? I wasn’t convinced.
“Yeah, I guess I’m going to have to talk to him about it at some point. I just don’t understand what happened. One second, he’s getting all excited about going at it bareback and whispering all kinds of shit, and the next—”
“Tell me that you didn’t! That’s too dangerous, Gabbi. You never know who you’re sleeping with until you know who they’ve been sleeping with. You’re smarter than that.” I was, but I also knew how often the team got tested and how careful he’d been with condoms at first.
He did have a daughter, though. He’d claimed that he had worn a condom that night with Harper’s mother, that he’d seen it in the trash the morning after, but that the mom had claimed it had broken.
Even so. “I have an IUD, Heather. You know that.”
My gynecologist had insisted on it when I’d had some intense cramping as a senior that made it almost impossible to study.
“Pregnancy is not a disease, Gabbi. STDs, those are diseases. Some of them serious, incurable ones.” She shook her head and looked at me like I was crazy.
“He’s clean,” I insisted.
“Did he show you a recent test? How do you know?”
&
nbsp; I couldn’t give her the real answer. The one that involved my father’s strict policies for his active players.
“I just know. Trust me. He’s clean.” I expected her to give me the talk, but she didn’t.
“Okay, as long as you’re as sure as you seem. Then what happened?”
We talked until the sun was setting through her bay window, bathing the room in soft light.
“I should go; it’s been a long day.” I stretched my stiff limbs and carried my mug to the cluttered sink.
Heather might have cleaned up, but she was still a long way from her usual, orderly self as the exam grew closer.
“That it has. Drive safe, babe. We’ll talk tomorrow. Try and talk to your mystery man, okay? I hate seeing you like this. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation.”
There was.
He’d realized that I was just not worth his time. I’m not insecure. I never have been. I was attractive, but James was top-tier supermodel hot. Not only that, he was witty, intelligent, and easy to be around.
Even if he was looking to settle down, which he definitely wasn’t, it wasn’t going to be with a girl like me.
Heather’s words echoed around in my head as I drove home. She was right, to a certain extent anyway. If he was done with me, the least he could do was tell me. My heart stammered at the thought, but finding out sooner was better than later.
I had gone into this thing with my eyes wide open and my heart completely shut. Somehow, he’d taken a crowbar to the layer of protection I had surrounded myself with, and I’d forgotten that he was a fun distraction that my dad would hate.
I had known that James was trouble. It was the very reason I’d said yes to dinner in the first place, but it seemed that I was the one in trouble now that trouble didn’t want to get into me anymore.
On a whim, I decided to call him. I deserved to hear him say that he was over whatever was going on between us. I deserved the truth, even if I was expecting that my call would go to voicemail.
“Gabbi?” he answered on practically the first ring. “Are you okay?”