But she’d let me go so easily. Moved on no problem. She looked so damn good, too. So happy and perfect. Her curvy, incredible body sheathed in that black dress was giving me a hard on so solid the blood loss was dangerous. She also gave me a headache so brutal, I wanted ten more beers. One of the perks for playing in a British soccer team was that Coach didn’t mind of we drank. Half the guys on the team played with hangovers. I’d developed a taste for escape, and escaping just so happened to be the one thing that always reminded me of her.
Dinner had started a few minutes ago. I was conveniently—fucking Joanna—seated right across from the ultimate unattainable sight. To make matters worse, Sab’s parents were here. They’d barely been able to look me in the eye since I sat down. They’d hate me even more if they knew I hadn’t thought of their daughter in two years. The way I hated myself for missing someone more than I missed the first love of my life.
I was a monster.
My eyes burned.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I missed my second love more.
I grabbed my beer and drank it down, waving the waiter over. Only Mom and Dad would cater a dinner at home. But then again, Joanna was destined for great things. I was their stain, their letdown.
“Can I get a double shot of whiskey?” I asked the waiter.
He nodded, heading into the kitchen.
“You really want to do that here?” Bank muttered. “You know what you’re like when you get shitfaced.”
I met his gaze, mine so dark it made him flinch. The only reason I brought him with me was because he’d been my only ally. “What am I like?”
“Honest,” he muttered in response.
I looked up, my eyes and her eyes like magnets. It amazed me that for two years I’d tried to smother my feelings for her, but they’d only grown. She was right. I should have just said yes to her when she spilled her guts all those years ago. I should have smiled like an idiot and fell in love like I was supposed to, instead of fighting her, instead of holding on to Sabrina so forcefully she’d been ripped out of my hands and replaced with heartbreak twice her size. I wanted to reach across the table and grab Esmaie. Take her. Have her.
Love her.
Her eyes glistened staring into mine. I wasn’t hiding anything. Good. I didn’t want to. I was sick of hiding everything. She sure looked as broken as me. She looked empty the same way I was. It was sick to hope that she was as miserable as I was.
The waiter put the whiskey down in front of me.
I drank it back, holding her eyes. I didn’t let them go. Not when Dad gave a speech. Not when Mom did. Or the Mitchell’s. Dinner commenced. She was shaking. Her delicate fingers wrapped around her fork shook every time she brought it to her mouth. She looked away so many times. But that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that she brought her eyes back to mine every time even knowing what she’d see.
“You look crazy,” Bank ridiculed. “Stop staring her down like that. She’s not a prison guard with the key.”
“She’s not?” I tore my eyes off her and landed them on him instead. It sure felt that way.
“No. Your sister’s really hot. Smart. She’s got a volleyball player’s ass. Round, firm, and plump.” He wiped the drool from his mouth.
“No,” I growled, Sab’s dad looking over at me. I cleared my throat and sat back. I missed Sabrina. I missed her smile. I missed her, and I always would. I’d accepted it. That was the hardest part. “Don’t even think about touching my sister with those filthy unworthy fingers. I know where they’ve been.”
I knew, deep in my heart, in what was left of it, that I could not live the rest of my life missing Esmaie.
Bank rolled his eyes and then looked at her at the head of the table. “They want to be in her.”
“Bank, so help me, I’ll murder you no problem.”
He sighed. “Fine.” He nodded toward where Esmaie sat. “Where’s blondie?”
My head snapped up. She was gone. Gone. Like before. Damn it, I missed her. I wanted her. Her absence stabbed me. I felt this way, every day. Like I was missing some crucial piece of me. I practiced hard, played harder, and even though I was moving up in the league, I didn’t care about anything. But her. Funny how one person could uproot your entire world, and then set it on fire.
I drank some more. People slowly left the dinner table. Hours passed, and Esmaie didn’t come back. Eventually, it was just Mr. Mitchell and I left. He had the same amount of empty glasses around him as me.
We both looked up, and his sadness pierced me in my soul.
“She should have graduated, Wade.”
I cracked, choking back my tears. “I know.”
“She should be living her dreams. You remember what they were?”
“I even remember the order she wanted to achieve them.”
“Tell me,” he begged, bracing himself for heartbreak.
“College. Nursing degree. Career. Marriage. Babies. That was both of our plans.”
He met my eyes. “Was? You don’t dream anymore, son?”
I couldn’t even answer him, but I forced myself. “What for?”
“Because my daughter loved you with all her heart. She would hate the way we are. Drinking our sorrows away. And she’d hate the fact that you’re ruining a good thing even more.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughed a little, a sad laugh that said I’m heartbroken, not stupid. “Jo told me about Esmaie.”
“Of course, she did.” I was teetering on the edge of shitfaced. I had no filter. “I hate myself.”
His tears were threatening to spill. “For what?”
“For wanting someone else. I’m a monster. For ever thinking I could move on. How could I do that to her?” I begged, slamming my fist into the table. “I love your daughter, but I think I love someone else more. She’d hate me.”
He shook his head. “She’d never hate you. She loves you. She’d want you to be happy. I know my daughter, and deep down so do you. What do you want, Wade? My permission?”
“Yes. I do. I want to know that you won’t hate me for breaking her heart.” I looked up at the ceiling, breaking through the plaster and the second story for the heavens and the stars where Sabrina now lived.
“You can’t break her heart. You can have different kinds of love with different people. You can have what you wanted, just in a different way. Stop running, Wade, and come home. She’s always with us.” He patted his chest. “Right here.” He got up from the table, waiting for me.
I got up, too, and wrapped my arms around him. I sobbed into his suit. He sobbed into mine. For a girl we loved and would never stop. I felt her presence. Golden, bright, and beautiful. She hugged us both, and then I felt it dissipate, like warmth taking its time to leave. I felt her permission to move on. Her permission to never let go completely.
That night, I drank myself to sleep in my childhood bedroom staring out across the street into the bedroom of the first girl I ever loved. Who loved me.
I said goodbye to her that night.
In the morning, I’d start putting my life back together. One dream at a time.
Chapter Seventeen
Esmaie
“What the hell is that?” Jo shouted from her room.
I groaned, my head pounding from guzzling champagne behind the Hollywood sign with Jo and her friends all night. “I don’t know,” I moaned back.
The banging started again. I shifted, feeling something smooth and sticky on my cheek. I rose my head a little to find that I’d fallen asleep on the leather couch in the living room of the apartment I shared with Jo. I glared at the door, realizing someone was knocking. I looked at the clock on the cable box. My eyes bugged out of my head. It was seven in the morning. We’d only gotten in a few hours ago.
The banging didn’t stop. My brain was still drunk. I was sore, tired, and grumpy. I crawled over to the door and used the handle to pull myself up and wrenched the door open.
I bl
inked a few times, squinting to see who it was. My heart fell out from under me, sending a wave of nausea through my body.
Wade exhaled in relief. “Did I wake you?”
I groaned, shielding the sunlight like a vampire.
He studied me. “I’ll take that as a yes. Can I talk to you?”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. I’ve got two years’ worth of shit to get out.”
My entire body hurt. I had no energy to fight with him or be angry. My heart still lay in shambles. She was just happy he was here. I shuffled away from the door, so he could come in. I fell face first onto the couch. He sat on the coffee table, expression contrite.
“You look how I feel.” He brushed my hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “Just listen to me, please? I want to say all of this before I have a chance to overthink it all. I think that’s what screws me up so much. I think too much about everything, so in the end I don’t know what’s right or wrong.” He took a deep breath, and then he opened his mouth. “I did everything wrong by you. I had no right falling in love with you when I was in love with someone else. But I couldn’t stop myself. I thought I had to choose the entire time, and it tortured me. But I realized last night that I don’t have to choose between you or Sabrina. I had my love with her and I will always have it. It’s in here.” He patted his chest. “Safe, forever. What’s not safe is what I feel for you. It’s always up in the air. I can never catch it. I spent so many years not feeling anything, and then you come along and what took me years to feel with Sabrina, I felt with you in seconds. I had no time to prepare myself, and there you were, so open, so ready. I didn’t think you deserved to be second place. You deserve first place. I couldn’t put you there. You weren’t ready to be there.” He ran both hands through his hair. “Losing you was so fucking hard, baby. I ran as hard and as fast as I could from myself. Not from you. But I think we needed that time apart. I had to put to rest a lot of things. And all of that could have been in vain, because it all depends on you. What you’re willing to live with. What you’re not. What you’re thinking. I understand if you don’t want to jump back into this. If you need time, I want to give it to you. Start over again. Do this right. Give us the chance we always deserved.”
He took another deep, heartfelt breath, expression expectant.
I was too hungover for this.
He blinked at me. “Well?”
“I’m going to be sick,” I gasped, running out of the room and closing the bathroom door behind me. I leaned against the closed door and slid down to my knees, burying my face in my hands. Was this how he felt all those years ago? He’d just spilled his guts to me, expecting me to be where I had once been, so ready and open to grab our dreams and make them a reality.
I was angry. Angry he’d left me here for two years when he didn’t need to. He didn’t have to suffer on his own, and in doing so, he’d made me suffer, too.
“Esmaie,” he said, his pain evident through the door.
“You left me.” I glared at the tiled wall of the bathroom, my tears blurring my eyes.
“You let me.”
“What more was I supposed to do? I gave you time, but you didn’t give me any. You were selfish. You weren’t fair. You left me here. You can’t just come back and everything’s better.”
“I can’t?” Something hit the door. I imagined it was his forehead, the position he’d be in talking through the door of the bathroom.
“No! Are you crazy?” I crawled over to the toilet. The uproar of rage I felt at his comment sent my stomach into a flurry. I puked uncontrollably, pain attacking my body, emotionally and physically.
The door opened. Hands pulled my hair back. Wade rubbed my back as I humiliated myself in front of him once again. It just kept coming up. Tears streamed down my face. I shoved at him blindly. “Get out of here.”
He knocked my hand away and sat with his chest pressed to my back. He hugged me as I puked. “I spent a long time trying to remember what this felt like.”
“Like what felt like?” I moaned, my stomach muscles cramping. I hadn’t drunk this much in a long time. I tried not to do that anymore. My studies were too arduous to have time to drink, and Joanna couldn’t with volleyball hanging over her head. She found ways to have fun without men and alcohol. Buddy reading books together and laughing our asses off, or crying them off as we read side by side. Studying with incentives, like an hour of studying got a half-pint of ice cream. I hadn’t talked to Bri and Ren since I left Iowa, but they never would have tried to show me an alternative to my destructive behavior. They would have ridiculed me. Joanna was a real friend, and she didn’t even have to be since I was the reason her brother left.
And she was the reason he came back.
“You.” His grip tightened.
“Wade, seriously, get out. I’ve embarrassed myself around you enough. Please, go.”
“How have you embarrassed yourself?”
“Where do I even begin?” I sagged against him, facing away so he couldn’t smell my puke breath.
“You mean putting yourself out there over and over again?” He pressed the side of his face to mine.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“That wasn’t embarrassing. That was brave. It was beautiful. I think about it all the time, about how royally I screwed us up, and how easy it would have been for us if I had just listened to you in the beginning.”
Oh no. We weren’t going here already, were we? What was it about this man that made me want to bare it all? “Don’t do this to me. You can’t just come back, and things go back to how they were. I’m not the same anymore.”
His heavy breath kissed my neck. “You’re better. Go brush your teeth. I need to kiss you.”
“No.” I tried to wiggle free of him. “No, Wade. We both know what’s going to happen when we kiss.”
His hands kneaded my body. Gripping my waist, rubbing my thighs; I was still in the same dress I wore last night to dinner. Where he pinned me in place with his sharp, hateful gaze.
“You’re cute when you fight us. You need to fight us? Hmm?” He kissed behind my ear and slid his hand between my legs, rubbing his fingers up and down my inner thigh.
“Yes,” I whined. “I need to fight you for once.”
“Are you really dating someone?” He sucked on my neck, groaning from deep in his chest. His fingertips dug into my inner thigh.
I felt like shit. He was here but he hadn’t been. My hangover turned my stomach. My body ached. And his felt so damn good wrapped around mine. I wanted to lean in, turn into him. But Wade had never really been in as deeply as I had. He’d stood on the edge, but hadn’t jumped in. I couldn’t give in until he was right beside me. Falling over and over again.
“Is that why you came home?” I asked, watching his fingertips brush my dress aside. My panties were the color of his eyes. Pale blue. And in the middle was a wet spot. He hadn’t seen it yet. His face was still pressed close to mine. If he saw it, he’d never let me fight him. I pressed my thighs together and knocked his hand aside, pulling my dress down. “Is that all I had to do?” Finally, he let me go. I struggled to get to my feet. “Date someone else?”
When he didn’t answer me, I looked down to find him staring up at me like I’d broken his heart a third time. “You’re really dating another guy, Esmaie? I haven’t been with anyone since you. I turned down every single woman, never sought them out. I jacked off to your image every fucking night, and you’re out here with someone else!”
My heart lurched. He looked devastated. He moved his hand to his chest, clutching at it. Like the idea of me with another man hurt him too much to accept.
“No,” I blurted out. “I’m not dating anyone. I haven’t been with anyone else either. What would be the point, baby?” I leaned against the counter, unable to stand a moment longer. My head swayed. “There’s no one that would compare to you. I don’t even have to try and look. I. Just. Know. Like I always have.”
&
nbsp; His hand dropped from his chest. He closed his eyes and his lips parted, relief washing over him. “Thank you,” he muttered. His eyes opened. There was a new look in them that made them shine. Alertness, conviction, maybe even resolve all shone in them. He got to his feet. “Do what you gotta do and then go lay down. I’ll clean up in here.”
He didn’t move. I got this nagging feeling that I’d just earned a shadow. A hot as shit shadow who made my heart feel whole and unstable all at the same time. I brushed my teeth and washed my face. “What are you doin—” I yelped, gravity falling out from under me.
Wade cradled me to his chest. “Where’s your room?”
I pointed to the only open door in the hall. It wasn’t much. Just a twin mattress and a desk piled high with homework and textbooks. He looked around at the bare walls, the empty space. I rolled into his chest. “I don’t have a lot of extra cash. My scholarship was transferrable for only another year, and I had to get financial aid for the rest.”
He laid me down on my bed, pulling the covers up to my neck. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be moving in tomorrow. I was making good money playing overseas. You have extra cash now.”
“You’re moving in tomorrow?” I laughed at his audacity.
He nodded, serious. “We still have a lot to talk about, but I get it now, Es. I get what you were feeling. We can have us now and figure out all that other shit later.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I get it.”
I was too tired and sore to argue. Plus, he was so pompous and sure. I’d stick it to him after I woke up. “Where are you going?” I asked, already half-asleep when he pulled my door closed.
“Nowhere.” He shut it softly.
When I woke up, I thought everything had been a dream. Wade, his speech and his touch. I was still slightly nauseous, and my stomach muscles were sore from being sick. I tore my dress off and grabbed a towel, showering and dressing in shorts and a cami. I was too blah to do much else. I staggered out into the living room. I heard voices talking in low, hushed tones.
The Jock and the Dreamer Page 14