And then she moaned.
If only she’d done that from the start.
I grazed her sides before finding the hem of her shirt, fitting my hands beneath it until I had my palms on her bare skin. She was so warm and soft. But as soon as I had her breasts in my grip, something changed.
Not with her.
With me.
Lori seemed to enjoy my touch, moving with more fervor while her moans grew exponentially in the otherwise quiet car. I wanted to enjoy…whatever this was…but I couldn’t seem to stop trying to figure out what was wrong. I had a hot girl on my lap, riding my half-chub like a cowgirl at a rodeo, her bare tits in the palms of my hands, yet something wasn’t right.
Needless to say, she didn’t give me the chance to figure it out before she switched it up again. She scooted back as far as she could without laying on the horn and alerting everyone of what was taking place in my car, and proceeded to unbutton my jeans. I tried to stop her, but she must not have been accustomed to the word “wait.” Either that or the loud music in the club impaired her hearing.
In a flash, she not only had my jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, but she also had the waistband shoved down enough to wrap her fingers around my dick. And still, I couldn’t get her to slow down. It wasn’t that she needed to stop completely, just take it easy long enough for me to mentally catch up.
However, I did put on the brakes when she lifted her skirt and shifted over me to climb back up my body. “Lori, you need to stop. We have to get a condom. I have one in my wallet, but it’s in my back pocket, and I can’t reach it.”
“It’s okay. I’m on the Pill.”
Her sexy moans and heavy pants of anticipation disappeared in lieu of the loud, ear-piercing screech of metaphorical brakes and burning rubber. “No. It’s not okay.” I tried to shift her off me, but with the confined space, it ended up being nothing but knees and elbows stuck between a door, a console, and a steering wheel. With all the jostling around, she more than likely didn’t understand my intention.
Holding onto the headrest behind me, she arched her back and shifted into position. The second I felt her heat graze mine, I fitted one hand between us to cup my junk, preventing her from the home run she obviously sought.
As much as I wanted that same thing, love was cleaner with a packaged wiener. I didn’t need to be caught in the middle of a baby-daddy scandal to know the risks of having a child with someone before I was ready. Shortly after the beginning of my first year on the team, a woman I’d been on a few dates with had left a condom in my car. We’d planned on heading back to her house, but something came up and I had to drop her off. Later, Ellie found it and pointed out the tiny holes through the wrapper. The girl had claimed something in her purse must’ve done it, but I wasn’t willing to figure out what.
Now, I had one hand over my deflating dick and the other frantically trying to get between us, hoping I could come up with coherent words to get my point across while also multitasking enough to keep her from following through with her intentions. But I didn’t get that far. While I attempted to grip her arm, she wrapped her fingers around my left wrist, lifted it into the air, and then leaned into my chest, pushing my arm over my head.
Blinding pain pulled a barking cry from my chest, everything else long forgotten. Immediately, Lori stopped her aggressive behavior and asked if I was okay, as if it were completely normal for a man to hold his balls in one hand, clutch his other to his chest, and moan in agony while a beautiful—if not utterly crazy—woman straddled him.
Some incoherent words were muttered, her apologies offered, and after fastening my jeans and tugging her skirt back in place, she quietly exited my car. It ended up taking another thirty minutes behind the wheel in the parking lot, collecting myself, before I had enough range of motion in my arm to drive away. But I didn’t head home. Instead, I drove on autopilot all the way to the interstate, not stopping until I pulled down the familiar dirt driveway. It didn’t matter that I had no change of clothes or even a toothbrush for the morning. I clearly needed to be here, because it was where my heart led me.
When I shut off the engine, I happened to catch a glimpse of the time—almost a quarter till two in the morning. Still, I didn’t care. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was where I belonged. This was where I was meant to be.
I trekked around the house, using the moon to light my way. When I made it to the back, standing in front of the familiar window that no longer seemed so recognizable, I held my breath and tapped on the glass. After a beat, I rapped again, this time, a little louder. Finally, she peered around the side and squinted before lifting the window.
“What are you doing here, Coby?”
I shrugged, realizing for the first time how ill-prepared I was for showing up at her childhood home in the middle of the night, hours before her entire family gathered around a table to give thanks. “I needed you.”
Chapter 7
Ellie
I glanced over my shoulder and then turned back to Coby. “Meet me at the front door.”
He did, and I let him in. The second he stepped into the house, even before I had the door closed behind him, he had me in his arms, my face tucked against his chest. We stood like that for a beat longer than normal, him needing me, and me being there for him.
Finally, I took his hand, locked the door behind us, and led him down the dark hallway to my room. The lamp I turned on beside my bed cast a soft glow in the space around us. And for the first time, I saw the anguish in my best friend’s face. He appeared to have been crying with heavy circles under his eyes and red-rimmed lids, but it was the defeat weighing his shoulders down that scared me.
In a hushed tone, I asked, “Coby, what’s going on?”
He took a deep breath as he resumed his spot on my bed. I crawled over him and laid down, flanking his left side—the way I’d done countless times before—and lifted my head for him to slide his forearm under my neck. But Coby didn’t move, and I was instantly filled with fear. I propped my head on my hand and waited for him to unload. Slowly, he closed his eyes, and a tear ran down the side of his face.
“There’s something wrong, Ellie.”
I wanted to lighten the mood, joke with him about his stamina or boy-band nicknames for Ryan or my disdain for pig or even vanilla-scented candles, but I knew in my heart, whatever Coby had to tell me would change our lives.
“Is this about Charlene?” I hadn’t heard him mention her since the tabloid debacle, but if that harlot tried to ruin him, I’d ruin her. When he shook his head, I tried again. “The team?” No. “You’re going to have to give me something to go on, Coby. I don’t have a clue.”
“I got benched in the last game.”
This wasn’t new information. It happened several weeks ago, so I couldn’t imagine why it was suddenly so devastating. “I know.”
The tension in his jaw indicated his frustration. “I wasn’t benched for a strain.”
“What do you mean? That’s what you told me. That’s what was all over the sports channels. Did you get caught with another player’s wife, or something equally horrendous, and get suspended?”
“No, Ellie. Everyone believes it was just a muscle strain. Overworked. That I just need to give my arm a rest because pitching one hundred and sixty-two games in a regular season is physically demanding.”
“But it’s not that?” He wasn’t making sense, yet with clarification would come truth, and it was one I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle.
“I’m in constant pain—burning, searing agony that radiates from the base of my neck down to my fingers. And the numbness that the tingling brings prevents me from holding the ball correctly. Then when I wind up, I think it would be less painful if my arm were crushed in a vice grip.”
“What does Steve think?” Surely his pitching coach had dealt with shoulder injuries before. Coby wasn’t the first player to ever be benched.
“I haven’t told him the extent of it.”
I bolted upright to stare at the golden-brown eyes that had held my attention most of my life. “Why not?” I shrieked before remembering it was the middle of the night and my parents had no idea Coby was here. “You have to tell him what’s going on.”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t. I just resigned my contract. It will look like I let them buy a lemon. If I were injured, that should have been disclosed during negotiations.”
“But you didn’t know. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That won’t be the perception.”
“You have to see a doctor, Coby…before you end up doing permanent damage.”
“How am I going to see anyone without the team finding out? I can’t go into a doctor’s office and someone not see me, or a staff member not leak it to the press. That just leads to scandal.”
“So what are you going to do?” I got what he was saying yet the alternative seemed to outweigh the consequences of neglect.
“I hoped you could help me figure that out.”
I fell onto my back, and he winced at the slight bounce of the mattress. I didn’t doubt he was in pain, but there was more to his melancholy than the discomfort he felt. “Did something happen tonight that brought you here?”
“Not really.”
I’d heard that tone before. It was the one he used when there was more to tell and he was reluctant to share whatever it was. “What were you doing when you decided to come? Just hanging out at the house?”
“I went out with Gage.”
“To where, a whore house?”
He let out a bark of a laugh that shook his chest. “No, a club. Why?”
“You reek of cigarettes and cheap perfume.” I’d been distracted by his presence when he got here and hadn’t noticed it when he came in, but now my room stunk like a brothel. “And my guess is no club in Tuscaloosa uses Eau de Slut to keep their dance floor smelling fresh.”
“It was nothing.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me.” I huffed and rolled away from him.
“Come back. I can’t turn onto my left side, E.T. I wasn’t blowing you off. I’m serious when I say nothing happened. Nothing ever happens. When it comes to the ladies, my batting average rivals that on the field.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. Coby and I didn’t discuss his dating scene. He didn’t flaunt it in front of me, and I didn’t ask questions. It was easier—it prevented me from becoming jaded about that part of his life. “There’s no way Coby Kyler—Major League pitcher—strikes out in the bedroom.”
“Believe what you want, but there’s a reason I haven’t ever been in a relationship.”
I didn’t know what to say. My intuition told me he exaggerated, and this had more to do with his shoulder and career than his ability to hit a home run in the bedroom. As we lay there in silence watching the blades spin on the fan and the shadows dance around the walls, his pinky hooked with mine and gently squeezed.
“Hey, E.T.?” His voice broke the quietness, and he turned his head to face me.
“Yeah?”
“How angry is MMMBop going to be that I crashed Thanksgiving? I can go to my dad’s if I need to.”
I fought the grin though I couldn’t stop it. I had no idea where he came up with this stuff. Coby didn’t mean any harm in his teasing, but the silliness took me back to the way we were pre-draft…and I’d missed it. “Hanson? Seriously? That might be the worst one yet.”
“I’ve got an entire arsenal lined up. I can keep them going all night.” He felt it, too. It was evident in the way his nose scrunched and the light bounced off his eyes. “Seriously, Ellie. I don’t want to cause you problems.”
Coby had been on the road more than he’d been home recently, and he wasn’t aware of the strain that existed in my relationship with Ryan. “He’s not here.”
“Why not?” He almost sounded offended. The disbelief shone in the grimace that replaced the boyish grin that had been there just seconds ago.
“It just didn’t work out.”
“Ellie…when did you start keeping secrets?”
“Hmmm…April, two-thousand thirteen.” I winked at him. “I’m kidding. I’m not keeping anything from you. We just haven’t had much time to hang out. No big deal.”
“Okay, well since he’s not here and everyone else is asleep, I’d say we have all the time in the world. So talk. I’d hate to have to tell NSYNC bye bye bye.” Coby thought he was clever, and I couldn’t deny his ability to bring a smile to my face.
“It’s really not a big deal. Since he graduated and got a job, he’s been…excited to progress our relationship.”
“Like he’s talking about getting married?”
I sat up and crossed my legs. My hand got stuck in my tangled hair when I ran my fingers through it, and it dawned on me how atrocious I must look. But as quickly as the thought came, it left. “Maybe, although right now he’s pushing me to move in with him.”
“Are you ready for that?”
“I have no idea. Possibly after I graduate, but he doesn’t see the point in waiting.”
Coby wore his emotions on his sleeve…and his face. He couldn’t hide anything from me. His brow quickly furrowed, and his lips pursed just before the muscles in his jaw flexed. “You don’t have to stay because of me, E.T. You know that, right?”
“That’s just it. You’re finally home, I have a couple of months before you go back for Spring Training, and it’s my senior year. I’m not interested in making any massive changes. Student teaching begins in January…and honestly, it just feels off. Should there really be this much hesitation to move in with your significant other if it’s the right thing to do?”
I’d battled that question in my mind since Ryan began his quest for me to live with him. My hesitation to move in with Coby had been about my desire to experience life as any other college student would—my reluctance never had anything to do with living with Coby. But now that I was there, it felt like home. We’d picked out all the furniture and decorated the rooms together. I might not have a penny invested in the property, yet it felt like mine. Like it was where I was supposed to be. There was no pressure there—for anything. And that wasn’t the case with Ryan.
I had left out the parts about Ryan being ready to take our relationship to the next step physically. We’d been together long enough that people assumed we were intimate, and still, he’d stuck to his guns about intercourse until he graduated. That wasn’t to say we hadn’t found creative ways to be together, but we hadn’t done the deed. When it hadn’t been an option, it was something I craved often, and now that it was a possibility, I no longer cared about it. Nonetheless, I couldn’t decipher if that was because I didn’t want to share that with him, or if it was because Melinda had just dropped out of school because she got pregnant. Either way, I was too close to the finish line to derail all I’d worked for in the last three and a half years.
“I don’t know. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand where he was coming from. You guys have been dating for a while. Now that he’s out of school, it makes sense he’s ready to pursue life with you. He’d be crazy not to, Ellie.”
“Coby, I haven’t even secured a teaching position for next fall. I could end up with a job in another state, or not find one at all. There are lots of graduates vying for high school English positions in the area. And what if I decide to get my master’s degree? There are just so many balls in the air right now, I don’t think I should make any commitments.” I felt like I was arguing my case before a grand jury, even though Coby hadn’t put me on trial.
He struggled to sit up without using his left arm, and my heart hurt to see him in pain. Then he scooted back against the headboard, settled against the pillows, and offered me his hand. When I took it, he pulled me between his legs, pressing my back to his chest, and circled my stomach with his forearm. I relaxed into his embrace and exhaled the breath it seemed I’d been holding for months.
“If you’re not ready, E.T., then y
ou’re just not ready. You don’t have to make a decision today. Trust your instincts.” He lifted a finger on the hand that rested casually near my belly button, and I touched my pointer finger to his. “And, Ellie…if Ryan loves you, he’ll wait.” His use of Ryan’s actual name didn’t escape my attention—nor did the sentiment behind it. My best friend knew I loved my boyfriend, and I had no doubt Coby would step aside to make room.
Peace washed over me. I didn’t have an answer, but I was safe with Coby by my side. The rest would fall into place.
Coby and I didn’t talk about his arm again while we were home. We didn’t see our parents often, and Coby, with his schedule, saw his father even less frequently. So, we spent the holiday giving thanks for what we had as a family. The greatest thing about my mom’s dining room table was the power it held to bring us all together. Leaving at the end of the short break was harder than it had ever been in the past. For the first time since I’d left for college, I wished I could stay in the cocoon of our childhood.
It always took Coby a couple of days to settle into a routine during the off-season, but his withdrawal was more than his need to catch up on sleep and eat his weight in pizza. He blew me off when I asked about it, yet he refused to leave the house. The couple of times he’d been willing to talk, I heard the depression setting in, and whether Coby would admit it or not, I had to find him help.
The internet hadn’t proven to be the wealth of information I’d hoped for, and I was limited on where I could ask for help. I didn’t think anyone would connect me to Coby, but I knew better than to trust anyone with his name. It dawned on me, walking across campus, that the University of Alabama had one of the best pre-med programs in the country…which also meant there were numerous doctors on campus who were much more likely to assume my inquiry was related to Ryan.
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