Batter Up: Up Series Book 2

by Robin Leaf

  I waited until Andre left the room before speaking.

  “Etta, I…”

  She put her hands on either side of my thighs and got right in my face. “You will NOT speak to me right now,” she seethed through clenched teeth.

  I smiled. “Yes, I will,” I said quietly.

  “Fine, I’ll get Andre to finish you up, then.”

  I leaned back casually, flexing my arms, of course. “Okay, if you really want to leave me alone with Andre, go right ahead. I’m sure he’ll speak to me,” I wagged my eyebrows at her, “and I’ll be more than happy to speak right back to him.”

  She pushed herself up and turned to the machine. “You’re really resorting to blackmail, Nate.” Ah, I was back to Nate again. Yeah, I deserved that.

  “If you hear me out, it won’t be an issue.”

  She turned on the machine and cranked up the dial.

  I sucked in through my teeth. “Fuck, Etta, ow.”

  She turned it back down. “Wuss.”

  “That was real mature.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot you’re a paragon of maturity.” She turned the dial slowly.

  I waited until she got the levels just right then I grabbed her wrist and turned her around to face me.

  “Will you let me speak to you now?” I slid my hand inside hers. “Please?”

  She shook her head. “Not here.” She pulled her hand from mine. “My office, after you’re iced down.” She watched my leg for a few seconds to see if the muscles were flexing properly. “And after that, you will leave me alone.”

  Fat chance.

  ***

  I followed Etta into her office and closed the door. The big dog bone, the one with the note that said “For Giles,” I left in here earlier was moved off the desk, so I know she saw it. Working on going at her through the things she loves most didn’t seem to have an effect… yet. Later today, she’d get three more surprises. One, the first delivery of a year’s supply of dog food; feeding Giles cost a fortune. Two, a call from Jackson accepting her position. He and I met over Thanksgiving holiday, and I talked him into accepting, asking him to call after my appointment. And three, a generous supply of products from the bath place she loves in her favorite tangerine-vanilla scent, which, I had to admit, would benefit me as well.

  I had to sign the papers on the last surprise I had for her. It would have to wait.

  She sat on the edge of her large desk and motioned for me to sit in the chair. Classic intimidation strategy. She thought she would get the upper hand by being in a position of power. That was perfect. I needed her to feel that she had all the power.

  “Make this quick, Nate,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  I ran my hand over my head. “Etta, I wanted to apologize. I am aware of what a huge ass I was and I wanted to explain…”

  “Fine,” she looked back and grabbed a paper off her desk. “You apologized. Now you can leave.”

  I stood up and moved closer to her. “I’m sorry, Etta, but I’m not finished.” I took the paper out of her hands and laid it back on her desk. “You can at least hear all of what I have to say. Then I will leave.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Well…?”

  “I have been broody and out of sorts since I injured my knee. I’m afraid that my career is over, and as you know, my career is pretty much all I’ve allowed myself to have for the last eight years.” I sat back down. “Then I see you again. I start to reminisce in my head and think of all the colossal mistakes I made with you and dredged up old feelings…” I looked up at her and saw her face softening. “I was a mess that night, Etta. I saw you with my brother, comforting him. Then I saw you with Jackson. That, combined with the shit from my injury and my conflicted feelings for you…I made yet another stupid choice in a string of stupid mistakes with you.”

  “Why would seeing me with Jackson upset you?” She put her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God, you don’t know he’s gay, do you?”

  “Yeah, well, I do now.” I quickly smiled. “I got a little crazy, Etta, which the drinking didn’t help. I fully understand that being drunk is no excuse.

  “Then you left with my brother. Jackson calmed me down and drove me home, but when I got there, I walked in my house and saw Jake having sex with Ashley, and I snapped.”

  “Why would that make you snap?”

  I swallowed and looked down. “Because I thought Ashley was you.”

  She was quiet, so I looked up at her. Her eyes had gone smoky dark. The amount of hatred on her face? She looked like she was going to murder me right then and there.

  “Get. Out.” Deadly.

  “What am I missing?”

  “If it had been me with your brother, it would serve you right!” she yelled, picking up her stapler and throwing it at me, but I dodged it and it hit the wall. “You fucking son of a bitch!”

  I stood up. “What the hell, Etta?”

  She picked up the bone and swung it at me, narrowly missing my nose. “After all these years, you think you can just charm your way back into my good graces with some lunches and a stupid fucking apology?” She swung it again, but I ducked. “It almost worked.” She threw the bone on the ground and turned away from me, her hands going to her hair. “God, I’m so stupid.” She turned back and paced toward me, putting her finger in my face. “You know what? That song was the closest thing to the truth you’ve ever said. You never loved me. It was all one big lie!” She pushed me in the chest, hard, on the word lie. She threw her arms out. “Why try now?” She poked me in the chest. “You’ve lived in L.A. with that fucking backstabber for years now, Nate. Or did you find out Emily is getting married so you’d settle for the consolation prize?”

  I was confused. “Emily? What’s Emily got to do with us?”

  “Don’t play dumb.” She laughed humorlessly. “Oh, that’s right. You’re not playing. You were always dumb when it came to me. I’m just glad I saw the real you before I followed through on the biggest mistake of my life. Get the fuck out!” She walked around me and opened the door. Five minions were crowded at the door, obviously listening to our conversation. They scattered like roaches.

  I was pissed. I walked up to her and stood right in her face. “I love you, Etta,” I said quietly, but still angry. She closed her eyes. I cupped her chin. “No look at me.” She opened them. “I love you and I always have, since the first moment I saw you, until this very moment and probably until the day I die.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve never stopped. And I will own up to every mistake I’ve ever made regarding you, but not one of them involved your sister.”

  She nodded her head. “I saw you,” she seethed through her teeth venomously, “with her.”

  I dropped my hand from her chin and stepped back. “No, you didn’t. If you think so little of me to believe I would ever do something like that to you after all we have been through,” I walked away, “then we are definitely done here.”

  ***

  When I drove in my driveway, I realized that I didn’t remember the drive home. It kind of concerned me that I allowed myself to drive so angry and distracted. Plus, the shake in my hand that I don’t remember stopping to get really scared me.

  As angry as I was, it didn’t escape my attention that today was the first time I ever said the actual words to her out loud. It wasn’t my plan, but all my plans never have gone like I wanted them to go. So now what?

  I never in a million years would have guessed that Etta thought so little of me. Even if she didn’t return my feelings, she should have known I would never betray her, especially with her sister. I don’t know what she thought she saw, but at this point, I didn’t care. I. Was. Done.

  I plopped down on the couch and grabbed the remote. Shake in one hand, remote in the other. Something I hadn’t done for almost three months. I flipped the channels, settling on a marathon of some show about puppies on Animal Planet. I dozed off somewhere around episode three.

  “Wow, this is a sight
I haven’t seen in a while,” Jake said, startling me out of sleep. “I take it things did not go well?”

  Jake sat down on the smaller couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “No.” Ashley came in from the kitchen and sat next to Jake.

  “What happened, Nate?” Jake asked.

  “I waited to talk to her alone, I apologized and explained everything I told you I would say last night, but when I got to the part about catching you and Ashley, she freaked out on me. Told me it would serve me right if it was her with you. I told her I loved her and always have, and she said something about seeing me and Emily together and I left.”

  “You and Emily? C’mon, that’s crazy. She should know you would never…” he stopped. His expression turned guilty. “Oh, shit.” He leaned over and rested his face in his hands. “Fuck, Nate. I’m so sorry.”

  I looked back and forth between Ashley and Jake before it hit me.

  “It was you she saw with Emily, wasn’t it?”

  Jake nodded his head. “While you were out looking for her. She must have come home.”

  “Oh my God, that makes so much sense,” Ashley said. “You both sound alike. And from the back, if it was dark, I can see where she thought it was you.”

  “And that’s all she saw. We were on the couch.” He put his head in his hands. “I knew I heard the door close. Emily said she didn’t.”

  “How the fuck can this happen?” I asked.

  “Well, I was sitting on the couch, and Emily had her shirt off and she was straddled…”

  “It was a rhetorical question!” I stood up. “So all this time, Etta saw you with her sister and thought it was me?” I looked at Jake. “She never told you this?”

  “No, but a lot of the comments she made to me about you make more sense now.”

  I sat back down on the couch and grabbed the remote.

  “Wait,” Ashley said. She sat down next to me, grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. “What are you doing? Call her. Go over there. Do something.”

  I looked Ashley in the eye. “No.”

  “No?” Jake asked. “What the hell, Nate? This is a simple fix.”

  “She had eight years to find out the truth!” I yelled and stood up. “I wasted ten fucking years of my life loving that woman, eight of which were spent alone, pining for her, comparing all other women to her, all the while she believes I’m the type of person who would confess my feelings to her and not two hours later, fuck her sister on the couch, a couch where she and I spent so much time.” I turned to Jake. “A simple conversation with you, me or Emily would have cleared this all up. But no, she’s so fucking stubborn. She never told you about it. She hasn’t spoken to Emily in eight years. It was easier for her to believe the worst.”

  Jake looked at me with pity. “Nate…”

  “No, Jake. I believed for eight years that I royally screwed up. That I was to blame for how things ended between us. Hell, they didn’t even technically end. But now I learn it was actually her fault.”

  Ashley tried. “This isn’t her…”

  “Yes it is, Ashley. It IS her fault. It was easier for her to believe that I was the one with her sister rather than consider the possibility that it was someone else. She thinks I’m a total dick.” I threw my hands up. “I’m done. It’s finally over. I can finally let her go.”

  And I walked out of the room.

  Twenty

  August 17, eight years ago

  Since the party, Etta had been increasingly… weird. Things between us? Strained. I didn’t question. I tried to act as if nothing had changed. She took on extra summer classes. She found reasons to stay away from the apartment, even spending a few weekends in Austin with Emily and one in New Orleans with Brody. Miles came and stayed with us more frequently. In fact, we weren’t ever alone. She invited Beth and Chris over a lot.

  She wasn’t really super different when she was around me, just quieter and often lost in thought, borderline distant sometimes. I would feel her staring at me, and when I turned toward her, she looked away quickly. I asked frequently if anything was wrong. I always got the same answer, “Nothing.” She told me once last week that she wasn’t sleeping well.

  This morning, she left before I woke up; the note said she went shopping with Beth. That by itself isn’t strange. What is strange? She’d been leaving a lot of notes lately. And she’d often be gone most of the day.

  So when she got home late this afternoon, I told her I was making dinner for the four of us. I called Chris earlier and asked him to back out at the last minute so I could have time alone with Etta. I was sure she would make up an excuse if she knew the dinner was just for the two of us.

  Chris came through, and he didn’t even have to lie his way out of it. His sister went into labor when she was using our apartment’s pool, so Chris and Beth took her to the hospital. I get that Houston’s heat in August is no picnic, especially for pregnant women, and that she frequently used the pool to stay cool, but her water actually broke in the pool. Add that to the list of reasons why I refuse to use public pools. Grossness aside, I owed that baby for coming two weeks early.

  Etta walked into the kitchen as I was straining the spaghetti noodles. Yes. Spaghetti. Sauce from a jar, salad from a bag, and garlic bread from the freezer. I’m no chef.

  “It smells good,” she commented.

  I smiled. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’m actually a little mad at myself that I’ve never cooked for you before.”

  She smiled. “You’ve made me countless Nate specials.”

  “That’s a sandwich, Etta, not cooking.”

  She laughed. “So boiling some noodles and opening a jar is cooking now?”

  “Hey,” I whined. “If you have to turn on the stove or the oven, it’s considered cooking. So shut up.”

  We sat down at the table to eat. A few bites in, I started the conversation.

  “So, are you sleeping better?”

  She stilled her fork on her plate for a few seconds, then resumed swirling her pasta. “No.”

  “What’s the problem, Etta? You have not been yourself for a while now.”

  She set her fork down and looked at me across our small table. “I’ve been having dreams.”

  “Like nightmares? I read somewhere that it’s good to talk about them. It makes them seem less real and less scary.”

  “I’m fully aware of that, Nathaniel,” she snapped, “but they’re not exactly nightmares.”

  Uh oh.

  She continued. “And it doesn’t feel exactly like a dream. It feels like something else.”

  Double uh oh.

  “Like maybe a memory.”

  I kept my eyes on my plate and kept eating.

  “You know, your silence isn’t really a good thing at this point, Nathaniel.”

  “I didn’t know you wanted me to say anything. I was letting you talk.” Smooth. “What are the dreams about?”

  She paused for a long time. “You.” I looked up at her. “And me.”

  Shit.

  I couldn’t speak. I fucking couldn’t say a word. I thought she didn’t remember anything, and now, I wasn’t sure what exactly she did remember. I was at a total loss. I’m sure my expression wasn’t exactly innocent, either.

  “Nathaniel, did something happen that night?” When my mouth fell open, she added, “Between you and me?”

  I looked down. I didn’t know exactly how to handle this. I knew I had omitted information before and admitting it now would be taken not well at all. But I didn’t want to lie either. I opted for vague. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?” She stood up and leaned over the table. “Either it did or it didn’t, Nathaniel. There is no sort of.”

  I kept my eyes on the table. “Yes sort of. Because I stopped it.”

  She crossed her arms and stared at me. “That’s consistent with one of the versions of the dream.”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “Yes.” She sat b
ack down. “So will you tell me what happened that night so that maybe I can finally get this out of my head. And then afterward, you can explain to me why you’ve kept it from me for two months, which is just like lying if you ask me.”

  “First of all, I didn’t lie. I told you the truth before, just not exactly everything. And I wasn’t keeping it from you to intentionally lie to you, Etta, I was trying to protect you. And me a little, too. I want to keep you as a friend, and I was afraid if you knew the truth, you’d want to move out.”

  “So, you think I’ll think it’s that bad?”

  “No,” I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “That came out wrong. I thought you might be upset.” I threw my napkin in my plate. “Fuck, the more I say, the worse I make it sound.”

  “So why don’t you try the truth?”

  I knew I had to choose my words carefully here, but if I thought too long, she would think I was lying.

  “Okay. Well, you started flirting with me in the car on the way home. I already told you that you said I was hot. Then you started touching my hands and told me you’d thought about them,” I could feel my face redden, “um, at night. When we got here, you smelled me and came inside and started taking off your clothes. You rubbed me, grabbed my hands and…” I stood and started pacing. “You guided my hands… to…” She looked pale and stared at the floor. “I stopped, Etta. I swear I did. That was it. I didn’t even look at you naked, well until you turned around and dropped the shirt I asked you to put on, but mostly, I stayed focused on your face. I knew you didn’t really want me. It was just the drug, and if I had given in, it would have been wrong on so many levels. I swear, Etta, that was all. I told you to get dressed and I left and took a shower. You passed out on top of your covers, and I covered you up and watched over you until I knew you were out of danger. That was it.”