The Ground Beneath

by Stephanie Vercier

I’m tempted to snap back and tell Sheila that I’m an adult, that I’m allowed to make my own decisions and that perhaps she doesn’t know Hunter quite as well as she thinks she does. But it’s obvious to me her concern for me is genuine, and so I instead answer what seems to be her biggest worry.

  “My parents already know. My dad met Hunter yesterday, and he likes him.”

  Sheila’s eyes widen. Then she lets out a sigh and nearly falls into her chair. “Hunter can be a very likeable guy. But I can’t imagine he’s anything at all close to the kind of man your father really wants to see you with.”

  “Because a guy like Wyatt was better?” I can admit I ask it in the most snarky fashion possible, but the fact is that Wyatt was exactly the kind of guy my parents wanted me to marry, and yet he’d been living an entirely different life behind closed doors. What Hunter’s done in his life is a known quantity. In going forward with him, I’m doing it with both eyes open.

  If Sheila read the articles Daniella wrote about me, she’d know just what I mean about my now deceased husband. By the way she looks at me now, her eyes nearly frozen in place, I’m pretty sure she has but is too embarrassed to admit it. I’m about to tell her it’s okay, that of course she would have been interested in the details, but then her eyes move.

  “Anyway,” she finally says, clearing her throat and pressing a stray hair back into place. “I’ve made my feelings known, done what I could, and I can only hope you won’t throw me under the bus if things turn sour.”

  “I would never do that, Sheila.” I sit a little straighter in my chair. “You’ve been so good to me, and that’s the only thing my parents will ever need to know. I take full responsibility for my relationship with Hunter because that’s what adults do, right?”

  Her shoulders sag as she slides the palms of her hands to the side of her face, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples like she has a splitting headache.

  I imagine the worst, like she’s going to go into a long speech about how I’m not as much of an adult as I think I am and that my parents will still blame her for anything that goes wrong and that Hunter is so much worse than I could ever imagine. But then she pops her eyes back open, settles her hands on her desk and says, “Then let’s move on, shall we?”

  “Sure… yes. That sounds good to me.”

  She organizes some scattered papers into a neat stack, turns them around and pushes them to my side of the desk. “I’ll need ten copies of these, and I’d like you to place a call to Henry Carmichael—you should have his number. Please remind him that we have a meeting at noon sharp and that if he doesn’t want to come to the office, then we can go to him.”

  Just like that, we’ve thankfully gone from personal disagreement back to our professional working relationship. I take a brief look at the first page of what turns out to be a legal agreement for representation. It begins to answer the question of what Theresa Carmichael was doing here so early.

  “So, we’re signing Henry on?” What a boon for Sheila, considering Henry is one of the Seahawks’ most popular players.

  “And his wife. I usually don’t like to represent non-athletes, but they come as a pair.”

  “Does she need representation?” I ask, trying to find the answer for myself in the paperwork.

  “She’s a hot enough commodity, locally at least,” Sheila says, though her words lack enthusiasm. “She’s done some regional commercials, has a jewelry line and is developing a web series. The commission won’t be much, but her husband’s business will more than make up for it.”

  “That’s amazing, Sheila. I guess the wine we brought her in Santa Clara did the trick?”

  “No… I don’t think that was it. Honestly, I have no idea what brought her to me, but she called yesterday afternoon, eager as could be to get out of their current contract and jump ship. I don’t have any desire to question her too deeply and risk pissing her off.”

  I really had missed a lot by not being in the office yesterday. If I’d been here instead of in Coalton, I might have been the one to field Theresa’s call.

  “Are you planning to celebrate? I can make reservations for you and Lisa if you’d like. I’m sure she’d—”

  “No need,” Sheila says with a heavy sigh. “Lisa caught a flight to New York last night to explore her career opportunities. Seems as though I have about as much say in what she does as I do in you making a giant mistake with Hunter.”

  Her barb wounds me, but not enough to keep me from feeling sympathy and a small measure of surprise at Lisa leaving.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. It’s all I’ve got in my arsenal.

  “Don’t be,” she says. “Being sorry is no way to live.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  HUNTER

  “That rotator cuff needs to fucking heal already,” Josh says after he swings his golf club and shoots the ball across the green.

  “Why? So I can beat you again?”

  Josh hoists his golf bag over his shoulder and starts walking toward the ball. “I’d rather get my ass kicked than play by myself.”

  “Well, I’m here aren’t I?” I needed to get out of my condo for a few hours while Alli was at work. I’d lived alone for years, but now the place feels empty and depressing without her.

  “Not the same,” Josh says. “And it’s not just the rotator cuff.”

  I walk along with him, clouds shifting over the sun, a chill in the air as we near October. “What are you talking about?” My mind is so full of images of Alli and what we’d shared that I think maybe I missed something.

  “You! You’ve been different ever since you met that girl, that Allison chick. You don’t even want to hang out like we used to.”

  “Are we not hanging out now?” I realize I sound like a dick, and I feel a snap of guilt at the possibility my friend really does miss me.

  He sighs as we continue on, shaking his head and staying quiet until we reach the ball. His stance is all wrong when he swings, and the shot is bad, the ball flying hard left when it should have gone hard right.

  “Fuck!” Josh beats the ground with his club and releases a string of obscenities, and it’s the most upset I’ve seen him in a really long time.

  “Jesus, man.” I grab the club and stop him from tearing up the green any more than he already has. “You’re going to have us thrown off the course.”

  “Like we can’t pay for the damage,” Josh says angrily. “We’ve got more money than God between us.”

  Now I’m the one getting pissed off. “You give me shit about Alli, like I’m a terrible friend, and then you act like a total dick yourself. What the hell is your problem, Josh?”

  He turns to look at me, narrowing his eyes. “I thought you and I were on the same wavelength, no settling down, no falling in love—”

  “Who says I’m in love?” It comes out like a reflex, the kind of thing someone who has sworn off relationships would say, but even as the words pass through my lips, I know how untrue they are.

  Josh nearly laughs. “I saw pictures from that thing at the hospital. You had your arm around her… around that Allison girl like she was your girlfriend. And you’ve been avoiding my calls. You don’t have time to go out. Your head is all up in the clouds. So what the hell else am I supposed to think except that you’re falling for her?”

  It hasn’t been that long, not even a full day since I told Alli that I’m in love with her, and yet no doubt it’s written all over my face for the world—in this case Josh—to see. “I really look that different?” I ask, curious if there’s an actual physical change in me.

  His laughter is cutting. “You do love her then, or you think you do. And yeah, I saw it the first time you disappeared at The Hive. It’s like you’ve joined a fucking cult or something.”

  I shake my head, not wanting to believe I’ve been walking around with a cult stare. “That’s not how I see it. Actually, it feels like I’ve joined the real world, can finally feel what almost everyone else who falls in love for real g
ets to experience.”

  Josh laughs. This entire thing is amusing him. It’s annoying, but when he starts to walk toward the ball, I follow. He’s my friend, and I don’t have many of those, not real friends at least. So I figure I’ve got an obligation to really hear the guy out.

  We reach the ball, and he takes his swing, hitting it in the right direction this time.

  “Haven’t you ever been in love?” I ask him after we watch the ball land.

  “In high school,” he says, his tone subdued. “At least I thought I was.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  He scratches at his cheek, his lips pressed together in a grimace. “Usual story. Boy meets girl. Girl has boy by the balls. Girl cheats on boy. Boy promises himself he’ll never let a girl fuck him up like that again.”

  It’s not much to go on, but I don’t think he’s going to tell me more than that. “So, that’s it. That made you swear off love?”

  He laughs. “Like that wasn’t enough? It made me realize what a waste of time relationships are, at least with chicks.” He shakes his head. “I thought we were the same, you and I. I didn’t ever think you’d go all domestic.”

  “Come on,” I say, following the ball. “This thing with Alli is just starting—”

  “You gonna keep calling her Alli now, huh?”

  “That’s right. And I get why you’re upset, and I’m going to work on being a better friend, but I’m not going to stop what I’m doing because it pisses you off, Josh. Sometimes I feel like you and the guys just use me to get more women, so I don’t think it’s wrong of me to want something for myself.”

  He doesn’t say anything to that.

  “I want to be a different person,” I continue, “maybe the person I always thought I was supposed to be, not the guy I’ve been pretending to be.”

  He stops short. “Pretending? What the fuck does that mean?”

  I’ve never been completely honest with Josh about my childhood. Sure, he knows about my mom and my aunt—everybody does—but he doesn’t know about the deviant who took away the innocence I still had. And I wasn’t about to tell him something I’m sure he’d rather not know.

  “Sometimes you have to be a certain way to get ahead,” I attempt to explain. “You know, like you don’t want baggage to weigh you down. Well, I got ahead. I’ve been a fucking quarterback in the NFL for years, so maybe I can ease back, maybe I don’t have to be that way anymore.”

  Josh doesn’t say anything like, Oh, that makes total sense, or, I can absolutely see your point. He just kind of looks at me, then asks, “We going to play through or what?”

  So much for a profound friendship moment.

  “Yeah… sure… let’s play through.”

  While Josh was the one to bring Alli’s name up, he doesn’t mention her again. In fact, he doesn’t say much at all as we push through the first nine holes, and he doesn’t start speaking in full sentences again until we’re making our way through the back nine. By the time we’re finished and driving toward Seattle, he acts like we never argued, like he was never upset about my relationship with Alli.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” he says from the driver’s seat of his SUV.

  I risk looking at my phone and checking the time. I’d wanted to at least offer to take Alli to lunch, even if I knew she’d probably say she was too busy with work. “Uh… I don’t know. You mean for lunch?”

  He taps his fingers on the steering wheel and says, “I had something more exciting in mind, but sure, why not lunch. I sure as hell could eat.”

  I want to call Alli, even just text her to let her know my plans, but I think any form of communication using my phone is just going to piss Josh off, set him on another rant about why I’m such a terrible friend. I’ve never had to navigate the splitting of time between friends and a woman that I love, so I figure this might be good practice.

  I decide I’ll call Alli after we eat. “Sure,” I say. “All that walking made me hungry.”

  I should have known by Josh’s shit eating grin that he had something else in mind than just lunch. And if I’d known he’d end up demanding we eat at his favorite strip club, I could have said no while we were still half an hour south of the city. But watching Josh beg as he parked in the lot in front of the club was not a pretty sight, and the only way to make him stop was to relent.

  I’ve never been a big fan of these places, maybe because I’ve always had the idea a good percentage of the women working in them don’t really want to be there. At least the one we end up in proudly states it’s owned and operated by women and, as far as strip joints go, it’s about as nice as they get. It’s clean and swanky, a lot like The Hive, the type of establishment businessmen entertain their clients at, a place non-threatening enough that other women come in for lunch or drinks, and where any attempt to touch the dancers is strictly forbidden. When we settle in, Josh gets food, but I stick with just a beer, not especially wanting to eat in front of naked women. When Josh’s attention is on the dancers, I’m able to finally send a text off to Alli.

  “I haven’t been laid in over a week,” Josh says, turning back to me, then throwing back his third drink. “I’m going nuts.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have come to a strip club then. Too much temptation for you.”

  I’m not expecting the disgusted, sharp laugh that comes out of his mouth. “Says the guy who apparently can get it whenever he wants. Is Allison a good lay? Or do you still have to teach her a few things?”

  I’m filled with an immediate rage at the way he’s talking about the woman I love, like she’s just some piece of ass, and that anger frightens me. I become aware of my fists balling at my sides, of my jaw clenching, of my heart starting to beat out of my chest.

  “What… did I hit a sore spot?” Josh turns back to the stage, then waves down our waitress and asks for another drink.

  My fury doesn’t dispel on its own, this need to defend Alli. I have to push it down and remind myself that Josh is my friend, that he’s seriously buzzed because every drink he’s thrown down has been a double, and he’s saying shit to upset me because he still feels hurt and ignored.

  But I can’t just stay silent. Before my anger fully subsides, I make sure I’ve got his attention and growl out, “Don’t ever talk about Alli that way again, Josh. I fucking mean it.”

  Finally, he takes notice, his eyes widening as he leans back in his seat. “Jesus… sorry,” he mutters. “I guess I did hit a nerve.”

  “I think we should leave.” He hasn’t finished his food, but I don’t really care. “And you’ll give me your keys so you don’t end up wrapping your SUV around a tree.”

  “Oh… fuck.” He drags his hand over his face. “You think I’m drunk?”

  “You know you are.” When the waitress returns with another cocktail, I tell her to take it away and add it to the bill.

  “I need to piss,” Josh says, his words beginning to slur.

  “Fine.” I look down at my phone—still nothing from Alli—“I’ll wait for you at the front.”

  I leave more than enough money on the table for the food, drinks and a generous tip, then head to the front of the club to wait for Josh. In the meantime, Alli texts back, says it’s been crazy at the office but that she should be off at her usual time.

  I call her back, wanting to hear her.

  “Hey, Hunter,” she says, that sweet sexy voice of hers making me glad I didn’t just text back a reply.

  “Hey, beautiful. I can’t wait to see you later. I’ll pick you up if that’s good.”

  “Of course! It’s great actually. Maybe just wait for me outside the building this time though? I’m not ready to overwhelm Sheila with us quite yet.”

  “Probably a good idea,” I agree.

  In the silence that follows, Alli must get a good listen to the loud music in the background because she asks, “Where are you exactly?”

  Shit.

  I haven’t done anything wrong, have actually averted my
gaze from any part of a woman that isn’t her face, but I still don’t want to have to admit I’m at a strip club.

  And yet I have to, don’t I? I can’t start lying to Alli when she’d been hurt so much by that very thing in the past.

  “I’m with Josh,” I say, “… at a strip club. I’m sorry, Alli. I don’t want to be here. As soon as I can find Josh, we’re leaving.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not what you think. I don’t even like these places. Josh pretty much insisted we have lunch here, and…” I let out a breath. “And I realize I should have just said no. Kind of sounds like I’m blaming it all on him, huh?”

  She actually lets out a soft laugh. “You really don’t want to be there?”

  “I really, really don’t. The only woman I want to see without clothes on is you. I need you to know that.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I believe you. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling the truth.”

  I sigh with relief when I hang up, glad I’d been honest and thankful she believes in me.

  When I stuff my phone back into my pocket, it dawns on me that Josh has been gone a lot longer than it should take for a piss, and I’m beyond ready to get out of here. I call his phone, but no response, so I head back to the table we were sitting at, just in case he hadn’t heard me right. The table is empty, already cleared.

  “Hey, have you seen my friend that was with me?” I ask our server as she walks by.

  Balancing a tray with several drinks on it, she stops and turns back in my direction. “Tall guy with brown hair? Seriously good looking?”

  “I’ll leave the good looking part up to you, but the rest fits.”

  She smirks and says, “I think I saw him in the back hallway on my last trip to the bar actually, the one to the right of the bathrooms.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I’m afraid of what I might find when I head down that back hallway, Josh slumped over and ready to pass out or not there at all, having found his way to one of the smaller dancing stages or bars to get more alcohol. I expect it to be somewhat of a wild goose chase, which I’m not looking forward to, but when I turn the corner into the back hallway, he’s right where the server said he’d be.