by Lila Felix
“Why not buy a new one?”
I felt like a preschooler constantly asking why questions when I should be concentrating on coloring in the lines.
Sitting back on her haunches, she breathed out, hard. “I felt sorry for it.”
“Huh?”
She’s nuts—certifiably insane—feeling sorry for a piece of furniture. I was about to go back inside with the naked people.
At the same time, there was something truly adorable about her optimism—like it could never be shattered.
“It was sitting there in a second hand shop at a flea market. Of course, no one could see what it really was with that disgusting, thick coat of paint hiding everything good about it. So I bought it, decided it deserved to be stripped down—to reveal what was really underneath.”
She began to sand the corners and the edges. It seemed like a waste of time to me. She didn’t do it all at once. Instead, she sanded a piece, wiped it clean and then continued again. Like she was breaking the damned thing in to being redone.
“No physical therapy today?”
“Nah. Every other day.”
I sat on one of her chairs. “So where do you work?”
She smiled again, but it didn’t carry that same glow from before. “You’re stuck on work, huh?”
“All I know is work.”
“Tell me about your work while I sand if that’s all you know.”
After I’d talked for about two hours, she stood and stretched. Her dress rode up a little on her thighs. Damn, the girl had a pair of legs that just wouldn’t quit. She’d listen to me without ever batting an eye. I expected her to be impressed, but instead I found her—bored.
“I need to go eat. I haven’t eaten all day.”
“Yeah, I should probably go eat too.” The thing was—I’d discovered the night before that despite my determination to cook, I’d burned the salmon to an inedible state.
When I looked up, Lyra was starting at me. It wasn’t a new sensation. Women stared at me all the time.
This girl was staring through me and it made my insides curl.
“Do you ever cheat?” The question took me by surprise.
“In soccer?”
That caused a fit of laughter from her. I always felt like a living, breathing joke around this girl.
“No, on your diet. You said you only eat protein and veggies or whatever. Do you cheat on it? I mean, you’re not really in training right now, right?”
Technically I wasn’t in training and after the salmon incident, the only solid food I’d eaten was some grapes and a salad with no dressing because I forgot to buy it at the store.
Because I never go grocery shopping.
My stomach spoke for me.
“Come on. You’re trying something new today, right? A friend and a meal, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.”
I blamed my immediate acceptance of her offer on too many pills, too many brain cell depleting television shows, and too much time alone.
While we walked, I crippled, toward her apartment, I debated whether or not this was a good idea.
The view changed my mind.
Damn, that girl’s hips were made to be gripped—to still her—to rock her toward me—to push against the wall.
Too bad this wasn’t a post-game party and she wasn’t in my bed.
Not that I could do anything with this bum knee.
I bet we would could find a way.
There was also that gnawing that I couldn’t get over, a feeling I got about her. Like she deserved more than what I would offer her. Like she was above all the rest of the girls I’d had.
Like maybe I wasn’t enough.
The smell of tomatoes and basil along with the natural scent of woman enveloped me as she closed the door behind me. I took a look around the place as she took out aluminum foil covered dishes from the refrigerator.
“If you need to wash up, the layout of this place is the same as yours.”
Wordlessly, I walked into the bathroom that may have been in the same place as mine, but was as different from mine as could be. My bathroom was completely white, tub, toilet, and sink, with the exception of the all black towels they’d put in. Her bathroom was plum colored with a light purple shower curtain and towels. Even her name was sewn onto the edges of the towels hanging off the rods.
I washed my hands with the pink bar of soap, taking note of the towel draped over the mirror.
How in the hell was I supposed to see if my hair was perfect if the mirror was covered up?
Chapter Eight
Lyra
Frenzy Stance
Sometimes I forget how weird I am compared to other people. I casually just told him to go into my bathroom—the bathroom, where my mirrors were covered and those necessary pills lay dormant in the cabinet. I only took them when absolutely necessary. It had been almost six months since I’d taken one.
I needed to learn to stop being so trusting.
“Smells good.” He said, strolling back in. His face gave me no clue as to whether or not he thought the covered mirrors were weird. If they did, maybe I’d be lucky enough not to ever have any idea.
“I hope you like Italian.”
He shifted uncomfortably between the living room and the kitchen. “I haven’t had Italian since the day I graduated high school.”
That didn’t really answer my question.
“When I graduated high school, my parents threw a party. They gave me a set of suitcases and a car.”
“Sounds like they were giving you a hint. When I want a woman to leave my place, I put her shit by the door and call a cab.”
Well wasn’t he precious.
That first comment stung. It was so close to the truth that I turned around, halfway expecting him to be reading it from my journal or something. I’d felt exactly that way. They’d given me an extravagant party with a huge cake—the whole house had been decorated.
It was all pointless, of course. The only people that showed up were my parents and my sisters. They’d claimed that over thirty people were invited. My disbelief tinkered between knowing they didn’t invite people or they didn’t want to invite anyone.
The people would only show up to see the show—me on display.
Because after what Abraham had done to me, I was the best news to hit my small town since we got a fast food chain.
It was like they’d given me the complete package in order to ensure that their life and mine would never cross again.
That was just my take on it though.
My parents loved me.
Ignoring his dig, I continued prepping.
“Sit down. It’s almost ready. Do you want water or sweet tea?”
“Water—um—please.”
He acted like saying please was a real imposition.
We ate, well, I ate and Crown inhaled. It wasn’t a lack of manners per se. I thought the boy was just starving.
“Eric said he took you grocery shopping yesterday.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how to cook half the stuff in my refrigerator and there’s no salad dressing.”
His face resembled a child—so pouty and broody about something he couldn’t do. Gray eyes concentrated on his next bite, refusing to meet my gaze. I barely held back a laugh. I half-expected him to say, ‘Crown Sterling doesn’t cook.’ The whole thing was pitiful in the cutest way possible. From where I stood, Crown Sterling couldn’t do shit.
“I was planning on grilling tomorrow. Maybe you can bring your stuff over and I can grill you a bunch. That way you can have it cooked at home. You can just heat it up.”
Hussy.
Liar, liar, dresses on fire. I had not planned to grill the next day. I had planned to begin refinishing the dresser and catching up on my reading. He made a face that looked like skepticism.
The expressions he made when no one was looking compelled me to find out the mysteries behind them. There had to be more to this person—any person—than their job, their precious caree
r.
“That—yeah. Thanks.”
I got up to refill his plate twice after that. He must’ve been starving. Since he made no attempt to make conversation, I did.
“So, Eric’s your uncle?”
“Obviously.”
“He just said he hadn’t seen you in a while.”
The fork clanked on the side of my cream-colored pasta bowl. Either he didn’t like to talk while he was eating—or he just didn’t like to talk at all. Or he didn’t like talking to me.
“Did he say how much of an effort he’d made to see me? I can guarantee the answer would be none.”
“I didn’t ask questions.”
He picked up the fork and finished what was on his plate. “Funny, you sure are good at asking me questions.”
I’d never met anyone like Crown Sterling. He made no effort to maintain eye contact while he was speaking. He blurted out truths without covering them in anything sweet or softening the blow.
It was kind of refreshing and then sour, like drinking lemonade and then swallowing the piece of real lemon in the bottom.
Not the eye contact thing—I could easily spend hours investigating the kaleidoscope of gray in his irises.
“That’s what friends do.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s why I don’t have any. Um—thanks for the meal. I’m sure to be in a carb coma for the rest of the night.”
Somehow his thank you came out like a curse and I didn’t know whether to be offended or grateful.
“Sure. Come over tomorrow if you want.”
He shrugged and halted after slowly making his way to a standing position. He looked down at the dish he’d effortlessly cleaned and then quickly to the sink. I clamped down on my lips in an attempt to quell the smile.
‘Crown Sterling doesn’t do dishes’ I chanted, waiting for his decision.
“Yeah, bye.”
That was a no on the dishes.
Later that afternoon, Tippi came over, looking frazzled. Then again, Tippi always looked frazzled. She was the high strung sort.
“I heard something today.” She said, throwing her bag on my table by the door.
“Oh, accounting gossip. Do tell.” I rubbed my hands together and then went to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea. She was the only person in South Louisiana I knew who drank her tea hot and preferred her cake cold.
She propped herself up on the counter, which made me shiver. I hated when people did that. It was like putting their ass right on my food. I’d asked her not to do it, but she said I was micro-managing her.
“Well, you know that Mr. and Mrs. Bertrand’s neighbor is our receptionist.”
I had no clue, but I nodded just to move the story along. One thing you didn’t want to do was to get Tippi on a tangent.
“So, Chela Bertrand was telling Pam that her nephew just moved here and he’s like kind of famous. She wouldn’t tell where he lived or why he was here.”
There were two ways I could handle this. One, I could tell Tippi everything. There would be swift and heavy ramifications for that option. Tippi had a big mouth. But mostly, my best friend had a tendency to ram her nose in where it didn’t belong. That usually left me with the clean-up.
The second option was keeping it to myself. Our little city was small, but big enough that more than one person could be new in town without the whole place running a gossip mill. Plus, people often bought fishing camps around this area, so new people to the area came and went often.
“That’s the gossip? There’s someone who just moved in and he’s famous. But we don’t know who it is and we don’t know his name or where he lives.”
She jumped down, frustrated. “Ugh, I knew you wouldn’t get excited about this. You never get excited about things. I mean seriously, I could meet him and we could get married. I’d be rich and famous. Think about it.”
I cleared my throat. A warmth swamped my face and neck at the picture of Tippi and Crown walking the red carpet.
Soccer players don’t walk the red carpet, idiot.
“What if he’s a real jerk, Tip? You’d go after a guy just for his money? Anyway, you and I both know that you hate guys in general.”
“Not all of us can just flash a smile and make enough to live on. I’m going home.”
Her tea flooded from my coffee maker into the cup below. Maybe it would calm her down.
“Just stay. Your tea is ready. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Nah, I’m gone. See you later.”
High—strung.
**
The phone rang early the next morning. It was the first of the month, so there was only one person, or people, who called on the first and the fifteenth.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Lyra. How are you?”
“I’m okay, Mom. How are you and Dad?”
“We are great.” She hesitated and I could hear the muffle of her hand against the phone while she spoke to my dad. They went back and forth like that for a few seconds before she came back. “We were thinking about coming to see you—at your house.”
That one sentence had me bolting from my still laying down position. My parents hadn’t been to see me in months. Even when they did come see me, they invited me to a restaurant to eat. It was like seeing where I lived validated my separation from them.
“Okay.”
She let a long sigh blow through the phone. “This is horrible, but can you text us your address? How about this afternoon?”
My parents really must’ve meant business.
“That’s fine. I will cook. About five?”
“That sounds good. Text us the address.”
I got off the phone and texted the address to them. I hated texting. It was one more of those robotic things I could barely bring myself to use, much less embrace.
It seemed so technical—so cold.
That’s when the freak out began.
Chapter Nine
Crown
Off Balance
Before I got into bed that night, completely lethargic from a pasta overload, my phone rang. It was Geraldo, and as much as I wanted to grab the thing up and give him the cussing he deserved for dropping me in this hell hole and then leaving me without another word, I didn’t.
He needed to wait for me.
Asshole.
Going to bed took twice as long with my knee wrapped in all those bandages. Even with the compounded sleep effects from Lyra’s cooking and the pills I’d taken when I got home, it was nearly impossible to get comfortable.
There were too many things swirling through my head.
Like the fact that I didn’t know how much money I had or where it all went.
I knew where most of it went.
None of my teammates had called to check in on me.
My coach hadn’t called.
Then, in the background, but sneaking further and further toward the foreground was Lyra. I didn’t like her at all. She asked too many questions. She treated furniture like a person. She cooked too many carbs. She liked Eric and Chela, two people who I was refusing to like just on principle.
When I talked, she looked me directly in the eyes. It felt like an intimate examination. There was nothing inside to examine. I played soccer, I trained, and I ate. There wasn’t much else to me.
No one looked me in the eye when they talked to me and I wondered why she insisted on it.
I squirmed under her scrutiny.
The really sad part was, I didn’t know how to deal with a girl—sober.
Most of the girls I encountered were already drunk or on the verge of it. It made things easier. They didn’t ask many questions. I didn’t have to lie to them or make up anything. They flirted. I didn’t flirt back. For some reason they found that interesting enough to offer themselves up for some action. The next morning, I made it clear that their purpose was served.
It wasn’t like they thought we were falling in love or anything.
Despite all those flaws of hers, she wa
s fine—hotter than all the women I’d ever seen put together. She moved with a lightness—like she was free of all the things that weighed most people down. Maybe it was because they didn’t weigh her down—maybe it was because she didn’t allow them to weigh her down. I didn’t know which.
I’d never been free of the weight of my life—ever.
She scared me in a way that made me crave more of her, like the start she gave me only made me crave the adrenaline. I was addicted to the fear she put in me.
Lying there, I’d tried to ignore her and found it nearly impossible. Without my music playing or the TV, I was left with my own thoughts and the sounds of her. For someone who proclaimed to like peace and quiet, she sure was noisy. The walls between our apartments must’ve been made of paper. I knew when she washed dishes. I knew what kind of music she liked. The water could be heard at night when she took a bath.
Her nightly routine, whatever it was, consisted of shutting and opening doors and cabinets. Her footsteps thumped on the wood floors in perfect time. There was a rhythmic simplicity to the whole ordeal—I found that I couldn’t properly rest until I heard it.
Deciding that the ten or so minutes I’d procrastinated calling Geraldo back was enough, I picked up the phone and dialed him.
“Crown, how are you?”
There was a marked difference in that greeting. Usually, he would feed me some secondhand cheer section shit.
“I’m a little shitty, G. I can’t play. My manager and my agent don’t call and I have no idea whether or not I’ve got enough money in the bank to buy food. How would you be?”
“Come on, Crown, just a little more time and you’ll be back at it. The owners have agreed to pay you half salary for the games you miss. Most of it will be put toward your debt, but you’ll have to talk to your accountant about that. I will text you her number.”
“Coach hasn’t called—nothing.”
He cleared his throat and hesitated in answering. “Well, they’re busy. You know how busy they stay.”
“And why is my story not being plastered all over the news. I’m one of the best players of all time and according to the television, I don’t exist.”
A bloated pause filled the air in our conversation. “Look Crown, we are doing what we can. We’ll see you when we see you.”