"Yep, and I did," Dani says. “It tore me apart. I did what I could, being a friend to her and to you, even as I knew the truth on both sides."
"And what's the truth, Dani?” I ask.
"I can't tell you! It's not my place!" Dani yells, and I see movement inside. Pete's up, his eyes concerned as he sees her yelling at me. Dani notices too, and waves him back down before turning back to me. "I can't tell you. Only Whitney can do that."
"Great," I whisper. "But she isn't calling me. I only have today off. Then we're in full-on camp mode again through the start of the regular season. Last game's an away game, so the day off is our travel day, and I talked with the team. They've given me your wedding off, but what if she leaves again?"
Dani looks at me and sets a hand on my back. "All right. I shouldn't tell you, but you deserve it, if only to talk with Whitney. She's at her Mom's place—she's staying there until things get settled for her and Laurie."
I nod, too overcome with emotion to form words for a few seconds. "Thank you, Dani. I guess I have been a burden on you."
She shakes her head and her arm slides around my waist. "If you were a burden, I'd never have told you anything, you know. You've been a good friend, and you deserve closure at least. I'd prefer if you find happiness, though."
Now calm again, we go back inside, and I say my goodbyes to Pete and Dani and promise again that I will be at their wedding. Getting in my car, I immediately head over to Ms. Nelson's house. It's funny, really. I call teammates and coaches who are nearly the same age as Ms. Nelson by their first name all the time, but to me, Patricia Nelson is always going to be Ms. Nelson.
Her house is nearly identical to what is was five years ago, although the brown paint on the trim looks fresher than it had been. I realize, sitting there, that of all the time I've been back in Silver Lake Falls, I've never driven down this street. It's like I've been avoiding it, even going out of my way to avoid the neighborhood. Swallowing, I park, and getting out, I feel a sense of deja vu. It's then that I realize I didn't park in front of the Nelson house, but instead a few doors down, and a very familiar set of planters is right there next to me. At least the red flowers have been replaced.
I walk on nearly numb legs to the door, hoping against hope that Whitney is there. Lorenzo, Laurie, Ms. Nelson . . . I don't care about them. Well, Laurie is cute, and she's a nice little girl, and I'd like to apologize to her about the crappy dinner she had last time, but it's Whitney I need to see.
My finger is shaking as I reach out and touch the button, and inside the house, the bell rings.
Please, let it be Whitney.
Chapter 15
Whitney
"No, Lorenzo, I don't think that's a good idea."
I'm talking on the phone, a conversation that I should have had with Lorenzo weeks, if not months earlier, but I was too moved by his care for Laurie to be more firm with him. It's my fault, really. I ended up stringing him along when I shouldn't have. "Yes, I understand that it puts the business at risk. Lorenzo, when I proposed this idea months ago, I thought about that. Of course not! You and I both know that I was always honest with you. I always told you after we broke up that I just don’t love you. I've tried to be as kind as I can about it, and I care for you, but only as a friend. I'm not going to be held hostage by that any longer."
Lorenzo unleashes a long string of liquid Italian in my ear, and I can tell he's either crying or half-drunk, or possibly both. “That doesn't matter. Yes, you care for Laurie, and she cares for you too. But I've made my decision. Laurie and I are permanently relocating to the United States, regardless of how you feel or how it effects our business. I hope you and I can continue to operate as business partners. You're a smart man, and I think you and I can make good money this way. But if your feelings are going to get in the way of that . . . then it's best we make a clean break before either of us gets more financially invested in what would be a doomed project."
Lorenzo's clearly crying now, and I feel a twinge of regret. I do care for him, even if it's not as he needs, and I don't want to hurt him. He goes off again in Italian, and I listen as peacefully as I can. "If that is your decision, Lorenzo, then so be it. I'll adjust my plans accordingly. Goodbye."
I hang up the phone as Lorenzo keeps yelling, putting the phone on silent before he can call back. I'm not going to be emotionally hijacked by a man, even if he does care for Laurie, especially after the way he went off outside the Cafe Italiano. I’m glad that Mom had taken her to the preschool at her church, which offers full daycare or partial daycare, at least until Laurie is ready to start elementary school next year.
Someone rings the doorbell, and I wonder who it is. Mom doesn't get deliveries often, she says, and it's just after eleven. Mom said she was going to go to work after dropping Laurie off, so it couldn't be her. She isn't supposed to be home until six or seven.
I get up from the couch and walk toward the front door, and when I'm about three feet from the painted white wood of the inside, I feel it, a tingle that starts at the base of my neck before becoming a hum that seems to wash through my entire body. Maybe I'm psychic, or maybe I just feel the magnetism, but I'm not surprised at all when I see Troy standing there, a nervous look on his face. "Whitney."
"Troy. I didn't think you knew I was staying here. I suppose I have Dani to thank for this?" I should be pissed that he's here uninvited, but I'm not.
"Please don't blame her," Troy says, and I can't be mad at Dani either. I knew that after Troy gave me his phone number I was avoiding calling him, even though I shouldn't have. I just kept putting it off, hoping the problem would solve itself. I should have called him, but I didn't. Now, he's standing outside my door, and the magnetism is back, and I feel like fate is taking control again. "I damn near begged her in her backyard while their neighbor's dog yapped at a thousand barks an hour."
I can't help it. I smile. "All right, I won't blame her. She just did the right thing anyway. I should have called you. Would you like to come inside?"
Troy nods, and I turn, leading him into the living room. "Have a seat on the sofa. We can talk there. You want something to drink? Water, some Gatorade or something? I'm not sure what a professional athlete like you drinks."
"Careful which player you ask that to," Troy replies with a chuckle. "A lot of my teammates would hit you up for a beer."
"Dani told me you're totally dry. I'll be the first to say I support you in that, but I do sometimes have a glass of red wine with dinner. You can't spend five years in Europe without becoming used to that."
"That's okay, I don't worry about what other people do there. Just . . . I won't let myself down that road, even in the littlest step,” Troy says, pausing while I disappear into the kitchen. I come back with a couple of glasses of apple juice. It's Laurie's favorite and it’s cold. "Thanks. I guess you know why I came by."
"I do," I reply, and I take a sip of my juice to settle my nerves. "We've got a lot to talk about."
Troy nods. "I'll be honest with you, Whitney. When I saw you last week at the stadium . . . it scraped a scab that I thought was a scar."
I nod in understanding. "I'm sorry about that. If it means anything, it reopened a lot of closets that I thought I'd locked closed a long time ago too. No, that's not true. The doors might have been closed, but there were still things stirring inside, even after five years."
Troy nods and sighs. "So where do we begin? I don't want to sound like a melodramatic hysteric, but all I have inside me are hysterical questions. Maybe it's better . . . safer if I just let you tell me what you want to tell, and then we can go from there."
I laugh softly and take another sip of juice. "You've become a bit of a nerd in the past few years. I don't think the Troy I knew would have even used words like melodramatic hysteric. Clement was good for you."
"Coach Jackson was good for me. After the season, he took me in and made sure I had a roof over my head and clothes on my back. More importantly, though, he personally guided e
very step of my college prep. He was the one who cracked the books, who made sure in the dark days that I didn't give up, and made sure I was ready come May for graduation and to go to college."
"When I left Silver Lake Falls, I wasn't sure what I was doing. I just knew I had to do it. I'll get to the why later. I had Laurie in late May, and afterward, I went to university in Europe. I'd already gotten into art and art history by then, and so when Lorenzo offered to go into business with me—his family has some money—I went all-in. For the past two years or so, he and I worked with clients to find art to bring to the States."
"You told me," Troy says, and sips his juice again. "What changed?"
"Laurie," I say honestly. "She's so smart for her age, and maybe I dote on her too much, but she's also precocious, which I guess is another word to say willful, stubborn, and some would say spoiled. Oh, she's charming enough that she gets away with it a lot, but I couldn't have that in her life any longer. In Europe, a pretty little girl like her would be spoiled irretrievably rotten. So, that combined with those rattlings in the closet I mentioned earlier led me to decide that I had to move us back to the United States."
"And Lorenzo's fine with that?" Troy asks. "I mean, he seemed a bit uncomfortable at the cafe, and to be honest, as Laurie's father, he should have a say in it."
I move my foot and wince when I step on one of Laurie's Legos. She loves the things, but she leaves them all over the place and never quite gets them all picked up. "Ouch. Troy . . . Lorenzo isn't Laurie's father."
"What? But you two . . . and the way he seems to care about her . . . I don't understand."
The air is heavy, and I can barely breathe, but I decide to just charge through. "Troy, Lorenzo and I—we dated for a while, but it never worked out because I never loved him. Or to put it a better way, I loved him, but I was never in love with him. He's going back to Italy because of it, because of what was between us all the time. Do you understand?"
"I can understand that. Go on, because I feel like you have something important to say."
Troy is bigger, but he's just as patient as he was years ago, that certain sense of self-composure that is part of his raw magnetism. Maybe on the football field, he lets his fury and anger go, but right now, sitting next to me is a gentle, kind man, matured from the slightly cocky man-boy he was before. "Troy . . . I brought Laurie back to America to meet her father. I brought her back to meet you."
Troy blinks, stunned. "Okay, Marshawn must have hit me in the head too hard yesterday, because I swear you . . .”
"Yes, Troy. You're Laurie's father."
Chapter 16
Troy
I've had one concussion in my football career, a blindside shot during my freshman year at Clement when a guy blindsided me on a kickoff. I'd gone flying through the air, landing in a crunch on the turf, my helmet smacking the ground hard, and everything went fuzzy. I didn't lose consciousness, but for the next few minutes, everything was sort of hazy, like people were moving in herky-jerky slow motion, and when they talked, I could see the lips moving, and words were hitting my ears, but nothing was quite making sense.
That's how I feel now, sitting next to Whitney as she tells me that I'm Laurie's father. I see her stop, her mouth closing, and I see what is in her eyes. It's fear, fear that I'll reject her and reject her daughter. But, how could I?
Instead of answering verbally, I stand up and take Whitney by the hand, pulling her to her feet to wrap her in a hug. Five years of pain and doubt drop away from me in an instant as her body presses against mine, and I'm crying again, this time not tears of hurt or sadness, but tears of joy.
"She's my daughter?" I whisper through my tears, and now Whitney's crying too, holding me close and nodding, her own tears blurring her words, or maybe it's my shirt, I'm not sure.
"She is. Didn't you see the resemblance?"
I set Whitney down, shocked as it all falls into place. The hair color, the eyes . . . "I saw your face when I realized who her mother was," I said in wonder, still holding Whitney's hand. "When she came to me at the stadium, I said to myself that she looked like a combination of people I know, like a merging of two other people . . . then when you came up, I realized what I saw in part of her face, but I never . . . oh, Whitney! Thank you.”
I grab her again in a big hug and spin her around in the living room, both of us now laughing. "Why thank you?" she asks. "I should be the one thanking you. You're the one who gave Laurie to me."
I stop, my mind whirling. That happened after my concussion too. "Whitney . . . so many questions, so much to say . . . wait, first things first. Let me be a part of Laurie's life? I mean, right off the bat, I'll take care of you both, don't worry about that. I'll go to the Hawks tomorrow if you want, and they can take a cut of every paycheck and send it wherever you want, but please, I want more. I want to get to know Laurie. I want to be part of her life, not just a child support payment."
"She's a handful," Whitney says cautiously. “I’m happy to accept the money, not for me but for her. But if you want to be a father, a real father to her, you have a lot on your hands. You're going to have to spend time with her."
"I can do that. Whitney, I play pro football. Most of the guys, except on tape days, we don't even get to work until noon. Hell, I'll walk her to school every day, and spend every Monday that we're not on MNF with her. I like living here in Silver Lake Falls. Most of the people give me peace, and I can still drive to the stadium for practice. I mean, Sundays suck, and travel days, but there's the offseason, and . . .”
Whitney stops me with a finger on my lips, and I see she's smiling. "Don't let your enthusiasm run away with things. I'm telling you she's a handful because she needs more than a playmate—she needs a father. Can you be that?"
I calm, and nod, but there is a red thread of anger in my mind, and I promise myself that I'm not going to give in to that anger. “I’ll be the best father I can be. I'm going to need your help, though. I missed so much already. My God, why didn't you tell me?"
I sit back down on the couch while Whitney remains standing, hugging herself, trying to find the answer that she can put words to. "Troy . . . it was hard. I mean, after that night in the woods, about two weeks later, I started feeling all emotional and loopy. You were there though, so I figured I was just head over heels for you. I started getting sick, and doubts started twisting in my mind. I mean, we'd been careful, right?"
"We were," I agree. "I remember it well. You put the condom on me yourself."
Whitney nods. "I mean, in the past five years, I've thought about it a lot, and you know the conclusion I came to? At this point, it doesn’t really matter. What happened, happened.”
"You have had a lot of time to think about this. But Whitney, that still doesn't answer the main question. Why didn't you tell me?"
"The day I got the test, it was the same day that . . . well, it was the day you came into school after your father beat you so badly. You were so ready to get out of Silver Lake at the time, and I was so chemically screwed up I wasn't thinking straight. Then I took the test, and it was positive, and well . . ."
"Did you think I was going to be like my father?" I ask, trying to keep the fury out of my voice and obviously failing based on the way she flinches. "Did you think I was going to be a worthless piece of shit like he was?"
"No!" Whitney says, and she's not crying but close to it. "I did it because I didn't want you to be forced into a future that you would have been miserable in! We were eighteen, and I knew how honorable you were even then! You'd have given up your future in football to take care of Laurie. Hell, you'd have followed Pete Barkovich into the Navy or the Army or some damn thing and wasted the talent that you've been blessed with! I did it because I wanted to see you become the man you are right now, right here! To become that demon that I saw on the football field a week ago, that I watched in clips and games on the Net for the past five years! I did it because I still love you!"
Whitney stops, covering her mouth a
s the words hang in the air between us. She looks like she didn't expect to say what she said, and I stand up, coming over and taking her hands again. "Excuse me?"
"Remember when I said that there was something stopping me and Lorenzo? It was you, or more precisely, the memory of you," Whitney says, shy again, like she was when we were first dating. “It's true. I’ve never stopped loving you. Seeing you in that Hawks uniform, it just brought it all back to me, stronger and more intense than ever."
I smile and nod, pulling her in for another hug. "Whitney, I have something to tell you too," I whisper in her ear, brushing a lock of hair behind that perfect shell of pink that has been in my dreams for five years. "I never stopped loving you either. I always have."
She draws her head back, and the pain in my soul flares for a moment before she pulls my head down, and we're kissing, the pain disappearing forever as her lips caress mine, soft and tender. My heart sings, but more importantly, my soul cries out, and I pull her closer. We stay there like that for long, beautiful minutes, my Whitney in my arms once again, and I never want them to end.
When she pulls back, there's a look in her eye that I remember, and she takes my hand, biting her lower lip just like she used to. "Come with me," she says, leading me toward the back of the house. "Mom's gone, and Laurie's at preschool. Come with me."
I stop in the hallway, tugging on her fingers. "Are you sure?"
She stops and nods, smiling that smile that captured my heart long ago. "We've only made love once in our lives, Troy. We've only made love once, and look what we created. I wonder what happens if we make love again? And no, I don't mean another baby."
"I'm carrying protection." I chuckle, patting my back pocket where my wallet resides. "Team policy. The trainers hand them out to every player once a week. The owners don't like scandals. They're fresh and fully tested, too."
Fourth Down Baby: A May-December Romance Page 32