by Mindy Klasky
He’d fucked up.
Sure, he’d made the decision—one he still thought was best. Twelve, er, Jamie shouldn’t have been tied to him, shouldn’t have given up everything she loved, just to be with him. She shouldn’t have been forced to take on the life of uncertainty he was willing to risk for himself. What if he wasn’t good enough to make it to the majors? What if an injury ended his career before it even began? What if he was traded somewhere terrible, somewhere no sane person would ever want to live?
So he’d listened to Ep and tried to protect her the only way he knew how. He’d taken the decision from her. And from Olivia, too.
But even as he thought that, he realized she’d done some taking, too. “Jesus, Twelve.” He saw the irritation spark inside her eyes, but he didn’t bother to correct himself. “Didn’t it cross your mind I’d want to know? I had a right to know!”
~~~
Sure, it had crossed her mind. A million times. But she wasn’t going to give him that power over her. Wasn’t going to let him back into her life.
Because he’d pretty much destroyed her, that day in Lockhart Hall. He’d torn her heart out by its roots, splintered it into a million jagged pieces and left her gasping, still trying to figure out exactly what had happened.
For a long time, she’d asked herself how she hadn’t seen it coming. Why hadn’t she realized he was going to break up with her? Why hadn’t she suspected that their four years of college were just that—fun times before moving on, a finite time and space that he’d never consider expanding.
It had felt like a death. She’d gone through all the stages of mourning, just like her Sociology textbook had told her she would.
Denial: In those first shattered minutes, she’d refused to accept what he’d said. He’d be back in a minute. He’d gone to take a run around campus, to work off some of his excess energy. He was nervous about graduation, about testing his skills in professional baseball. But he’d be back. He loved her, and he’d be back for her.
Anger: In the hours that followed, she’d realized he was an asshole. If he’d known all along that he was going to leave her behind, the least he could have done was let her in on the game. She should have taken the chance to sleep with the hockey jock across the hall when he’d asked her out that drunken night in February. The hockey jock wasn’t going pro.
Bargaining: In the days after graduation, she’d been willing to do anything to get Nick back. She could fly to California, show up at his minor league game that night. She could set aside her plans for her photography business. She could keep house for him, do whatever he needed to make his life easy. He’d obviously only left because he was stressed, and she’d do anything humanly possible to make that better for him.
Depression: For two full weeks, she knew he’d been right to dump her. She was an iron weight, dragging him down. No sane person would ever want to spend time with her, much less live with her. Why had he even put up with her for four years? She was fat, and ugly, and she couldn’t take a picture to save her life. She’d been fooling herself, thinking she could ever make the photography gig work. She couldn’t even get out of bed, much less build a career.
Acceptance: A month after graduation, she broke through to a new realization. Nick had left her, sure. But she had a diploma from the University of Raleigh. She had a loving family. She had skills—she could write well, and she was better with a camera than anyone she’d ever personally met. She’d be okay. Lonely, yeah. And sad. But she’d be fine. She’d survive.
And then she’d realized she was pregnant.
It was her own damn fault. She was the one who’d come down with bronchitis. She was the one who’d forgotten all those warnings on her monthly packets of birth control pills, the ones that said that antibiotics made them substantially less effective. She was the one who’d celebrated her first day of real recovery by seducing Nick, by welcoming him back into her bed.
The funny thing was, all the books said she should slip right back into those five stages once she discovered the pregnancy. She should plummet straight back into the emotional chaos. But she’d never been tempted to go back there again, not even for a heartbeat. It was like she’d lived through a forest fire, and her fingers were immune to the flicker of a single match.
In the end, she had Olivia and none of the rest of it mattered.
“Jamie?” Nick said, and she heard the dark challenge in his voice, the fire beneath his words that matched the gleaming copper of his hair.
She shook her head. “No. You don’t have the right. You don’t have any rights at all. You’re the one who walked away.”
He closed his eyes like she’d slapped him, and he kept them closed as he said, “This is different.”
“How?” There. She did still have some anger to draw on. It scorched that single word like wildfire. She let a little more of her rage bleed into her voice as she said, “Is it different because there’s an innocent child you can walk away from now? I don’t trust you, Nick. I’ll never let you hurt Olivia the way you hurt me.”
She watched him swallow, heard the sound above the thunder of her own heartbeat. It was so hard to stand here with him. How many times had she seen light glinting off the stubble of his day-end beard? How many times had she seen his mouth twitch as he searched for a specific word? How many times had she watched those ridiculously long eyelashes, waited for them to rise, to reveal the green eyes beneath?
The green eyes that matched her daughter’s.
The green eyes that looked at her now with the same grim determination she’d last seen seven years before, in an overheated dorm room, when he’d cut the bonds between them forever.
“I could have done something,” he said, and his voice was soft enough that she actually took a step closer to him. “I could have helped you.”
“I didn’t want your help,” she said.
“I could have sent money.”
“I didn’t need your money.”
“Dammit, Twelve, I should have been there for you!”
She didn’t bother answering. There wasn’t anything to say. The old nickname gave the lie to the rest of his statement—he should have been there, but he’d given up that right. He’d forfeited it the day he’d chosen to walk out. Nevertheless, she wasn’t surprised to hear his next question, the one she’d been dreading from the moment she’d seen him in the dugout.
“Can I see her? Will you let me talk to her?”
“Nick…” She surprised herself by not knowing the answer to his questions. For years, she’d told herself she had to protect him, had to keep him from feeling responsible for Olivia. She had to protect Olivia too, had to keep her safe from a man who could walk away without a backward glance. But he was asking for involvement now. His eyes were open, and she had no excuse.
“You can be there,” he said. “I just want to meet her.”
“Let me think about it.” She saw the defiance settle in, tracing the lines of his lips, of his rugged jaw. He’d fight her on this. With phone messages and texts, with hand-written letters in her mailbox. With lawyers and judges and juries, if she didn’t give in.
She sighed. “Let me figure out the right way, Nick. I don’t want Olivia hurt.”
When he nodded, the wave of relief was so strong she almost sank against the rack of towels. “All right,” he said. “But don’t take too much time. I’ve lost six years already. I’m not willing to lose much more.”
She started to figure out an answer, but he was already walking out of the laundry room. She stayed behind, breathing deeply of the clean linen scent. She wanted to bury her face in the closest stack of towels. She wanted to climb into the pure white laundry, curl up in a soft nest, fall asleep and never have to worry about the crazy outside world again.
But DJ Thomas was waiting. Robert, too. And Olivia, of course.
Everyone looked up expectantly as she returned to the dugout. They thought she was fine when she picked up her camera. They accepted her smile,
her instructions, her competent orders for the rest of the shoot.
And not one person asked her where Nick Durban had gone. Not one person commented on the dramatic new path her life was taking. Jamie tried to forget it all, too, as she built a perfect photo spread for the Rockets.
~~~
The next morning, Nick leaned against his kitchen counter, chugging down chocolate milk after his run. He’d gone five miles, the usual route, but every goddamn step had felt uphill. Usually, running made him feel better. He fell into a rhythm, broke away from whatever thoughts were nagging him—how he’d missed a throw home the night before, why he hadn’t turned a double play.
But the thoughts hanging over him now were a hell of a lot more important than any double play of his career.
He kept reliving yesterday’s conversation in the laundry room. The laundry room! Christ. He could at least have found a decent place to talk to Twelve. Ormond would have let him into one of the suites. They could have left the park altogether.
But the location of their talk hadn’t been the real problem, and he knew it. The real problem was that he’d fathered a child, and he hadn’t had the first idea until yesterday afternoon.
He couldn’t say he was surprised. “Surprised” was for relatively unimportant things like hitting a walk-off home run against Atlanta’s closer. Nick was astonished. Floored. Staggered.
Great. He was a goddamn thesaurus.
In the abstract, he understood Jamie’s position. Of course she knew he’d never hurt their daughter, not physically. He’d taken care of his nieces and nephews for years, and no one had ended up at the emergency room, not even once.
But that record would never change the fact that Jamie didn’t trust him. Every word he’d said to her that last day in college, every sentence he’d repeated from Jeremy Epson’s script, had been designed to drive Jamie Martin away. When Nick did a job, he did it well. He’d left no room for doubt with Twelve. He’d cut as hard and as deep as he could, because they’d both needed to be free.
That’s what his agent had told him to do. That’s what his lifelong dream had required. And if he called Epson now, if he read him the Riot Act, Ep would laugh that New York bray and say, “I did what you hired me to do. I gave you the advice you needed.” He’d say, “You’re playing with the Rockets now, so what are you really complaining about?”
Nick took off his T-shirt and mopped his face dry. He shoved the milk carton back in the fridge and prowled to the living room.
He should have gone over to the park instead of taking a run. He could have worked out in the weight room, focused on his lats, on that stubborn oblique strain that only the off season would let heal right.
He didn’t give a damn about his obliques. He was just cooking up reasons to see Jamie again. To talk to her, about anything at all. To speed up her thinking about Olivia.
Swearing, he collapsed on his couch and picked up his dog-eared copy of The Sun Also Rises. He forced himself to read a few pages of the familiar taut prose, to plow through the emotions that were shoved down and down and down until they compacted into bedrock.
That shit was a waste of time.
Like a man working through a new weights regiment, he picked up his computer. He’d told himself the other day: his life with Jamie was over. Time to remind himself of that truth, in living color. Time to see if Shygirl6 had written back to him. It would be like taking medicine, routine doses until his goddamn heart caught up with his brain.
He navigated to the TrueLove website and found a bright red heart pulsing over the usual logo. He rolled his eyes at the stupid graphic, but he opened his inbox.
So Shygirl6 had a favorite body part. And a favorite position. All he had to do was tease her a bit, and maybe he’d get answers to both of those questions.
This was stupid. He could better use his time hacking through the familiar Hemingway.
But he could use a little diversion. Some harmless flirtation. A little rewiring, until he accepted the reality that he was never going to have Jamie in his life again, not in any romantic way. Shit. She hadn’t even told him about his daughter. She wasn’t ever coming back, and the sooner he got that through his head the better.
It wasn’t like anyone ever met their one true love through online dating. Shygirl6 had to be in it for fun, for distraction. Just like he was. Just like he knew he needed to be.
He glanced at the Live Five Questions for the day.
What was his favorite postage stamp? Okay, so much for relying on TrueLove’s brilliant social engineers.
He opened up a text window and started typing. “Hey. I don’t think you really want to know my favorite postage stamp, what brand of soap I use, whether I prefer turkey or ham, or if I’ve ever gone skinny-dipping. I’ll skip all that and say I hope you’re having a nice day.”
He read back over the words once and considered erasing every one of them. But if he did that, he might as well delete his account. And that would be stupid. He was paid up through the end of the month. And he had to take his medicine.
He hit Send and leaned back on the couch.
~~~
Jamie was curled up beneath a quilt, sipping her third cup of chai from an oversize mug. Olivia had woken her three times the night before, resisting every maternal ploy to get her back in bed. Of course, that meant the kid had been an animal to wake up that morning. Every bit of their routine had been thrown into chaos as Olivia complained about breakfast, complained about the clothes Jamie laid out, complained about breathing.
Okay. She hadn’t actually complained about breathing. She’d just made such a histrionic show of doing it that she might as well have been complaining. Jamie had never been so grateful to drop her daughter off at the gaping front door of James K. Polk Elementary School.
Jamie could only hope that Olivia was in a more pliable mood that afternoon. She grimaced. Lauren still didn’t have a verdict from her doctor; she was supposed to see a specialist on Monday. This was the first time since arriving in Raleigh that Jamie had truly regretted the distance from her family. If she’d still lived in New York, she could have taken Olivia to her mother or to one of her sisters—no questions asked, no need for lengthy explanations. If Jamie had been in need, her family would have taken care of her.
Of course that care wasn’t string-free. Jamie couldn’t have spent the rest of the morning curled up in the perfect quilt-lined nest in the corner of her ideal couch in the peace and quiet of her flawless tiny home. She couldn’t have nursed her cup of vanilla chai and allowed herself to feel, to work her way across the shifting sands of the emotions Nick Durban had stirred up in her the day before.
Because, like it or not, Nick had stirred up quite a lot in her.
She’d thought she was done dwelling on their past. She’d imagined that she’d reached some sort of peace with what he’d done. She’d told herself plenty of stories about how she’d grown, how she’d become a better person because of standing on her own two feet.
But the truth of the matter was, there’d been something wonderful about sharing a life with someone. Even in the protected madness of college life, she’d thrived knowing Nick was there for her, and she was there for him.
She remembered the quiet times, how easy it had been to literally lean on Nick, to study together, to just be. She could hear herself reading a passage out loud from Hawthorne or Melville or Ralph Waldo Emerson, something from that course on Self-Reliance and the Transcendentalists. Nick had thought the whole philosophy was hogwash, and they’d argued for hours, only giving up when they were both too tired to speak. But not too tired to make love—slowly, comfortably, spooned against each other in the laughable confines of a university dorm-room bed.
She shook her head. That was ancient history. She was a different woman now.
Defiantly, she grabbed her computer. Soon, she’d be able to update her photography website, to send out word through social media that she was ready to take Raleigh society by photographic sto
rm. She’d waited for months to boast a “get” like Nick Durban. The Professor himself—who could be safer? More family friendly? More inviting for the clients she hoped would break down her door? She only had to wait for the entire calendar shoot to wrap up, and then she could complete the serious promotional work she needed to rebuild her career.
But before she could open her website, she ordered herself to check out TrueLove. She didn’t want to do it. She wanted to think about all the great times she’d shared with Nick in college.
But that had been seven years ago. In the interim, she’d done everything in her power to build a life without Nick. And Ashley had been right when she’d pushed the online flirtation—it was well past time for Jamie to move on, completely, whole-heartedly. Even if Nick finally knew about Olivia.
Especially if Nick finally knew about Olivia. Jamie had to do everything in her power not to slip back into schoolgirl dreams of a glowing, happy future. An impossible future that would only break her heart all over again, the next time Jeremy Epson said, “Jump,” the next time Nick settled on whatever he thought was best for her, for them.
Steeling herself, she opened her inbox and found a short message from RoadWarrior ending with, “I hope you’re having a nice day.”
And suddenly, she was. Because she’d heard from a guy who liked her, at least enough to send her a message. Because she’d heard from a guy who wasn’t wrapped up in years of angst and misery, in lies and silences and all the spaces that could grow between them.
It was silly, she knew. She had no idea what RoadWarrior looked like, where he worked, anything about him, really. But there was that little rush of excitement when she saw his words, that tightening beneath her heart that made a smile bloom on her lips.
She typed back, before she could think of all the reasons not to. “I AM having a nice day. Surprised to hear from you, though, in the middle of it. And I think those Live Five Questions are pretty stupid too.”
She hit Send and shook her head, calling up the software that ran her complicated website. She could rough out the updates, even if she couldn’t make them live yet. The trick was to tell a story about the Rockets. She started with a few warm-up pictures she’d taken outside of the stadium—clear, clean shots of the architecture, dramatic stretches of green grass, of red-brown base paths.