Hate the Game

by Holly Hall

  “It’s the gameday crowd, man.” Enzo drained his glass. “That’s why I wanted to go to Rooftop. It’s not as crazy.”

  I caught Holland’s gaze and she covertly rolled her eyes. Where she was low-key—Miss Down-For-Anything—Enzo’s scene was a hundred times more bougie. Like Maseratis in the valet line bougie.

  Theo made a noise that could’ve been either agreement or protest. Enzo didn’t seem to notice.

  “So, Theo,” Holland started, propping her chin in her hand. It was her interrogation pose. I mentally braced myself. “You’ve lived at your place for how long?”

  “Coming up on eleven months now.”

  “How do you like Wicker Park? Are you thinking of exploring other options when your lease is up?”

  Theo shifted his foot onto the rail below the table and shrugged. He didn’t detect where Holland was going with her questioning, but I did. She was barreling toward the topic of us moving in together.

  “I’m not sure.” He found my eyes and I couldn’t help but hold my breath. “I do love the convenience, the distance from downtown and the gym. I’m not committed to it, though.”

  “I’ve been telling Ava that when her lease ends in March, she needs to either find a roommate so she’s not paying so much, or move farther out,” she said. That dirty liar! I’d been begging her to be my roommate for two years, and she’s the one who couldn’t commit. Theo didn’t know that, though, and my mortification magnified.

  “Bro, you gotta invest,” Enzo said, unknowingly coming to my rescue. His stare stayed on one of the many TVs showing the game. “Think of all the money you’re throwing away on renting. You could be putting that into real estate.”

  Where Theo simply wasn’t aware of what Holland was implying, Enzo couldn’t care less. But, the resulting conversation of property value in and around the city took the focus off the prospect of us moving in together. It wasn’t that I couldn’t envision living with Theo. With his cooking skills, I didn’t anticipate the transition being difficult.

  It was everything that went along with it.

  If this went south, our shared living situation would get awkward, quick. Not to mention the questions of who would move out and when, who would keep which pieces of furniture. It was the natural next step for a lot of relationships, much further down the road, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t terrified at the prospect.

  And now my thoughts were working themselves into a frenzy, and I couldn’t fall down that rabbit hole and be distracted all night. I grabbed Holland’s hand. “Did I tell you we went country dancing again?”

  That had the desired effect. She pushed Theo’s shoulder, effectively dragging him from the real-estate debate and into a recount of our night at the Saloon. “Ava Wynn not only went to a country bar, but returned? Did you dangle a bottle of rosé in front of her to get her there?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t all that hard. She was a good sport about the whole thing.”

  “I two-stepped my little heart out,” I said.

  “She did.”

  “We even did spins, flips, all sorts of things.”

  “Hold up,” Theo interrupted, putting a finger over my lips, and I giggled. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration but because you said that, I’m definitely flipping you next time.”

  My eyes widened in genuine terror.

  “I’d pay money to see that. We’re going.” Holland nudged Enzo and he barely spared her a glance. I winced inwardly. It was business as usual for them, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful to watch. Holland deserved someone who was just as gung-ho about life as she was, and I imagined Enzo deserved the same. Holland just refused to see it, preferring him over being alone.

  Then the bar erupted in cheers, and wouldn’t you know, Cade Kessler was on the screen running the ball into the endzone, putting Chicago up by seven. Taking it as a sign, I leveled a knowing look at Holland. She just rolled her eyes and continued her victory dance.

  That served as a segue into sports talk, and the guys’ conversation took off from there, throwing jargon around that was a foreign language to me. I was content to observe, watching Theo’s gestures grow more animated as the drinks flowed and Chicago kept scoring.

  I could get used to this. His attentiveness, the delicious contentment I felt. Theo and I might’ve been opposites on paper, but it didn’t feel that way. We related where it counted—on a deeper level that was harder to put into words. With our tenacity and sense of adventure and refusal to quit on the things we cared about. But while the alarm bells had quieted, they hadn’t disappeared entirely.

  Because this was going too well. It was too easy with him. And there had to be a catch.

  There always was.

  “I just received an email from a very happy client. Well done, Ava,” Leigh said on her way to her office, and while I stood next to the breakroom coffeemaker in stunned silence, Eddie slapped a hand over his chest. Despite my refueling and Eddie hunkering over a box of donuts someone had brought, she hadn’t stopped to tell us to get back to work.

  Eddie pressed his lips together. “Did you just get a ‘well done,’ or did I imagine that?”

  “Do you think she’s sick?”

  “Maybe she got laid this weekend.”

  I scowled at him, as per usual.

  “Speaking of imagining things, I saw a very interesting photo when I was working on the Healthy-Living graphics. Where the hell did you find cowboy boots in Chicago? I know you didn’t own those before.”

  “Crazy, right? Theo took me dancing at a country bar. It was more fun than I thought it would be.”

  “Wait. Date? With Theo, your trainer? The Theo who’s also the man-candy next door?”

  I avoided the question by testing my coffee, but I should’ve known that wouldn’t satisfy gossip-hungry Eddie.

  “No no no, don’t hold out on me now, Sis. This is getting juicy.”

  “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”

  “That you’re dating the guy your boss is paying to train you?” His smile was slightly feline. Like the cat that got the canary.

  I ducked around him and shut the breakroom door. Luckily, I didn’t think anyone was in earshot. “I never thought of it like that,” I fibbed.

  “You didn’t? That would’ve been the first thing I thought of. But I doubt I could’ve ever come up with a scheme like that.” He dabbed his lip with a napkin, but his casual air did nothing to calm my rapidly beating heart. “Bravo.”

  “Please don’t let that slip to anyone. If Leigh found out I was dating him, she’d probably assume that’d been my plan all along.”

  “Puh-lease. I’d congratulate you if that were the case. That’d be deliciously clever.”

  “Try conniving.”

  He waved a hand. “You don’t have to worry about me. So, how serious is it? Are we talkin’ random-hookup status, or like, he’s cooking you breakfast every morning?” Eddie wiped his hands and pulled out his phone, and his fingers flew over the screen.

  “It’s . . . new. I don’t know. I like him, though.”

  His eyes widened. “Hell, I like him too.” He turned the phone so I could see the picture he’d found. A headshot from Theo’s website.

  “He’s cute, right?”

  “More like ruin-your-life-gorgeous.”

  I winced. “You’re not making me feel better.”

  “Honey, you should be feeling just fine right now. You’re shacking up with this Adonis. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Foreboding festered in the pit in my stomach. I fetched my thermos from the counter and headed for the door. “Thanks for the reminder about the health thing, I need to finish my write-up for that.”

  “Write-up? Did I miss something?”

  “No.” I paused halfway through the door and lowered my voice. “If I don’t want to be stuck in Relationships forever, I need to show Leigh what I can do.”

  “Girl, you’re wasting your time. Leigh doesn’t care what you can do, she cares about
how well you can stay in line.”

  My hand flexed on the cold metal handle. Staying in line was something I could put under skills and qualifications on my resume; I’d been doing it for years. But I had to wow Leigh if I wanted her to loosen the reins and give me some creative freedom. I just wasn’t sure how to get her attention.

  “You’ll keep what I told you about Theo between us, right?”

  “Yes,” Eddie said on a dramatic sigh. “But, in the meantime, you enjoy that snack while you have it, okay? I want details next time!”

  I left the breakroom somehow feeling worse about Theo’s and my situation than I had when I’d arrived. I was in for a long day.

  Chapter 21

  Ava

  “Tell me about your family,” Theo said.

  We’d spent the morning at the animal shelter visiting Shorty, then rode rented bikes to a nearby café for brunch. A “workout” session with a perk. The pitfall of dating an entrepreneur was that work rarely stayed within the confines of normal business hours, but that was also the advantage. It meant I could have Theo to myself during a weekday. I, on the other hand, was playing hooky.

  “That’s a broad topic I’m not sure you can handle,” I joked. My family were a bunch of nuts. The dynamic could be described as chaotic at the best of times, and my family tree resembled a confusing interchange of several main highways.

  Theo peered at me over his menu and said, “Start with your parents, I’m sure I can handle it,” while I pretended to weigh the stuffed crepes against the egg-white omelet. Crepes always reigned supreme.

  “They started traveling the country in their RV as soon as I went to college, which is pretty much all you need to know about them.”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it? And I guess that’s a testament to their relationship—being able to be cooped up in an RV that long.”

  “I think the only thing they have in common is their tendency to fight like cats and dogs. But I guess if it’s worked for them this long, they’re doing something right.”

  “Ahh, that’s relationships though. Having been together, what, twenty-something years?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Having been together twenty-seven years, I can see how you’d get a little annoyed with each other. The list of their gripes is probably a mile long, but I bet the one with their accomplishments is longer.”

  I pushed my shades up on top of my head. “That is true.”

  “That’s probably been their dream since they brought you home from the hospital and started missing sleep, and now they’re actually doing it. How cool. Where are they now?”

  “Yellowstone, I think. Or was that last week? They’re on national parks.”

  “That sounds like heaven.”

  I shook my head to myself. We’d covered a wide array of topics in our few months together—and had gone on plenty of adventurous dates—but somehow the subject of my family had never come up. I guess we’d been preoccupied with other things.

  You might say we’d been going at it like teenagers who’d just discovered the pleasures of fooling around. You’d be right.

  “You’re distracting me,” I accused him across the table after the waiter took our orders.

  “What do you mean?” Theo frowned in a way that said he knew exactly what I meant.

  “I ordered crepes again. I’m supposed to be doing better.”

  “Define ‘doing better.’”

  I leveled a glare at him.

  “You’re happy.” He said it like an accusation, and a smile stretched across my face. “So, why sweat the small stuff?”

  “It’s not going to be small stuff if I keep eating sugar stuffed with sugar.” My argument was feeble. I was happy, and I had more energy than I’d had in years. And I wasn’t even trying. In fact, I hadn’t stuck to a diet in . . . I couldn’t remember how long it’d been.

  “Does your love of crepes mean we’re doing the Willis Tower climb that’s coming up?”

  “Uh, I think I’d rather gain a few pounds than pass out in the stairwell of some skyscraper.”

  Theo held up his hands. “Just a suggestion. You know, in case you were searching for something else for your program.”

  “This was our last ‘session,’” I said, using air quotes.

  Theo had been pinching his lip between his thumb and forefinger before he slapped his thigh in mock frustration. “Dammit! Does that mean my services are no longer needed?”

  “Or maybe I’ll just have to find something else to do with you.”

  “I can think of a few things.”

  The waiter interrupted our suggestive banter by dropping off our entrées. If Theo’s encouragement hadn’t been enough to convince me I’d made the right decision menu-wise, the dusting of powdered sugar over crepes that oozed Nutella and cream cheese was.

  I took a huge bite rather than respond to Theo’s last comment and groaned in pleasure. He opened his mouth and I fed him a bite, and when syrup dripped from the corner of his lips and I used a finger to catch it, he took the tip in his mouth and sucked. It was maybe the most casually erotic thing anyone had ever done to me in public.

  “I guess it’s good timing, then. We’ve got the rest of October before Chicago turns into winter hell.”

  “Speaking of. . .”

  “Winter hell?” Theo supplied.

  “No, October. Your birthday is coming up, right?” I don’t know why I asked. I’d known it from that night at the bar when I’d seen his ID.

  “Yep,” Theo said casually, then frowned. “Did I tell you that?”

  “No, I saw it on your license. And I would’ve surprised you with something but I thought, this being our first celebration together, I should ask what you wanted to do.”

  “Nothing.”

  I looked up from my plate to ensure he was being serious. Did he know who I was? Planning photo-worthy events was my forte. My bread and butter. My thing. Judging by his persisting frown, I guessed his answer was one hundred percent genuine.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. We weren’t big on birthdays when I was a kid.” He shrugged.

  “So you want to steal my thunder now? Come on, you have a free party-planner at your disposal.”

  “We didn’t have a ton of money growing up, so my parents put the emphasis on small, meaningful things for us. Not ones having to do with specific days or events or whatever. That way we never expected anything, but we’d always be surprised.”

  “Okay, fine.” I pretended to relent, but my thoughts hit the ground running.

  “That doesn’t mean I wanna be surprised on my birthday,” he added. Dammit, consider my thunder officially stolen. “But I notice the little things year-round, and I appreciate those.” He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “No surprises.”

  I stewed over the birthday thing for days before accepting the fact that although I was who I was—a lover of beautiful events and fancy party supplies—Theo was who he was. He didn’t fit anywhere on my list, he was above it, and with that came the expectation that when he didn’t try to fit me into a mold, I would do the same.

  So I took out my frustrations on a blog post titled “Party Plans For Your Anti-Party Partner.” It would never see the light of day, but it gave me something to open my creative vein into.

  I’d pulled out my notebook to add one last thought to my written outline for the post, when Leigh called me into her office. I was used to her thankless attitude by now, but after praising my handling of our clients, her current no-nonsense tone jolted me.

  I tiptoed into her office on jellified legs and discovered her ravaging a bag of Doritos. She didn’t even tell me to have a seat before she got down to it, brushing her orange-dusted fingertips uncharacteristically down the legs of her designer denim.

  “I wanted to see if there was any truth behind a concern one of your coworkers brought to my attention. I myself thought it was a bit of a stretch.”


  A concern? My breath snagged while I waited for her to continue.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have anything going on with the trainer from your workout program, would you?”

  I swallowed. My first instinct was to play dumb, a trait I was sure Leigh already accepted as fact when it came to me, so I said, “What do you mean by ‘anything’?”

  Leigh’s chewing stopped, and her gaze snapped to mine, like I was already guilty. “Do I need to spell it out for you? Personally. Romantically.”

  “Yes, but”—she was already settling back in her chair, her stare frosting over—“it didn’t start until the program did. I mean, after the program did. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I knew he was a trainer, and he offered to help me with the segment. It was innocent. But he’s, well, him, and I’m—”

  “That desperate for attention that you’d risk your integrity at your job for a fling?”

  My hands, which had been gesticulating in time with my words, dropped. Heat crept up my neck. Leigh was stern, but I’d never classified her as cruel. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, and, if it means anything to you, I think it’s much more than a fling.”

  “It doesn’t. But I’m more insulted that you assumed I wouldn’t find out about it.”

  “I didn’t think it was that serious.”

  “What part of my funding your hookup isn’t serious?”

  “It isn’t like that.” My voice shook, and I clenched the back of the chair in front of me like it was the only thing holding me together.

  “But you hid it from me, so maybe it was like that.”

  “I didn’t hide it from you. I just didn’t think it was worth mentioning.” Knowing that everything I countered with sounded like an excuse was making me panicky. My tone thinned as I grasped for an explanation.

  “I’m sensing a common theme here. You didn’t think.”

  Because my current position doesn’t require the ownership of brain cells, I thought, but I didn’t say that aloud because what would it prove if I did? I was a workhorse. I did what needed to be done, and I didn’t challenge the person who was the gatekeeper to my future. I’d just hoped, naïvely, she’d somehow pick me out of the clamoring crowd of creatives in the office and recognize my potential.