Hate the Game

by Holly Hall

  “Thank you,” I said, “for getting ahold of me.”

  His snort was silent, but I felt the puff of air from his nostrils. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “I blocked your number.”

  “I noticed.”

  “It was easier. I just couldn’t keep looking at my phone and hoping. . .”

  “I know.” He nodded gently.

  A few beats of silence.

  “But I’m glad you kept trying. If not, I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d found out it was too late for Shorty.”

  “I wouldn’t have let that happen. I would’ve showed up at your door, agreement or no agreement. I think the situation warranted an exception.”

  “Definitely.”

  His voice lowered a couple notches, when he said, “It was good to see you, though. The circumstances could’ve been better, but. . . I’d hoped you were doing okay.”

  “You, too. It seems like you’ve been very busy. I was kind of surprised I never ran into you, loitering in the hallways or anything.”

  Another cynical snort. “Yeah, no, I’ve pretty much stayed at the gym as much as possible. Your guess earlier was spot-on. I had a cot set up and everything for a while.”

  “You wanted to get away from me that bad?”

  “I wanted to do what you asked. Try to rebuild your trust.”

  His mentioning of trust reminded me of what Holland had said. “I’m not sure I ever fully trusted you, and that wasn’t entirely your fault. Maybe that was mistake number one.” I pushed a gum wrapper around the floor with my toe. “You didn’t have to go out of your way to avoid me, though. I realize some things beyond the four walls of your apartment are kind of necessary for living.”

  “It was the only way I could stop all the thinking. And even that didn’t work.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “About everything. I’d lie awake and torture myself. Making lists, mostly.”

  “Lists?”

  “That slipped.”

  “Now you have to tell me.”

  He rubbed his lips together, as if physically holding the words in. “I’d think of everything I loved about you, everything I was losing because of what I’d done. Like . . . how your nervous laugh comes out as this fluttering sound, but your genuine one comes straight from your belly. The kind of sound that feels like home.”

  I drew my next breath slowly and steadily, but it caught somewhere in my rib cage. I sensed the vulnerability in his admission and didn’t want to ruin it.

  “You curl your toes when you’re terrified. Or at least, you did when we were paddle-boarding. You tried so damn hard to put on a brave face, and something made you want to do it.”

  “It was the hope of impressing you that made me want to do it.” I’d meant to grumble the statement, but instead it came out kind of breathy.

  “How you get excited over the smallest things,” he continued. “Like bath bombs, or carbonated beverages. Basically anything bubbly. And I was going to ask you to move in with me when your lease was up, knowing it was soon and not giving a fuck about it being socially acceptable. And knowing damn well I’d probably have to move into your tiny-ass apartment because mine doesn’t have a bathtub and I wouldn’t ask you to give that up.”

  Somewhere amid that monologue, my eyes had grown misty and the tightness in my thoracic cavity migrated to my throat. He’d seen me. A guy I’d thought wouldn’t take a second glance, and confused the hell out of me when he had.

  Maybe love wasn’t about the perfect person checking off all the boxes on your list. Maybe it was about the steady in the chaos; the person who, as life buzzed on around you, kept you grounded instead of caged.

  I looked up and our eyes locked. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m going to ask for it anyway. Because that’s what you do when you find someone who makes it feel like forever’s staring you right in the face. You go all in.” He rotated toward me, our thighs sliding against each other. “I know you don’t think we make sense. But we make perfect sense to me.”

  “That’s a hell of a list.”

  “I had a while to think about it.”

  I dabbed beneath my eyes with a knuckle. “You don’t have to ask. I forgave you a long time ago. Not that I would’ve admitted that out loud before tonight, though.”

  “Good timing, I guess.” He didn’t smile, but his gaze held a restrained glimmer of hope. “I’m sorry for what I was involved in. I want you to know, I stopped training Pierce. Kicked him out of the gym.”

  “You did?” He nodded, and my hand instinctively went to his knee. “I’m sorry he wasn’t who you thought he was.”

  “I have texts from that day, after he and I talked. Telling him I wasn’t willing to lead you on.” He slipped a hand in his pocket, but I caught his elbow.

  “You don’t need to show me. I believe you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Even back then, I didn’t think you could do something out of pure malice. It’s not your style.”

  “It isn’t,” he said firmly. Then, with a trace a humor, “You looked pretty convinced, though.”

  “Well, yeah. I was mad and embarrassed. It was all I had to hold onto so I wouldn’t crumple like a flower on the sidewalk. We were in public, for crying out loud.”

  “Yeah, ouch. My bad.” He feigned regret in that moment, although I knew he truly regretted how things had transpired. “It looked like you hated me.”

  “I didn’t hate you. But at that moment, I just hated the whole thing. Dating. Relationships. That I hadn’t sensed what was coming. More than anything, I hated that I was losing something.”

  “Which was. . .”

  “Someone I loved.”

  His eyebrows eased upward, and he cocked his head.

  “Kind of a shitty reveal, I know,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  Theo reached over, broaching the almost nonexistent space between us, and laced his fingers through mine. “I wanted to tell you first. You know, after I screwed it up the first time.”

  “I beat you to the punch.”

  “I love you. There. Present tense.”

  I took a deep breath. There was no need to question it. I knew, all the way down to my bones, that I still loved him. “I love you too. Present tense.”

  He looked down at our conjoined hands and ran his thumb over my gloved knuckles. “This might be jumping the gun, but do you want to come over?” I searched his eyes. “For dinner, nothing else. Unless you . . . I mean, not that I mean—”

  “Now I have you flustered.” I giggled.

  Theo shook his head wanly. “I know we can’t just pick up where we left off. But can we start with dinner?”

  “I think that would be okay.”

  “And then, maybe you can come with me to pick up our dog.” He smirked and held up his other hand. How I’d missed that smirk. “I don’t know if that’s taking things too fast. Is that taking things too fast? I can send you a selfie of Shorty and me instead.”

  “You wouldn’t dare leave me out of Shorty’s homecoming. But that sounds perfect. And then?”

  “And then . . . we find out together what comes next, and we don’t leave it up to a damn list.”

  I grinned. It was time to retire my lists after all, leave some things open to chance. I couldn’t think of a better time for it. “Deal.”

  The End

  Somewhere Between Us Excerpt

  Chapter 1

  Now

  Not many people can say they’ve been hit in the face with their past. After tonight, I can officially check that off my short list of life accomplishments. Well, more like I hit my past with my face.

  Either way, he looks unflinchingly back at me and hardly blinks, doesn’t even allow his eyes to wander. Just gives me the hard stare of someone who’s schooled themselves on that very look. Like he expected to see me and is somehow disappointed by it.

  It’s been ten years since I last saw Jeremy. Ten years since he left for col
lege and decided he didn’t want to take his small-town girlfriend with him—AKA me. But here he is, outside the bathrooms of the only bar in town, gripping a long-neck bottle of beer as casually as if he never left.

  There are a million things I could say, and all that comes out of my mouth is a paltry, “You’re here.”

  “Keen observation,” he says. His voice is deeper now. Dismissive. Not at all like I imagined. Then he steps around me, heading back toward the bar and officially rendering me speechless.

  I return to the table my group of girlfriends have claimed. They chatter on around me, not noticing as I search him—someone I long ago accepted as good-and-gone—out among the bar stools. And then I’m pushing away from the table and gravitating toward him, my body jaunting forward all at once. A confused product of the years I’ve spent pretending what we had didn’t matter. That it was nothing but puppy love.

  He glances over when I squeeze past the patron beside him, and it doesn’t take a genius to see his indifferent expression and rigid posture and read between the lines. But I don’t let those things stop me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting my parents.”

  That’s it? My brow furrows of its own volition. Does he truly believe he owes me no explanation? Then my lagging brain finally catches up to my mouth and puts two and two together. I’m officially an asshole. “Your father. Of course. How is he?”

  His eyes have already traveled elsewhere, locked on a liquor bottle or something equally as insignificant, but I notice his wince. “It won’t be much longer.”

  Jeremy’s stepdad, the man who assumed the role of father when Jeremy was eight years old, is dying. Prostate cancer. By the time he was diagnosed, it was too late. The good ones always go too soon.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Yeah,” he interrupts, draining his beer. I signal to the bartender, a guy who was two grades ahead of us in school, to bring us two more Shiners. Screw society’s expectations that exes can’t buy each other drinks.

  The bottles are opened and served, and I take a long pull from mine. Something tells me I’m going to need it. Jeremy doesn’t seem eager to add to the conversation, so I pretend to watch the basketball game on the flat-screen. My mind runs a mile a minute, wondering where he’s been, what he’s done, and why he’s finally here, all while I study him from the corner of my eye.

  Youthful fullness has given way to chiseled cheekbones and a sharp jaw. A day’s stubble is hardly noticeable against his dark, mocha skin, and his black hair is cropped close, slightly shorter on the sides. Professional and stylish. Expensive-looking.

  I try not to stare and focus on the brown bottle in front of me instead, picking at the label. “It’s weird seeing you here again. I wasn’t sure when you’d come back.”

  “I never meant to.”

  I look over at him, noticing the set of his jaw. “You never meant to visit your parents? Ever?”

  “They visit me.”

  “Oh. Well, I tried calling you. I guess you changed your numb—”

  A bump to my elbow interrupts me. What follows are the slurred words of the last person I want to see right now—the only man who could somehow succeed in making this reunion more awkward. “Miss Cameron, it’s been too long. You’re lookin’ good, girl.”

  Jeremy’s chest expands as he takes a huge breath, and I can see the patience drain from his expression. Because Kip Daniels is the last person he wants to see, too. Kip is the town drunk, the instigator of most Waterview drama, and Jeremy’s biological father. The very one who left him and his mother before he was born. Maybe leaving runs in the family.

  As if bored by our silence, Kip throws his arm over my shoulders and leans in close. “My boy still hittin’ that?”

  I set the bottle down harder than I mean to, turning to Kip and putting a stabilizing arm around his waist to drag him out of here before he starts any trouble.

  Jeremy just scoffs and grumbles, “Your boy.”

  “Not you. Eric. My other boy.”

  The second the words are out, my throat closes. Because not only is Eric Daniels Jeremy’s half-brother, the son of the woman Kip left Jeremy’s mother for, he’s also my boyfriend. Has been for years. I watch with dread as Jeremy’s eyes somehow darken a shade. I remember when they were filled with so much more, promises and hopes and love. They slide over to me now and I see something else. Accusation. Loathing, maybe.

  “I think it’s time I take you home.” I force myself to turn away, take Kip by the shoulders, and steer him and my embarrassment out to the parking lot. An apologetic glance at my friend Beth is all that’s necessary. Everyone knows Kip Daniels, and everyone knows Kip Daniels’ issues.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he says with a chuckle, whiskey breath forming clouds in the frigid, January air.

  For once I don’t answer him. Aside from the fading music and the sound of our shoes on gravel, it’s completely silent until we reach my car and I say, “Let’s get you home.”

  Kip gracelessly folds himself into the passenger seat of my sedan, and I wonder when the last time was that he felt shame. When he could even sense the judgmental eyes and whispered opinions. It would be impossible to keep his condition a secret, especially when he makes it his sole mission to drink himself to belligerence every night. If that weren’t enough, everyone in this town is privy to the circumstances under which Jeremy became fatherless. Add that to siring another son just a few months younger than Jeremy—a living, daily reminder of his father’s betrayal—and the scene Kip just created, and I can’t blame Jeremy for leaving. I can’t blame him for never coming back.

  Kip knocked up his mistress from the opposite side of town and, although he chose her, their relationship only lasted a few years before he got fed up with family life and did what he always does—washed his hands of her, for the most part. As far as I know, he’s done more for Eric than he ever has for Jeremy. Namely, claiming him proudly as his own.

  When we make it to Kip’s double-wide, I open the passenger door to help him out, but that’s as far as my assistance goes. He insists he can get himself into the house, although it’s often painful to watch. Tonight is no different. He sways on his feet while crossing the weedy patch of grass in front of his porch steps, leaning heavily on the railing and stumbling with every step up when he reaches them. I wait until he makes it inside. Nothing would make me feel worse than finding out he fell over and hurt himself after I left.

  Well, maybe one thing—reliving the betrayal in Jeremy’s expression when he learned I’d moved on with none other than his brother.

  Jeremy went out of state after we graduated, but not before leaving me. And even though I want to hate him—for leaving, changing his number, deleting his social media accounts, and leaving my emails unanswered—how can you ever hate someone who once possessed a piece of your heart? A piece of you? Reminiscing comes easy and forgetting becomes impossible when someone leaves you suspended mid-fall.

  The house I share with Eric greets me with silence. He works in the oil field, so he’s gone for weeks at a time. I hang my purse on a hook by the door and unzip my boots, lining them up along the wall. This house is ancient, passed down from Eric’s grandparents and now shared with me. There’s wood-paneling on the walls and peeling laminate in the kitchen from another century, but it’s clean and it’s ours.

  I pour a sloppy two fingers of whiskey and take it with me into the bathroom. Lord knows I won’t be able to sleep after this development. I turn the water in the claw-foot bathtub on hot, clip my hair up, and submerge myself in silky heat.

  The whiskey goes down like liquid fire, and I sit back. I could be angry. I could be hateful. I could be so many things, but all I feel is bereft. And instead of staying where he was and allowing me to get through life as well as I have been without him, he came back.

  Ten years after Jeremy, my thoughts are reeling, and my heart remembers all too well the ache he left.

  I cou
ld use a distraction, but to reduce Eric to that isn’t entirely fair. We’ve been together for seven years—the no man’s land between “When will he put a ring on it?” and “Will you two ever get married?” I wish it’d been me who broke the news about him to Jeremy. But he’s the one who left, and Eric didn’t. And if we could choose who we fell in and out of love with, maybe there’d be less grief in the world.

  I pull the plug and watch the water swirl down the drain, imagining the remnants of Jeremy, the last dredges of young love, going down with it. It’s not as easy as I wish it was to forget.

  I pull on a t-shirt and underwear, slipping beneath the covers with my hair still wet. A few unexpected minutes with an ex-boyfriend and now I’m haunted by past ghosts and what-ifs, my thoughts a storm inside my head.

  And, somewhere in the deceptive space between awareness and sleep, I remember the day that altered life as I knew it.

  Chapter 2

  Then

  “I’m off,” I announced, hopping off the last stair and striding past the entrance to the kitchen. I moved so fast I barely caught a glimpse of my father, but even then, I knew he was motionless. It was his morning routine: stand with a mug of coffee between two hands braced on the kitchen counter, staring unseeingly out the side window. He’d let his coffee go cold and then dump it out. Every morning.

  I knew none of this would change, but still, my strides shortened until I stopped completely. “Daddy?”

  He didn’t move. He just stared.

  “Dad?” I said louder, poking my head through. He looked over his shoulder with a start. “Do you want me to make you some breakfast before I go?” I was already cutting it close on time, but I doubted anyone would care. They could hardly blame me for doting on my grief-stricken, widowed father.

  “No, no,” he said, shaking his head and making a vague hand gesture, one that suggested I had nothing to worry about. I knew better. Because even though we were both grieving, someone had to make sure we ate.