Mister X

by Shae Sullivan

  “Then people think I’m a cheating bastard,” I say. “And I don’t give a shit, doesn’t that only help men, anyway?”

  “Not men who are about to be The Bachelor,” Peter says. “God, no matter how you look at this, it’s a total mess.” He eyes me and sighs. “You need to contact that woman, somehow. Tell her the contract is over and you’ll be wanting the ten million back from her. Or give her something, I don’t know, something small. Something to make her keep her mouth shut. And then, you call Stella and make up with her, and then you choose her on the fucking show. And when the show is over, you can have your life back.”

  His words make my heart stop. My entire life, I’ve always been told that when one thing is over, I can have my life back.

  When college football is over and you’re in the NFL, that’s when life really begins.

  When you get famous in the NFL, you won’t have to worry about a thing. You’ll have everything you ever want.

  When you’re on The Bachelor, just pick a girl and get married. Stay married for a little while, and then you can do anything you want.

  “I’m sick of being told to wait,” I say.

  Peter stares at me.

  “And I’m not going to do it anymore,” I say.

  Peter blinks, taken aback.

  I may have ruined the best thing in my life – my budding relationship with Alyssa – but I’ve finally learned my lesson. I’m through with letting people control me.

  I may never be able to get her back, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend the rest of my life letting others make my decisions for me.

  Chapter 17

  Alyssa

  After leaving Logan’s hotel, I don’t know what to do. My heart is aching and I can’t stop crying – but it’s Vegas, there are people crying on the Strip every single day. I’m sure I’m not the first – or even the dozenth – person to get their heart broken by a gorgeous guy, but it sure fucking feels like it.

  As much as it kills me to admit, I’m so deeply embarrassed to be in such a state in public that I take an Uber home. My apartment is both empty and welcoming, and I pour myself a glass of wine even though it’s still late morning. Sitting on the couch, I stare at the glass wall overlooking the Strip until everything turns to a blur.

  This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever been in this situation. To be honest, it might be part of the reason why I’ve never thought seriously about dating. I never wanted to give anyone the upper hand over my life, the upper hand over my heart and soul and mind and body.

  I never wanted to put myself in the position where anyone could hurt me.

  Caro would say that it’s because I’m a control freak, and maybe she’s partially right.

  But I think part of it boils down to trust. Aside from Caro, I’ve never been able to trust anyone.

  Not even myself.

  And right now, I can’t help but feel like I deserve everything that’s happened to me. This is what happens when you break your own rules, I tell myself. You start putting things over what should be important, and look what happens.

  Beating myself up now isn’t going to help anything, though. It’s not going to magically wind back the clock or turn back time. It’s not going to superglue the two fractured pieces back together, and it’s not going to erase the hurt from my head and my stomach and everywhere else.

  Fuck, this sucks.

  I just want to curl up in a ball and cry. I feel so stupid – stupid for thinking that Logan and I had something real, stupid for thinking that he really cared for me. The worst part is, I totally invited all of this on myself.

  A rational, reasonable person wouldn’t have gone fleeing to his hotel when she saw that thing in the paper. She would have called, or at least texted.

  How many other women had Logan been seeing during the time he had been spending with me?

  No wonder he wanted to make sure you were clean and taking the Pill, I think bitterly as I drain the last of my wine. He wanted to make sure that he could get away with anything, and you let him.

  Now, I understand why Logan wanted to make sure that he and I would never be truly intimate with each other. Not to avoid hurting me – he clearly didn’t care about that – but to avoid the stickiness, the messiness that came with such relationships.

  Nausea rises in my gut and I barely make it to the bathroom before spewing wine and bile into the toilet bowl. New tears come to my eyes and drip down my sticky cheeks. In a matter of seconds, I’m reduced to a crying, sobbing mess.

  I never should have let this happen. I should have just hooked up with him at that stupid fucking party and just left it there.

  Stupid fucking Halloween – why did I think Logan could be anything other than an asshole and a coward?

  And what was that he’d said about going on a reality show? How could it be possible that someone as fake as Logan wanted something even faker?

  I’ve been such an idiot, I think as I climb off the bathroom floor and rinse my mouth in the sink. All this time, I’ve been trying to see someone who isn’t there, someone who doesn’t even want to be there.

  I have no one to blame but myself.

  The realization, although it stings, lessens the pain a little bit. Being mad at myself, unlike being mad at Logan, is something that I’m used to, something that I know how to deal with.

  The best way to get over being mad at yourself, I’ve found over the years, is to minimize the wound. Get to the root of why you fucked up, and fix it.

  In this case, it would be tanking my involvement in AngelDate, and damaging my relationship with Caro. As soon as I stop shaking, I leave the bathroom and reach for my phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Caro, you know it’s me,” I say. “You saw my name pop up.”

  My friend sighs. “I didn’t, really,” she says. “I’m cross-eyed, I’ve been up all night working and I didn’t even look at my phone.”

  I don’t say anything, and immediately her tone changes.

  “Lyss? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I take a deep breath.

  “I broke up with him.”

  Now it’s Caro’s turn to be quiet.

  “I caught him with another woman,” I continue. Saying the words out loud feels like shoving a dagger into my heart and twisting it around, but I don’t stop.

  “He tried to give me some bullshit line, but I didn’t buy it.”

  “Oh, Alyssa,” Caro says finally. “Jesus, honey. Are you okay?”

  “I will be,” I say after a long pause. “But no, not really in the immediate short term. I feel like crap.”

  “I bet,” Caro says. She makes a sympathetic noise under her breath. “You want me to come over? We could make dinner and watch movies or something.”

  I look down at my feet. “There’s something I have to do first,” I tell her. “But yeah, if you want to meet me over here in an hour.”

  “An hour?” Caro laughs skeptically. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? Like, I’m not going to find you sobbing at the end of a bottle of wine?”

  “I ... I can’t promise that I won’t do anything stupid,” I admit. “But you’re not going to find me drunk. At least, not until you get here.”

  When Caro hangs up, I go into the bathroom and splash some cold water on my face. Then, I sling my purse over my shoulder, lock my apartment door, and leave.

  An hour later, Caro and I are sitting on the couch. She brought a bottle of red wine and a box of gourmet cupcakes, most of which are still staring at me from their pink cardboard box.

  “You really gave it back?”

  I nod.

  “Don’t be mad,” I say, wincing. “I had to. I couldn’t just keep ten million dollars. Not from him, anyway. If I win the lottery, I’ll fix it.”

  “I’m not mad,” Caro says. She raises an eyebrow and takes a long sip of wine. “If you remember, I never thought that taking that money was a good idea in the first place.”

>   “I know,” I tell her miserably. “But I feel like such an asshole. I really feel like I should’ve kept it, you know, like to spite him or something.”

  “No. You did the right thing,” Caro says.

  “What about AngelDate?”

  Caro shrugs. “The programmers are almost done,” she says. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a folder of sketches, the same sketches that I was supposed to look over earlier in the morning. “We’ll just let them go after they finish the first draft, or whatever, and go from there.”

  “What about Ned and Jeff?”

  “Look, Alyssa – I’m not going to pretend this is ideal, because it’s not ... but none of it was. You were getting so distracted, all you could think about was that guy. I know this hurts, but it’s for the best.”

  I nod slowly. She’s right, of course – she almost always is.

  “I just wish it didn’t hurt,” I mutter.

  Caro shrugs. “It won’t for long,” she says.

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “I know you – you’re tough,” Caro says. “You’re not going to let a little thing like this get you down, are you?”

  “I know it sucks,” I tell her. “But maybe ... oh, I don’t know. Maybe this is a sign that I need to change things up. Maybe I should try moving to California or something – Silicon Valley is a lot faster paced when it comes to the stuff I want to work on.”

  Caro doesn’t reply.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” Caro swallows a mouthful of wine and reaches for a cupcake.

  “That all I was trying to do is keep women safe,” I tell her. “And in the process, really hurt myself.”

  “This will pass, hon,” Caro says gently.

  I nod. I know she’s trying to comfort me, but it’s not really helping.

  Logan’s gone forever, and he’s not coming back.

  He never would have wanted me enough to have me in the public eye – not with superficial goals that I never would have seen for him.

  It just means that you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did, I think.

  And somehow, out of all of it, that’s what hurts the most.

  Chapter 18

  Logan

  Every time I close my eyes, I see her face. Alyssa’s perfect, symmetrical face. Her blue eyes, so full of light and life and fun.

  And tenderness, and vulnerability.

  It hurts so fucking much that I can’t stand it. I want to engage in all of the most self-destructive behavior on the planet. I want to drown myself in whiskey, to smoke so much weed that I forget I ever heard Alyssa’s name. I’m not really the drinking – or the smoking – kind of guy, at least not most of the time.

  Now, it’s different. Now I feel like I have to destroy every aspect of my life, smash a wrecking ball through the glass windows I’ve worked so hard to carefully maintain.

  To torture myself, because that’s what I deserve.

  Peter’s no help, of course.

  “I’m not going to say that I told you so,” he almost sings one morning, when I’m sitting on the end of the bed, hair dripping onto my shoulders. I’ve been out of the shower for over an hour, but I can’t work up the energy to move.

  “But you did,” I say evenly, raising my head and meeting Peter’s gaze with my own.

  “It’s not about that,” Peter says. He sounds almost embarrassed as he taps the tips of his fingers together. “But this was a horrid idea, Logan, honestly – you should be relieved that it ended when it did.”

  I take a deep breath, on the verge of rebuking him. But I stop before I can say anything – what would the point even be? Let him know that I’m upset and angry?

  He already fucking knows that. All this time, I thought that even if Peter wasn’t the best person to handle me, he at least had my best interests at heart and in mind.

  He’s proven otherwise, though.

  “You’ll cheer up,” Peter chirps. “Just give it some time. A woman like that, well, Logan – she never would have fit into your lifestyle, anyway.”

  “And just what is that?” I ask hotly. “You and my father both want some trophy woman clinging to my arm – you’ve seen Alyssa, you know how gorgeous she is.”

  “It’s not because of that,” Peter says evasively.

  I stare at him.

  “It’s ... well, you know why,” Peter says. He looks pained as he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. “It’s because she wants her own life. She wouldn’t be content just to share in the joys and triumphs of yours. She wants to do her own thing. What kind of a wife would a woman like that be? Or what kind of a mother?”

  “Jesus,” I mutter. “Enough already.”

  Peter seems to brighten at that. “You’ve got a dinner date with Stella tonight,” he says. “And tomorrow, The Bachelor starts filming – you arrive at the mansion just in time for a champagne toast and dinner, where you’ll officially meet your twenty-five new girlfriends!”

  “What’s the point of dinner, then,” I ask drily. “If I’m going to a house with twenty-four other women?”

  Peter opens his mouth, then clamps his lips together. His nostrils flare with anger.

  “You ask the stupidest questions, I swear,” he says. “Have you really learned nothing from our time together?”

  I swear to god, if I had any more energy right now, I’d walk out onto the balcony and throw myself off. I can’t wait for this to be over – for this stupid charade of reality television and money and airbrushed women. Despite being naturally good at football, I’ve never enjoyed it.

  But now, I can’t wait for the start of the season. I can’t wait to be hurt and sore all the time, jacked up on painkillers when I’m not out on the field. Drinking myself into oblivion with my teammates after winning or losing.

  I just want an out.

  Later that night, Stella and I are sitting in Land & Sea, a trendy restaurant that features both pescatarian dishes and enormous steaks. She’s twirling a strand of her platinum blonde hair around her finger and sipping an apple martini, staring down at her plate with a bored expression.

  “It seems like you don’t want to be here anymore than I do,” I mutter.

  Stella looks up at me and narrows her eyes. “You’ve made it really clear that you’re not interested in getting to know me,” she says.

  I don’t know what to say to that – it’s true that I have no interest in her.

  “I’m just going through some shit right now,” I say.

  Stella takes a long sip of her martini and flags the waiter, making me cringe at her over rudeness.

  “Yeah,” she says as soon as he appears. “We’d like a bottle of your house white – I don’t care how expensive it is, just make sure it’s big.”

  The waiter blinks and nods, disappearing in a flash.

  “It’s Vegas,” Stella says nonchalantly. “He has to deal with assholes all the time. At least he doesn’t have to worry about us skipping out on the bill.”

  I look down at my steak. A jumbo forty ounce Wagyu beef medallion, there’s no fucking way I could finish this thing. It seems almost comical, like the rest of Vegas. Oversized and overpriced and over-hyped.

  “Look,” I tell her. “Why are you doing this, anyway?”

  “What, having dinner with you?” Stella drains the last of her apple drink and sets the glass down a little too loudly. “Because I want to,” she adds, before I can elaborate.

  “No, because your agent told you to,” I correct her.

  “Well, sort of.”

  “No, think about it,” I say. My mind starts to churn and I reach for my own drink, taking a long slug. The waiter appears with Stella’s wine, but I wave him off before he can have either of us taste it. “You’re eating with me because someone told you to. And yeah, I’m rich. And I play in the NFL. But you don’t give a shit about that. You’d be out here with the fattest asshole on the planet if there was a chance you’d get famous from
it.”

  Stella looks both wounded and angry and for a moment, I wonder if I’ve gone too far. But to my surprise, her anger fades in seemingly a few seconds and she pours herself a hefty glass of wine.

  “You’re right,” she admits. “But look – you want to know something?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me whether or not I want to,” I mutter.

  She nods. “Right again. You know I’m almost thirty?”

  I shrug.

  “Yeah, well, a lot of people would be surprised,” Stella says. She tosses her hair and sighs. “You don’t know what it’s like for a woman – to try so hard only to realize that people think you peak when you’re younger.” She screws up her face, taking a long sip of the white wine. “And now that I’m older and smarter, I have to resort to fucking reality television to pay the bills. I was supposed to win last season! And then get married and get divorced and get a giant settlement, and then I could do what I wanted, at least.”

  I stare at her. “I ...”

  “Don’t say anything,” Stella says. She gives her platinum head a brief toss. “Don’t try talking me out of it.”

  “I ... I think I just realized something.”

  “What’s that?” Now, she sounds just as bored as I feel.

  “That we’re a lot more alike than I realized.”

  Stella’s features work over what I’ve just said, and she gives me a hesitant smile.

  “So, you’re willing to go on the show and pick me? And marry me, if only temporarily?”

  I get to my feet and Stella’s smile fades.

  “No,” I tell her. “I quit. I’m not going on the show. Good luck. I hope you get what you want someday.”

  Stella’s face is a mask of rage as I down the rest of my drink, get to my feet, and saunter out of Land & Sea.

  Peter’s waiting for me outside of the restaurant, leaning against a limo. He’s on the phone, but when he sees me emerge a few hours before I was supposed to, he gives me a panicked look and hangs up, trotting after me on his short legs.

  “Logan, wait! Where are you going?”