Ava
“Look, I really am busy.”
I was just about to make up some other excuse when one of the doors in the building in front of mine closed with a loud snap. I didn’t want to find out what could possibly happen if anyone in my complex found out who was standing in the stairwell to my building. I’d been home enough Sunday evenings to know there were football fans everywhere.
With a sigh and a promise to myself that he wasn’t going to get whatever he came here for, I waved him toward the door. “I don’t think there’s anything for us to talk about,” was the only thing I managed to respond with. Did I want to stand outside my apartment? No. Did I want to go inside? No. But I definitely didn’t want my neighbors finding out a semi-famous millionaire was standing right outside my door. “But you can come inside for a little bit before anyone sees you,” I said in more of a mumble than anything, turning back to unlock the door. “I guess,” I added just because the sight of him made me pretty bitchy.
You should have told him to beat it, Ava, my brain said. And it was the truth.
I held the door open for him, watching out of my peripheral vision as he squeezed inside. Once the door was locked, I flipped on the lights as the big defensive end took a few hesitant steps inside. I could see his head turning one way and then the other, looking at the pieces of stretched canvas art I had on the wall—not that he knew they were my work unless he looked closely at the initials in the corners. He didn’t make a comment and neither did I. He’d never asked what I did when I wasn’t at his house or with him, and I’d never mentioned it either.
Which was funny when I thought about it, because there were players on his team who knew exactly what I did. Players who had sought me out to redo their website banners, two of the guys I’d actually done tattoo designs for—and here was this guy. This guy that I had twice said to, “I was thinking your promo shots could be a little simpler. The font they used for your name doesn’t look very clear and the placement looks weird. Do you want me to change it for you?” and what had he done in return each time?
He’d said, “Don’t bother.”
He’d brushed me off. It had taken me weeks to get the nerve to make that suggestion to him, and I would have done it for free. But it was fine. It was his career and his branding, not mine.
He planted himself on the love seat in my living room, and I spun my desk chair around to face him, looking at him as evenly and unattached as I possibly could. The room was pretty small. The entire apartment was sized for one person. The only furniture that fit, cramped, was the two-seater couch, my desk, chair, and a bookshelf that doubled as a TV stand. Nerves didn’t pound through me as I watched him practically consume the space.
I was over this thing with him, and I just didn’t have the faintest urge to try and be friendly. I didn’t feel like joking with him or making it seem like there weren’t any hard feelings. If anything, I was annoyed he was at my apartment.
I had nothing left to lose, and he wasn’t in charge of my paychecks any more. I hadn’t even stressed when I realized I wouldn’t get paid for the last few days I was with him because there was no way I was contacting Sean or Trevor. Walking out the way I had and flipping him off in the process, had been worth every penny lost.
“Why are you here, Sean?” I finally broke the silence when a minute or two had passed after we’d sat down.
Sean had his hands on his lap, his face was as remote as it was before a game; even his shoulders were as tight as ever, his spine eternally straight. I didn’t think, even when he was at home, that I’d ever really seen him at ease. His hair was freshly buzzed, and he looked fine and healthy. Like he always had. As if a month hadn’t passed since the last time we’d been in each other’s presence.
He leveled his dark gaze on me and said, “I want you to come back.”
I was dreaming. That probably wasn’t the best word to use. Nightmaring? Delusional, maybe?
“Excuse me?” I breathed as I took in the whites around his eyes to make sure they weren’t bloodshot. Then I took a brief sniff to make sure he didn’t smell like a skunk. He didn’t, but apparently anything was possible. “Are you… are you on drugs right now?”
Sean gave me one hard, slow blink. His short but incredibly thick lashes went to rest for a brief second. “Excuse me?” His tone was subdued, guarded.
“Are you on drugs?” I repeated myself because there was no way he’d be here asking me this sober.
Right?
He stared at me with his unflinching eyes and hard, no-nonsense mouth. “I’m not on drugs,” he said, clearly insulted.
I eyed him like I didn’t believe him, because I didn’t. What the hell would give him the idea that I’d go back to work for him?
Drugs.
Drugs would make him think that wasting his time by coming here was a good idea. Hadn’t the parting comment I’d asked Trevor to deliver for me been enough?
What I was thinking must have been apparent on my face because he shook his head and repeated himself. “I’m not on drugs, Ava.”
I’d grown up with an addict, and I was well aware they denied they had a problem even if the signs they were out of control were right smack in front of their face. I narrowed my eyes and searched his features again, trying to find a sign he was on something.
“Stop looking at me like that. I’m not on anything,” he insisted, faint lines crossed his tan forehead—the children of the time he spent in the sun and a marker that he was thirty years old and not twenty-two.
I glanced at his arms to make sure there weren’t any weird bruises on them and came up with nothing. Then I glanced at his hands, trying to peer at the delicate flesh between his fingers to see if there were any track marks on there. Still, nothing.
“I’m not on anything.” He paused. “Since when have you ever known me to want to take a painkiller?”
It was my turn to pause, to meet his eyes in the safety of my apartment, and slowly say, “Never.” I swallowed. “But then I also didn’t know you to be an asshole either,” I replied before I could stop myself.
For one second, he reared back. The motion was minute, tinier than tiny, but I’d seen it. It had been there. His nostrils flared wide, the gesture so exaggerated I couldn’t help but take it in. “Ava—”
“I don’t need you to apologize.” My hands fiddled at my lap as that small hint of betrayal scourged its way right between my breasts, reminding me that maybe I hadn’t completely gotten over what had happened. Maybe. But I made myself tell him, “I don’t need anything from you.”
He opened his mouth, and I would swear on my life the muscles high up on his cheeks twitched. He made a small sound, the beginning of a stutter, like he wanted to say something substantial to me for the first time since we’d known each other, but didn’t know how to go about it.
The thing was, I wasn’t in the mood for it.
Whatever he might have contemplated saying was a month too late. A year too late. Two years too late.
I had lied to my loved ones about why I’d suddenly quit. Adding up another lie to add to the list of things I’d refrained from telling them over the years because I didn’t want them to worry or be angry over something so dumb and insignificant.
It didn’t matter though. I didn’t work for him anymore, and I’d honestly expected never to see him again. What was the point in getting all bent out of shape? I tried to tell myself that leaving the way I had, had been the best way to go about it. Otherwise, who knew how much longer I would have hung around waiting for my replacement? Maybe they would have tried to get rid of me quickly, but I would never know.
We were as even as we possibly could be. I didn’t feel anything except the barest hum of recognition for someone I’d seen hundreds of times. This guy who I had admired, that I had once respected, who had slightly broken my heart and disillusioned me.
I have moved on with my life though, I thought, forcing my hands still. “I just want to know why you’re here. I really do have things to do,” I said in a calm voice.
The man who had earned his nickname in high school, because even back then he’d been a big son of a gun, cocked his head to the side, his tongue sweeping over his upper teeth. The big knot of his Adam’s apple bobbed before he finally aimed his gaze back at me, accusingly. “I kept expecting you to come back after a few days, but you never did.”
Had I been that much of a pushover? “You honestly thought I would do that?” I gave him my best ‘are you serious’ look.
His eyes slid to the side briefly, but he didn’t admit or deny anything. “I want you to come back.”
No matter what, he wasn’t going to guilt-trip me. I didn’t even have to think about my response. “No.”
He decided to ignore me. Shocking. “I tried to get Trevor to find you, but no one even knew you had another cell phone or had your right address.”
Of course no one did, because neither one of them had ever made an effort to know anything about me, but I kept that to myself. The address they had was from the place where I’d lived with Diana and her brother in Fort Worth, a sister city to Dallas. Rodrigo had moved out a year and a half afterward when his girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and when I got my job with Sean, I got my own place, needing to be in Dallas instead of travelling back and forth almost an hour every day. Since then, Diana had moved in to her own place.
It also didn’t escape me that Sean didn’t drop Zac’s name. He was the only one in our small circle who knew my personal number, and I was sure he wouldn’t share it.
“Come back.”
I pushed the bridge of my glasses up and used one of the strongest, most resilient words in the English language: “No.”
“I’ll pay you more.”
Tempting but “No.”
“Why not?”
Why not? Men. It was only freaking men who would be so… so dumb. He hadn’t apologized to me for what he’d said. He wasn’t even trying to be nice and win me over to come back—not that I would. It was the same old shit it always was.
Come back.
Why not?
Blah, blah, blah.
Why not?
Why the hell would I?
I almost said I was sorry for not doing what he wanted, but I wasn’t. Not even a little bit. As I took in Sean, his overwhelming size swallowing my couch, demanding that I come back and not understanding why I wouldn’t want to, I realized that being ‘nice’ wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I had to tell him the truth, or at least the closest thing to the truth as possible. A small, immature part of me wanted to be mean.
I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me, but as I took him in, I took in the man who had provided me with a job that had allowed me to fund and fulfill my dreams. This was the same person who I’d seen at his worst, when he’d faced the possibility he would never play the only thing in the world he loved again.
This was Sean. I knew some of his secrets. I didn’t want to care about him, but I guess I couldn’t help it, even if it was a subconscious, mutilated version of what it had once been. And I didn’t want to be like Trevor, or Susie, or any other person I’d ever met who was mean for the sake of being mean.
So I kept it as simple as I could. I stuck my fingers under my thighs and said, “I told you. I deserve better.”
***
“Oh shit.”
I spotted the black Range Rover in the parking lot the instant the taxi pulled up in front of the complex by the guest entrance. There was no way I could miss it; I’d taken it to get an oil change and a wash a few times in the past. It wasn’t necessarily the nicest car in the lot—a few of my neighbors had Escalades and Mercedes that I wasn’t sure how they afforded—but I recognized Sean’s license plate number.
Yet it still caught me off guard to see it there.
He hadn’t exactly left my apartment with a smile on his face a few days ago. After I clearly told him I didn’t want to go back to work for him, he’d looked at me like I was speaking a different language, and asked, “Is this a joke?”
There went arrogance for you.
I’d answered the only way I would. “No.”
He had gotten to his feet, turned his attention toward the ceiling for a moment, and left. And that was that.
The last thing I expected was for him to come back. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d learned that this was a person who once he put his mind to something, nothing deterred him from his goal. This was the person who only heard what he wanted to hear. That didn’t exactly leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I guess a big part of me just wanted and expected to make a clean cut with him, especially after he’d made his lack of loyalty so apparent.
The fact that he’d somehow gotten my address and gone out of his way to come to my apartment when he hadn’t even been able to put in a single effort to ask me how I was doing, frustrated me more than it probably should have. It was too little too late. All I would have wanted from him in the past was at least a little bit of loyalty, if not friendship, and he hadn’t even been able to give me that.
“Everything all right, ma’am?”
“Everything is fine, thanks,” I lied, gripping the handle. “I thought I lost my keys, but I found them. How much do I owe you?”
Paying my fee, I slipped out of the car and hurried through the gate.
I made my way toward my apartment with one hand wrapped around my pepper spray and the other with my keys and wristlet, all too aware that I’d had too much wine to drink to deal with this crap right now.
My visitor was in the same spot on the stairs I’d found him days ago.
Sean’s gaze almost immediately landed on me, hovering on the hem of the dress I’d worn to dinner as he climbed to his size-thirteen feet. Dressed in workout shorts that reached his knees and a T-shirt, I was pretty sure he’d left practice and come straight over. If my dates were right, the team was halfway through preseason training camp, focused more on the rookies than on veterans like Sean.
“We need to talk,” he stated immediately, his eyes scraping their way to my chest and catching on the low dip of the cotton sundress right between my breasts.