My magic man.
He’d come straight to my house after he got back from road trips, climbing in my bed. And he’d say the same thing every time. “It’s good to be home.”
We had period sex, and tipsy sex, and shower sex, and living room floor sex. Sometimes we made love and sometimes we were hot, fast, and dirty.
He was a dream.
It was the life I’d envisioned with a partner, what I put in the wedding vows we made up on a dancefloor in West Virginia.
But there came a time when I got scared. My debt paymentswere excelling, with my balance the lowest it had ever been with the lowest interest rates. I was down to about $45,000 remaining. The endorsements and their commissions were flying through. But the more I paid, the more the companies demanded. The phone calls from collectors got more frequent, sometimes calling back-to-back while I was with Nick.
The point was made: I really could not afford, in a monetary way, to lose my job.
The biggest risk to my job was Nick. If we got found out, there was a real chance that I could get sent packing. And then what? Go crawling back to Tennessee, begging Roger for my job back? That couldn’t happen.
The fear got to me, and I started to fade.
I put distance between me and Nick. It wasn’t a fully conscious effort. I got slower to answer texts. I told him I was too tired to talk. When we did talk, I shared less of what was going on in my day-to-day. I’d cut our conversations short and make up an excuse to hang up.
I just didn’t want him tangled up in my mess. The more I pushed him away, the more likely it would be to end without me having to call it quits.
Because if I called it quits, Nick would do that emotionally mature thing he did where he rationally analyzed the problem and wanted to come up with a solution together. But no solution would be one he’d like, and I couldn’t stand to see his broken heart. You can’t rationalize your way out of facts, and the facts were that my job had to come first over what we had.
* * *
“Stop worrying so much. You’re doing just fine,” Marcie promised.
We were doing a phone check-in from her maternity leave, her coaching me on various client issues that cropped up.
“I feel like I’m treading water. I’m trying to go to enough gamesand prospect new talent, but it always feels like playing catch-up.”
“It’s sports agency. You’re never fully caught up. Been having fun with your buddy Obi?”
I took a few seconds for Nick’s nickname to catch up to me. “Oh, yeah. He’s pretty easy. I’m due for a meeting with him soon to touch base.”
“I heard he had you on skates a couple months back,” she laughed.
My stomach dropped. “How’d you hear that one?”
“Dev told me. I may have asked him about you when he called to ask me something about Stelle. He said you’re doing just fine.”
That surprised me. Dev was civil to me, but never overly warm. I always felt like he was a little mad at me. And I had a lingering paranoia that he would connect the dots about me and Nick.
Marcie and I went over some other clients I’d handled recently and chatted prospects.
“Can I ask you something personal, Marcie?”
“Open book. Let’s hear it.”
“Do you ever wish it was more balanced? Like the money’s good obviously, but it’s just kinda tiring. I prefer the female clients, and doing so many different sports is a lot to balance.”
“Shoot, me too. But part of it’s what we have you covering. When I’m back, we can divide things up a little bit better. You’re our legal gal, but you’re wearing more hats than that right now.” She paused. “We should get coffee sometime. Get me in some clean pants and out of the house anyway.”
Nick appeared in my office doorway, dressed in a dapper blue suit and looking annoyed.
“Oh, speaking of Oberbeck, he’s walking in now.”
“I’ll let you go. Send me a calendar invite for coffee, though. Please. For the love of God.”
