“What do you do when you have to deal with someone face-to-face?”
“I, uh…I wear a disguise.”
Mischief crept into her expression. “What kind of disguise are we talking about here? Costumes? Wigs? Just so you know, I’m imagining an entire closet of spy-grade silicone face masks. You know, like the ones from theMission Impossiblemovies.”
“Nothing that fancy.”
She stared at me, eyebrows raised in question.
I sighed. “Fine. I looked like an awkward hippie cosplaying as a praying mantis.”
She frowned, her gaze roving over my face like she was trying to picture it. I could tell the second she did, because her mouth started to twitch. It was like the flood that broke the dam. Her lips parted, and she let out a small little chuckle that quickly grew in volume and pitch until she was bent over at the waist, hands on her knees, all but scream-laughing at me.
“I’m not sure if I should be offended or embarrassed right now,” I said.
“Oh, God. Themental image, Ben,” she said as she fought to straighten back up. “Because you’re all…” She flared her shoulders out as wide as they would go, flexed her arms, and made a face I’m sure I’d never made in my life. “…and that sounds…” She tucked her chin down, opened her eyes as wide as they would go, and crab stepped toward me.
Then she was laughing again, and I lost it too. I really had looked like a damn fool in that getup.
By the time I calmed down, my ribs hurt. I couldn’t remember the last time someone got me laughing this hard. Goddamn it, Mom was right about my isolation after all. I was self-aware enough to admit that I’d been lonely as hell and just suppressing it. And I was probably more secluded than I should be out here.
Even with that awkward phone call from my parents, this morning was nice. Needed. Sharing a cup of coffee with someone, playing with their animals, showing off my hard work, it was these little things that made the difference.
I already got this to some extent with Jack when I visited him, but he was more reserved than Ella. Our conversations tended to be more serious, with long, comfortable pauses where we were left alone with our thoughts. It wasn’t like that with her. I couldn’t just fade out. Every second she’d been here, I’d been fully tuned in, wondering what she was going to do next.
Do you want to be my friend?I almost blurted.
Like this was preschool, and it was that easy still. I wished it were. Over the past decade, all of my friends had come from the sport I played. My agent. My PR rep. My fellow players. My personal trainer. People I was forced together with at first and then slowly developedrelationships with throughout the course of our interactions. It was easier that way than making friends outside of football circles. Those people got it. They understood the stress, the highs and lows, the intensity. And they kept their mouths shut about it all because blabbing to the media or online would cost them their jobs or their reputations.
It was a risk, making a friend who wasn’t tied to football in some way. But then again, maybe it would be worth the reward. To have someone in my life totally divorced from that world, to have a person I could talk to about literally every other subject on the planet, would be a welcome distraction, and would probably provide a much-needed mental break.
Ella hadn’t once, during any of our – admittedly limited – interactions, given me the vibe that she would ever blab on social media about me. The fact that she’d made up a fake name for me in front of her sister, and then double-checked my identity on the phone in case I was a catfish showed just how much she respected my privacy.
Maybe it was time I started trusting my judgment again.
“Hey, so,” I said. “I know your family is in town and Christmas and the following days will probably be hectic for you, but did you want to swing by sometime after, when it all dies down, and bring cribbage with you?”
She immediately sobered. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay here on Christmas by yourself? My family spends Christmas Eve and Christmas morning together, but then we break apart during the afternoon and go out visiting other people. It’s a tradition in the local area. I always pop in to visit Jack. I could easily swing by here afterward.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
She waved me off. “You really wouldn’t be. Megan doesn’t do the whole visiting thing. The stress of being around our entire clan for anextended period is too much for her. She usually goes back to my place to chill out, and I try to give her plenty of time to do so. But I don’t want to impose on you, either. Like I said earlier, I tend to push myself on people, and I don’t want to do that to you. I know you said you came out here to get away.”
My first instinct was to tell her not to come over. Not because I didn’t want her here, but because I didn’t want to upend her life. Then again, she was a grown-ass woman, so if she was saying she wouldn’t mind stopping over, I should take her at her word. And act like a grown-ass man and be honest in return.
“You’re not being too much,” I said. “If you’re up for it, please come over on Christmas.”
She brightened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning down at her.
Chapter 7: Ella
Christmas at the Jones house was anevent.One that required planning, coordination, and a lot of teamwork. Megan and Stacey were staying with me. My oldest brother, Jacob, his wife, Sofia, and their two boys, Evan and Michael, were staying with my parents, along with my two youngest siblings. My father’s brother and his wife – Uncle Jim and Aunt Pat – were staying with Grandma Jones. They’d crashed with her every Christmas since Grandpa passed away, in an effort to distract her away from his absence during what had been his favorite time of the year.
My other grandparents, Evelyn and Tom Pritchard, had decided to come up from Oklahoma this year, and were staying in their RV in my parents’ driveway. The way Mom complained about Grandma, they hadn’t been keeping to it as much as she would have liked.
“If she says, ‘Bless your heart’ one more time!”she had threatened during our phone call this morning.
