Finally, I find a loaf of sliced, high-protein, high-fiber bread sitting on the unused toaster oven. The loaf looks reasonably fresh. There’s no butter or jam or even peanut butter. So I toast a few slices and eat them standing over the sink.
Some first-night meal.
I check Instagram. The first picture it shows me is of Brayden, taken a few minutes ago. A blurry photo from inside a bar. His sleeves are rolled up. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone. Only the slight glassiness of his eyes makes him look like anything other than what he is: a handsome, rich, successful athlete. One who left his wife home to eat dry toast.
I thumb through to the Peaches official Insta account.The Atlanta Peaches welcome Asher Adler to the team…
In the picture, Asher’s wearing a Peaches hat that’s clearly new, going by the unbroken-in brim, and smiling like he’s in on a secret.Are you out partying too?It’s possible he is. It’s possible he’s forgotten about meeting me entirely. I don’t know him any better than I know Brayden—or anyone else in this city.
For the first time in my life, there’s only one person who I can depend on to take care of me—and that’s myself.
Chapter Eight
Brayden
July
This whole hallway feels…empty.Like it’s missing something. What do hallways usually have? Probably not just blank walls, but I can’t quite think of what should be there instead.
I have one picture, somewhere: me and Blake, arms around each other. We told each other that we were gonna spend our whole careers in Atlanta. Look how that turned out. He smiled thathigh school player of the year, high draft selection, top one hundred prospect, multi-time All-Star smileat me—then got the fuck out. My parents never even saw it coming.Neither did you.
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial his number so I can tell him what an asshole he is for leaving, and that I never want to speak to him again. He picks up—I can hear him fumbling for the phone—then asks, “Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine,” I snap.
“It’s two in the morning, Bray.”
Obviously. I’m looking at my phone. I can see what time it is. “Did I wake upyour girlfriend?”I don’t bother keeping the sneer out of my voice.
“Shira says hi, yeah.”
So I did wake her up. He should be mad at me. Yell at me. Something. I don’t know what.
“Are you at home?” he asks when I don’t say anything for a minute.
“I’m in the hallway.” I can’t remember if I locked the front door, and I don’t want to drag myself back down the stairs to check. I should go to bed, but my body is heavy. I sink to the floor. The walls tilt closer, stare back at me like blank eyes.
Blake hums. “You have a game today?”
Something about the question makes anger crawl up the back of my neck. Of course I have a game. “Don’t know if you forgot, I play for the big club now. There’s a game every day.”You’d know if you were here. You were supposed to be here.I swallow that down.
“It must not be that much fun playing, uh, fatigued.” And his voice trips onfatiguedlike he meansfucked up.“If you ever want to talk to someone about that…” he begins.
I can fill in the rest of that sentence for myself—counseling, therapy,rehab—so I don’t bother listening. Just click the phone to hang up. Settle against the cool flat surface of the paint. I can sleep out here. It’s my house. I could sleep on the kitchen counter if I wanted. The floor is fine. Wherever is fine. It doesn’t fucking matter. None of it does.
I’ll just pass out here. In the morning, I’ll wake up and go to the park and play and be absolutely fine.
I’m almost asleep when I hear a noise from up the hall. The sound of water rushing in the pipes.
Who else is here? Savannah, right. Did she go out too? I pull myself up, drag myself to her room. The door is closed. Ishouldn’t open it. It’s her room. She’s probably up studying…whatever it was she was talking about before.Bioinformatics. She said the word like it was obvious. I go to look it up…but it’s already pulled up as a search on my phone.
Vaguely, I remember being at the bar, trying to get another drink from the bartender who, for whatever fucking reason, was telling me that I’d had enough.I’m smart enough to know my limits, I told him. Smart enough to have a wife who’s studying…whatever bioinformatics is.
A scientific discipline that uses computer tools to analyze large sets of biological data.
Sure. Of course. Smart people stuff.If she’s so smart, why the hell did she marry me?
I touch the door handle, expecting to find it locked. It isn’t, and I turn it, slowly, waiting for her to yell at me to get out. She isn’t in her bedroom. A bar of light emanates from under the en suite bathroom, nauseatingly bright.
