Even her plain white panties are evoking memories I don’t want of the first night we met. The night when she slipped through the crowd around me to buy me a drink at a bar where I’d just taken over the stage to goof off with my guitar.
When she asked me if I was some kind of local celebrity or if the people at this bar truly liked pop song covers this much.
If I wanted to join her at her hotel and give her one good memory of the city after she’d bombed an interview.
That night, I lied to her. I told her my standard line—that I was a lazy bum who just liked music.
Not long after, I spotted her on television when I was hanging with a buddy who had the Fireballs game on. Shocked the hell out of me, but I was happy for her. I had her number but didn’tdo anything with it. She was a fucking badass. If she wanted me, she’d reach out, and I had my own shit going on.
But the next season, when I was asked to toss out the first pitch at a Fireballs game, I saw her in person again for the first time.
The look on her face—theoh my god, I know you, but I didn’t know who you werelook—told me everything that was echoed in her text to me later that night.
HOCKEY PLAYERS ARE NOT LAZY BUMS. Oh my god. Apologies. I never would’ve hit on you if I’d known. Can we pretend that didn’t happen?
I texted her back, turned on the charm, and that’s when things got fun.
For a few months. In secret. At her insistence because she didn’t like the optics of being with a professional athlete who was friends with a lot of her players.
Until I offered to teach her to ice skate and everything went to hell.
For the four years since, I’ve mostly managed to avoid her. I quit going to the bar where we met. If I hang out with any of the Fireballs players, I do it on my turf at Mink Arena or at one of our houses. When the Fireballs ask for one of the Thrusters to toss out a first pitch, I suggest someone else on the team.
I didn’t know my heart could be shredded as thoroughly as this woman shredded it. And considering how I felt after my divorce a few years before that, that’s saying something. But when I realized Addie was completely oblivious to the way I was hearing wedding bells in our future, that she didn’t want me as anything other than someone to let off steam with in the bedroom, I broke.
And I apparently shouldn’t have been neglecting the sessions with my therapist that I started not long after our breakup because seeing her again today fuckinghurts.
Like it was last week that I walked out of her apartment for the final time instead of four years ago. And also as if I’ve spent every day since both last week and four years ago waiting for her to text me and tell me that she misses me and her life is better with me in it and she wants to try to have a real relationship.
Add in the guilt at knowing I’ve hurt her arm again, and I can barely stand to be in my own skin.
I pull my new Mercedes SUV into the loading zone as close as you can get to the staff and player entrance of the ballpark. When I kill the engine, I’m also actively ignoring the soft scent of lavender that’s permeating the air between us, courtesy of this woman who’s once again making my heart pound and my palms sweat and my balls demand to know why it was wrong that we had the audacity to like her so much.
Because that was the problem.
Casual is all I have to give. Baseball is my first true love. I’m living out my dreams, and they’re not you.
I mentally shake myself.
This is one trip down memory lane that I don’t need right now.
Especially when that wasn’t exactly what she said.
It’s what I heard, but it wasn’t what she said, which it took me months to admit to myself.
“I can make it from here,” she repeats.
HerI’ve got thisvoice brings back more memories that I don’t want, and I reach deep to hear my old therapist’s voice instead.Being in a relationship isn’t about codependency, Duncan. It’s about the enhancement to both of your lives that you can’t get on your own.
Better.
Except not.
Addie made my life better. I wanted to make hers better, and she wouldn’t let me.
“There are seven cars in this parking lot,” I say. “If one of them isn’t the team doctor, I’m taking you to urgent care.”
“The doctor’s here.”
