Now, with my hope to find a place killed by the realtor, it became a burning issue.
I hoped hewouldbring one.
That would make it fucked-uply easier for me than a single Owen.
Knowing him for so long, I believed my heart was well-shielded, but I didn’t want to put it to the test. Especially not when I was going through a Sahara Desert dry spell.
“What did Simon say about the girlfriend status?” June asked.
“I won’t ask my brother, and Walter just cranked that he didn’t know, didn’t care, and that it didn’t matter because Owen would be gone before we can say Marilyn Monroe.” To Walter, she was the only supermodel fathomable.
He was probably right. About Owen going away soon after. He spent most of his life away from this town, to which he had moved at fifteen from England with his British mom and repatriated failed businessman dad.
Maybe I shouldn’t stress that much after all. Maybe I could go through with it with no drama and no scars—my preferred way to live my life.
Besides, after years of models, Mr. Jersey Number 7 probably wouldn’t look twice my way anyway.
2
Owen
“FUCKING CUNT!” I BREATHEDout when my goddamn knee buckled despite the ugly sleeve brace tightened around it. I gripped the back of the seat I was passing by on my way from the aircraft bathroom.
The man whose seat I clutched turned, lifting his sleep mask just enough to glare at whoever dared intrude on his First-Class cubicle. His groggy annoyance shifted to shock when I hissed a pained, “Fucking shit,” at my knee—suddenly remembering thatcuntas a legitimate curse word wasn’t quite as prevalent in the U.S. as it was in England.
“Mr. Wheaton, if you can please return to your seat, we’re preparing for landing,” a flight attendant approached me with a professional smile.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I huffed, pain slurring my voice.
“May I?” she gripped my elbow and helped me limp to my seat.
The sliding door of the cubicle across the aisle from mine was open. A rarity in First-Class where people pay goodmoney for maximum privacy. The woman in the gray dress suit occupying it smiled at me as she had ever since we boarded in Heathrow.
“This looks painful,” she had said eleven hours ago, noticing the knee brace that protruded below my designer’s calf-length capri pants when we found ourselves next to each other, exiting the A-list airport lounge.
“It’s not usually, but it is today.” I had limped that day after being on the mend for at least a week, and it pissed me off. I preferred pissed off rather than worried. Hope of returning to do what I did best—playing football—was my only reason to get out of bed before noon.
“Must be all that rain.” It was a typical London drizzle outside, but she had an American accent.
“Good thing I’m headed to California then,” I managed to say when a group of people raced toward me, surrounding and separating me from her, clamoring for my signature and a selfie. I wore my best smile and acquiesced. It wasn’t just talent that got me to the top. It was giving people—the media, fans—what they expected of me: always smiling and bantering, never scowling, even after bitter losses. And now, with my career on its deathbed, if to believe the grim predictions some doctors made, I had more than the usual urge to keep up my public image. These fans could be the last I’d have, so I tried harder for them. For me.
This couldn’t end. Not now, not yet, not like that.
The World Cup was a year away, and I had every plan on playing it with England. I couldn’t care less if I diedafter. I just wanted to bow out on top.
“So ... you’re a famous soccer player! I googled you while the mob lined up for your autograph,” the suited woman whose name I had forgotten said when we made our way through the sleeve toward the aircraft. “A top midfield attacker, been voted not just one of the top players of the English premier league, but one of the hottest in Europe’s Champions League despite losing the season.” She gave me a thorough once-over while shaking her phone with the screen facing me as if to prove where she had gotten her intel. A picture of me on the pitch in Wembley flashed on her screen.
“Football. Please.” I smiled back.
“You’d better get used to it being called soccer if you’re heading to the States.” She placed a perfectly manicured and bejeweled hand on my shoulder and flashed a smile at me.
Tell me about it.
“A big star traveling alone with no one to kiss your boo-boo?”
I wasn’t surprised by the familiarity. People often treated me like public property—the result of being notoriously approachable and automatically personable—and women like her usually cut straight to the chase with me, instinctively knowing that not much else could be gained from me. It was a barter.
“Who’s kissing yours?” I flashed an automatic smile and response.
