It’s enough to have me standing and reaching for the bottle, just because I don’t need their insanity and Blaise doesn’t need this bottle. But it’s been over six months since I touched alcohol last — and barely touched it the year beforebecause I was so sick from the chemo. As much as I thought I’d miss alcohol, I don’t. I don’t want this.
I don’t want this.
I start to hand it back, but then I lift my head and see Blaise staring at me.
His eyes move slowly, but it’s not the same sort of perusal the other guys were giving me, the scan that just kind of ends at the sight of my belly because the rest of the story of my body pretty much writes itself at that point.
Blaise goes right to my boobs at first, lingers there. Reasonable, since they’re enormous and this bathing suit that fit up top through most of my second trimester is now creating a mile of cleavage. The only thing that’s keeping it in place is the fact that my nipples have been hard for the last month. Hell, when I’m at home in the mirror, it’s hard for me to look anywhere else. So rock on.
But then his eyes slide down to my belly, and what was appreciation, I swear even a hint of a smile because a lot of people are just genuinely happier when they see a pregnant woman, suddenly morphs into something else.
Something bad.
He glares at me.
I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. I recall the thing I did before, tapping my belly to flash my naked ring finger, and try that again. Maybe he liked what he saw until he saw that I was pregnant and figured I was someone’s girlfriend?
But then his eyes run back up to mine. With the crazy directions the lights hit him at, I can’t see his eyes very well, but I feel them boring into me. I feel their hatred.
I’ve done nothing to him.
I don’t understand.
The world feels like it stops in his glare. My heart pounds in my chest, and there’s this peculiar devastation, this horrific foreboding, that sweeps over me.
It’s like he’s my person, but he’s ripping himself from me.
I have this urge to climb out of the hot tub like Evan did, just to grab Blaise and beg him to stay with me. I’d injure myself. I’d probably end up in the hospital in one of my usual tragedies that a miracle comes out of.
If it were a year ago, two years ago, I would have taken that gamble. But now there’s something more than myself at risk. The worst tragedy is no longer my own death.
I put my hand on my belly again, protectively this time.
He spins and returns to the house, slamming the slider shut so hard it rattles. Everyone’s really quiet despite the fountains of alcohol until Evan says, “Man, usually I want Blaise to be my friend, but not right now. You wanna play ping-pong?”
I don’t want to play ping-pong. I want to go home. I want to take a shower and wallow in bed and hide from the world for a couple days. Order a pepperoni pizza and binge on food the doctor tells me I can’t eat and I promise I’m not, but I have terrible self-control. I want to drown in grocery store sushi.
Blaise hates me, but Evan doesn’t. Gabe doesn’t. Wes doesn’t. Actually, as much as I don’t like Merrick, I don’t think he does either. They’ve accepted me.
“Umm, yeah. Let’s play ping pong.”
Chapter 9
Blaise
Tilly.
She was Trixie in my mind for months. Trixie the bitch. Trixie the con artist. Trixie the whore. Trixie the woman who is ruining my life. Who’s going to leave me destitute, a fucking joke, one of those guys who had a phenomenal NFL career only for their rep to get completely tanked because of something not even football related. I’m gonna be a Michael Vick. An OJ Simpson. Except I never hurt anyone or anything. All I ever did wrong was fall for a damsel in distress and then play a stupid game with her.
I now have seventeen thousand dollars in the bank.
I made over thirty million dollars last year. After taxes, the new car, my agent’s cut, the attorney I have on retainer, the accountant, the household expenses, and everything else, about six million got banked. All told, between my bankaccount and all my investments, which I don’t really understand and just let my money manager — myformermoney manager now — handle, I was looking at nearly twenty million banked up by the end of last season.
I’ve drained down to seventeen thousand dollars. No investments, no portfolio. I liquidated everything.
Because she’s taken it all.
So when Andy says, “I got you a gig. Two, in fact,” as I’m raiding the fridge a week after the hot tub party, mythank fuckis sincere.
