“I know he had a girlfriend for a while.”
“Did you know it was Tessa?”
Everything stops. My heart, the blood in my veins, my lungs, my brain. Marti clearly sees the incomprehension on my face, so she clarifies. “The girl dating Levi Casco. She was Jude’s girlfriend.”
What? Why? How? I don’t…I can’t understand. A flood of memories start making sense. The way all the hockey wives and girlfriends don’t seem to like Jude. The way Levi and Tessa won’t touch each other when Jude’s in the room. I thought it was because they were anti-PDA but they’re trying to be subtle for Jude. Carla once told me that some people on the team aren’t okay with Tessa and Levi being together. She meant Jude. He’s not okay. Why? Because he loves Tessa? No. Yes? I don’t know, and it’s making me feel even more humiliated. Why didn’t he tell me?
Marti stands up, grabs her phone off her desk, takes my hand and leads me through the office to the tiny conference room. It’s empty this early, so she pulls me inside and shuts the door behind us. She literally has to move me toward a chair and push on my shoulders to make me sit down. Internally I’m grappling with which emotion I should let overtake me.
Anger that he didn’t tell me this right away. Paranoia about why he didn’t tell me this at all. Sadness because he didn’t want to tell me this. Humiliation because clearly everyone I’ve been around in the last few weeks—Tessa, Carla, Levi, Dixie, Jude, Eddie, the rest of the team and now Marti—knew and purposely left me in the dark. Like an idiot.
Marti swims into view, sitting down in front of me and blocking the wall I’m staring at. She puts her phone on the table between us. “Eddie was drunk and had major verbal diarrhea, so he was just blurting out everything. He said Jude and Tessa were dating and that Jude cheated on her, so she dumped him. Then I guess at some point she and Levi started dating, and Jude lost it when he found out. Eddie’s big concern was it happened in playoffs and made Jude a pissy bitch that wasn’t fun to party with.”
“Tessa?” I repeat her name, and it feels painful suddenly. I remember when I met Carla and Tessa and took them to see potential business locations. Tessa was quiet and even seemed a little depressed. I remember Carla saying I shouldn’t think Tessa’s mood was due to her lack of interest in the places I was showing. It was because she was going through a breakup.
A breakup with Jude.
“I knew you didn’t know, and I wouldn’t think that was too big a deal normally,” Marti tells me, her voice calm and almost reassuring. “I mean, I would normally believe that Jude thought it would be awkward to tell you, or he hadn’t found the right moment…But then Eddie started the audiovisual part of his drunken homage to Thunder drama.”
Her hand moves to her phone. “Eddie was trying to show me how much fun Jude used to be. He kept showing me pictures on his phone of them partying. Mostly from his summer in Toronto after they won the Cup. There were a couple videos too of them in a hot tub with a bunch of girls.”
She’s pulling something up on her phone, and something in me starts to squirm like an animal in a trap. “I don’t want to see him with another girl, Marti.”
“That’s not what I need to show you,” she assures me and pauses, her eyes filling with sympathy. “I emailed this video to myself after Eddie passed out. I don’t even think he understood the significance of it when he showed it to me, but I do.”
She hits play and turns her screen to face me. It’s a video of Jude in just a pair of wet underwear, sitting on the edge of a hot tub. The background is dark night sky with some building lights twinkling like this hot tub is on a roof. I can hear girls chattering and splashing and Eddie’s pervy laugh.
“Dude, look around you. There’s plenty of pussy to drown your sorrows in,” Eddie’s voice says off camera.
Jude takes a sip from the beer bottle he’s holding and runs a hand through the overgrown beard he’s sporting. Water drips from it. This has got to be very soon after winning the Cup. That’s a playoff beard. “I’m not sad. I’m pissed. She had to pick my best friend? It would be like me fucking Carla. I might have fucked other people, but it wasn’t anyone she knew.”
That beer in his hand is definitely not his first because his words are sloppy. Someone off camera splashes him, and I see the water drops hit him, but he ignores it. Eddie speaks again. “So give her a taste of her own. Fuck Carla!”
“She’s Darby’s, you jackass,” Jude barks. His eyes narrow angrily, and then he sips his beer again. “But that’s a good idea. I should fuck one of her friends. I mean, Carla’s not her only one. I could find another girl she knows and parade that in front of her face.”
“Just make sure she’s hot,” Eddie advises and laughs.
Someone splashes Jude again, and he smiles this time as a voice whines, “Jude, come play with me.”
He grins at Eddie, which is essentially grinning at the camera, and puts his beer down. “But first I’ll try out your drowning in pussy idea…”
The camera follows him as he lowers himself into the hot tub, chest-to-chest with a topless blonde. I close my eyes. I think I’m going to be sick. I stand up. Marti does the same, and as I turn toward the door, she puts a hand on my arm. “I swear I didn’t tell you this to be a bitch,” Marti pleads sincerely. “I just know if it was me, and I really liked him, I would want to know. Before I liked him even more, you know?”
I nod. I’m not mad at her. I know she’s not being vindictive. She’s trying to be a friend. I want to reassure her, but I can’t right now. I can’t do anything but get out of here. I need to be alone. I open the conference room door. Marti must know I’m leaving because she says, “I’ll have Anastasia send your calls to me, and if anything urgent comes up, I’ll text you.”
I nod again, but pause and manage to find a shred of my voice, but only a shred. “Can you email me that video?”
“Okay.”
I turn and walk as fast as I can out of the office.
30
Jude
I should be sleeping. I only have two hours before I have to be at the airport to meet the team for our trip to the White House to meet the president and be congratulated on our Stanley Cup win last season. I didn’t sleep a second of last night, but it was worth it, because I managed to calm myself down and get my head on right again. I would have headed straight back to Zoey’s house at five when I was finally ready to go home, but I had locked the door on my way out. And then I reached for my phone and realized I didn’t have it, so I gave up and went to my place.
Which is why I’m getting ready to head to her office instead of grabbing some much-needed winks—because I need to make things right with her more than I need rest. I’m hoping she’ll let me take her to lunch so I can talk to her away from her office and spend some quality time with her before I’m gone for three days. I grab my packed bag off the bed and carry it into the kitchen.
