“Okay.” She blinked.
“Why do I make you so uncomfortable?” He leaned so close she could smell the bergamot soap Graziella placed in every bathroom of the house.
Her eyes burned. How was she supposed to answer that? She wanted to tell him that almost everyone made her uncomfortable, he was just the crown jewel of discomfort. She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t bear to think that there was yet another situation she had misread, like she had done so many times with other people. She wanted to tell him that she was afraid of being seen, really being seen, because it would mean she had to tell him about her diagnosis and all of her failures. But there was no way she was going there. Not today.
“No one is defined by their diagnosis,” the psychiatrist who diagnosed her had said. Not everyone would try to—or wouldwantto try to—comprehend. “Autism is an aspect of who you are, like any other characteristic. You get to decide how or even if you want to share it.” It was a tidy decree, allowing Ellie to decide “if and when” without worrying about “why.” She still had doubts, she still had questions, butthe worst one of all was wondering what would be different if she’d been diagnosed earlier. And now she didn’t want to think about the question that had begun to scorch a tiny hole in some outer ring in her psyche:Would things with Cris have been different?
“I’m uncomfortable because I do not have time to wonder about this. I spend so much of my time wondering. I cannot live in the past. I do not believe in regret.”
“Okay, then, no more wondering. Ellie, I did have feelings for you then. Through a combination of grief, fear, and general stupidity, I messed up. I know it doesn’t matter now, and maybe you won’t believe me, but I never forgot about you. Not for one second. I thought about you way more than even I could believe. It was infuriating. I can’t change what happened, but I also can’t let you walk around thinking that some part of me doesn’t break a little bit more every time I look at you, because it does.”
A breeze blew a lock of his wild hair down in front of his sunglasses, and he pulled them off. His eyes fixed on her. It was almost too much. This time she let herself feel the transfer of energy that usually made her look away and held his gaze anyway.
“I don’t care about our project or whatever it is that we are trying to do. I just need you to know,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I am sorry.” He pulled her hand to his chest, pressing the back of it to the spot over his heart. His warm skin felt like it would burn through her hand. Even with the sun in her eyes, she could see that this was a man who was trying.
“Okay.” She stared at their clasped hands. “I understand. Thank you for telling me that,” she said, too stunned to stop sounding like an automatic email reply. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, reaching deep inside. “I’m sorry, too. I could have attempted to talk to you before sending that email.”
Cris nodded. “Do you think we can turn this around?”
“I think we can try. That’s all I can say right now.”
“I’ll take it,” he said.
Some part of her was still trying to keep him at a distance, but even she knew there was only so long you could hold on to hurt before it held on to you. She sat back down on the bench, not ready to leave yet. Cris turned to her but didn’t take a step forward until she slid her bag off the space next to her and set it down between her feet. He sat next to her in the spot she’d cleared—not too close and not too far, just the perfect distance away.
CHAPTER 15
Cris had been dreading this Zoom meeting since the day he’d found out about theSports Illustratedarticle. But Teena texted him in all caps,MAKE TIME FOR A CALL, and he knew he couldn’t dodge her anymore with excuses of travel and time zones. It was time to deal with it. Weirdly, he was kind of excited. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush of a new life potentially awaiting him, which felt so much closer after he got the phone call on thelungomarewith Ellie. These days, he was finding himself abnormally interested in old episodes ofERand watching ambulances as they drove by. If having one conversation took him a step closer to getting this scandal off his back so that he could move on, he’d be ready for fifty more like it.
Cris sat at the kitchen table to be sure he was close enough to the router. Internet in the house could be thrown off by something as little as firing up the microwave, and the last thing he needed was more communication problems. He had propped his iPad up on two boxes of Barilla pasta and a brick of vacuum-sealed Kimbo coffee to get it tothe right height to spare Teena from staring up his nostrils the whole call. And since he had already shaved for the dinner that night, he was looking fresher and cleaner than ever. He was ready.
The meeting connected and Teena immediately stood up and began pacing a short path between the glossy white lacquer desk and a wall of glass overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway in downtown Miami. As a former trial lawyer, she was often found laying out her talking points while prowling back and forth in her office.
“Do you remember what I told you when we first started working together?” she asked, her dark-brown hand pushing one of her long braids behind her back.
“You said it’s a good thing I am good-looking, otherwise I wouldn’t get sponsored to take out the trash.”
“I said that? Harsh. But true. Aside from that. Do you remember?” This was rhetorical, clearly. T didn’t look like she was truly interested in his input. “You were part of the deal for Ale and Leo, but I never would have taken you on if I didn’t think you had something. And I had one request. I said, ‘Don’t do anything stupid without coming to me first.’” Left and right across the screen she went, in her hot-pink sleeveless shift dress and chunky jade jewelry.
“T, I really want to talk to you about—”
“You need a night out with your boys? You want to jump out of an airplane, go to a strip club, gamble? I can make that happen. I got a top-three NHL draft pick out of jail after he smuggled a monkey home from Phuket, Cris. I can handle things. Do you understand me?” Teena gestured with her perfectly manicured nails.
“I thought—”
“But, see, that’s the problem. It’s not what you thought, Cris. It’s what you did. Now I know the press gave you a rough time over yourdad. I can appreciate that you didn’t want to give them the time when they all came running back to you after Tokyo. It worked in your favor. A little mystique never hurt anyone and we were still able to get you two magazine covers and three commercials out of it. But now the press has nothing to go on and they are hangry. Anything they’ve got is what they’re going with. Do you blame them? I don’t.” Back and forth she went, an abstract glass vase on the desk filled with calla lilies coming in and out of view as she moved.
“I don’t want miracles. I don’t want to swim again. All I want to do is tell the truth and make it so that whatever legacy I left still stands for something in this sport. And then I want to move on. That’s it,” he said, holding up his hands.
“You should have thought of that before you went and took garbage,” she said.
Cris bristled. He hated the fact that no matter what, he was going to be considered a doper. No one out there was going to be interested in the nuances of what he took and why. They just knew he took something.
“I was in pain. I was never going to compete again and I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not what people think. WADA doesn’t even consider it a banned substance.”
“Yeah, but the IGF-1 in the velvet is most definitely a banned substance. I do all my research,” she said, jabbing a nail toward the camera. “But we’re going to fix this. I am going to help you because I believe in you. You’re a good guy, Cris, and we’re going to finish this out the right way.”
“I want that, too, believe me. In fact, I kind of have a plan.”
