Page 18 of The Sweetest Return

I could fuck without finding out what somebody wanted out of life. Didn’t matter who left before morning as long as nobody stayed long enough to get close to something I still hadn’t admitted was broken.

It took close to a year before another woman became more than that to me. Longer before thinking about Imani stopped hurting.

I called that moving on.

Most of it was staying busy and staying untouched.

Time did what I wouldn’t. Football helped. So did watching the women around it.

I had teammates whose wives packed houses every time a trade went through. Girlfriends who changed jobs because training camp started in another city. Women who built entire businesses around being able to work from wherever the league decided their men belonged.

Some of them loved that life.

Some of them didn’t.

The player’s career became the fixed point, and whatever the woman wanted had to move around it.

Nobody had to force anything. Everybody simply treated adjustment like love.

Aubrey helped me understand that.

When we got serious, she started moving her own work around mine without me asking. Turned down brand trips if they fell on important football weekends. Talked about slowing down her social platforms eventually because she could always do something behind the scenes once we settled down.

At first, I liked that shit.

Probably because some bruised piece of twenty-two-year-old me still wanted proof that a woman who really loved you would choose you without making it complicated.

Aubrey made choosing me look easy.

Then football disappeared.

As rehab stretched out and doctors stopped sounding confident, she slowly put more attention back into her own work. More trips. More content. More of the life she’d had when I met her.

I wasn’t mad about that.

Eventually, I realized I wished she had never stopped.

What bothered me was how much brighter she got whenever somebody suggested the public version of Andre Jones might still survive.

ESPN called about a guest appearance, and she lit up. A shoe company still wanted a campaign. Apex started calling, and suddenly Aubrey was talking about New York, studio wardrobes, playoff travel, audience numbers, and whether the network might eventually want us to do something together.

I never thought she was sitting there counting my money. Aubrey wasn’t built like that. When she loved somebody, she meant it.

The problem was she had fallen in love with a version of me that filled rooms, and I wasn’t sure she knew what to do with the man who might be satisfied owning dealerships, running a restaurant, building something with Pops, and going home at night without anybody knowing where the fuck he was.

Three days ago, I finally admitted it out loud.

The breakup took longer than I wanted and less time than Aubrey deserved.

She had been beautiful that night, hair pulled into a high ponytail, one of those fitted lounge sets she swore cost more because the fabric was better. Her dimples showed when she opened the door and called me handsome.

I hated what I came there to do.

I told her I didn’t think we should keep doing this.

She wanted a reason.

I gave her the closest thing I had.