Chapter 5
chapter five
Emme
Today’s Learning Objective:
Students will explore new and exciting opportunities.
I couldn’t stop laughing. Tears filled my eyes and my ribs ached. My face was burning hot again but I couldn’t help it.
“Oh, you’re precious,” I said, patting his rock-solid biceps. “Oh my god. I haven’t laughed like that in ages.”
I mopped my face with a napkin. Half my makeup came away in the process. When I looked up, I found Ryan staring at me, no hint of humor in his expression. If anything, the crinkle of his eyes looked…pained.
I shifted in the booth to face him and folded my legs in front of me. Places like this probably frowned on criss-cross applesauce, but I was taking all the liberties that having the city’s golden boy of football beside me afforded. “The next time I’m in my feelings, I’m going to call you and you’re going to say something unhinged like you want me to carry your big-headed babies.”
His brow quirked up. “I don’t have a big head.”
I wagged a finger at his long, rangy limbs and shoulders that barely fit through standard doorways. “Just look at yourself. They’d be huge, beastly children.”
He stared at me then, that distress still pulling at his features. He started to say something, but the server arrived with our meals and that interruption seemed to shelve the big beastly babies.
But Ryan didn’t move when the server left, didn’t touch his food. His gaze seemed unfocused and far away, and I only managed a few bites before asking, “Do you want to swap?”
We always ended up trading plates. Even when he ordered something far outside my taste, I ended up eating half of it. Or pushing our dishes together and sharing.
I slid my plate toward him but he held up a hand. “Do you remember how we promised to marry each other if we weren’t married by thirty?”
“I—” I gulped my water before saying something I’d regret because yes, of course I remembered. But I remembered it the same way I remembered the pepper spray I kept in my bag: It was nice knowing it was there but I didn’t think I’d ever need it, and even if I did, the odds were high that I’d fuck it up and injure myself in the process. “What made you think of that?”
He crossed his arms over his chest again. It was his default position. He’d always drawn some joy in coming across as foreboding. He strived to be unapproachable. The truth was, he just didn’t want anyone getting close enough to poke at his secrets and sore spots because they were right there at the surface, lurking just behind the cool glares and intimidating postures. And the big head, obviously.
“I think we could help each other,” he said.
“By…getting…married?” I drained the rest of my cocktail.
Fuck it, drunk wasn’t the worst thing to be tonight.
“Yeah,” he said with a defiant chin lift that had me choking out a manic laugh. “You said you needed a revenge date. How about a revenge husband?”
This time, I was too stunned to laugh. All I could do was stare at him, my mouth hanging open and my fingers clutching at pearls I wasn’t wearing. Small pulses of electricity lit up my body like someone was dragging their nails over my skin. We stared at each other for the longest moment. I wasn’t sure I was breathing.
He looked so serious, and with more than his usual grim intensity. This left me no other choice than to drop a hand to his head and give it a rattle. “How many concussions did you get last season?”
“Just one.”
I pulled away from him before I did something truly mortifying like running my fingers through his hair. This conversation was a damn minefield. One wrong move and fifteen years of friendship would blow up in my face.
“One too many,” I said. “I’m worried about you, Wildcat. You’re not making sense.”
“What if I am?”
What? What does that even mean? What is this about?
I motioned to his plate. “Don’t you need to eat like every forty-five minutes to maintain the whole two hundred and thirty pounds of hurricane-force muscle thing?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Two twenty-five.”
“Well, then, you’re wasting away.” I gave him an admonishing head shake. “And I’m sure you worked out today.”
He shrugged this off. “Only two hours. Off-season.”
“Have some of this,” I said, pushing my plate toward him. “It would be great for me if you did because I’ve been eyeing that cheesy veggie gratin thing.”
We traded plates and I went straight for the small cast-iron crock topped with blistered cheese. I still heard Teddy’s voice in my head when I ate anything that wasn’t strictly light, but I was getting a lot of practice at flipping that voice off.
Ryan polished off my fish in about three bites, but something changed when he set his fork on the edge of the plate and glanced at me.
It was as if the energy between us switched to a higher frequency. I felt his gaze heating my skin. I didn’t know what was happening right now or how to get us back to the way we always were, but I knew I needed to.
“Em, I was serious about?—”
“Not until you tell me why,” I said. I closed my hand around his wrist, my fingers flat on his pulse. It seemed quick, a hard and steady beat against my fingertips. “Either you tell me what’s really going on or I’m dragging you to the nearest hospital to get your head checked.”
He stared down at my hand for a long moment, a million thoughts whirling behind those eyes. “I think we can help each other,” he said carefully. “All this stress you’re feeling about the wedding, I can take it off your shoulders. I’ll go to Grace’s wedding with you and any of the other parties, and I’ll keep that sonofabitch far away from you. You know I don’t invite myself to fights but if that kid even looks at you the wrong way, I’ll sack his ass so hard he’ll be coughing up grass for days.”
I couldn’t ignore the immediate surge of relief that pulsed through me. The tension that had cemented itself in my body since the night I found out about Teddy faded a bit and my shoulders sagged. A deep, weary breath slipped past my lips and I fought hard to keep tears from filling my eyes.
It didn’t matter that Ryan was plucking me out of the water by the scruff of my neck. Any port in a storm.
Just for a minute, I wasn’t fighting to stay afloat. I wasn’t in this all by myself.
When I was positive my voice wouldn’t crack, I asked, “What’s in it for you?”
He made a face like he already hated the taste of the words to come. “My image needs some work. I’m making some moves for life after the League, and if I want things to go my way, I need to acquire something resembling a family values vibe.”
When he drowned those comments with the last of his beer, I released his wrist and went back to the cheesy vegetables. But just as quickly, I jabbed my fork in his direction. A bit of broccoli flew across the table. “I don’t buy that.”
He rubbed his brows. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Okay, but the League and the rest of pro sports is full of abusers, predators, bigots, and fools who invent their own trouble. They still have endorsement deals and cushy post-retirement gigs waiting for them.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” he said, picking up the stray broccoli and depositing it on the edge of his plate. “But it’s not true for my current circumstances.”
“What do you need to work on? Even if you’ve earned yourself a reputation for heartlessly plowing your way through every new supermodel and rising pop star in the past five years, I really don’t see how that’s bad enough to warrant a fake marriage.”
A muscle high in his jaw ticked as he signaled for another round of drinks. Eventually, he said, “Heartlessly?”
I jabbed the fork again. Some breadcrumbs went flying this time. “Didn’t that British singer with the lavender hair release a brutal breakup song about you last summer? Poppy Whatshername?”
He blinked up at the ceiling. “It’s not about me.”
“It’s widely accepted that it’s about you.”
“It’s not about me.”
“She slices and dices you, my friend,” I said. “It basically charges you with leaving her in a pile of emotional dirty laundry without a backward glance.”
“It’s not about me,” he said, biting off each word, thoroughly exasperated now.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. I did. Or, rather, I wanted to, but when that song came out, the citizens of the internet had gathered the evidence and made a very compelling case as to his guilt in the matter. We’d talked back then, but he hadn’t been too chatty. I hadn’t pushed.
Was it possible that I hadn’t pushed because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of him with a very young, very emotive singer who made waves everywhere she went? Sure. Or that the media had breathlessly documented every minute of their relationship, and for the first time in my life I had to look away when I saw my friend’s face in my newsfeed? Also yes.
It’d felt disloyal to resent his girlfriend for no other reason than I knew she drove him up the wall, so I’d said nothing about it. No texts teasing him about landing on the cover of magazines with his hand in her back pocket. No long voice notes reading unhinged social posts about whether he was riding her coattails (impossible) or she was taking his focus away from football (also impossible). And no comments about the song that seemed to imply he cared little for a woman who wanted to give him her entire world.
I’d kept it all to myself. That was how it’d always been with us. We didn’t talk too much about the people we dated. It was fine for the most part. I learned long ago how to play nice with the girls he hung out with, and he didn’t even notice the guys in my life. It was fine .
“For what I’m working on,” he said, still exasperated, “I need to turn the page from all of that.”
I went back to the vegetables. “And you think getting married will do the trick?”
“Emme.” He plucked the fork from my fingers before I could launch the cauliflower.
I lifted my brows in question, but he ignored that. He shifted closer to me and pressed my hand between both of his. I swallowed hard.
“I think marrying my best friend—the girl from back home, the one the media called my high school sweetheart in all of the Heisman packages because there are so damn many photos of us together after my games, the one who waited all this time for me to find my way back to her—will do the fucking trick.”
Before I could stop myself to think through the implications, the grenade blast this would blow in our friendship, in my entire life, I said, “Okay.”
We exited the restaurant into the bracing night air, but even that wasn’t enough to snap me out of the fog of what just happened?
My head felt disconnected from my body, like I was in the deep of a bad sinus infection. My thoughts were glossy bubbles, drifting away and popping into nothing before I knew what they were. Could I blame liquor for this? Probably not.
It took a minute to realize there was a group of people—men, mostly younger, early twenties—gathered on the sidewalk. They were all talking at once, some doing their best impression of Ryan’s passing stance while others simply bounced on the balls of their feet, vibrating with the pleasure of seeing Ryan Ralston in the flesh.
Sometimes I forgot that this was his life. That, to the rest of the world, he was a football phenomenon.
To me, he’d always be Ryan, the moody kid who secretly loved math and kept me tangerine rich.
The group lurched closer and I took a large step back. Ryan’s arm circled my shoulders and he held a hand out to them, saying, “Give my girl some room, fellas.”
The bubbles in my head all simmered and popped.
The men immediately backed up, showering me in a drunken chorus of “Miss, we’re so sorry” and “Ma’am, we’re at your service” and “Dammit, Doug, stop ruining everything!”
It must’ve been obvious that I didn’t know what to do because Ryan leaned in close, whispering, “Relax. I’ll handle this.”
I tried to wriggle out of the photos—because why did anyone need me in a photo with Ryan and his fans?—but he kept that arm locked around my shoulders. I smiled through it all, even when Ryan growled and snapped “Don’t even fucking think about it” when one guy went in for a side hug I hadn’t requested.
It was fun to see his fangs come out. He didn’t do that too often, instead choosing to let his glacial stares do all the talking.
Everyone got a photo, including Doug, who really did have a knack for ruining things, and Ryan ended it with a crisp wave and “Thanks for the support, boys.”
Ryan led me toward the SUV I hadn’t noticed waiting at the curb while the guys continued talking at him and shouting advice for the next season. One day, if I worked hard enough, maybe I’d develop the confidence necessary to tell professionals how to do a job that I’d merely observed.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” I said as he opened the door. “I’ll walk.”
“If you think I’m leaving you here right now, you’re out of your fucking mind.” His hands settled on my hips, gripping tight. “It’s ten thirty at night, freezing cold, and there are seven drunk guys over there who would think nothing of following you all the way home. Get in the fucking car, Emmeline.”
Still suffering from too much emotional sinus pressure to process anything quickly, I bobbed my head but made no other move. A low, rumbly noise sounded in his throat and then Ryan picked me up and deposited me in the back seat without so much as a grunt. The last time anyone tried to pick me up, I was half dead from anaphylactic shock and Teddy had made it seem like a lot of work.
Ryan followed me into the back seat, shooting a frigid glare through the tinted window at the men still shouting at him. The car pulled into traffic without wasting a second.
“Bowen, we’re going to the North End,” Ryan called to the driver.
Bowen nodded and hung a hard right turn. I glanced over to find Ryan staring at me, his gaze steely. He remained silent while my too-full head spun.
Did I just get engaged?
Or was it fake-engaged?
How had this happened?
How would I explain it to my friends? To my mother?
And was this any better than what I’d had before? This solved some of my problems, but none of the big ones. None of the sad, tragic, lonely ones that would linger long after Ryan’s deal went through. And wouldn’t it be so much worse when it was over?
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” was the only thing I could say.
I let him watch me while Bowen wove through the streets of Boston. Though I never gave him my address, he pulled up in front of my building like he’d been coming to this craggy little corner of Salem Street for years.
I reached for the door handle, but Ryan stopped me, saying, “Wait. I’ll come around.”
He gripped my elbow as I climbed down from the SUV, his other hand hovering near my hip. I’d love to say I didn’t need that much help, but I was just a hair over five feet tall and couldn’t dismount a vehicle this size without a firm grip on at least one handle.
“Thanks,” I said as I crossed to the narrow sidewalk in front of my building. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say now, but I knew I had to do something, anything. We couldn’t leave it like this. “Um, so?—”
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, flattening a hand beside my door.
His driver took off toward Charter Street. I watched as the taillights flashed before disappearing from sight. He was probably looping back up through Prince Street and not leaving Ryan here.
Because why would he leave Ryan here?
That wouldn’t happen.
We weren’t that kind of engaged.
Or…were we?
That would be something to think about.
I dug my keys out of my bag and Ryan watched while I struggled with the old, sticky lock. Once we were inside, he settled a hand low on my back. He kept it there as we wound our way up five flights of narrow, twisting stairs. We didn’t say a word.
I turned to face him when I reached the small landing outside my door. He stopped a step below though that still didn’t bring him down to my eye level.
He slipped his hands into his pockets only to immediately pull them out again. “Tell me you’re all right,” he said.
“I’m—I’m not sure. I’m fine,” I hurried to add. “But I need some time to think. About everything. That you said.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “And after you’ve had that time?”
“We’ll talk,” I said.
He pressed his tongue into his cheek, nodded once. “I have to be in LA tomorrow night, but I’ll be back on Wednesday. Can we meet up later this week? I have some events coming up and it would go a long way to have you with me for them.” He glanced over my shoulder at the off-kilter brass 5 and the hot pink skeleton wreath left over from last Halloween. “Or I could stay and watch while you think. Just like I used to.”
There was no reason in the entire world for those words to warm my blood all the way down to my toes, and there was certainly no reason to feel a twist of anticipation low in my belly. None at all.
“You’d get bored without some calculus homework to entertain you,” I said.
“Unlikely.”
Before I could respond to that, a crash sounded from the other side of the door. “Don’t worry,” Ines called. “It’s not broken.” After a weighty pause, she added, “And I wasn’t listening.”
I met Ryan’s gaze with a tired grin. “Later this week,” I said. “We’ll talk then.”
He lifted a hand like he meant to reach for me but let it drop. “I’ll text you my schedule,” he said, though each word sounded waterlogged with reluctance.
I didn’t like this. I didn’t like the sense that I couldn’t tell up from down. And I didn’t like that I couldn’t read his thoughts with one quick glance.
I beckoned him closer, my arms open. “Come here,” I said, fisting my hand in his sweater and pulling him to me when he didn’t move. “You’re not allowed to leave me without a hug.”
I held him close and, after a pause I didn’t understand at all, he wrapped his arms around me. The scruff of his beard scraped at my neck, and for once I didn’t wiggle away from it.
“I love you, you know,” I said, my words muffled against his shoulder.
“I know. I love you too.” Ryan drew in a deep breath and said, “Figure out what you need from me to make this work. Anything you want, anything at all. I don’t care what it is, I’ll get it done. If I can’t, I have people who can find a way.” He ran his hands down my arms. “We’re in this together. Okay?”
I bobbed my head, humming in agreement while I was confused and conflicted as hell. “We always are.”