Chapter 8
FLIP
“What the hell happened to your eye?” Dallas asks as we’re suiting up for practice.
“I missed a step coming down from my loft,” I lie.
He nods, like this totally makes sense. “Oh man, that’s a real design flaw.”
“Yeah,” I agree. The number of times I’ve almost fallen down that retractable ladder is unreal. I should consider replacing it with a spiral staircase.
Tristan glances at me, but he keeps his mouth shut and continues lacing his skates.
Not even for one second did I consider driving Tally back to her apartment last night. And that’s a huge fucking problem.
So was letting her sit in my lap. The fact that she felt right there is problem number three.
Problem four is how fucking territorial I got over her when Quinn offered to drive her home.
He’s a great guy. And Tally is right, he should have a girlfriend.
But no way was I handing her over to him on a silver platter made of my rejection and her emotional turmoil.
Problem five is the churning worry that won’t allow my gut to settle.
Tally is under a lot of stress; final exams, her parents getting a divorce, and her guilt over hurting my feelings.
I’m a big boy, and it’s clear she didn’t mean it the way I took it, so the least I can do is make things less awkward when we’re with the group.
She needs her Terror crew now more than ever.
Once we’re on the ice warming up our glutes and quads, Tristan digs in. “Want to tell me what really happened?”
“Not particularly.” Because then I have to take a closer look at my actions.
Tally’s roommate, Fee, is responsible enough to have handled the situation.
But Tally was a mess, emotionally and physically.
I didn’t trust anyone else to make sure she was safe.
And I wanted to be the one to take care of her.
Tristan raises a brow.
I ignore it and switch to an inner thigh stretch.
“You going to fill me in on the Tally situation?” he presses.
“I drove her home. End of story.” That lie is sharp and stupid.
“Dude.” He gives me his unimpressed Kermit face. “Your sister is my wife, and her best friend is the older sister of Tally’s best friend, and Fee is our coach’s sister. It’s six fucking degrees of separation everywhere you turn, so I already know you drove her home this morning.”
“Nothing happened,” I snap.
“Of course nothing happened. You would never. Maybe old Flip if she’d been sober, but that is not you now.”
I meet his gaze and guilt cuts through me, swift and painful.
We’ve known each other forever, but I almost imploded our friendship when he first came to Toronto.
He’s right. Every partner has been sober and willing, or so I believed.
But I put Tristan in a position that left little room for his own feelings a couple of times, and I will forever regret that.
I don’t want to overshare. “I didn’t think she’d make it back to her apartment without hurling.”
“So you set her up in the spare room.”
“Where else would I put her?”
I shouldn’t be this defensive. I haven’t done anything wrong. I held her hair while she threw up, put her to bed, then checked on her every fifteen minutes until I gave up and dragged the yoga mat into her room.
But for a moment, I longed to let her cuddle right up next to me so I could hold her while she slept.
Tristan arches a brow. Like he can see inside my fucking head.
I sigh. “I slept on the floor because I was worried. She didn’t know I was there and tripped over me on the way to the bathroom. Her foot caused this.” I motion to my eye.
“You slept on the floor?” He doesn’t sound skeptical, which I appreciate.
“On a yoga mat.” It was seriously uncomfortable, and my back is still annoyed, but it was worth it to make sure Tally was okay.
I don’t say anything about her face-planting into my dick. Or that I saw her entire ass, thanks to a wardrobe malfunction. I can never unsee it, and I’m pretty sure my future dreams about it will land me a front-row seat in hell.
Tristan rolls his head on his shoulders. “She was pretty flirty with you.”
“She was hammered.”
“She sat in your lap.”
“Again, she was hammered.”
“And you let her.” He side-eyes me.
I brush it off. Evade. “She had a lot going on.”
“You can’t lead her on, though, man,” he says gently. “Unless there’s more to this?”
“That’s not…there’s not.” I shake my head.
“Then you might need to set some boundaries.” He claps me on the shoulder. “I get it, though, she was messed up.”
I haven’t said anything to anyone other than Dred about her proposition, and I don’t plan to.
Not even Tristan. He’s one of my closest friends, but he could accidentally say something to Rix, and it could get back to Tally.
She’s already embarrassed enough. The speech she gave this morning has been rolling around in my head.
I don’t know how much of it was fueled by her hangover, but it hit a soft spot.
She knows me, and she knows what it’s like to be wanted for the wrong reasons, maybe better than I realized.
But last night she was in full-on defiance mode.
Hurt. Upset. Devastated and looking for an escape from the shit in her head.
And I was the person she came to. Bringing her back to my place, being the one to take care of her, seeing her in my robe, sleeping in my spare bed…
is giving me ideas I shouldn’t entertain. Can’t entertain.
Coach Vander Zee blows the whistle, ending that conversation and dissipating my fantasies.
But my mind is still whirling. I didn’t pay much attention to anyone but Tally at the Watering Hole. That doesn’t mean other people weren’t noticing us, though. Dred sure did. And so did Tristan. I should have let Quinn drive her home, but I couldn’t.
I decline the offer to go to the Watering Hole after practice. Instead, I make a stop at the retirement home since it’s cribbage hour and I’m always down for cards with octogenarians.
“Stop letting me win, Phillip,” Gurdy says after she beats me for the second time in a row.
“I’m not. You have decades of experience on me,” I argue as I move the pegs back to the beginning and set us up for round three.
“You’re missing points left and right. What’s going on?” She covers the cards with her wrinkled, age-spotted hand and tips her head. “Is it woman problems?” She squints. “Or maybe man problems?”
I sigh and flop back in my chair. “It’s woman problems.”
“Hallelujah. You finally got a girlfriend, didn’t you?” She slaps the table and opens her mouth to announce it to the entire room.
“No girlfriend.”
Her lips pucker. “Then what kind of woman problems? Did you get someone pregnant?”
“God, no. My coach’s daughter has a thing for me,” I confide.
“Ah.” She nods knowingly. “And you don’t feel the same?”
I sip my Earl Grey tea. “That’s the thing, I don’t know.”
She arches a gray, almost nonexistent eyebrow. “You don’t know, or you don’t want to admit that you have feelings because it would complicate things?”
“My coach would kill me if I dated his daughter.”
“You’re too important to the team to kill,” she reasons.
“She’s too young for me,” I rebut.
“How young is she?”
“Twenty-one.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s hardly too young. She’s an adult; you’re an adult. You’re making excuses. What’s the real problem?”
“She deserves better, and I have too much baggage.”
Gurdy reaches across the table and places her soft, age-weathered hand on top of mine. “Dear boy, we all come with baggage. What if she’s your right person? Don’t let her slip through your fingers because you’re too afraid to try.”
For the time being, I just give her a look and let her win again, but I roll our conversation over in my head on the way home.
Gurdy doesn’t know my history with women and relationships.
She doesn’t realize pursuing Tally would be wickedly selfish.
She would have to face all the media bullshit that comes along with me, and eventually I would have to come clean about what really sent me down that dark path.
Tally deserves someone who can give her his whole heart, not just a pile of fragments.
When I arrive home, I toss my keys on the counter next to the mail.
My first stop is the laundry room. I pull my freshly washed and dried sheets and bathrobe out of the dryer.
Immediately after I dropped Tally at her apartment, I came home, stripped the bed, and put everything she’d touched in the wash.
I stupidly thought cleansing my personal space of her presence and her smell would erase the memory of her being here.
But the image of her curled up in my spare bed, long wavy blonde hair fanned out across the pillow remains vivid.
It’s been an eternity since I’ve felt this kind of…
longing for something. Someone. She looked so peaceful, like she belonged…
I shut it all down. Compartmentalize it. There’s no other choice. Vander Zee would destroy me. Even if he didn’t and we did try, I can’t risk messing up the friend group because I’m suddenly lonely. Tally needs these people and their support more than I need someone to cuddle with.
I make the spare bed on autopilot, hang my robe in the bathroom, grab a healthy snack made by Rix from the fridge, and park my ass on the couch.
The book I’ve been reading sits on the coffee table, taunting me. The irony is real, since it’s Tally’s. She suggested it in the group chat and passed it to Rix, who passed it to me a couple of weeks ago. I flip the book open. But my mind keeps drifting.
Tally’s become an integral part of our friend group. I look forward to the nights where she joins us at the Watering Hole. I try to make her dance showcases when we’re in town and don’t have a game, because she’s incredible on stage.
I could convince myself that I feel the same way about her as I do Hammer, Hemi, Essie, and Dred—a friend who’s a girl and firmly platonic.
But her proposition has altered everything.
I don’t want to understand, to empathize, but I do.
Especially now that she’s explained and I’ve had a chance to reframe it all.
But I can’t pursue her. Her world is too fragile, and I would be devastated if I hurt her.
I pick up the book and immerse myself in the story, but whenever something funny or interesting happens, I find myself itching to text Tally.
Before the proposition, I would have thought nothing of firing off a quick message.
But it’s not just about the book. I want to make sure she’s okay, to tell her everything she said this morning made sense.
It’s a bad idea, though. Tristan was right, I can’t lead her on.
My phone buzzes on the side table.
I flip it over, half hoping it’s her. If Tally reaches out first, I can respond.
But it’s just an alert from my fan page. There are ten new messages, and all but two are from women who want to hook up.
It’s the reminder I need.
Because if I give in, I don’t think I could handle it when she continued her life and left me behind. That’s what always happens. She doesn’t want to keep me; she just wants my help.