Chapter 18 Vinnie
VINNIE
“How did you know Tilly was the one?”
Angelo studies me as he leans against the bar with a toothpick between his lips. “This girl got you questioning your ways?”
The last few days, I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about Bianca. I’ve never been this way with any girl in my entire life, especially not one I haven’t slept with.
“I don’t have any ways.”
Angelo stares at me and raises an eyebrow.
“Okay. Okay.” I throw up my hands because my brother knows everything there is to know about me. “I like this chick.”
There’s a hint of a smile on Angelo’s face. “When was the last time you were with someone else?”
I open my mouth to throw out a date and quickly close it again.
I was all ready to fire off an answer, but this is something I really have to think about.
“It’s been a while.” I rub the back of my neck and stare down at the bar top.
“Shit, it’s been a few months. I’ve been so busy with training camp, I didn’t have time to get laid. ”
“But now you have time?”
I shake my head. “Not really, but I make time for Bianca.”
He pulls the toothpick from his lips and smirks. “I think you answered your own question.”
I stare at him for a minute with my mouth hanging open, letting his words sink in before I finally speak. “Just because I drop by her place doesn’t mean I’m ready to spend the rest of my life with her.”
He shakes his head slowly and sighs. “Have you ever made time for the other women?”
The truth of my words puts shit into perspective. I make time for her. I go out of my way to see her on the weekends, even though she isn’t exactly overly thrilled when I don’t give her an option.
“Well.” I pause and swallow down the reality that my brother may, in fact, be right. I was more of an in-the-moment type of guy, and I had never been into seconds either. “No.”
He rests his elbows against the bar and leans forward. “You want her dating other men?”
“Fuck no.” I look at him like he’s insane because he should know me better than that.
“Point made.” He smiles.
I walked right into that one. I never once cared about what happened to the women I slept with after the fact. Hell, I didn’t even care if they left my bed and gave someone else sloppy seconds. But the very thought of any man touching Bianca sets my blood on fire.
“I would break his legs.”
“Did you lock it down?”
I stare at him, and he stares back.
He motions between us. “I remember you being all up in my shit about locking down Tilly, and the same when Lucio was dating Delilah.”
“Yeah, well. You guys are different,” I grumble.
Angelo has always been a relationship kind of guy. He started dating Marissa so long ago, I don’t remember a time in my childhood without her. And although it took him a while to move on after her death, he went right into another lasting relationship.
Lucio is a different beast. He was a mix of Angelo and me. He had been a playboy at his core, but he had way more feelings for the women he slept with than I ever did. His getting caught up on Delilah and Lulu wasn’t surprising, especially with his hero syndrome.
“Grow the fuck up,” Angelo says and points at me. “You either lock it down or move the fuck on. Shit or get off the pot, brother. Stop stringing her along.”
I rock back on my stool. “It’s the other way around. Bianca keeps pushing me away.” I shrug because I can’t figure the girl out. “One minute, we’re bumping and grinding our way to ecstasy. And the next, she’s pushing me out the door.”
“Ahh.” He laughs. “Getting a taste of your own medicine.” I give him the middle finger, which only makes him laugh harder. “You know what they say?”
“No.” I cross my arms, suddenly defensive, and purse my lips. “I don’t believe in any of that nonsense.”
“The girls usually throw themselves at you.”
“Older women too.” I wink.
Angelo rolls his eyes. “The first girl to turn her back on you has your head all messed up.”
“She’s not turning her back on me.”
He tilts his head. “She’s not?”
“Not exactly.”
“Have you slept with her?”
I focus on my fingertips as I tap them against the wooden bar and avoid looking at Angelo. “That’s kind of personal, isn’t it?”
His laugh echoes in the empty bar. “That’s precious coming from you.”
“Fine. We haven’t had sex,” I blurt out. “Happy?”
“The fact that you’re sticking around this long without sleeping with her shows you’re growing up and may actually want more out of the relationship than a quick lay.”
“Ang.” I lean back and bring my eyes to his. “I’ve never been a quick lay.”
He grunts before throwing a rag from the countertop in my face. “You still act like a dumbass. That much hasn’t changed.”
I crumple the damp cloth in my hand. “Seriously, though. I can’t mess this up. We’re neighbors, and I’ll still have to see her every day if I do.”
“So, you haven’t slept with her because you’re a pussy?”
I groan. “Of course, fucker. Bianca’s different.”
He steps backward and leans against the countertop behind him.
“You’re a pussy.” He crosses his arms with a satisfied smile on his face.
“This girl is into romance. She doesn’t want the playboy Vinnie Gallo.
She wants to know she isn’t going to land in a tabloid as the latest side piece of the hottest player in Chicago, and I’m not talking about football. ”
“So, some sort of grand gesture?”
My brain hurts from thinking this hard. I’ve never had to think beyond a smile and a wink before the chick’s clothes would practically fall off and she’d be on her knees sucking me off.
“A sincere gesture. It doesn’t need to be big, but it has to have meaning.” Angelo glances toward the door. “Go let Carlos in. He’s getting antsy out there and probably scaring the pedestrians.”
“I’m going to jet. I have to get to the training facility. If I’m late, the coach will have my balls,” I tell him as I walk toward the doorway where Carlos has his face practically smashed against the glass.
“He’ll have to wait in line behind Bianca.”
I flip him off, hearing his laughter at the hilarity of my predicament and all the snarky comments he’s able to hurl my way.
“Hey, kid.” Carlos smiles, and the lines in his face deepen as I open the door for him. “You look a mess.”
“I’ve never been better. Training camp’s brutal,” I lie.
I am a mess. I’m used to working my ass off on the field, but working Bianca is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in years. They say nothing worth having in life comes easy, but it shouldn’t be this goddamn hard either.
“Go make us proud,” he says as he walks by me, needing his morning beer to straighten his drunk old ass out.
I spend the next thirty minutes while driving to training camp trying to think of all the grand gestures I could make to win over Bianca.
Most of them involve money, but I’m not sure something splashy and over the top like whisking her away to Vegas for a weekend would be something a writer on a deadline would like.
Her career is just as important as mine.
I live game to game, and she lives book to book.
We are only as good as our next play. The last thing I want is for her to get distracted from finishing her book and missing her deadline.
That would kill any future chance of making her my girl faster than treating her like a quick lay.
I’m not even paying attention to where I’m walking as I make my way down the hallway to the locker room.
“Hey, handsome.” The voice crawls over my skin, making me suddenly feel ill. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
I sidestep Tracie as she tries to touch me. “You’re not allowed to be here.”
She pouts, but it has zero effect on me. “Don’t be that way. You know we’re meant to be together.”
“I have a girlfriend,” I tell her, tucking my hands into my pockets as I put more space between us.
“We all slum it sometimes,” she says with a shrug.
Her words slam into me, and I see red. I stalk toward her, getting in her face, but I am careful not to touch her. “Let’s get something straight…again. I am not yours. You’re not mine. We’re not a couple. Bianca’s my girl, you crazy bitch.”
The insane part of her takes over, and she laughs right in my face. “You’re precious with how much you defend your little toy. Have your fun now, Vinnie. Sow your oats. It doesn’t matter to me. I know who you’re going to be with in the end.”
I narrow my eyes, trying to calm down because my body’s vibrating with anger. “We are nothing.”
“Gallo,” Coach calls from the door of his office down the hallway, probably saving me from doing or saying something I’ll regret.
“This is the last time I’m going to tell you to leave me alone.” I don’t give her another chance to say something back before I jog toward the coach’s office, trying to shake off the tightness in my body from Tracie’s bullshit.
“What’s up, Coach?” I say when I am face-to-face with him.
He’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed, his eyes going between Tracie and me. “Step inside,” he tells me. “We need to talk.”
I pace the small empty patch of linoleum in front of his desk, waiting for him to speak. He walks through his office slowly before collapsing into his chair. “Stop moving. You’re making me nervous, for shit’s sake.”
I stop quickly and turn to face him. “What’s being done about her?”
He lets out a heavy sigh before shuffling papers around his extremely messy desk. “She’s seeing her psychiatrist again and back on the meds, but her grandfather can’t bar her from the facility, though she’s no longer allowed in the locker room.”
“That’s it?” I glance up toward the ceiling and curse under my breath.
“If she becomes more aggressive, her parents are willing to get her treatment in a facility, but right now, this is the best we can do.”
“So, all that shit about me being the future of the team?” I ball my hands into tight fists at my sides and bite down my anger. The last thing I want is to give anyone a reason to cut me from the team before the season even starts.
“It’s still true. Listen, you have a few options.”
I cross my arms over my chest and lift my chin. I’m pretty sure they’re all going to suck, but I don’t tell Coach that.
“One, you just hang tight and wait for her to find a new infatuation.”
“Victim,” I mumble because infatuations can be something great, but not when Tracie’s involved. “Coach, she’s been after me for almost a year. I don’t see her moving on any time soon.”
“Two,” he says, skipping right over what I just said.
“You can file a TRO against her, but the likelihood it’ll be put in place and followed is highly doubtful.
Plus, it’ll end up in the hands of the press.
No longer will the story be about the superstar kid who’s going to take his hometown team to the play-offs.
It’ll be about your relationship with the owner’s granddaughter. ”
“There’s no relationship,” I correct him.
“Or we sit back and wait for her to really fuck up.”
“That’s all you have?” I shake my head slowly and groan.
“That’s it, kid.”
I don’t say another word before I storm out of his office, finding the hallway empty, and head toward the locker room. In a few short months, my life has gone from uncomplicated to crazy-as-fuck without any middle ground.