Chapter 8 #2
“Did Jack shove a stick up your ass again?” He chuckles, ending his conversation with a veteran on our team—Cole. Decent enough person. He lifts his chin at me before his well-timed departure.
“It’s near fucking daily.” I shoot Mitchell a scathing glare, growling into my drink.
Everyone else might mistake Jack’s persistence for charisma and care about my wellbeing, but Mitchell sees through his childish bullshit.
“I will pay you half a million right now to accidentally tear his hamstring, so I don’t have to spend the rest of the season around him.
All the better if the damage is permanent. ”
When Jack injured himself in college, he reminded everyone of it every thirty-two minutes. One thing led to another, and he got one of his teeth knocked out the next practice.
Truly a mystery where that puck came from. Really was out of nowhere.
Mitchell shakes his head, and his perfectly styled blond hair doesn’t move a breath. “So he can spend all day watching you from the bench? You’re threatening him with a good time.”
And that might just be worse. “Where’s the demon?” I ask.
I’ve been calling my sister a demon since we were kids.
When she was four, I found her making “potions” with the shampoos and soaps, incanting what I could only assume was advanced Latin.
When questioned, she shrugged and said that it was on a need-to-know basis.
Naturally, six-year-old me assumed the worst.
Mitchell nods toward the pool where Sabrina is doing the Macarena to “Mr. Blindside.” Her dark hair flicks around with her clumsy movements. She’s smiling as per usual, having the time of her life, and making everyone around her fall madly in love with her.
I’ve questioned my mother on several occasions as to whether we are in fact related. She confirmed it, much to my dismay. The running theory is that I absorbed all the negativity from the womb, and Sabrina was left with all the joy that I never dared near.
If I go up to Sabrina now, she’ll try forcing me to dance, and truthfully there are very few things that would be more painful. As if we’re of the same mind, Mitchell and I silently edge closer to her, periodically glaring at anyone who looks at her.
“Any updates I need to know about?” he asks.
I shake my head once. “Sabrina said anything about her?”
“The same.”
Good.
“There’s a family dinner tomorrow.” Mitchell gives me a weighted look.
My jaw tics. “Jack’s going to be there?”
He nods. I chug the rest of my drink. I haven’t spoken to my parents in nearly a decade, and yet, Jack is breaking fucking bread with them every month. Their golden boy. The son they always wanted.
“Are you going to be there?”
“Like I’d let him near Sabrina,” he says, offended that I’d suggest otherwise.
Sabrina hates the fucker as well, and she isn’t so welcoming toward him at their dinners anymore. It took her a year to realize she was getting played by him.
I spent thirteen months trying to survive with a sister who hated me, eight months without the person I considered my best friend, and the rest of my life without parents. All because of Jack fucking Norton and his lies.
At least Sabrina and Mitchell will never fall for his shit again.
I grab another beer and take a healthy sip of it to get the bitter taste out of my mouth. Making me lose almost every friend I had in high school and the early days of college wasn’t enough; he had to take my parents too.
He’s replaced me on all the annual family vacations to our summer home on the lake. He shook my aunt’s hand after she got her PhD. And he wakes up at five in the morning to drive out of the city with my father to pick out the Christmas tree.
My parents put him on a fucking pedestal, and he’s not even blood.
Time continues rolling by until one of the many girls who frequent these types of events spots me from across the crowd and beelines straight toward me.
Here we fucking go. I feel my patience wither into nothing like it’s a physical being.
“Thanks for being tonight’s entertainment.” Mitchell clinks his drink to mine when she’s a couple feet away.
I glower.
“I never see you around anymore.” She runs her hand over my chest. Rachel, I think. Or is it Amy?
Don’t care.
“I know. That was intentional.”
I send her a withering look because apparently peeling her hands off my body makes for bad press, and I simply cannot be fucked having another conversation with my agent about how I need to appear “ready and available” to all women at all times, while simultaneously acting hard to get.
It’s a compromise I’ve had to deal with because I can’t be a cunt to everyone without getting shafted.
The tactic is healthy for our wallets. And because the media has a massive hard-on and decided that I’m on the market as Detroit’s catch of the season—like a fucking fish—I’m meant to be welcoming toward physical advances.
The fact that their touch makes me nauseated is completely irrelevant in everyone’s eyes—comical, in fact.
Rachel throws her head back with a grating laugh and rubs her very fake tits against my arm.
Wait, her name is Kelly, I think.
Fuck this. Why can’t two a.m. come sooner?
It’s loud. It smells. It’s too crowded. But I’m stuck here because either Coach, the boys, the media, or all three, will be up my ass if I don’t show up to celebrate our “outstanding win” and sour the atmosphere with my less-than-sunny disposition.
My presence is hardly necessary. All I do is watch the guys get shitfaced and/or laid, while waiting for time to roll by until it’s an appropriate hour for me to leave.
“You’re so funny, Leo,” she drunkenly giggles, even though I know for a fact that she’s faking the whole tipsy act.
It’s not vodka and soda in her glass; it’s straight soda. I heard her order.
“Duval,” I correct. “Not Leo. We aren’t friends. Don’t act like it.”
Mitchell watches the scene unfolding and gives me an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up. So much for having a best friend who always has my back.
Thank God Sabrina isn’t here. Otherwise she’d be quick to put on her PR hat to defuse the situation before someone rats on me to Coach or the media again—because Lord forbid I have boundaries.
A nauseating lilac smell fills my nostrils right before a redhead puts her unnervingly bony hand on my other arm.
Oh, this one I know all too well. Lexi, aka Alexandra Melissa Rosenwell, is the daughter of one of the electoral candidates, and the second biggest irritant that this green Earth has spawned.
She nearly pisses me off more than Jack.
Yet she’s someone Jack hates like no other. I’d usually like anyone who gets under his skin, but she’s the exception. She understands the definition of rejection as poorly as he does.
I’m off my game. I can usually smell her five minutes before I see her.
If I could physically recoil from her touch—and every other person’s touch—I would. But no, I have to remain tense, nauseated, and unimpressed, counting down the seconds until they get the hint and leave me the fuck alone.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Lexi, the self-proclaimed queen bee, purrs as she runs her unnecessarily long nails down my arm to the hand that’s holding my drink.
Is it her hobby to try to breach my comfort zone? I’m certain it’s so someone can snap a picture that she can run to the press with and turn it into a political maneuver.
Or to send it to a woman so they can get the wrong idea.
I catch Jack watching out of the corner of my vision.
Three months ago, when I had the misfortune of Lexi’s company, he tried talking to me after practice about not letting me get distracted by some chick.
He said the same thing all through high school and college whenever I was getting close to someone.
Lexi looks at the blonde beside her, and with the cattiest tone, says, “Hannah, why don’t you go somewhere else.”
Ah. So none of the names I guessed.
Right.
Well, Hannah narrows her eyes at the second-worst human being in this building, suddenly acting like the definition of sobriety. Then she turns to me, fluttering her lashes like I might save her, and goes up on her tiptoes to whisper, “Call me if you’re sick of her.”
“Fucking hell,” Mitchell mutters.
Violated isn’t an adequate enough description for how I feel when she slips her hand into the pocket of my trousers to leave me with her unwanted parting gift.
Only two people are allowed to touch me in an unprofessional capacity, and it sure as fuck isn’t either of these two women.
Actually, fuck the press.
I’m already paying a publicist. I might as well get my money’s worth.
I grip Hannah’s wrist with the tip of my thumb and forefinger, and throw her hand aside, sending the piece of paper flying into the unknown. Let someone else call her.
“I’m not desperate enough right now,” I say. Then I do the same to Lexi’s scrawny hand. “This is the third time I’ve asked you to keep your hands to yourself. If I have to tell you a fourth, I’m certain The Herald will be very interested to hear that you’re selling ecstasy to minors.”
Lexi snaps her hand away, and because she’s a two-headed snake, I barely notice her face fall before she fixes it with her winning, honeyed smile. “You’ll change your mind one day, Duval.”
“Right,” I deadpan. I look at both women. “Are we done here, or do you need me to say in simpler terms that I’m not interested?”
Lexi acts first, linking her arm with Hannah’s, suddenly her bestie. Snake. “Come on, I think I saw Simon doing shots.”
Hannah glares at me but follows her fake friend. They’ll come crawling back in a month. I glower as Mitchell buckles over with laughter. The fucker.
“Charmer.” He takes a swig of his beer, tacky strobe lights reflecting off the bottle. “It’s a wonder you haven’t landed a woman.”
My internal temperature drops, and I have to remind myself that I tolerate Mitchell, and my beloved kin wouldn’t take too kindly to me murdering him. “Says the one who started dating my sister when we barely knew how to drive—I still haven’t forgiven you for that, by the way.”
He holds up his hands in surrender.
“I need a shower to wash off the smell of hairspray and bad perfume.” I look down at the orange stain on what was once a perfectly white shirt. Fucking fake tan. “Fantastic. It looks like I’ll be stopping to get bleach on the way home.”
“For ingestion or cleaning?”
“Both, should the mood take me.”
“Here I was thinking that you’d be in better spirits from being hit by Cupid.”
I grind my molars. “The arrow didn’t quite land between my eyes.”
“Really? You’ve already been acting stupid. Must be all the times you’ve hit your head then.”
He chuckles at my glare.
I’ve seen what Mitchell does for my sister. Once upon a time, I thought there was no way I’d show up to a game with little specks of glitter on my face because I got dragged to some girly pop concert the night before.
I’ve been doing far stupider shit lately.
Mitchell’s brows knit when his eyes catch on my chest. “Since when do you wear crystal necklaces?”
It’s a tiger’s eye. I’m borrowing it from her since she’s been secretly borrowing things from me. I don’t wear it nearly as often as I’d like because of how flimsy the black rope is.
I don’t answer, grinning to myself as I down the rest of the beer. I check my watch and decide that I’m calling it. I’ve shown face here for long enough.
“You heading out already?” Mitchell knows the drill.
“I’ll say hi to Sabrina, then go.”
I’ll start our little meeting early. It’ll be so unfortunate if my girl isn’t asleep by the time I get there. She made a mistake. She needs to pay the price.