Chapter 26
DUSTIN
A week after the great naked maid in my kitchen debacle, Jenny was already posting pictures on social media with her new beau—who apparently wasn’t a douche.
I still felt good about my decision to send him and his buddy packing, because what kind of guys are that hammer slammed on a Sunday afternoon?
Okay, I’ve been there, done that, so I shouldn’t judge too hard. Anyway, I didn’t usually go on social media, but I had some time to kill while I waited for my wife to get home from her shift at the hospital.
So here I was, flipping through Instagram and lounging on her couch.
Since our game tomorrow evening was in D.C., Coach Slanch cleared me to fly here early and stay at Cat’s place, and, I quote “do what you gotta do, Dusty Boy.”
Do what I had to do meant acing our immigration interview tomorrow morning with Mr. Winterboner, as I liked to call him. I mean, come on, we had signed the papers, we were making public appearances, what more did the man want from us?
Cat and I had been texting all week like we were getting ready for an extreme version of The Newlywed Show where one of our livelihoods depended on getting the answers right. Actually, that wasn’t far from the truth.
I didn’t research ‘immigration marriage fraud’ much that night in Vegas. I know, shocking. Typical Dustin. Shoot first. Do research later. But it does turn out you can go to prison for five years if they have ‘reason to believe you’ve been intentionally evading U.S. immigration law.’
Now, I’m no law expert, but that doesn’t sound like something we should be playing around with. Prison time wasn’t something I was interested in, and neither was Cat.
Still, I wasn’t worried. If any crazy couple was going to be able to pull this off, it was Kit Cat and me. She had the brains, and I had the brawn. The brawn didn’t especially help us in this situation, but no matter.
More than that, after last week’s fight, and the ensuing rambunctious make-up sex, we were starting to feel more and more like a real couple.
I didn’t know anymore if it was necessarily ‘acting’ that I was pretending to be insanely attracted to my spouse.
If it was, I was one hell of a method actor. We both were.
Attracted to, and in love. Well, maybe.
Though I had whispered them silently that one night, I still stumbled over those three words. I love you. I could say them when I knew she wasn’t listening, or quietly enough that she wouldn’t hear me. ‘What did you just say?’ she would ask, and I would think quick.
Like the other day when I whispered it on the phone before she picked up.
‘No, I didn’t say I love you, I was just saying ‘My. Nice view!’
‘Oh. Uh, okay. Where are you?’
‘The locker room in Nashville. Trust me, uh, it’s just got a great view here.’ Of the towels. Really nice towel rack here.
Luckily, she didn’t press the issue.
I wondered if she could feel it, too. We fucked with reckless abandon, and each time we did, and she trembled and came and rode me until I did too, she would collapse in a sweaty heap on my chest. Sometimes we would fall asleep, sometimes she would just lie there with her eyes closed, and I wondered what was going through that pretty little head of hers.
And I would think the three words, but not say them out loud, because that would mean she would have to say them back, and if she didn’t, well, we all know how that feels.
At least, I do.
The woman in question that Cat was inquiring about?
The one-night stand that Jenny mentioned?
Yeah. It’s a true story. And it’s true that I still think about her. I tried for years to forget that night, but I just couldn’t.
One, it was an embarrassing night for me. I broke my rule of just sharing my feelings outright with a woman, and it came back to bite me. You never tell a one-night stand you’re in love with her. That’s just bad policy. Hey, live and learn, right?
Her name was Fiorella. I never got a last name from her.
And after we shared the hottest night of sexual encounters I’d had up until that point in my short life—three of them, to be exact—with her collapsed in a sweaty post-coital heap on my chest, I muttered those three words every woman wants to hear. She said, ‘what did you just say?’
I said, “I love you, Fio.”
She shook her head. “How can you know that? You barely know me.”
I shrugged, stroking her hair. “I have no idea. I just do.”
Saying I love you to a one-night stand was the corniest thing I ever did. But I’m a man of passion, and when we were together that night, I got the feeling we were kindred spirits and—not to reinforce the corniness—something in my heart told me this was the girl I would marry.
A little after dawn the next morning, I woke up and Fio was gone.
Thanks to Fio, I learned my lesson. Maybe I was crazy for putting so many of my emotional eggs in her basket.
Maybe I was stuck in a fantasy. But after that experience, I felt it was better to stay closed off than to open your doors up to hurt.
And that is why I’ll be glad to get this interview over with tomorrow.
Once we have the formalities out of the way, we’ll be able to enjoy each other.
It had been dark for over an hour now, and the kitchen timer dinged so I turned the heat down to low on the corned beef, cabbage and carrots I was cooking.
I grinned as I stirred its contents, remembering back to last week when I came home to Cat having cooked up a traditional Spanish paella.
It was delicious. She was the best wife a guy could ask for.
I didn’t ask around on the team, but I was pretty sure none of the other guys had a wife who dressed up like a literal bunny and made homecooked meals, so I wanted to do the same for her.
My mind floated. Maybe we would make a good couple, like, long term. She definitely worked long, and odd hours, but so did I.
But she worked in D.C. Chicago had hospitals too, though.
I shook it off. The cabbage was at the perfect temperature, so I put it on the lowest heat setting.
What was the male equivalent to dressing up in lingerie? Cleaning the house, maybe?
I looked around skeptically. Cat kept her place incredibly orderly, and while I was fine with her rearranging my house to make it more organized, something told me she had a way of doing things here that was best not for me to mess with.
What would Magic Mike do, I wondered, wandering around the house. I did some pushups in her living room, which was my custom when I was feeling bored or nervous. They somehow always seemed to calm me down.
As I was standing up, my head (who was the one with the big head now?) accidentally brushed a moleskin notebook on her nightstand, and it flipped onto the floor and opened to the most recent page.
I swear I don’t like looking at people’s private journals. But the first words I saw written down in her book were worried, relationship, and Dustin. I didn’t open the page. But I admit it, I looked.
Dustin says the past doesn’t affect him, but I can see it in his eyes.
Who is this girl from the past? How did she mess him up?
We all have our skeletons, though. I have mine—the night I’ll never forget—and he has this.
Are two people ever really meant to know each other fully, and be totally transparent?
My blood pressure started to rise. Well, I couldn’t hate on her, because whenever I thought of Fio, I did get distant.
I tried to block her out, and it made no sense, but some part of me still weirdly wondered what she was up to.
If she was out there, hooking up with lots of guys and then just ghosting them like she did to me.
Yet, it had been almost ten years since our one-night stand.
iPhones were barely a thing then, neither of us had social media at the time, and I definitely couldn’t even pick her out of a lineup these days, even if I tried.
I only had that one silly polaroid photo of Fio. And it didn’t even show her face.
So I wasn’t innocent here.
My mind wandered angrily, though. Jealousy flared through me. What was this ‘night she would never forget?’ I picked the journal up, put it back on the nightstand, then dropped down and did fifty pushups.
These were angry pushups, this time.
I wasn’t angry at her, exactly. I was also angry at myself. And the world, for its messiness.
Since I was sweating, I threw off my shirt so I had just my jeans and boots on now, and took a few deep breaths, looking around her room.
My suitcase was stacked in the corner, and It looked like a hobo had taken up residence here, the way a couple of shirts had fallen out of it. I was about to tidy up since I knew even my slight messiness would be enough to give Cat anxiety, when I heard the doorbell ring.
I went to the door, wondering why on earth Cat would be ringing her own doorbell. Did she forget her key?
When I looked through the keyhole, my blood pressure skyrocketed. I opened the door.
“Hello,” the man said with an evil-looking smile, pulling at the corner of his mustache.
“Mr. Winterborne,” I growled. “What are you doing here?”
“Drop-by visit,” he said with the same pseudo-smile. “It’s been specially ordered.”
“I don’t understand. We are scheduled to come into your office tomorrow.”
“Right. Which is why I decided to drop by tonight. Surprise.” He let out a single chuckle and made this jazz hand-like gesture which did not amuse me.
“I’m not letting you set foot in this house.”
“It’s ordered by the courts, Mr. LeBlanc. Or are you not familiar with the nuances of immigration law? Oh, never mind. Why would you be? All you need to know is if you don’t let me in, Cat’s visa will be automatically terminated.”
I took a deep breath and swallowed. I wanted to settle this the old-fashioned way. But of course, this wasn’t the wild west.
“If you have nothing to hide, why would this be a problem?” he asked.
“Well then,” I said. “Come on in, Mr. Winterborne.”
It took all the self-control I had not to call him by his nickname.