CHAPTER 16 Ford Bradley
Something Real Fucking Dumb
Thanksgiving is a success by all accounts, but mostly by mine because I finally got to pretend like the woman I’ve wanted to be with for a long, long time now is actually mine.
But when the last dish is dried and her family is long gone, the pretending has stopped, and I’m left with an empty feeling inside despite the very full feeling I have from eating way too much.
That’s what the holidays are all about, I guess. Overeating. For most people. For me, though—I have to be up bright and early to practice football tomorrow morning, which means I’ll be struggling since I partook in one of the luxuries I don’t usually afford myself.
She’s leaving in the morning.
She needs to be back in Vegas for a wedding on Saturday and a charity event next weekend—a charity event she’s hosting for my brother, by the way. Her ex.
They’ll see each other. They’ll be together.
Any progress I think we’ve made is a delusion.
I can’t be with her. She was with my brother, and he’s still my brother whether he extracted himself from the family or not.
I’m leaving in the morning, too. For practice. We’ll leave around the same time, but when I come home, it’ll be to an empty house.
I’m not looking forward to it.
She gives me a hug goodbye in the morning, and I’m tempted to kiss her again.
I don’t. I can’t. She doesn’t want me to, and while I got to have my fun yesterday, that’s all it was. Pretend. A day to be thankful for, I guess—like I said at dinner.
I head to practice, and I guess I’m quieter than usual because Cole calls me out on it in his usual, eloquent way. “What the fuck’s up your ass today?”
I grimace at his question. “Nothing. Just ate too much yesterday. Paying for it today.”
“Been there. I ate with the team, and we had a hell of a time afterward.” He throws out an elbow in his usual joking manner, but I can’t muster up the enthusiasm for a return.
She’s gone, and that’s weighing me down today.
“It’s really just the food? You weren’t yourself out there on the field today, man,” he says. He sits in his locker and leans forward so we can talk around the wall dividing us.
I glance over at him. One of the benefits of being clear across the country from my siblings is that I can share these sorts of talks with teammates instead of family.
Some of my family are well aware of my feelings for Tatum—like Everleigh, for example.
There are others—like Archer—who I hope never find out.
I blow out a breath and finally make my confession. “I, uh…have feelings for my brother’s girl.”
“The one staying with you?”
I wince as I nod.
“Thought you said she wasn’t his girl anymore,” he says.
“She’s not. They ended things, and she asked if she could come hang out here a while.”
“Did your feelings start before or after that?” he asks.
“Long before. I’ve known her since high school. Probably loved her since about then, too.” I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know. She’s the chaos to my calm. We just fit. She makes me laugh like nobody else. She listens when I talk. We just have this connection I never saw with her and my brother.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to invite her to stay with you awhile after the breakup?” he asks, his brows furrowing in confusion.
“I’m a masochist, okay?”
He chuckles at that.
“The reality of it is that they’ve sort of always been on and off.
I guess I assumed they’d figure it out someday and be on permanently, but this time, she tells me it’s off permanently.
And I guess things just sort of changed when she was here.
It almost felt like she felt it, too. Like she wanted it.
And then I did something real fucking dumb, and now she’s back in Vegas, probably making up with him while I pine away for something that was never meant to be mine. ”
“Christ, you’re dramatic. Pull it together, dude. Life’s not so goddamn serious. But just so I can fully understand the bigger picture here, what was the dumb thing you did?” he asks.
I press my lips together. “She’s a wedding planner. She’s had this dream of creating this destination wedding brand, of owning event venues in different places. I went in on one here with her in Tampa.”
“Oh, shit. You bought a place with her?”
I nod. “And it gets worse. Her family was over yesterday for Thanksgiving, and she didn’t want to spend the day getting hammered with questions about whether it’s really over with my brother, so we pretended we were together.”
“I can’t decide which thing is dumber. Going in half on a facility or pretending she was your girl,” he muses.
“It gets worse. Instead of spending the day fending off questions about my brother, we spent the day listening to her family talk about how they always thought she and I would be perfect together.”
He rubs his forehead. “I guess I can see why you were off your game today.”
“It’s complicated, but I’ll pull it together for game day.”
“You only have two days to prepare for that,” he reminds me.
“I know. I got this.” Except the truth is, I’m pretty sure I don’t got this at all.
It gets worse when I arrive home to an empty place. There was so much light and joy here just twenty-four hours ago, and now it’s back to being quiet. Dark.
I peek into the room where she stayed. The bed is neatly made, but three cups sit on the desk along with a few folders that remind me she’ll be back.
A sense of loss plows into me.
She’ll be back, but what will change between us in that time? It felt like we were getting close to something, like she was starting to awaken to the feelings I’ve had for years.
And now it feels like we’re back to square one.
I need to focus on football. It’s almost December, which means we’re ramping up to the playoffs. What we do now on that field is more important than ever.
Who I am when I step foot onto the grass in two days could determine my fate for the next two months and my legacy beyond that.
I can’t let this distract me from everything I’ve worked so goddamn hard for my entire career.
I leave her room and take a shower. I jerk off and moan her name as I come.
And then I slip under the covers…not of my own bed, but of the bed she slept in while she was here.