Chapter 20 Avery
Chapter twenty
Avery
She had a pillow covering her face the moment it happened.
"Are you alright?" I ask with caution, hoping she doesn’t feel embarrassed. "That was…"
"A lot? Messy? Like someone set off a pressure hose?" Her voice is muffled by the pillow she holds firmly against her face. "I’m so sorry, I can’t control it." She pulls the pillow away from her bright red face, throwing it to the other side of the room with a sigh.
"Firstly, it was barely even a trickle. And secondly, I think you mean incredible, and so fucking sexy."
She doesn’t like that I’ve chosen those words to describe what just happened between us, I can tell.
Why is it that with sex, everyone is so eager to rip clothes off and get down and dirty, but once it’s over, they feel suddenly embarrassed? Like, how dare they get away with doing something so pleasurable? It’ll never make sense to me.
"Can we just pretend it didn’t happen?" she asks, turning to face me. Her cheeks are still pinched and doused in various shades of pink, her forehead and upper lip covered in tiny beads of sweat.
"If that’s what you want." I roll to face her. "But I need you to know that is absolutely nothing you need to be embarrassed about."
"That sounds a lot like talking about it, Avery," she teases, and I move onto my back, feeling content. "I'll try not to make a habit of it."
"Yes, you will. The next time I fuck you, it’ll happen again. I’ll make sure of it." I close my eyes, feeling a rush of exhaustion, too afraid to look at what the time is. I should be well and truly asleep by this point, but I just can’t find it in me to care.
"Now what?" she asks quietly, and I feel her side of the bed move slightly. I open my left eye as she reaches down to pull my sheet to cover herself up.
I wish she wouldn’t.
"Do you have anywhere to be?" I ask, my breathing now steady, my hand resting on my chest, my eyes back to being closed.
"At three in the morning?" The sound of her hair rubbing against my sheets lets me know she’s shaking her head.
"No, can’t say I do. Besides, it was my idea not to get a hotel room for tonight.
My bags are already in one of your spare rooms, though.
" She laughs to herself, and I smile. "If that’s okay. "
Or you can just stay put. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but if I say them, I run the risk of her turning me down.
So, I decide to say nothing at all.
There’s another silence that hovers in the air, and for a moment, I wonder if she’s read my mind and dozed off for the night. But when I feel her leg move next to me, I know she’s probably just deep in thought.
"Why basketball?" she asks, her side of the bed moving more than it was before as she inches closer to me.
"Why music?" I counter, hoping to steer the conversation away from me. But one thing I’m learning about Olive Herring is that she marches to her own beat. Only does things she wants to do or feels comfortable doing, unless she’s contractually obligated.
When she doesn’t reply, I know she isn’t going to let up any time soon, so I give in with a deep, hearty sigh.
"My parents had me when they were young. I’m talking, high school age.
And I guess as I got older, they grew apart.
They were kids when they got together, you know?
They realized that they didn’t have as much in common as they did when they were teenagers. "
"Are you close with them?" she asks, and I say the word ‘yes’ before her words have time to hang in the air, but they settle deep in my chest.
I love both of my parents. I owe everything to them.
They gave me the best upbringing they could, with what they could afford.
"So, you played to distract yourself from their separation?" she asks, sincere and curious.
"At first, yeah." I shrug. "When I had games, only one of them would come and watch. They couldn’t even be in the same room with each other without fighting." The memory of it all hits like a freight train, but it’s dark, and she can’t see the way my face contorts with sourness, so I continue as though it doesn’t have an effect on me.
"But one day…one day I guess everything changed. "
"And you kept playing?" she presses, but never interrupts.
"I started playing the game as a distraction, then it became a need.
A requirement, almost. They were talking again, being friendly with each other for the first time in a year.
I knew that if I wanted them to continue on that path, I had to keep playing the game.
And then, out of nowhere, Mom was pregnant with Noelle, and they told me Dad was moving back in.
I praised basketball for making it happen.
I thought that if I quit…" I let the words trail off, knowing my reasoning sounds stupid, but when you’re a kid, everything is skewed.
You come up with ridiculous ideas on why things happen the way they do, and to me, basketball was the thing that brought my family back together.
"Your family would break apart again," she finishes for me.
"I couldn’t have Noelle growing up in a broken home, you know?
I had to deal with it for two years. Two bedrooms, two homes, birthdays, Christmas’.
It took a toll on me, and from that moment on, I made a vow that I would protect my family from anything.
Especially my sister." My voice cracks, and I determine that’s where my story ends.
At least for the night, anyway.
Come tomorrow, though, I’ll pretend I never said a word to her about it. Hopefully she doesn’t expect more from me.
"You know it has nothing to do with you, right, and everything to do with the love they have for each other, and the family they created?"
I know she’s right. Of course I know. My reasoning for playing the game sounds as ridiculous as it feels when I even think about my family.
I nod instead of arguing.
"And you know that when you decide to give it all up one day, they’ll be proud of you for the career you had, the career you made for yourself based purely on your talent and determination?"
"You mean, my parents could still divorce, even if I don’t retire until I’m eighty?" I pretend to gasp, and she laughs.
"Why don’t you let the rest of the world see this side of you? The guy who is fiercely protective of his family."
The discomfort’s mine, not hers, but it cracks thick in the air between us.
She’s just lying there, patient and open, like she’s trying to see past all the noise in my head.
"I have. They didn’t see it that way, though.
They deemed me reckless. Irresponsible. Aggressive.
" I squeeze my eyes shut to force the image out of my head. The way it made me feel when I saw those three words used to describe my character, when it’s so far from the truth…
God, I’ll never forget how it made me feel.
But it’s the narrative I’ve chosen to run with, because I would prefer my image be tainted, than see my sister’s face on the cover of a magazine.
"Why music?" I veer the conversation away from me, realizing that I haven’t learned a single thing about her.
"Why not?" She rolls out of bed, her silhouette lit by the streetlights pouring through my floor-to-ceiling, curtainless windows.
One hand clutches the sheet to her chest while the other blindly searches for her underwear. Already halfway out the door.
"Not happening," I tell her, getting up in a hurry, looping my arm around her waist, and pulling her back into the bed with me. She places her cheek on my chest with a soft laugh.
"If you think a repeat of that is going to happen, you’re out of your mind." She shakes her head, but that isn’t what I want. Far from it, actually. "I’m sensitive after what you just did to me."
"I’m just trying to understand you. For this whole thing to work, I need to know you as much as you need to know me."
"Can’t you just…make it up?" she asks, staring up at me from my chest. "You did so well with our meet-cute story, I figured you could just make up the rest, and I’ll go along with it."
I shake my head. "I will get you to open up to me, Olive Herring. Even if it’s the last thing I do."
Her laughter echoes through the room, and it turns my heart to mush.
Olive wriggles away from me and gets off the bed again, but I don’t try to make her stay this time. She would if she wanted to, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
"Do you have plans tomorrow? I don’t want to overstay. I can be out of your hair before the sun is up. You won’t even remember I was here," she says quietly.
Oh, but I will remember. I’ll see her in my bedroom every time I’m alone in it. "I planned to watch my friend, Romeo Moore, play his hockey game in…four hours. And I have a game tonight," I tell her. "You should probably be there. To keep up appearances."
"At the hockey game or yours?" she asks, throwing on one of the shirts hanging in my wardrobe.
"Both? It might be fun. Noelle was planning on coming with me to the hockey game, but we could all go together, if you want? She would love it."
"My next shows are in Atlanta. Tomorrow night. Not like, tonight-tomorrow, but actual tomorrow," she says, like I should have her tour schedule memorized.
What she’s saying barely makes sense, but I get the gist.
"I have to be there by morning for sound check and a pre-show signing."
I reach over for my phone on my nightstand, checking my team’s roster and schedule over the next few weeks, to compare it with hers.
Tapping away at my screen, I download a calendar share app and upload everything from my personal calendar to it.
Games, training, events, and everything in between, and hit save.
"What’s your number?" I ask, entering the digits as she tells me.
Her phone vibrates from the floor beside the bed.
"I just shared my calendar with you and added in all of your tour dates. "
"Seriously?" she asks, unable to hide her surprised tone. "Who knew you were so organized?"
"Yes, seriously. I want to do this shit properly. If you and I can somehow manage to be in the same places at the same time, as often as possible, it won’t seem as fake." I shrug, not that she’s looking at me. I also don’t want to let her down or ruin her career.
Her face is lit up by her phone screen, a gentle smile on her lips.
"Well, going by this, you play three times this week," she says confidently, and I can’t help but chuckle to myself. I don’t have the guts to tell her that we typically play that many times every week, anyway, but by the look on her face, I think she’d figured it out.
"Okay, so as I’ve since learned, that is the standard.
Don’t you get tired?" she asks, her eyes looking from her screen into mine.
I shake my head. "I’m used to it."
We spend the next hour going through the gaps in our schedules, trying to line something up. We come up with potentially one day a week, depending on press conferences, and promo for her music.
"So, when should we get married, then?" she asks, but I was hoping she had the answer. "Because I have a suggestion. Hear me out…"
I sit up, resting against the wooden headboard, patiently waiting.
But she doesn’t say a word.
"Are you going to tell me, or are you going to make me wait another hour?" I smile, and she sits beside me, still scrolling through her phone. I sneak a glance over her shoulder. "What are you looking at?"
She tilts the screen toward me. "In a month’s time, you’ll be in Vegas for a game. What if we line things up for then? A shotgun wedding, Elvis impersonator. It’ll be fun!"
"I’ll send my jet to wherever you are, so don’t worry about having Josie book you flights."
"Perfect. Who knew my future husband was resourceful and hot?" She snickers, locking her phone and dropping it into her lap. "So it’s settled. Tomorrow, we will go to hockey, then basketball. And in one month, I get to take your super fancy jet to Vegas, where we tie the knot."
I nod. "If it were up to Orlando and Josie, they’d probably ship us there overnight to speed up the process," I say, knowing full well my manager is capable of exactly that if the timing called for it.
"I might need something sparkly on my finger, too. Maybe Noelle can help with that. Do you think that’s something she would want to do?" she asks, and I feel my chest constrict.
Olive and I are nothing more than the next PR relationship. But the fact that she wants to include the most important person in my life makes me happy for my sister, but nervous for her at the same time.
I just have to remind myself that while I don’t know Olive well, I know she isn’t the type to put my sister in danger.
"She would love that."
"Then let’s sleep. We have a big day tomorrow. Ring shopping, hockey game, and basketball game. Anything else you want to add to the agenda?"
"No, thanks."
"Good. I’m exhausted already just thinking about all that."
Me too.