Chapter Thirteen ZOE
Chapter Thirteen
Z OE
“And then what did he say?”
Martha crowded in on the couch next to Phyllis, the former elbowing the latter when she wouldn’t move quickly enough.
“I know Rosa already told you this story.”
Phyllis elbowed Martha right back. “I missed this part. I didn’t have my hearing aid in when she called.”
“I told you not to take those out,” Martha yelled.
Phyllis glared. “It’s in now . You don’t have to yell, for gosh sake.”
Rosa shook her head from her perch in the armchair. “Martha never listens to my stories anyway.”
Martha sniffed. “I’d rather hear Zoe tell it, because then I can watch her facial expressions and figure out what we need to do about this little development.”
The little development, as they were calling it, was Liam’s bombshell from the day before. As soon as I’d gotten off the phone with Rosa, she’d in turn called the girls.
A few years ago, I would’ve sat around with a group of my coworkers, or Amie. And now ... I had these three.
Taking care of Mira took so much of my mental energy that I could hardly stop to process what it meant to my life most days. It was hard enough to find good, trustworthy friends in your thirties and beyond, but even more so when you could hardly keep your head above water.
I liked Rosa’s friends. They were funny and sweet and had no inhibitions. It was refreshing to be around women who weren’t trying to impress anyone and had a lifetime of insight to share.
Maybe it wouldn’t make sense to a lot of people that I’d inserted myself into a group of Golden Girls, but I found myself liking this new friend circle an awful lot.
Liam was training and would be gone for a few hours, so Rosa had declared an emergency meeting. Their shiny cars pulled into the driveway less than five minutes after he left.
With Mira fast asleep upstairs and a bowl of ice cream for each of them, they were a rapt audience. When I got to the part where Liam said he thought I was Hermione come to life, Phyllis sank back into the couch with a happy sigh.
“This is good, Zoe. Damn it , this is some good stuff.”
I laughed. “He said he got over it years ago. He was just ... being honest.”
Rosa snorted. “Okay.”
“You don’t believe him?” I asked.
Martha swallowed a heaping spoonful of ice cream. “I believe him. He’d never tell you if he still had a crush on you.”
Rosa arched an eyebrow. “Or that’s what he’d want you to think.”
Phyllis’s spoon scraped the side of her bowl when she scooped up her last bite of mint chocolate chip. “He didn’t put that much forethought into it. He wanted her to know he doesn’t hate her, and I think that’s admirable.”
Martha tapped her chin thoughtfully. “What if you thank him by hopping into the shower with him?”
“No,” the rest of us said in unison.
She held up her hands. “All right, all right. Calm down. She said the shower gel made her crazy. It’s a unique way she can break the ice.” Then she tilted her chin down, peering at me over her glasses. “Besides, one day you wake up and you can’t maneuver shower sex anymore, and you never know when that day is. The tiles are unforgiving on your joints, and unless you’ve got all those really ugly hand bars installed, you’ll never be able to withstand the position.”
I blinked. “This isn’t helpful,” I whispered.
She laughed, patting me on the shoulder.
“Having sex with Liam, even if he were amenable, is the worst possible thing she could do,” Phyllis interjected. “If they make it about something as trivial as attraction, they’re doomed before they get started.”
My eyes dropped to the bowl in my lap. Everyone fell quiet.
“It was hard for me to view Liam differently when it was just about Mira,” I said slowly. It wasn’t just about Mira anymore. And maybe it hadn’t been for a while. Nothing about this was black and white, neatly confined to boxes that made sense. Absently, I rubbed at my forehead as those boxes melted into each other, as black and white mixed into varying shades of gray. “He’s not ... he’s not this horrible, cold person that I always assumed him to be.”
The women surrounding me listened. They were really good at that. Probably because they’d had decades of experience with building good friendships. Talking is fine, but sometimes the thing you need most from the people in your life is for them not to talk. Not to push. Not to pry.
The best thing a real friend can do for you is give you a safe space to speak your truth.
“I’m glad he told me,” I continued. “Maybe he could’ve approached it differently, but it’s good that I know.”
His words tumbled unbidden through my head again, even though I’d already replayed them a hundred times. That first night was crystal clear now, the memory dragged up to the forefront of my mind.
For so long, I’d remembered only his parting shot, felt the wound of it like it was fresh, like the impact of it still stung my skin.
When I pushed beyond it, dredged up those first few moments, there was something very different about the Liam who’d walked into the kitchen when I was nose-deep in a book.
He wasn’t flirty, and he wasn’t forward.
He was kind, though. He shook my hand, and we made small talk. Pleasant, easy questions. I think I even made him smile. Just a little.
But his eyes . . .
I swallowed past a lump in my throat.
I remembered his eyes when they’d looked at me. When they’d locked on mine. There was one moment where my stomach had swooped weightlessly, and then guilt had followed in the very next breath. And when I’d set my book down, his gaze had moved straight to my ring, shuttering immediately.
His expression had only closed further when Charles arrived, straight from the office and high off closing a big settlement for the hospital. He’d kissed me on the top of my head and asked if I was being rude again, ignoring the people around me for the people in my books.
That was when Liam’s eyes had flattened and he’d walked out of the room.
“Where’d you go?” Rosa asked gently.
I blinked a few times. “The past.”
She hummed thoughtfully.
“Sometimes it’s simple to change your perspective of your past,” I said. “The way we view our own choices and our culpability in how things played out. I don’t think this is one of those simple ones. It feels complicated.”
“What are you going to do now that you know?” Martha asked.
I ate the last bite of my ice cream, set my bowl down on the coffee table, and slowly looked at each of their faces.
“Now I try to get to know Liam Davies.” I smiled. “One question at a time.”
Phyllis’s face lit up, and she reached for her phone, peering over her glasses as she typed slowly with her thumbs. “I googled this the other day.”
Rosa hid her smile.
Martha rolled her eyes. “Googled what?”
“What questions to ask your crush,” Phyllis said. “I had that date with the retired doctor and didn’t want to screw it up.”
I blew out a slow breath through puffed cheeks.
“Liam’s not her crush,” Martha said.
He wasn’t. I was just ... obsessing over the way he smelled and the way he freaked out over Mira’s fever and the fact that he’d thought I was a literary heroine come to life when he’d had a crush on me.
Curious is what I was.
He was a problem to be solved.
A story that I wanted to unpack.
I’d never been able to resist a great story, and I had a feeling that Liam had one, if he’d let me see a little bit beyond what he was already showing.
“Oh, this is a good one,” Phyllis said. “What would you do if I called you in the middle of the night?”
With a groan, I covered my face with my hands.
Rosa laughed delightedly. “She doesn’t have to call him,” she said slyly. “He’s just a quick trip down the stairs.”
A sound escaped my lips. A whimper, maybe.
Martha snickered.
“Wait,” Phyllis added, “this one is better. Have you ever had a crush on a teacher?”
“That reminds me,” Martha said, “that we should add a teacher-student book to our list.”
Rosa pulled out her notepad. “Got it.”
I sat up, hands raised. “Thank you, truly, but I think I’ve got it handled.”
“I’ll email you the list,” Phyllis said.
“She doesn’t need the list,” Martha yelled.
Phyllis gave her a look. “I can hear you just fine, Martha. Stop yelling.”
My phone dinged with an email notification. I smiled at Phyllis. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’ll use this.”
“Just in case, deary.” She winked.
“We’re going grocery shopping tonight when he’s back from training. I need to look at this like a fresh start, I think. He’s not the guy I thought he was. Right now, that’s all I know.”
“Don’t fall in love with him,” Phyllis warned. “Or be so concerned with finding out the hidden parts of him that you ignore the red flags.”
Martha and Rosa traded a look.
Like me, Phyllis was divorced. Like me, she’d been hurt. Sometimes those hurts meant just a little bit less trust. In others.
Or, worse, in ourselves.
Drops in the bucket that we couldn’t pull back.
I settled my hand over hers. “I’m not going to fall in love with him. But I’m not going to ignore the way he’s trying either. If I write him off based on his past, then I can’t expect anyone to give me a second chance when I might deserve one.”
“That’s all you’re getting?” I asked. My nose wrinkled when I looked at the additions to his cart.
Healthy, gross bread.
Enough eggs for a family of six.
Chicken.
Veggies.
And then more veggies.
Mira sat in my cart, kicking her legs, and when she tried to lean forward to grab a box of cookies, Liam pulled it from her hands and set it back on the shelf without dropping his gaze from mine.
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I answered carefully. “I just noticed that it seems to be all you eat.”
He patted his flat stomach. “Gotta fuel right heading into the season.” Then he peered into my cart, eyebrows lifting at the three cartons of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
“Don’t judge my ice cream consumption, okay? It’s my single vice, and I will not apologize for it.”
Liam’s lips twitched, an almost smile, and I found myself holding my breath.
“You only have one? I’m jealous.”
I pushed my cart past him. “Why? What are yours?”
“That your question for the day?”
My lips twisted in frustration. “No.”
In a weaker moment, I’d opened the link that Phyllis sent me, shaking my head at some of the questions.
“What if we trade off who makes dinner?” I asked. “Or are we making separate meals? Because I need more variation than that.”
“You gonna cook for me, Valentine?” Liam leaned past me to grab a bag of apples, his arm brushing mine. Our eyes met and held as he pulled back.
“I will if it means I don’t have to eat chicken and veggies every single night.”
“You’ll eat late during the season if you wait for me,” he said.
Risking a quick glance in his direction, I noted that his eyes were steadfastly fixed on the display of bananas. Regular season was still about three months away, training camp just around the corner.
The assumption there was that we’d still be living together.
I didn’t correct him.
“True,” I added quietly. “You have Tuesdays off, right?”
He nodded. “I’ll be in for a bit, though. No one really gets any days off during the regular season. Fridays I’m done early.”
These were things I knew from living next to Chris and Amie for so long. I always had extra time with Amie when Chris was in the thick of his busyness. Once Mira was born, it was tough for her in a different way.
“I can save you leftovers,” I said. His gaze cut over to mine. “For when you get home late.”
Liam didn’t answer right away. His jaw tightened, and he finally conceded a nod. “That’d be nice.”
This was so weird . I’d been dropped into an alternate reality where we spoke nicely to each other. We had polite conversation. He wasn’t dropping f-bombs every other word.
Oh gawd, we were, like ... friends now?
I gave him a quick once-over out of the corner of my eye. Chris was the only man I’d ever considered to be my friend, and he came with a wife, so this was a situation where I was wholly out of my element.
None of my friends had ever looked like Liam. Or had ever had crushes on me.
“You like to cook?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t love it, but I’m good at it. Charles always liked a big home-cooked meal waiting for him when he walked in the door.”
Liam’s brow furrowed. “You worked full-time too, yeah?”
“I did.” And then some. During tax season and the end of each quarter, I’d fall asleep on the couch with a stack of papers on my chest.
“Why couldn’t he make the dinners?” Liam asked.
“An excellent question,” I said lightly. “I stopped with the fuss of a fancy meal after a few years. I was too tired.”
“Did he help?”
I smiled. “Depends on your definition. If by helping, you mean make passive-aggressive comments about the lack of effort I was putting into our marriage, then yes, he was incredibly helpful.”
Liam’s mouth opened like he was going to ask something else, but then he closed it.
“Just ask,” I said, nudging him lightly with my shoulder. “I’m not the one with the limit.”
He set some bananas in his cart, face bent in thought.
Mira tapped my arm. “Can I have a snack?”
I tweaked her nose. “What else?”
“Please,” she said dutifully.
“Go ahead,” I told her. Immediately, she dug into the front pocket of my purse and found an applesauce pouch and a small bag of Goldfish.
Liam eyed her carefully. “Am I supposed to carry food everywhere now?” he asked.
“Pretty much. Better get a manbag.”
“What the fuck is that?”
I exhaled a laugh. “Probably not your thing.”
“Probably not.”
He glanced over at me as we walked toward the checkout. When we’d pass someone, he’d garner an occasional look of recognition, but so far, no one had approached him. He was wearing a dark cap, the brim tugged low, but it was impossible to hide the sheer breadth of his frame.
With the way it sat on his head, there were moments when I looked at him and could see only the hard line of his jaw and his firm, unsmiling mouth. His eyes were hidden, and I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
It was his eyes that softened him, I’d realized. Guarded as they were, they gave away when he was letting his walls down, even the tiniest bit.
The question popped into my mind immediately.
“Do you hate the fame that comes with playing?”
Liam stopped, that green, green gaze fully visible now as he pivoted to face me. “That your question?” His voice was a low, bone-shivering rumble.
Somewhat breathless from asking it, I nodded slowly.
He licked at his bottom lip and glanced across the store. “It’s a yes-or-no question, Valentine. You sure you don’t want to rephrase?”
My mouth curled in a smile. “How do you feel about the fame of playing?”
We started walking again, the aisles wide enough that we could stay side by side. He was so much taller than me, but he matched the length of my strides so that I didn’t have to hurry.
The skin of his arm was warm, and even when we didn’t touch, I could feel that warmth coming off him like an aura.
“It’s complicated.” He inhaled, and his arm touched my shoulder. I didn’t move away. His eyes flicked down to mine before he continued. “I don’t mind when people come up to me, ask for a picture or whatever. Most are nice.”
“But?”
Again, the corners of his lips hooked up incrementally. So close.
“But,” he added, “I never want to disappoint a fan if I’m not some smiling, outgoing guy. I’m just ... me. And that won’t always be enough for people looking to meet someone they idolize, whether they should or not.”
This new side of Liam, which I was just now uncovering, left a warm, aching sensation crawling up through my throat.
He was far more self-aware than I gave him credit for. That much was undoubtedly true.
And like I had conjured their existence by asking the question, a little boy and his sister approached carefully, their mom standing back about fifteen feet with an encouraging smile on her face.
Liam and I stopped, and he gentled his face. Just a bit.
The boy opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. His sister, a bit taller than him, nudged him in the back. They were both wearing Denver shirts.
His freckled cheeks flushed pink the longer they stood there, and his eyes darted down to the ground.
“What’s your name?” Liam asked.
The boy’s eyes darted up. “N-Nathan Maxwell.”
Liam held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Nathan. What about you?” he asked the sister.
“I’m Daisy. He was too nervous to come say hi by himself.”
Nathan gave his sister a wide-eyed, incredulous stare. “No, I wasn’t,” he hissed.
Liam glanced between them with a wry grin. “You like football, Nathan?”
He nodded frantically. “Denver is my favorite team. I wanna play there someday.”
“Gonna have to work really hard if you want to do that,” Liam said.
“I know; I will,” Nathan said. His eyes held the fervent light of unfettered hero worship.
“You ever been to a game?”
Nathan and Daisy traded a look. “No. Mom said the tickets are too expensive for her. But I’m gonna ask for my birthday again. I ask every year,” he said quietly.
Liam swallowed, slowly pulling his phone out of his back pocket. He crouched down so that he was closer to eye level with Nathan.
“Tell you what,” he said gently. “If you give me your mum’s email, I can send you and your sister passes to come to training camp one day. How does that sound?”
“Sweet! Mom, he needs your email,” Nathan yelled over his shoulder.
I stifled a laugh.
Mira munched on her Goldfish and waved at Daisy.
Daisy smiled, studying both Mira and me openly.
“Thank you so much,” the mom told Liam, her eyes shining with grateful tears. Her ring finger was empty, and the bags around her eyes told me just a bit about how tired she was. “This will be the highlight of his year.”
Liam finished tapping something out on his phone. “Just sent it over to the office. They’ll have it under your name.” The three posed for a picture, and Liam leaned over to speak to Nathan. “You make a nice sign for camp, all right? I’ll make sure you meet some of the guys.”
His chin trembled. “I’ll make the best sign ever .”
“Good.” Liam nodded. “See you in a few weeks, yeah?”
Even though Liam had started walking away, I paused for a moment, watching as Nathan crumpled into his mom’s embrace and lost his battle to tears, completely overwhelmed by what he’d just experienced.
My cheeks were wet when I joined Liam again, and he studied my face.
“You’re crying?”
I exhaled a watery laugh. “I can’t help it. You made that kid’s life.”
I could tell that Liam was uncomfortable with the praise, because he adjusted his shoulders and sighed heavily. “Just sent an email, is all.”
“Okay.”
At my patronizing tone, he gave me another look. “Don’t make a big thing of it, Valentine. And I’m still not hugging you if you keep crying.”
I rolled my lips together, a weak attempt to hide my burgeoning smile. “I’d never expect you to.”
One question at a time, I thought.
A few more like that and I could only imagine what I’d uncover. Or how dangerous these new sides of Liam could be.