Chapter 11
Training camp ended, and I was happy as hell to be home. I missed my wife. Yeah, I missed the sex, but more than that, I missed her. I missed holding her and loving up on her. And somehow, between the time I left for training camp and got home from training camp, something had switched up.
Skyy missed me while I was gone. When I got back, she fucked me like I’d been gone two years as opposed to two weeks.
But I’d known her for too long and knew her too well not to feel the .
. . distance she was creating between us.
I wasn’t blinded by the pussy. I knew Skyy.
She could be like a dude when it came to sex.
She could disassociate. She could give me the pussy, suck my dick, bow down to my dominance, all while pulling back little by little.
I didn’t know what I’d done. Initially, I figured she was in her bag about the fact that I left. But I knew that wasn’t it. Something happened, and it scared her. It caused her to retreat inside herself and take her heart with her.
I played it cool all week. The team was headed into the first pre-season game.
While I knew that pre-season games didn’t hold much weight for many players, or even coaches, for me, they would set the tone for my season.
I wasn’t the type to slack off just because the games wouldn’t affect our record.
I still brought my A-game and gave it my all.
I let Skyy cook so I could concentrate on the business at hand, but after the game, . . . she owed me an explanation about her behavior.
Travis approached me in the locker room. We exchanged dap.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“I can’t call it. It’s hot out there. I know that field finna be on fire. I hope they?—”
“Stop playing with me, bro.”
He chuckled. I knew he knew something. I knew it wasn’t cool to involve other people in our marriage, but I had to do what I had to do.
Not only that, but I trusted Travis implicitly.
I knew he would have my back. I sent him on a fact-finding mission.
I asked him to holler at Kelcie and find out what the hell was going on with my wife.
He chuckled his ass off. “Let’s step somewhere private.”
The two of us left the locker room and stepped into a deserted hallway.
“What’s up? What’s going on with Skyy?”
He sighed. “Apparently, this drama with Phoenix Avondale . . . the dead male escort, the drugs, the pregnant mistress—all of that has Skyy feeling some kind of way.”
My face twisted up in confusion. “Why would that bother Skyy at all?” I took a deep breath. “Everybody knows that this dude is a pill popper. Everybody knows he’s a Mollie taking, orgy hosting cheater.”
“Everybody except Skyy, apparently. I don’t know. I’ve told Kelcie that he’s come to me and asked me to pray for him to clean up his act on a hundred occasions. I don’t know if she told Skyy that, though.”
I sucked my teeth. “She shouldn’t even have to tell Skyy that. Skyy should know that whatever fuckboy shenanigans Phoenix is involved in have nothing to do with us.”
“This is why I didn’t even wanna tell you this before the game. You need to hold your head, not be all pissed off because Skyy is being a woman.”
I eyed him. “You call this being a woman? I feel like women should be insulted by that.”
“It’s not an insult. Women can be emotional creatures, leading with thoughts and feelings.
She was feeling some kind of way because it was her first time going through training camp with you as your wife.
While she’s in the midst of figuring out her footing with that, here comes Phoenix’s drama.
You know Skyy. She don’t really . . . do emotions too much. Them shits make her uncomfortable.”
I had to chuckle, because he was right. My girl wasn’t one to just sit back and let emotions have their way. She was going to try to control them and put them neatly in a box so she could deal with them at a later date.
“She probably never really wanted to give her heart to me in the first place.” I mused. “But I’m so fucking irresistible.”
“Yeah, you’re the man.” He joked with me.
“Fuck you.” I laughed before turning serious. “So, my wife thinks she can withhold her heart from me because she’s scared that I’m gonna break it? Noted.”
“What’re you gonna do, Jay?”
I moved my eyes over to him. “I’m gonna make sure she knows how much I love her. Let’s go. I know you’re warming the bench tonight while the second and third string QBs get their shots, but I’m on the field tonight. Upper management gotta make sure they didn’t make a mistake picking me up.”
We won the game. I was glad about that. I was also glad that I had time to work on my rhythm with the second-string quarterback, Silas Hutchinson.
Coach even put Travis in for a hot minute.
Of course we connected to make magic. I could catch a pass from Travis off the very tips of my fingertips.
It didn’t matter if he threw it high, low, short, or whatever.
It was like my fingers were magnets to any ball touched by him.
The Coyotes didn’t understand the blessing they were about to receive from putting us back together on the field.
What I wasn’t glad about was the conversation I was going to have to have with my wife.
She met me at the door when I arrived home, still wearing her game day outfit—a Coyotes T-shirt, fashioned to show her mid-section, short blue jean shorts, denim colored pointy-toe boots, and her curly hair pulled up into a ponytail, with some of it hanging freely around her shoulders.
She was so damn gorgeous that I had to remember that we were beefing.
“Congratulations, baby! You played so good. Did you hear me screaming from the stands?” She threw her body into mine.
We’re beefing . I fought the temptation to pull her close.
“Thanks. Nah, I didn’t hear you. We got food?”
I felt her stiffen as she pulled away from me. She backed up, her eyes searching mine. Unlike her, I was able to keep my expression blank.
“You okay?”
“I’m perfect.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Why’re you asking?”
She was silent for a few beats. “I don’t know. You seem . . . attitudinal.”
“Well, I’m hungry as hell and tired.”
“Oh, right. The food is ready. Meet me in the kitchen.”
After I dropped off my game day bag, took a piss, washed my hands, and changed into shorts and a tank top, I met Skyy in the kitchen.
She had my plate ready. The grilled chicken, roasted potatoes, and strawberry and pecan salad looked good.
I took a seat at the island. After saying grace, I dug into the food while Skyy filled a glass with ice and coconut water.
“Thanks,” I told her as she placed the glass beside my plate.
“You’re welcome.”
The room fell silent. Skyy squirmed.
It was probably wrong of me to purposely ice her out, to purposely make her feel uncomfortable in her own home, but I honestly felt some kind of way.
I was patient forever. Proved myself time and time again.
Fought for her damn trust. Finally thought I’d earned it, and she was secretly pulling it back again.
All because some other couple was having problems. I didn’t have it in me to rebuild trust that I didn’t break.
The room was quiet, except for the sound of the tines of the fork periodically hitting the plate. I didn’t look up.
“Are you mad at me?” I could hear the concern in her voice.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.” The word came out quickly. “I love you, Jay. I’m not mad at you. I don’t have a reason to be mad at you.”
I kept eating.
“I have some work to do.” She stood from the island and left the kitchen.
Later that night, Skyy finally came into our bedroom. I hadn’t seen her since our . . . encounter in the kitchen earlier. I’d taken a nap, gotten up, and eaten again. Took a shower and got back into bed. I figured she’d stayed in her office.
She walked into the bathroom. I turned up the volume on the television and continued to binge-watch my show.
About twenty minutes later, she reentered the room.
Her hair was piled on top of her head, in the most haphazard way.
She was dressed in a sleep shirt, and she smelled like heaven.
It took every ounce of self-discipline I had not to toss her little ass on the bed and make her pussy my dessert.
We beefing , I reminded myself.
“Can we talk?” She sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah.” I muted the volume on the television and threw the remote onto the nightstand. Then, I gave her my attention. Again, I kept the expression on my face as blank as possible.
She looked at me, with her eyes pleading for me to give her a clue about what I was thinking or feeling. I kept my expression blank. She was too used to me rescuing her and letting her off the hook. She was going to have to thug it out this time.
“I feel like you’re making this hard for me, Jay.”
I felt that shit in my heart, because the last thing I ever wanted to do was make something hard on her.
I’d spent the entirety of our friendship making things easier on her.
But she was the one keeping secrets. At some point, I had to stop saving her from herself and from ways and habits that would hurt our marriage in the long run.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Speak ya mind, wife.”
She took an audible breath. “While you were at training camp, I made an appointment to get on birth control.”
“Wow.” The word slipped out without my permission.
Her confession caught me completely off guard.
Travis hadn’t shared that piece of information with me.
All of a sudden, my head got real foggy, and my heart started to palpitate.
I was confused. The blank expression on my face dropped and was replaced by a frown. “What?”
“I-I-I mean,” she started to stutter, “I didn’t get on birth control. I just went to talk to my doctor about the options.”
She was trying to play word games with me. She wouldn’t need to talk about options if she didn’t plan on making a decision about which one she wanted.
“You went to talk to your doctor about getting on birth control, but you didn’t talk to your husband?”
“Jay, I?—”
“Why?”
“I, uhm?—”
“Why?”
“While you were at training camp, True called us all into the office and told us that Phoenix Avondale was arrested. He had ordered a male escort . . . him and his mistress?—”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to tell you, Jay. You keep?—”
“Why? You’re trying to bullshit me, saying something about Phoenix Avondale.
The fuck Phoenix Avondale got to do with our”—I gestured between the two of us—“relationship? Tell me why, Skyy. Why would your response to anything about Phoenix Avondale be to go behind my back and get on birth control? And you wonder why people say Scorpios are sneaky. They say it because y’all do sneaky shit. This is sneaky as hell.”
“I wasn’t being sneaky.”
“The fuck do you call it? Did you call or text me and talk to me about it? Did you mention that you had a doctor’s appointment? Nah. You did the shit you always do, Skyy. You decided arbitrarily, in your mind, that keeping this information to yourself was best for you.”
“I didn’t decide arbitrarily, Jay.”
“Then how did you decide? Did you make a chart? Did you lay out all of the pros and cons? Did you do a list of ‘best- and worst-case scenarios’? Did you ask for input from others? Kelcie? Your mother? Anybody?” I sucked my teeth.
“And you look in my face and tell me how communicative Scorpios are. How they always want to talk things out. Yeah, they do, right up until something real is on the line. Right up until their feelings or their emotions are on the line. Then they lock everything in a vault of fucking secrecy.”
“This is not about me being a Scorpio!”
“Nah, you don’t get to get in your bag. I’m the one who’s pissed off right now. But you’re right. This isn’t about you being a Scorpio. It’s about you being my wife.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and Skyy wasn’t a crybaby. “I am your wife, and I apologize for fucking up, Jay. I’m learning on the fly here. I’ve never even seen a marriage in action. I’m not gonna always know what to do.”
“What would a friend have done, Skyy? What would a friend have done? Because even if you don’t know shit about being a wife, you know about being a friend, right? You are my friend, right?”
“I’m your best friend.”
I stood up from the bed. I could take it when I thought she was just pulling back out of fear.
But to find out that she actually made an appointment to get birth control, without even talking to me, .
. . that was something different. “Ay, I’ve always been a proponent of you having your secrets.
I’ve always tried to respect the fact that there were some things you felt compelled to guard.
You being private has never been an issue for me, because I always knew that you would tell me the important things.
I always believed that even if you were picking and choosing what to share, you would share the important shit.
Well, the fucking joke is on me, Skyy. Congratulations.
I’m up. I need to get out of here for a minute. ”
“What?” The distress was evident on her face. “What? We need to talk about this.”
“Oh. Now we need to talk about it? I’m making an arbitrary decision about my life and my level of comfort in this relationship, and now we need to talk about it?
People always say that nobody likes it when you pull a ‘them on them.’ So, I’m pulling a Skyy on Skyy, and Skyy is having a shit fit.
” I made my way into the walk-in closet and pulled out a random duffel bag.
“Learn how to take what you give out, shorty.”