Chapter 12 Twelve
Twelve
Jal hadn’t been planning on going to the game at all, but their encounter in the park lingered on her mind. After he left, she only managed another wallet and a fancy portable cell phone charger before calling it a day.
Elena called the next morning looking for help at the restaurant, but there was no way she could be around her friend without the subject of Ciaran coming up.
In true Elena fashion, she’d be full of questions that Jal didn’t have answers to yet.
Questions like what, if anything, Jal wanted from him, or whether she was ready for another relationship after Andy.
So, even though the guilt tore at her, she’d told her friend no, and hit up Times Square instead, returning home after a few hours with a sizeable addition to the envelope full of cash in her bedroom ductwork.
Saturday morning dawned dark and dreary with rain lashing the windows at the head of her bed.
She rolled over and lifted a corner of the curtain.
Mother Nature to the rescue! she thought and snuggled back under the covers.
Sure, the pros played in the rain, but a bunch of corporate wannabes?
The rain would certainly wash them away, right?
She spent the morning at the laundromat downstairs, with her nose buried in a tattered old romance novel from the shelf near the vending machines so her stuff didn’t get tossed in some random place when she didn’t move it the second the machine stopped.
Every time she looked up, her mood soured, as the view through the fogged-up glass showed the weather improving.
By the time she stepped back outside, the bag of folded clothes perched on her shoulder, the sun was playing hide and seek with the thinning clouds and the city street sparkled, the way it only did after a good rain.
She went back upstairs and tried to busy herself cleaning, but her attention kept drifting to the clock, to the sunny skies outside.
Three o’clock came and she found herself bouncing all over the apartment, never really finishing a task.
There had been a necklace on the coffee table when she’d cleaned it off, which had led to rearranging her jewelry box and the cluttered dresser.
Moving the accumulated makeup on her dresser back to the bathroom turned into reorganizing the linen closet for an hour.
All along, her stomach churned as her mind continually ran through the list of tasks still to be done, never truly forgetting the one thing she was avoiding.
Running out of cleaner had led to her going back to the kitchen for more only to start scrubbing the kitchen counter instead, pausing half-way through when she realized that she’d already cleaned the counter, at least three times.
“This is asinine,” she grumbled and pitched the scrub into the sink. She blew a lock of hair out of her eyes and checked the clock again. Three-thirty. Her anxiety spiked wondering what Ciaran could be thinking right now. Why did she care so much about what he thought, anyway?
She retrieved the scrubber from the sink with a hand that trembled slightly and went to scrub the stove only to find it too had already been cleaned.
Her chest grew tight, making her heart flutter and each breath feel like it was through a straw.
She braced her hands on the edge of the stove and tried to stop thinking.
When her thoughts continued to spiral, she stumbled to the cabinet next to the sink.
Her shaking fingers sent several bottles clattering down before she managed to grasp the right yellow bottle and start in on the cap.
It finally popped loose and a handful of small orange pills spilled out over the counter.
They scattered further as she made a grab for one, any one, but they either skittered away into the sink or onto the floor until she finally managed to trap one and raise it to her mouth.
Something stopped her hand, and she looked down at the pill clutched between her fingers.
“Get… a grip,” she wheezed and dropped the pill back to the counter with a clatter, she folded her arms over the countertop, concentrated on a single drop of splattered sauce that she had missed on the wall, and focused on just breathing. In for a count of four, hold for four, out for four, repeat.
A dozen cycles later, the straw was gone and her chest was no longer crushing her heart. She took one more deep breath for good measure, blew it out on a sigh and scooped the pills that hadn’t fallen into the sink back into their bottle and went to grab her coat.
The game was nearly over by the time Jal got there, but she found an open space in a corner of the field and hadn’t been there for more than a minute when some burly blond meathead with a Viking fetish swept Ciaran ‘s feet out from under him.
As if in slow motion, he sprawled to the grass and rolled to a stop clutching his calf.
His shirt and face were streaked with mud and grass, and her heart may have skipped a beat or two, or ten.
She turned away, unable to watch him writhing on the ground, his yelp of pain seeming to echo in her ears. She lifted her hand to her mouth as she pivoted back. When his friends helped him to his feet and supported him over to the bench, she was surprised when her eyes prickled with tears.
Maybe she should have taken that pill after all if her emotions were this close to the surface. She had to remind herself that there had been a time not that long ago when she would have gotten pleasure from him being literally knocked down a peg. What changed?
The crowd around her started to shift during the break in play. She soon lost her line of sight, just as a petite female paramedic was staggering over from the medical tent under the weight of a gigantic black duffle full of supplies.
Jal found herself drawn through the crowd until she was able to tuck into the shadows beside a set of bleachers near the bench where she could observe him but not be easily seen.
The paramedic handed him a cloth for his face and hands, and got him to put his leg on the bench so she could clean a wound on his calf and wind a bandage around it.
Once she finished, Ciaran stood and bounced on his leg.
He flashed a wide smile in response to the paramedic’s question and raised his hand, signaling to the referee that he wanted to return to the field.
The wave of relief nearly buckled her knees.
She scrabbled for a grip on the bleacher railing to keep her feet.
The redheaded player came off and sank gratefully down onto the bench, even though he’d only been out on the field for a few minutes. Ciaran didn’t miss a beat, intercepting a pass and was off like a shot and Jal found her knees going weak for a completely different reason.
Ciaran passed the ball, looped around the Viking wannabe, who cursed and lost his footing trying to catch up, and accepted the return pass almost without looking. Jal marveled at the awareness he had on the field, at his relaxed focus as if playing was as natural to him as walking down the street.
The dreamy smile playing on his lips had her transfixed.
He played with the same intention to his movements that she was sure he did with everything else, dodging another defender and sending the ball soaring into the net.
Moments later, the referee blew the whistle three times and judging by the celebrations, Ciaran’s team had won.
The teams formed two lines for the end of game handshake, then the deputy mayor strode across the field and presented Ciaran with a trophy, a surprisingly fancy one for such an event.
It had a cup on top of all things and years of names etched around the side.
The crowd began to disperse, and she held her ground against the bleachers, letting the crowd pass by.
She fiddled with the cuff of her sleeve as people brushed by her, momentarily obscuring her view of Ciaran and the rest of the players milling around the benches.
The sea of sweatshirts and light jackets eventually parted and, as it did, Ciaran looked up from tying his sneakers and met her eyes as if he had known exactly where she was.
He smiled and she found herself giving him a wobbly smile in return.
He gathered up his belongings and went to take a step in her direction, but paused with his foot comically in mid-air, one side of his mouth twitching at the warning tilt of her head.
He lifted his eyebrow by way of asking her permission to cross.
She tapped her chin thoughtfully, and somehow managed to keep her face neutral while he stood there still as a stork, waiting. For a moment, she thought about seeing how long he could hold it up without falling, but she dismissed it, and nodded with all the grace of a queen granting a boon.
The smile that spread across his face had just enough of a wicked gleam that Jal’s fingers started tingling from the adrenaline. The air between them crackled with energy the closer he got, as if the morning’s thunderstorm was returning.
He stopped a few feet away, his duffel bag looped over one shoulder.
“I didnae think you were comin’.” His Scottish accent, usually so tightly controlled, came out in full force.
She had a feeling that he forced his voice into a pattern more understandable to American ears.
But she also wasn’t complaining as the sound of it sent a shiver down her spine.
“My plans changed last minute.” she replied, though the lie tasted bitter on her tongue.
“Glad I am, that they did.”
Jal ducked her head to hide the heat that burned on her cheeks at the sincerity in his words. Her eyes fell on the bandage wrapped around his calf. “How does your leg feel?”
She felt, more than saw, him shrug. “It was touch-and-go there at first. I half expected the paramedic to pull a saw out of her bag and try to take it off.”
Jal swatted his shoulder.