Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
COLTON
OCTOBER | COLUMBUS, OHIO | TAMPA, FLORIDA
“Jones! Let’s go!”
I glanced back to the airport’s entryway, finding Coach looking like he was ready to kick my ass.
“Coming!” I called. I lowered my voice and turned to Violet, who still had an arm around me. “I guess I better go. Can we talk while I’m gone?”
Violet’s smile was soft. “Sure. Send me the pics.”
I chewed my cheek and hoped Violet couldn’t see how my heart started to pound. She wanted the pictures for herself? “I can tag you too. Or collab? Whatever you want.”
She shrugged and pushed the end of my nose in. “Whatever works for you. Have a good couple of weeks.”
“Ten days. Not that I’m counting,” I said. “And you too. A good ten days.”
Our eyes bounced back and forth from one to the other. God, did her lips ever look so supremely kissable as they did right then?
“Jones!” We both startled at Coach’s shout.
“Hug me quick and go before he kills you,” Violet said, folding into me for a squeeze. I lowered my face and inhaled a whiff of her hair before letting her go.
“See ya, Vi.”
“Bye!”
I turned back at the airport’s doors to find her already getting into her car. Coach slapped me on the back. “Glad you sorted out the whole promposal thing.”
I rolled my eyes. “That was not a promposal. We just took some pictures for me to post. You know, prove it to people. Stop the rumors. Make it my responsibility and not the team’s.”
Coach bobbed his head. “A good idea. That’s the kind of leadership I want to see. You messed up, but you stepped up.”
Well, he was probably the only one proud of me. When I stepped onto the plane, I was greeted by half my team making kissy noises. My face flushed and I held up my middle finger.
“Leave him alone!” Sorrento shouted over the noise.
“Yeah, let Cap be happy!” Owen said. It would have been a nice thing to say, but he had his mouth half full of my junior bacon cheeseburger.
“Owen, what the fuck?” I demanded.
He grimaced. “It was getting cold, Cap.” He held out the sandwich. “Want a bite?”
Royce leaned over and ripped a bite off the burger, straight from Owen’s hand. Owen startled like a shark jumped up and bit it.
“I’m good,” I said. “Just give me the Frosty.”
Behind Owen sat Leroy, the paper cup in his hand and plastic spoon in his mouth. He rounded his eyes at me.
“You too?” I asked.
Leroy lifted a shoulder. “It was melting.”
I settled in my usual seat next to Dottie and scrolled through the pictures Violet and I took. God, she was beautiful.
Dottie leaned over. “Is that your girl?”
My gut twisted. No one here knew about the fake part. “Yeah. That’s her.”
He patted my thigh. “She’s pretty.”
I nodded, unable to pry my eyes from the screen. “Yeah. She is.”
I analyzed the picture that made me stop scrolling. The fall sun made the edges of Vi’s hair glow, and we were looking at each other and laughing.
I looked completely and totally in love. It would be a convincing enough photo for the public, but was it too vulnerable to show to Violet?
But that was the kicker: she looked just as enamored as I did. I silenced my hopeful heart, but it couldn’t stop me from staring.
“Post two,” Dottie said. “People like to look at two.”
I fought a laugh. “Are you a social media expert?”
“My wife is good at it. She posts two.” He leaned over to look closer. “Ooh, do that one. With the funny one. Where you laugh.”
The one of me kissing her forehead with her eyes closed and the one of us laughing. They really were perfect.
The flight crew started the usual safety speech as I sat there trying to figure out what to put as the caption. Violet would read this and it affected her too. I had to get it right. Acid churned in my throat.
I started typing.
Mine then, mine now.
Delete. Too possessive when she wasn’t really mine.
My sunshine.
Delete. Too mushy, even if it was true.
My partner in crime.
Delete. Too soon after last night’s debauchery.
My lips curved up when I thought of it. It would mean something to her and prove something to the rest of the world.
The fries to my Frosty.
COMMENTS (13)
Interesting that Jones isn’t dressing when he just got caught with his dick out
Figures that Ohio’s so bad. Their captain’s too busy railing college girls
Actually he posted a pic with her. It’s his gf
Jonesy’s dating a girl in college?
At least he found the only hot girl in Ohio
WHEN CAN WE TRADE HIM
I’d rather have washed up Dylan Sorrento for a captain than Jones. At least the Princes had Cup runs
Ohio’s so boring Jones had to go to college parties in a corn field for some excitement
Surprised they didn’t call it a lower body injury for his dick getting dipped so hard
That’s the girl he dated in college. Violet Gennari.
UGH THEY ALWAYS DATE SOME GIRL FROM THEIR PAST (sobbing emoji)
At least she’s not blonde (shrug emoji)
(up arrow emoji) A win is a win
Does anybody have a screen recording of the makeout? I need it. For science.
Related: anyone good at making deep fakes?
Insult to injury. That was the theme of my life lately.
This was the second game of a road stand, but the first I was allowed to play in. I had to sit out the first because of my mini-scandal. And now we just took another loss in Tampa.
And glutton for punishment that I was, I’d taken to reading what the fine people of the internet had to say.
I shouldn’t have been looking. I knew it was going to be bad.
I knew nothing good could come from seeing what people had to say on the internet.
It was bound to hurt. I was only going to want to snap necks of anyone who said anything about Violet, and want to puke at the people calling to snap my neck.
I loved to pretend I was above it, that the criticism fueled me. That was one giant lie. When it was directed at me, it wasn’t as bad. But when I let my team down, especially if people shat on my team because of something I did, I was a mess.
“Don’t read that shit.” The washed-up former captain himself slumped down in the seat next to me, and yanked my phone out of my hand.
“I’m not,” I lied.
“It’s just a bunch of keyboard warriors with nothing better to do,” Sorrento said, going to the account and unfollowing it for me. “You’re welcome.”
“Hey,” I whined, snatching my phone back from him.
“Trust me, the less you read that, the better our team will be.”
“But what if they’re right?”
“So what if they are?” he shrugged.
“I mean, they’re the people who fill the seats. They have a right to be upset with me. I feel like I should say something.”
“What? Fuck no, you shouldn’t. Gimme that.” He reached for my phone again.
“Cap, everyone’s waiting for you to make an apology tour,” Royce said.
“Yeah. The people won’t rest until they have an explanation for your egregious behavior,” Owen tried.
I flipped my hand over like a maestro as the “shut up, rookie” chorus broke out around us.
“What you did wasn’t that bad,” our alternate captain Korowski said. “But I hope she’s worth it.”
Sorrento looked at me with a grimace. “How’s that going?”
“Good. Why would it be bad?”
He shrugged. “I mean, you’re not very happy since all this happened.”
In truth, it was everything. The pressure of being captain of a losing team. The losing itself. The negative media attention. And the fact that Violet wasn’t really mine to have. That we hadn’t kissed before I left. But she did show up at the airport to say goodbye, to check on me.
But no kiss, and she still wasn’t really mine.
The others had moved on to ribbing someone else, probably Owen or Royce. Sorrento’s focus stayed on me. “You know you can tell me anything, right, man? Whatever you’re going through, I’ve probably gone through it.”
He might have been right, but jealousy still reared its ugly head. When he was captain, he had a wife and kids. A beautiful family.
All I had was a fake girlfriend and the feeling like I wasn’t good enough, no matter what I did.
But I forced a smile. “Appreciate it.”
Then came the ultimate blow: my phone ringing with my dad on the caller ID.
“Hi.” Violet’s warm voice came from my phone screen. “How are you?”
It wasn’t a casual “how are you” where you don’t really want the answer. Violet was worried about me.
“I’m okay,” I said, knowing that okay meant anything but. I sat back on my hotel bed and kicked my legs up, crossing them at the ankle.
She puffed her lip out, eyes flicking over the screen. “You don’t sound okay.”
“Lost. Just talked to my dad.”
She nodded, looking sympathetic. “Sorry. I imagine he wasn’t happy.”
“Yeah.” I replayed his abundant criticisms in my head. That I was losing focus. Not showing my worth. Letting that girl get in my head again.
“You know you’re doing fine, right? You lost three games and one of those, you didn’t play in. You have what, fifty other games this season?”
“Seventy-nine,” I corrected. “But yeah, I guess you’re right.
” Still, my mind continued to spin. I wasn’t ready to admit that I read the criticism not lodged by my dad, which was also abundant.
I didn’t want her to go looking for it. If anything, Violet still had pure opinions of me.
I didn’t need to give her any other reasons to want to stay away from me.
And I especially didn’t want her to worry about all the guys on the internet saying she was hot or all the women being jealous of her.
“Hey, I liked the pictures you posted,” she said. “We look cute.”
A smile finally curved my lips. “Yeah. We do.”
“You still didn’t send them to me,” she said. “I had to screenshot your post.”
My stomach dipped, and finally, I felt the cloud around me start to lift. “And what did you do with your screenshots, Dr. Gennari?”
Violet giggled and bit her lip. “Looked at ‘em.”
“Yeah?” I couldn’t stop smiling now. I wondered if we were her phone background. She was mine, where I’d zoomed into the picture of her laughing and looking at me.
Presently, she yawned and stretched, twisting to crack her back. My heart tugged at the familiarity of that habit of hers. “You need to go to bed, pretty girl.”
She closed her eyes but kept her smile on. “Probably. I’ve got a little bit of hockey romance to read before bed though. Want to stay on with me and read for a while? Or do you have somewhere to be?”
There’s nothing I could have chosen that would have been better than watching her read, those drowsy eyes and that messy hair the most beautiful sight at the end of a shitty couple of days.
“Nowhere to be. Let’s read.”