Chapter 53
Chapter Fifty-Three
Brayden
When I wake up, Baby is asleep on my chest. “I dreamed your mama came home,” I say.
Baby looks at me with her luminous kitten eyes, then blinks a few times as if she resents me for having disturbed her.
Her toys are still in a scatter around the living room.
Of course she liked the twist-tie attaching a little squeaky mouse to its cardboard holder more than the toy itself.
I scoop some of the toys up, leaving the ones that Baby seemed the most intent on, and carry the rest to the drawer in the kitchen where I’ve been stashing most of the duds.
Something in the house feels…different. Sav left early this morning—for class, I think—but I dreamed she was here, a feeling I can’t shake like the smell of her rose perfume in the air.
I climb the stairs up to her room. Our room, really since the door between our bedrooms has been open more often than not.
Sav’s dresser drawers are open. Her closet is half bare hangers, her bathroom stripped of makeup and hair supplies. Did we get robbed? Except instead of taking her jewelry, her pendant is hanging from a stand on her dresser, next to a few other necklaces.
I pluck it from the stand. The pendant sits heavy in my palm.
Did I forget how much it weighs? Or did I just not care when I gave it to her?
A strand of her hair is woven through one of the links on its chain, like she was in a hurry to take it off.
What happened? “Sav, are you here?” I call.
My voice echoes back, but no other responses come.
I put the pendant back on its stand carefully, like she could come back at any moment and wouldn’t want to have the chain tangled.
Next to it is a folded piece of paper. I open it.
Her debit card falls out. I read her note then read it again.
The writing is dry, but the words are stained as if she dripped water on it. Or she was crying.
I pull my phone from my pocket, expecting a text or call from Savannah—an explanation—something that will close this widening chasm in my chest like when she packed away her things and left, she took my heart with her.
There’s a message from an hour ago all right, but not from Sav.
Asher: Call me as soon as you get this, B. We need to talk.
I FaceTime Asher from the kitchen, my hand already around a glass. “What’s that?” he asks as he watches me take a sip—possibly a gulp—of the whiskey from the single bottle remaining in the house.
“What do you think?” I take another slug. I missed the burn of it, the feel of it coating my tongue, the smoky aftertaste. But mostly I missed the way that it could make the world feel a little more distant—bearable, even. “What happened?” I spit.
“The team knows about us.” Asher’s mouth is a grim line on screen. “Coach called me into his office this morning. They know about me and Sav.”
“And you and me?” Is there a you and me? I don’t add.
Asher presses his lips together hard enough to go white. “I didn’t ask. They want a certain image.”
He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to elaborate.
It’s the image I’ve been raised in—the mold I was poured into until I fit.
Straight, monogamous, churchgoing. Except it took being with Asher and Savannah to recognize that mold for what it was—a trap.
“Did you tell Sav what the team said?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond for a long minute, but that silence is answer enough. He did tell Sav, and he regrets it, but it doesn’t matter, because she isn’t here anymore. “Yes,” he says finally. “I thought she should know.”
Anger rises up my throat. I douse it with another gulp. “Not me, though. You weren’t gonna tell me first?”
On screen, Asher’s face goes stony. “You aren’t the one who’s gonna have to publicly wear this. You know how this shit works—whatever protects the team.”
I can see the gossip now: Savannah slept with one of my teammates, broke our marriage, fled into the night, even if it’s barely midafternoon.
I take a long swallow of whiskey. Now that I’ve started drinking, every sip is easier than the last. Maybe I should be more worried about that than I am, but worry is for some other person, some distant future version of myself with a hangover and an empty bed.
“Sav’s gone,” I say. “She took her stuff and left. I don’t know where she is.” Is she with you? Jealousy—worrying someone will take what you have. What I had. Though that isn’t right. I didn’t have Sav, exactly, but she had me.
On screen, Asher looks like he’s actually at a loss for words. “That’s not— I thought— I told her I couldn’t be with her—with either of you—anymore. Not to leave you.”
“Well, she left all right. Do you know where she went?”
Asher shakes his head.
“Would you tell me if you did?” I ask.
Slowly, he shakes his head again. “I wouldn’t.”
So it’s like that. It’s always been like that, really.
I knew she was going to leave. Ever since I met Sav on that porch.
Ever since I vowed to be her husband even if she was my wife in name only.
My glass is too empty. I refill it. Ignore Asher’s look of disapproval.
He can save that shit for someone else, someone who actually deserves his sympathy.
Suddenly, the house is too big, too echoey. We have a game tomorrow. A lifetime away. Lots of hours between now and then and a million places in the city that will run a tab for me.
I tried, for a while, to be the kind of man who was good enough for Savannah, for Asher, for myself. Look where that got us. “I’m going out,” I say. “Don’t come looking for me.”
Asher’s eyebrows shoot up. “Whatever it is you’re gonna do, B, don’t.”
“Stop calling me that.” Stop thinking about me at all. “In fact, I don’t want to talk to you unless we’re on the field.”
“Brayden—” Asher says my name like it’s a question in and of itself, but I don’t want to hear the rest of it, so I cut off the call. Stand in my kitchen listening to the sound of my own breathing. Too loud. I need to be somewhere else, some place that doesn’t smell faintly of roses.
I go to Baby’s food bowl, refill it until the tiny bits of kibble start to cascade onto the floor.
That won’t do. Who thought I could take care of anything?
I can barely even take care of myself. Sav said she got a pet-sitter to look after Baby when we were on the road, but I don’t know any of the details.
I text Sav—the text isn’t even marked delivered.
Call her. It goes straight to voicemail.
A recording of her plays. Hi, you’ve reached Savannah Burke.
Not Forsyth; it was never gonna be Forsyth.
“Who did you have watching Baby?” I ask after the beep.
Already, I sound slurred. Fine, whatever.
The cat has food, water, and several litter boxes.
That’ll last for a while. I’ll figure the rest of this out… tomorrow.
I stare down at myself. I’m still in the clothes I slept in. I shed them as I go upstairs, pull on something better, something that’ll attract the attention of every phone camera. The team wants us to be discreet, to make everything Savannah’s fault and call that the end of it.
But fuck them and fuck that. If they need to pin this on anybody, I’ll give someone to blame. Me.