20. Cooper
20
COOPER
N ow, what to say?
The blank text bubble stared up at me. Did I deny and deflect or come clean and say so what ? The cat was out of the bag, so was I supposed to honor the NDA? I didn’t even know, but in the interest of legality I erred on the side of caution.
I didn’t answer Jewel. I left her hanging in our text stream.
Hell, my own sister didn’t even want to know me most of the time. Now she suspected me of fucking a celebrity and she wanted the dirt. Well, tough shit. She wasn’t going to get it. Even without the NDA I wasn’t going to talk about Renée. Not to anyone outside of the two of us. What it boiled down to was it wasn’t anyone’s business. Certainly not the gossip columns.
Better to go on as always and ignore anything said in the media. Besides, didn’t Renée have people on staff to run interference on stuff like this?
Good God! Now they’re running articles about your temper.
Nothing like having my past reach up to grab me in the nads. More importantly, how did they find out I was the one in the picture? Damn internet sleuths.
I didn’t answer that last text either. What was the point. I was better off letting the fire burn itself out than to add to the charges and confusion by defending my character.
Most people would think: what character?
I had burned my bridges in my chosen career and had blamed everyone but myself. When in reality it was my bad decisions, my anger, my pride that had tripped me up. No matter that the ump was a notorious prick. I should have known better and let his damn goading words wash over me instead of reacting in the moment.
Well, I wasn’t going to make that mistake with Renée. Let her team and her fame take care of the whole sordid business. I wasn’t going to say a word. If I did, I’d look guilty of stirring shit. I hadn’t done a thing except let her know at the last second, I had recognized her. Maybe that was stupid on my part—because ultimately, she might blame me for the fallout. Think I planted the photographer with a want to extort money out of her.
If she never heard another word from me then she’d get what she paid for. That was the least of what she should expect for her money.
I could hear some of my friends think that I had sold myself short. That I should cash in on the moment. But even at my lowest, I don’t think my character was that sketch.
I wanted to be a better man. To change and make my life what I wanted. What I envisioned for it. Not get swept away by someone else’s idiocy.
Yep. I needed to plan and think.
I got back into my car and drove to the city park on the lake. Picnic tables were mostly empty that time of day. On the weekend, they’d be full of families out enjoying the water with their boats and tents. A campground sat adjacent to where I set up to look out over the water to think.
If I’d had time in Bali, I might have done that there. However, I’d been too busy fucking some sexy self-helper’s brains out to do much in the way of getting my shit together to notice more than the scenery. Now, I was pissed at myself that I didn’t take advantage of sitting and watching the ocean and letting my problems unravel.
Something about a body of water seemed to make it easier to focus my thoughts and figure out a game plan. I should have done that when I lived in Redd Port. Maybe then, I wouldn’t have punched the ump and got let go from the team and blacklisted.
I scrubbed at my head and watched a sailboat cut a perfect path through the water. Maybe I’d learn to sail. I’d been out on speedboats, fishing vessels, and jet skis. I had been aboard a sailboat a time or two but had never learned how to captain one myself.
Had to be tranquil out there, skimming across the water and catching the wind. I needed to find other ways to feel alive than being on a field and hitting a ball before I ran around the bases. Though, anyone who grew up in Suwannee Grove knew that softball and baseball were life. It was just the way things were there.
My damaged reputation didn’t do much to help me get a job coaching softball or baseball anywhere in the area—much less the state. Nope, the sports world was a pretty tight community. Word spread as had my blacklisting. I wasn’t about to get a job anywhere near the sport I’d made my life.
My phone buzzed again, and I took it out of my pocket and looked at the screen.
I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail.
My number wasn’t published anywhere, so I doubted it was a reporter asking for a statement. I don’t think it was the app company either. Truth be told, I was a little leery of talking to anyone I didn’t know about anything at the moment.
Nope. I’d screen all calls and then make a decision about who I spoke to for the next few weeks. Chances were the entire Renée situation would blow over and I wouldn’t be asked about her.
What would I say if I was asked?
Pretend that the single most important experience of my life never happened? That the woman didn’t drive me crazy from a thousand miles away? That I didn’t wish with every fiber of my being and frayed strand of my mind that I was with her again?
Yeah, probably not going to happen. As soon as someone asked me about her, they were going to know something happened between us. I wasn’t that good an actor. My thoughts were usually clear in my eyes. No one had to guess if I was mad, happy, hot, sad. Emotions were hard to cut off. I’d tried to in front of Renée because I didn’t want her to guess or even think for one moment that I knew her. If I had let on, would she have been so open and honest in her lovemaking? Or would it have been a source of tension between us?
Hard to say.
I found her to be so much different than her public persona. So much softer and less sure. The thing I didn’t know for sure was if that was an act on her part. Had she purposefully made herself that way in order to throw me off or put me at ease?
That too was hard to say.
Whatever she had been on Bali, I fell hard for her.
Now, I had to try and pick up the pieces and move on. Because face it, no matter how good it was between us, a relationship wasn’t what she’d paid for.