36. The Rules
THE RULES
CHELSEA
My doorbell rings at three in the morning, but it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been expecting it. Expecting him.
Which is why I’m tucked up with a blanket in the corner of the couch right now, instead of in bed.
I glance at my phone on the coffee table. The screen is dark, but if I unlock it, the video will be paused right where I left it, with a woman’s hand reaching for the ties on Brett’s swim trunks.
The image is seared into my brain.
Everything in it is so... visceral. Because I lived it.
The gray pool tile. The lounge chair. His abs. I even recognize the spot on his inner forearm that should have a heart wrapped in barbed wire on it, though on screen, it only sports precise black script that reads, Janelle.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch past that. I don’t want to see that part of his life. The part he tries to cover with ink on his skin. It’s too much, too raw for me to handle with my heart so bruised.
With a fortifying breath, I get off the sofa and shuffle over to answer his knock. The thunk of the deadbolt is obscenely loud in the quiet house.
I pull the door open.
Brett’s shoulders are slumped, his suit wrinkled. He’s obviously come straight from the airport. He looks tired. Sad. Not like the conquering hero he deserves to be tonight.
“Are you okay?”
He lifts his head and something flares in his eyes, replacing the wariness. Surprise? Hope? “You’re not mad?”
I try to process the question.
Confidence shaken? Yes.
Heartsore? Yes.
But not mad.
I shake my head, and the relief in his body language as he steps into the house makes my chest ache.
I might not be angry, but seeing him now, standing in front of me, I know I’m not okay, either.
Because how am I supposed to keep a man like him—one with adoring fans, women throwing themselves at him, with a damn sex tape, even—happy in the long run?
Dustin would probably get a good laugh out of the fact that I ever thought I could.
He already taught me how this goes. First they want you. Then they decide you’re lacking.
“Chels.” He says my name like it hurts him, and I kind of understand, because it hurts me to hear it, too. He lifts his hand, tucks my hair behind my ear. I close my eyes and revel in the brush of his fingers.
But when I open them, his fingers still.
Something in his face changes, and he pulls his hand back. It’s like he can see all the emotions battling inside me, how desperately I want how I should feel and how I do feel to meet somewhere in the middle.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re not hurt. You don’t have to pretend with me.”
I shake my head, trying to be rational. “You had a life before me. I know all that.”
My words do nothing but make his jaw tight. “But?”
I open my mouth, but I don’t know what to say.
His shoulders stiffen, as though my silence is the worst possible choice, so I try my best to articulate the tangle of confusion in my chest.
“I just... it’s a lot to process. I wasn’t expecting to see you and her.
And logically, I get it. It’s an old video.
She was your wife. You didn’t do anything wrong.
At all. But seeing you in the pool room with her...
where we... I don’t know. It’s all messed up.
I mean, Jesus, Brett. You have a sex tape.
You drew the line at me giving you head in a stairwell, but a whole damn video with her is fine? ”
He sucks on his bottom lip. Looks down at his feet. When he raises his head again, his expression has lost its earlier vulnerability. He’s harder now. Braced for impact.
“I get it. It’s like you told Shanna. We’re just sex. You wanted a walk on the wild side, and that’s what screw-ups like me are for, right? Good enough for a fling, but not for anything long-term.” He huffs a bitter laugh. “Hell, you don’t even want anyone to know we’re together.”
Because this was destined to fail from the start.
I didn’t want to admit it before. But my father saw it. Shanna saw it. Everyone could see it but me.
This was never the plan.
“One night, no names, remember? Maybe that’s all we were supposed to be.”
“Bullshit!”
His angry outburst makes me flinch. “This stopped being one night the second I kissed you in that elevator. Do you get that?” Brett runs an agitated hand through his hair. “You’re not just some girl I picked up in a bar because I wanted to get laid!”
I want to cry. But better to end things now, before he realizes I can’t give him what he needs. “Yes. I am.”
I watch as the fact of it crosses his face, as he realizes the truth of how we met.
“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? You’re still playing by rules you made up before we even met. You always have been.”
His smile is resigned, laced with defeat and self-recrimination. “Jesus, Chelsea. What’s a guy got to do to get you to take a shot with him?”
I cross my arms, trying to staunch the ache in my chest as tears spill down my cheeks.
Brett looks at the ceiling. Shakes his head. “Cursed.”
His chuckle is mirthless.
“I’m never going to outrun my past, am I?
Just when I think things are getting better, something always goes wrong, and I end up right back here.
It’s almost poetic, isn’t it? That what I had with Janelle was fake, but she made me believe it was real.
And now that I’ve found the real thing with you, you’re trying to convince me it’s fake? ”
He seems angrier suddenly; he’s almost vibrating with it.
“That’s horse shit, and you know it. This has never been fake. You want to be scared of what’s between us, then at least own it. Because you know that night when you think you got so down and dirty because you picked up a stranger in a bar?”
I suck in a breath.
“That was straight-up, off-the-menu, vanilla missionary sex. And it wasn’t good because it was dirty. It was good because it was us.”
I wrap my arms around me to block out his words. To keep my insides from spilling out. “But I—”
“But you don’t want good. I know. That’s the problem. Because I do. You make me want everything good, Chels. And you just want me to be bad.”
The paraphrasing of my own words lashes deep, right to the bone.
“You want me to be your dirty stairwell blowjob, and there was a time when I would have settled for that. But I’m not that guy anymore. And I can’t be that again. Not even for you.”
“So what are you saying?”
I already know. Of course, I do.
But I think hearing him say it might make it feel more real later. When I’m playing this moment over and over in my head until the gaping hole in my chest finally scabs over or grows numb enough for me to function again.
“I’m saying what I meant to say before I got here. Before looking at your face made me want stuff I shouldn’t. I think we should break up. Or stop fucking. Or whatever this is to you.”
He rakes a hand through his hair.
“Your dad’s already requested the honor of my presence in his office tomorrow morning. And if by some miracle I convince him to let me keep playing, I can’t afford any distractions going forward.”
His fingers flex. For a split second, I think he might reach for me again, but they curl into fists instead.
“I’m here for hockey.”
With that, he turns and pushes through the screen door. But when it should have banged shut behind him, he pauses on the snowy step, turning back to me. Frigid air rushes in, attacking my bare limbs, and I shiver, but I don’t move. I just return his steady, even gaze.
And then I watch him walk away.