Chapter 27 #2
“Not if you know what’s good for you.” He probably assumes I’ll beat his ass if he tries, but really, I’m just saving him from Petra’s response.
“You going home with her tonight?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” I respond instead.
“So yes, then,” he says.
I’m not going home with her, actually. She lives with me.
The words float through my brain, but I trap them there and take another long swallow of my beer instead.
She doesn’t technically live with me. She stays with me when she’s in New York.
We need to figure out a more permanent solution, and I’m not talking to my teammates about our relationship until it’s more settled.
Tonight. We have to figure things out tonight.
“All right, I’m heading out,” Thompson says. “Just wanted to say goodnight. And good party. Mystery woman over there did a nice job.”
“I’ll let her know,” I say, and we clasp each other on the shoulder in farewell.
The last few people leave and we’re down to only me and Petra, her staff, and the waitstaff. She ambles over to me in those sexy heels, leans into my shoulder, and sighs. “My feet are killing me,” she groans.
“Want me to massage them?” I ask, and nod toward the empty couches. “Plenty of space.”
“I would feel guilty if everyone were cleaning up around us while I sat here with you rubbing my feet.”
“I’ll wait until cleanup is done.” This seems like a good place to have the conversation we need to have tonight. If we go home, we’ll end up naked in bed. We need to talk first.
“Okay, you’ve got a deal.”
I set my beer on the edge of the balcony to my right. “Okay, what do we need to do?”
“You’re paying for this,” she says, looking around the space, “you’re not working.”
“I’d feel guilty if everyone was cleaning up around me while I stood here having a beer.”
“Touché.” She rolls her eyes at me. “Fine, we need to move these couches and tables inside.” She points toward the glass wall to the inside space where food was served. The waitstaff is already in there, breaking down tables and pulling the spindle chairs to the side of the room.
It doesn’t take long for me and Petra’s staff to move the couches and coffee tables inside, then I head out to start grabbing the leather barstools and bringing them in too. “How’s this all work?” I ask Petra when she steps up beside me. “You rent the furniture and they deliver it for the event?”
“Pretty much, yes. The hard thing is finding enough of the same items for a coherent look. Sometimes for events like this, where I want eight matching couches, I have to buy the furniture. Then Morgan turns around and sells it online, but that adds a whole layer of complexity when you’re only in town for a few days.
Back in Park City, I have a whole storage unit with stuff we keep to reuse at events. ”
I pull out one of the last two barstools for her. “Here, sit for a minute. Let me rub your aching feet.”
Petra glances into the interior loft space where her team is chatting as they grab a few remaining items and head toward the elevator. “You good, Petra?” Morgan calls.
“Yeah, we’ll lock everything up,” she calls out. “Thanks everyone!”
They call out their goodbyes and Morgan says, “Okay, see you at the airport tomorrow.”
I see Petra’s shoulders reflexively stiffen, and I hope it means she hates the idea of leaving as much as I hate the thought of her going.
“See you then,” she says.
“Are you flying back to Park City with them?” I ask as we watch them all get into the elevator.
“No, but my flight to LA leaves at the same time as their flight through Denver, and apparently our gates are really close. Morgan had mentioned that earlier, which is”—she shrugs—“whatever. I just wasn’t planning on being in work mode tomorrow morning.”
“You seem like a pretty close-knit team.”
“We are. It’s been hard on them with me being in LA.”
“I can sympathize with that feeling,” I tell her as I reach down and pull her foot into my lap.
“Hmm.” She lets the sound out slowly as I untie the gold straps that wind around her calf and slide her sandal from her foot.
“What does ‘hmm’ mean?” I ask as I scoop up her other foot and repeat the process of removing her other heeled sandal.
“I’m just trying to figure out what you mean by that.”
“What’s to figure out? I’ve missed you while you’ve been in LA and it’s been hard on me being separated like that. I want you back here in New York,” I say and she shakes her head back and forth slowly. “Or I want to be in LA, if that’s what it takes.”
Her eyes shoot up to mine, huge and wide and questioning. “What are you saying?”
“I want us to be together wherever it works. And with my contract up in New York after the finals, I’m free to either renegotiate with New York or try to move to another team.”
“You would leave New York?” Her voice is quiet and unsure.
“To be with you? Yes.” My thumbs are making small circles on the ball of one of her feet, and I slide one thumb down along the arch of her foot. Her eyes roll back until they’re closed and a small sigh escapes her lips.
“This . . .” she says. “This feels very sudden.”
“Petra.” Her name comes out rough with my Russian accent. I hold the long e and roll the r deliberately, and no other words follow until she opens her eyes and looks at me. “Is this the direction you see our relationship heading in?”
She pauses, then says, “Yes, eventually.”
“But not now?”
Her lips part, but no words come out. I think back to what my dad said about her and her mom: She knew how I felt about her and she used every available opportunity to manipulate me, sharing little pieces of herself here and there when it was convenient for her, then denying there was anything between us and telling me I was a jealous fool.
And I’ve watched Petra do the same to you . . .
No, that’s not Petra. She’s not denying there’s anything between us.
“I don’t know,” Petra says, and I’ve almost forgotten what I asked.
“What would be different if we waited longer, aside from having to figure out how to make this work long-distance which, let’s be honest, is not working all that well.
” Aside from the couple days I spent with her in LA, it’s been over a month since Stella and I had seen her before this weekend.
The FaceTime calls we fit in only made it harder because we got to see her without really seeing her.
“Sasha,” she says, as she reaches over and her hand strokes down the side of my face. “I don’t know what my life even is right now. I don’t know if my show will get picked up for a second season—”
“It will,” I say emphatically. I saw the season premier, I read the reviews, I saw the ratings. If the other episodes are as good as the premier, there’s no way she’s not getting a second season. And I’ve seen another episode while she was filming it, so I know how good they’re going to be.
“But what if it doesn’t? What if you move yourself and Stella to LA, and I don’t get a second season and then I go back to Park City?”
I think about this for a second before I ask, “You’d go back to Park City even if I’d moved to LA?”
Her eyes are wide as she lifts her shoulders in a questioning motion, like she’s pleading with me to understand. “I don’t know. My whole life is in Park City.”
“Your whole life? What about me and Stella?”
“You know what I mean.” She looks away, out at the Manhattan skyline, like the answer to my question might be somewhere over there.
“No,” I say as I switch to massaging her other foot. “I don’t.”
“I mean that everything I’ve built, my business, my employees, my circle of friends . . . it’s all in Park City.” The look on her face is so conflicted.
I think about how both Jackson and Sierra have moved away, and how hard Petra’s told me that’s been on her to only have Lauren in Park City.
“Is that something you could be flexible about?” The knot in my stomach is growing tighter by the moment. “There’s no NHL team near Park City. It’s not even an option for me.”
She takes a deep, steadying breath. “I think I’d rather come back to New York than have you move out to Los Angeles.”
“Okay, we can work with that.”
“It’s just, I have contacts here. I can much more easily move my business here than I can start over in LA.
And whether the show gets picked up for a second season or not .
. .” She pauses, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then says, “I think I’d rather be here with you and Stella, even if it means I can’t do the show. ”
My stomach flips over. “You’d walk away from the show?” I’m stunned. I didn’t expect this at all. I know how much the message of that show means to her, how privileged she feels to get to tell these women’s stories.
“There’s an interview that will air later this season, I think it’s episode thirteen.
In it, a super famous actress said something to me that just .
. . resonated. She told me: ‘If you’re someone who is stuck working toward goals some previous version of you wanted, when what you now want is actually something else, then you’re not being true to yourself.
’ I’ve heard those words over and over in my head since she said them, and it’s like she knew exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.
This show, the platform it gives me, it is something I wanted.
But what I want now is you. You and Stella.
And I think we can make that happen more easily here in New York than anywhere else. ”
I drop her feet and stand, spreading her legs in her seat so I can get as close to her as possible. Her arms come around my waist, pulling me to her. I tip my head down and our foreheads rest against each other.
“Thank God,” I say. “For a few minutes there, I thought maybe we were becoming our parents.”
I feel her pull back with a sharp inhale of her breath. “What do you mean by that?”
Shit. I should have thought more about those words. I should have planned out how I would tell her.
“Sasha,” she says when I don’t respond instantly. “What do you mean, you thought maybe we were becoming our parents?”