Chapter 39
CHAPTER 39
GABE
This is fucking ridiculous. I cannot believe I’m right back here again.
I shift the gel ice pack on my shoulder and stretch my legs along the sofa.
No point going to bed yet, even though it’s now almost two a.m. I’m too furious about this whole situation to be able to sleep.
Not furious with Wyatt. As much as I’d like to be able to blame someone and have a focus for my anger, I’ve seen the replays and he did nothing wrong. It was an accident that could have happened to anyone. I’m just frustrated as fuck that it happened to me and reinjured my shoulder that had just fucking healed.
I’d hoped the third episode in a NatGeo series about capybaras would work its magic and bring my heart rate and stress hormones down to a normal level. But no such luck.
It’s the first time capybaras have failed me—a testament to the total fucking shit show my life has turned into. Or, rather, that I have managed to turn it into.
The reinjuring of my shoulder might have been an accident, but the Natalie stuff sure as hell isn’t. That one is entirely my fault. And those two things are now swirling around my head in one giant cyclone of fucked-uppery.
But maybe the reason the capybaras didn’t do the trick for me tonight is because I was distracted from their amazing ability to stay underwater for five minutes at a time by thoughts of the one shit show in my life I might actually be able to do something about.
Wyatt.
Maybe calling him wouldn’t be the worst idea.
He’ll think I’m blaming him for what happened tonight. And maybe I should tell him I know it wasn’t his fault. And maybe apologize again for slamming him against the lockers that time. Maybe he never even read that email I sent. Maybe he just deleted it.
But no doubt he wouldn’t take my call. What he said to Natalie is a testament to what he still thinks of me. But I could leave a voicemail. And maybe he might listen to it.
I know for sure Natalie would say it was worth a try.
Yeah, you know what, fuck it. If I can’t fix any of the other things I’ve wrecked, maybe I can fix this one.
And maybe I can have a friend other than my parents.
But I will still give him hell over what he said about me to Natalie though.
I slide the ice pack off my shoulder and drop it onto the floor as I reach for my phone.
Before I touch it, it rings and makes me jump. Jesus, who would call at this time of the night?
Definitely not my parents. They were both pretty tipsy on the Italian-night Chianti when I spoke to them earlier .
I think I managed to put their minds at ease about my fall. At least enough for Dad to tell me, in great detail and with slightly slurred words, about the incredible tiramisu they had for dessert. Except he kept calling it tirra- moo -see.
Anyway, who the hell is this now?
I flip the phone over.
Well, fuck me sideways. It’s Wyatt.
“Glad you called,” I say without giving him time to speak. “I was just think?—”
“Dude, can you let me in?”
“What? Let you in where?”
“Your building. And up to your place?”
“You’re here ?” I might be prepared to talk to him, but I’m not sure I’m ready for a face to face. In my living room.
“Yeah. Downstairs. And I’m outside, on the sidewalk, because the doorman from Fort Knox here won’t even let me into the fucking lobby.” The hard stare Wyatt’s giving the doorman, who’s ex-Special Forces and takes no shit from strangers, is audible in his voice.
“Why?”
“Wanna talk.”
“So you just show up at my house? At”—I take the phone away from my head to check the time—“two eleven a.m.? Couldn’t you just call like a normal person?”
“It’s not the same. And I was sure you’d be so fucking mad about your shoulder that you’d still be wide awake.”
This man knows me.
“And that you haven’t eaten,” he adds.
My stomach growls right on cue as I look at the empty yogurt tub on the table next to me, the contents of which constituted my dinner.
“That’s why I brought pizza,” he says.
Fuck.
“From Pappalucci’s,” he adds.
Double fuck.
“With the garlic-buttered shrimp on it.” His tone says he knows that’ll be the clincher.
Okay. Even my grand principles have limits. “Pass me to the big guy who won’t let you in.”
There’s a rustling sound and some muffled chatter before a voice says, “Hello?”
“Hi, Clint. It’s Gabe.”
“Good evening, Mr. Woods. I’ve never known you to have a visitor at this time of night before. And I’ve never seen this gentleman with you before either.”
“Is he really carrying a pizza?”
“Yup.”
“From Pappalucci’s?”
“Yup, from Pappalucci’s.”
Wyatt’s voice protests in the background, saying something I think was “Did he think I was lying about the fucking pizza?”
“Okay, Clint,” I tell him. “You can let him up.”
“Thank you, sir. Good night, sir. Enjoy the pizza, sir.” And Clint hangs up the phone.
“You seriously thought I might make up the pizza? You motherfucker,” Wyatt says as he steps out of the elevator, holding the box in the air as if it’s the Stanley Cup.
“Good evening to you too.” I pull two beers from the fridge with my right hand because I’m not supposed to use my left arm. It should really be in a sling.
“Seriously though. Really,” he says, kicking off his boots, hanging up his coat, then walking along the wide hallway toward me. “A year and a half since I left, and all I had to do was show up with pizza and you’d talk to me again?”
“I thought it was you who wasn’t talking to me?” I grab a roll of paper towels from the drawer and set it on the island, gesturing for Wyatt to put the pizza next to it.
“Is that not what I’m doing right now?” he says. “Seems that talking to you is exactly what I’m doing.”
I point at the beers. “Open those. I’m only allowed to use one arm. Because, you know, some total ass-twat reinjured my goddamn fucking shoulder about five minutes after it got better.”
He takes the first bottle and snaps off the lid. “How long are you out for?”
I shrug—with my good shoulder. “Doc says he needs to look at it again tomorrow once the swelling’s gone down.”
Wyatt slides the bottle toward me and opens the second. “Been icing it?”
“Of course I’ve been fucking icing it.” I take a long slug of the cold beer.
He sits opposite me and opens the pizza lid. “I knew you wouldn’t sleep. And I knew you’d be starving.”
“You’d make the perfect girlfriend.” I put down the bottle and tear off a slice of pizza.
It’s still good and hot and the cheese is stretchy, and I am absolutely starving and oh, sweet Jesus, it’s fucking delicious.
“As good a girlfriend as my cousin?” he asks.
I stop mid-chew.
“Ah, so that’s the real reason you’re here?” I ask through a mouthful of buttery shrimp. “To tell me to keep my hands off Nat?”
He picks up his beer and points the bottle at me. “Did it not occur to you for one fucking second that perhaps I feel like shit for what just happened in the game and I wanted to see how you are and apologize?”
“No.”
“Priceless. Fucking priceless.” He pauses to look at the ceiling for a second. “This is why we aren’t friends any more.”
I rip off a piece of paper towel, wipe my mouth and take another swig of beer before replying. “I know exactly why we’re not friends anymore. Because you’re an unsympathetic asshole who told me to pull myself together and get over it when I was at rock fucking bottom when that vile woman sold her vile lies about me, and my crook of an agent ripped me off. And then you fucking left to play for the Ironmen and never took my calls.”
I take another bite of pizza. “This is fucking delicious. But fuck you.”
Wyatt rips off his own slice. “If you recall, you were sinking into a pit of despair and needed someone to yank you out of it before you kept spiraling, lost your edge and ruined your career. I was trying to kick you up your ass for your own good. And you thanked me by grabbing me by the shirt, slamming me into a locker, and yelling in my face so hard you covered me in spit.”
“And you know what?” I rest my elbows on the counter and look him firmly in the eyes. “I am really fucking sorry about that. It was totally out of line. And I would have told you that eighteen months ago if you’d taken my calls when I started to get my shit together and tried to get in touch.”
I rip off another mouthful of pizza with my teeth and, for a moment, we both chew without speaking .
“Why wouldn’t you take my calls?” I ask him once I’ve swallowed.
Wyatt balances his slice on the edge of the box while he finishes his bite and washes it down with beer.
Then he sets the bottle on the counter with a clunk and looks down into it. “Because things were fucking tough at the Ironmen, and if you were calling to give me a hard time, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”
He was having a hard time there? Christ, you’d never have known from watching him play. “Tough? Tough, how?”
He shrugs and continues to stare into his beer. “I struggled to keep up with them.”
“Bullshit. You’ve always been one of the fittest, fastest players in the league.”
“I don’t mean physically. I mean up here.” He taps the side of his head with the bottle.
“Like what?” I finish off my slice and wipe my hands.
Wyatt shakes his head. “They’re all stats and doing things based on numbers over there.”
I draw in a sharp intake of breath. “As opposed to playing from their guts, like you do?”
Finally, he looks up at me. “See, I knew you’d understand. And I wanted to talk to you about it. Because you’d get it. But I could feel myself losing my grip on my positivity and I was terrified if I spoke to you, you might drag me down to where you were.”
“I was through all that shit when I called you.”
“And how the fuck would I have known that?” He picks his pizza back up.
“Because I explained it all in the email I sent you because you wouldn’t answer your fucking phone.”
He pauses with his pizza midway to his mouth and I can see the exact second the memory of that pops into his head.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “I forgot about that.”
“Great. Glad I fucking bothered.”
“Thanks though,” he adds.
“What for?”
“Apologizing for the locker room thing.”
I nod and grab another slice. “Thanks for getting the garlic-buttery shrimp.”
“For old time’s sake,” he says.
And we sit there finishing off the garlic-buttery shrimp pizza from Pappalucci’s and drinking beer, like we used to do to celebrate every win. And it’s almost, almost , like the last year and a half never happened.
Because that’s what real friendship is like.
Wyatt laughs so hard he has to blow his nose. “Seriously, she was wearing a bunny suit?”
“Seriously. And I felt really fucking bad about hurting her ankle.”
“Jesus.” He screws up his snotty kitchen paper and tosses it into the empty pizza box. “Nat’s a good kid. Always been a good kid.”
“What was the boyfriend like? The one who moved to Alaska.”
“Boring as fuck.” He leans forward on the island to emphasize the fuck . “Only met him twice. Once at a wedding and once at a funeral. At one of them he was droning on about a 1970s documentary about trees in Alaska. And at the other I had to walk away when he started to talk about soil nutrients. ”
“So, he’s boring on very specific subjects then.” I shake my head. “Just can’t imagine Natalie with someone that dull. She’s so”—how do I say this to make it not sound like I really liked banging your cousin and I’d really like to do it a lot more ?—“not boring.”
Wyatt drains his beer and shrugs. “Probably didn’t think she deserved any better.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t realize how amazing she is, huh?”
“But you do, right?” he says.
I look my friend and Natalie’s cousin directly in the eyes and nod. “I do.”
“Well, then don’t fuck it up.”
“Too late.”
“Oh, Jesus.” He rests his head in his hands. “Let me guess. You really liked her, then decided you’d better back off in case she does you dirty like that other chick or your agent or whoever else screwed you over. Or that being with her might distract you from the game and affect your play. So you walked away.”
“Pretty much.” I wipe a blob of pizza sauce off the counter with my finger. “But possibly worse than that.” I suck off the sauce.
“What could be more loser-ish than that?”
“I didn’t do it to her face. I left a…note.”
“You left a note?” Wyatt’s eyes are approximately the diameter the pizza was an hour ago. “You left a fucking note ? Did you think you were in an old black-and-white movie or something? Who the fuck leaves a fucking note ?”
“It seemed like the best idea at the time.”
“Then I’d hate to have heard your worst idea.”
My shoulder’s starting to ache again now. “I think I need to ice this and go to bed.”
He closes the lid on the debris we’ve tossed inside the box. “Then in the morning you need to call my cousin and tell her how fucking amazing she is.”
“Huh.” I get off my stool and move toward the freezer. “So she can ignore my calls just like you did?”
“Jesus Christ, you are such a fucking moron, Woods.” He pulls out his phone. “I’ll call her for you.”
“No, no.” A cold, dread-filled panic surges in my chest.
He taps the screen. “Text then.”
I practically lunge across the island to stop him. “Fuck, no. Stop. That wouldn’t be fair.”
“Okay, okay.” He holds up his phone like a weapon he’s surrendering, then gingerly slides it into his back pocket.
Blowing out a breath of relief, I turn back to the freezer and pull out a fresh, ice-cold gel pack. Exactly like the one I wrapped around Natalie’s ankle that first night.
“Well, unless you want to engage in another old-timey form of communication and send her a carrier pigeon, that”—Wyatt points at my left shoulder as I wrap the pack around it—“has bought you a few days off. You could always go deliver a message yourself.”
“You mean you bought me a few more days off by causing it.”
“Oh, don’t fucking start.” He heads up the hallway toward the elevator. “You know it was an accident. And I came here to apologize. So don’t give me shit for it.”
The cold already feels good.
“Look,” Wyatt says, pulling his boots back on. “I’m really fucking sorry we were both assholes who haven’t talked for so long. And I’m really fucking sorry that I told Nat you’re a dick and she should stay away from you.”
He straightens and grabs his coat from the rack.
Two hours ago, I thought the chances of me even talking to Wyatt ever again were virtually zero. But here he is, in my hallway, having been the bigger person and shown up bearing our old traditional celebratory pizza and apologized to me for everything.
I step toward him and hold out my hand. “I’m sorry you were an asshole too.”
He laughs. It’s a brotherly laugh—a laugh you reserve for someone you could kill sometimes, but who you also love like they’re your family.
He bats my hand away—“Oh, fuck off”—and pulls me into a hug.
“Watch my shoulder.” I pat him on the back. “Some asshole tried to break it earlier.”
He lets go of me and opens the elevator doors. “And that asshole is wondering why the fuck you are here and not up in Warm Springs apologizing for being an asshole to someone who is definitely not an asshole.”
Then the doors slide shut across his knowing grin.