3. Waiting for Tomorrow #3
He looked toward the phone again, then back at me. “My dad handles all the off-field noise so I can focus on winning games, Piper. I don’t have time to analyze every caption, every comment, every stupid rumor somebody posts online.”
“I’m not asking you to analyze comments. I’m asking you to care that your wife is standing here telling you this crossed a line.”
He fell quiet.
For one hopeful second, I thought he might actually apologize.
Then he shook his head.
“You need to stop obsessing over internet comments and let Reid do his job so we can lock in this signature collection. This deal affects everything we’ve been building.”
The word we almost made me laugh.
I stepped away from the counter.
The kitchen suddenly seemed too wide, with Nolan on one side and my purse near the phone on the other. I had spent years telling myself the public version of him didn’t matter because I had the real man at home.
But the man in front of me was defending the public version.
“Nolan, do you understand what you’re asking me to accept?”
“I’m asking you to trust me.”
“No. You’re asking me to trust Reid.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Then stop letting him decide what our marriage is allowed to look like.”
He went completely still at that, and I knew I had finally touched the part of this he didn’t want questioned.
Reid had built the career. Reid knew the sponsors. Reid understood the league. Every argument ended in the same place: his father knew best, and I was expected to live with whatever that expertise cost us.
I looked at Nolan and left the purse closed.
“Your job is to throw a football. Your job is not to erase our marriage so your agent can sell a fake romance to the tabloids.”
For a moment, Nolan said nothing.
Then he reached for the tablet.
The casualness of it almost made the argument worse. He tucked the tablet under one arm, picked up his water bottle, and turned toward the hallway as if we had reached the natural end of a meeting.
“I’m done arguing about a picture.”
“That’s the problem.” I stayed where I was. “You think this is about one picture.”
He stopped but didn’t look back.
“It is one picture, Piper.”
“It is one picture today.”
That got his attention. Nolan looked over his shoulder, the tired irritation still clear in his expression.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m telling you that something is wrong, and instead of listening, you keep explaining why I shouldn’t care.”
“I have listened.”
“No, you’ve defended it.”
He tucked the tablet against his side. “Because there is nothing to defend.”
I looked toward my phone on the counter, then at the purse beside it.
The envelope was still inside.
All afternoon, I had imagined pulling it out with a smile. Now the idea of placing those photographs between us made me want to grip the purse tighter.
“You’re walking away from me again,” I said.
“I’m going to ice my shoulder and sleep.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
Nolan turned toward me at last, but there was no apology in his face. Only exhaustion and the impatience of a man who believed the conversation had taken more time than it deserved.
“I’m not doing this tonight, Piper. I have a 5 a.m. film review with the offensive coordinator tomorrow, and I cannot deal with this manufactured drama.”
The word made me stare at him.
“Manufactured?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
He let out a sharp breath. “This whole thing. The photo, the comments, people online pretending they know anything about my life. I cannot spend my night fighting about something strangers invented.”
“They didn’t invent the picture.”
“Piper.”
“They didn’t put Sloane in your lap. They didn’t make you smile.”
He gave me a hard, defensive look.
I stepped back and pulled the purse closer to me.
“I’m not manufacturing anything, Nolan. You’re choosing to ignore what your decisions are doing to us.”
He looked at the purse for a second, then back at me.
If he asked what was wrong, I might have told him.
If he crossed the kitchen and apologized, I might have forgotten the whole miserable argument long enough to put the envelope into his hands.
He did neither.
“We’ll talk about this tomorrow when you’ve calmed down.”
The words landed with the same tone he used when a reporter pushed too far after a loss.
“You think I need to calm down.”
“I think we both need sleep.”
“I asked you because I wanted an explanation.”
“And I gave you one.”
“No, you gave me Reid’s.”
That silenced him again.
I waited for another defense of his father, another speech about contracts and sponsors and how nobody understood the pressure he carried.
Instead, Nolan pressed the tablet harder against his side.
“Goodnight, Piper.”
He walked away.
His footsteps receded down the hallway while I remained beside the counter. The kitchen felt hollow after he left, the silence stretching out between the unused chairs and the countertops.
I rested my hand over my stomach.
The baby was still ours.
That mattered more than this fight.
Nolan was exhausted. He was sore from the game, buried under Reid’s demands, and too defensive to understand what I was trying to tell him. If I showed him the sonogram now, the moment would belong to Sloane and the campaign and an argument I already wished had never happened.
Tomorrow was our anniversary.
He would sleep. I would sleep. Maybe morning would strip some of the arrogance out of him. Tomorrow night, I could give him the envelope the way I had wanted to from the beginning, in private, when we were ourselves again.
I held the purse against my side and stared down the empty hallway.