Played (11 page)

"He didn't."

"Bullshit. No way would the girls have
left him alone," I said.

"Well, some of it was my fault,"
she confessed. I stared at her, and then burst out laughing.

"Don't try that on me. You've both
told me you're more like brother and sister and dating each other would be
disgusting. So how could it have been your fault?"

You can always tell when a redhead is
embarrassed or angry; the trick is in knowing which. Two red spots appeared in
the center of her cheeks, and spread to cover her entire face. I poised to run
for it. When she spoke, I realized I'd mistaken embarrassment for anger.

"Well, uh, I might have um, beat up a
girl that broke up with him. She was cheating on him, and then she dumped him.
Broke his heart." Evidently, Drew's heart was rather fragile.

"You
might
have beaten up a
girl? Ri, what does that even mean?"

"I guess it means I punched her in the
face and she got a black eye and a bloody nose," Ri said, hunching into
herself defensively.

"You're kidding!" Was I going to
have to get a new roommate if I broke up with Drew? I'd been considering it.
Stringing him along when I couldn't commit because I was still carrying a torch
for Justin just seemed like a terrible thing to do. I hated myself for it, and
it sometimes made me quiet and pensive on our dates.

I knew that Drew knew something was wrong.
He showed me in every way that he wanted to make it right and blamed himself.
The truth would devastate him, but the lie was tearing him up inside. I didn't
know what to do; only that he was a decent, kind, wonderful boy who deserved
better than me. In spite of it all, if he ever initiated sex, I wasn't going to
turn him down—far from it. How could I want two such different men so much?

Ri had been silent long enough to make me
look up at her from where I'd been staring at the floor while my thoughts
drifted. She had an intent look on her face, which hadn't gone back to its
normal color yet.

"I was twelve. C'mon, Janey, talk.
You're scaring me." All I could do was shake my head. Talking to her would
do no good and might do irreparable harm. I plastered a smile on my face.

"I'm just trying to imagine you wading
in like that," I said. "What did Drew do?"

"He wouldn't speak to me for a
week."

"Serves you right. You should stay out
of his business," I said. My light tone belied my devout hope that she
would stay out of mine, too.

"I can't, hon." Her
uncharacteristic endearment caused me to look at her again with a jerk of my
head. "He's emotionally vulnerable. You don't know what he's been
through."

"What?"

"Not my story to tell. If he hasn't
told you, he doesn't want you to know. But be gentle with his heart, that's all
I'll say."

I had another reason to be depressed when
the famous Salt Lake City 'haze', a nasty, brown, cold fog that any other place
would have called smog, settled in for a long stay. On the other side of the
pass toward Wyoming, skies were blue and sunny, though perishingly cold.
Between longing to get some fresh air and missing Gracie, I was looking forward
to my long weekend for Martin Luther King Day with the intensity of a prisoner
seeing the end of his sentence.

But, it wasn't to be. On the Friday before
the holiday, a front swept in and knocked the haze out of the air, but also
made the roads going east too treacherous for my trip. Glumly, I spent the
holiday weekend alone in the dorm, since Ri went home despite the storm. The
only bright spot was the Saturday game, with, as usual at the home games, a
nice win for the Utes. Drew was in a good mood when he approached me where I
waited for him afterward.

"Wanta catch a movie?" he
drawled.

"Sure, sounds good. I'm starved
though, could we get a burger first?"

"How many times have I told you not to
wait for our after-game snack to eat on game night?" he teased. He knew
quite well that I ate first. He just didn't approve of my choices; usually an
apple and a Laughing Cow baby cheese. With a burger and the obligatory cheese
fries in front of us, Drew asked something that I had never considered before.

"Would you ever go to an away game,
Sugar? If Ri came with?"

I thought about it for a minute. "I
guess it would depend on where, and whether it was during the week. I don't
know, why?"

"Well, I was thinking about
Valentine's Day," he said. "Have you looked at the schedule for next
month?"

"No, why?" I asked again.

"We've got away games in California on
the thirteenth and the fifteenth. We won't be back in between. I wouldn't want
to leave my girl alone on Valentine's Day, so I was wondering if you'd go. That
way we could be together on Friday."

Maybe it was the prospect of getting out of
smog-ridden Salt Lake, or maybe it was because I thought it was so sweet of
Drew to be thinking of such a thing so far ahead of time, but the idea appealed
to me. Drew looked at me anxiously as I weighed all the factors. That was also
the next long weekend, President's Day, when I'd have a chance to go to the
ranch and see my daughter. However, what were the odds that the weather would
be a factor in going east again? Pretty bad ones, I thought, remembering that
February was the snowiest month across I80. Could I wait until Spring Break,
another three weeks after Valentine's Day, to see my baby? Three months between
trips home…an eternity. I couldn't make this decision on my own.

"Drew, I love the idea, but you know I
have family obligations, too, right?" He seemed to deflate before my eyes.
"Wait, hon, I'm not saying no. I just need to think about things a little
bit. Plus, Ri would have to agree. Can I let you know after she gets
back?"

"Sure. I mean, I keep forgetting you
have a kid. You don't ever talk about her, and I don't want to pry."

"It's not that I don't want to talk
about her, just that I miss her so much. Talking about her makes it worse and I
cry. You don't want to see me crying, Drew, it ain't pretty," I teased.
"Red, blotchy face, snot running, mascara making a black river down my
cheeks."

"Stop! I'll take your word for it. I
don't want that picture in my head," he laughed. His good mood restored,
we enjoyed our movie, an adaptation of a book we'd both read, and talked about
it all the way back to the dorm, where he kissed me outside as usual and
wouldn't come in.

"Too dangerous," he said, his
eyes glittering. "Ri's not there and I don't know if I could restrain
myself." He swooped in for another long, deep kiss. "See?" he said
when we breathlessly broke apart.

"You know," I remarked. "If
I didn't respect you so much, I'd insist you go in with me. I want you, Drew.
You don't have to restrain yourself."

"That's just the trouble," he
muttered. We'd had that discussion too often, though; there was no need to keep
beating the dead horse. He was determined to remain celibate during the season,
and I wouldn't change his mind.

I called Charity for a heart-to-heart about
whether I was a bad mom for wanting to go to California when I could maybe see
my daughter instead. The signal was bad and wouldn't sustain a Facetime call. I
had to take my cues from her tone of voice, when I really wanted to see her
face. She assured me that Gracie was fine. She missed me, but she was getting
to be old enough to understand that I'd be home soon, and she didn't pine for
me. Probably not even as much as I pined for her. Charity thought I should go
to California.

"You don't intend to be a single mom
all your life, do you Janey?" she asked.

"I haven't thought about it, but I
guess, no, I'd like to find someone and make a family with him. Maybe get a
brother or sister for Gracie."

"Well, she has plenty of those," Charity
laughed, referring to my sisters' kids. "But I know what you mean."

"How are you feeling? How long do you
have, about three or four weeks?" I thought Charity's baby was due in mid-February,
but I hadn't had an update as to exact due date in a while.

"If I don't hatch this baby pretty
soon, I'm going to tear my hair out," she replied. "But yeah, don't
be surprised if you get a call on your hot date that Katy's baby brother is here."

"Oh, Charity, I didn't realize it was
the very same weekend! I should come home to help."

"Don't you dare. I'll have Janet here,
and Amber, if not the rest of them. You go have some fun, like a normal co-ed.
You deserve it, hon."

Ri was on board, so we booked our flight to
LA and our hotel on Priceline. We were committed. Drew even lined up one of his
teammates to take Ri out on Friday, so she wouldn't be alone on Valentine's
Day, either. He confided to me that he hoped they'd click. He liked Greg a lot,
and thought it would be fun for the four of us to double even after we got
back. I wasn't sure Ri would be down with that, but I figured she was strong
enough to fight her own battles, so I said nothing.

When the time came, I drove us to the
airport and left the CRV in long-term parking, since the team had already left
and we had no one to drop us off. Ri's posse was usually dependent on me for
rides anywhere, not a car among them. I was nervous, hiding the fact that this
was my first time flying, so when Ri casually ordered a wine from the flight
attendant, I followed suit.

The fruity red liquid soothed me almost
before the first swallow hit my fluttery stomach, and I settled back to enjoy
the short flight. Changing time zones was another first for me, so arriving an
hour after we left having been on the plane for two hours was disorienting, as
was the overwhelming number of people we had to wade through to reach ground
transportation in LA.

I'd been disappointed to drift down through
smog as bad as Salt Lake's as we landed, and the smell hit me with an almost
physical blow when we walked outside. I'd never been anywhere that had such
humid air and the contrast between the dry, cold city we'd left and this
tropical heat left me gasping for more oxygen than the air seemed to hold. And
the noise! I felt buffeted from all directions as Rihanna took me in tow and
found a taxi. We went first to our hotel, as the game wouldn't start for
another three hours.

"Better take a nap," Ri advised.
"The game starts late, they won't be done until ten, which is eleven our
time. You'll fall face first into the cheese fries." She was right. I
wasn't a night owl; we'd established that.

The game was a win, the only road win so
far this season, and there were enough Utah fans in the stands to make a riot
when the final horn sounded. If Ri and I hadn't clung together, we might have
been trampled as our own fans rushed the team exit. An elated Drew and his
buddy Greg found us cowering by the wall and moved us down the passageway toward
the locker room.

"They're with us," they told the
security guards. "They were about to get killed out there. Can you look
out for them while we shower?" Assured of the guards' care of us, they
hurried into the locker room. Moments later, Drew came out with his wavy hair
slicked back and wet, to wait with us for Greg, who took the time to blow-dry
his.

We had a great time celebrating the win
over a late-night snack as usual, and Greg made plans with Ri to pick her up
for their Friday night date at six, saying he'd need to get her back to the
hotel early due to night-before-game-night curfew. I looked at Drew and he gave
a slight shake of his head. I didn't know what he meant by that, but stayed
silent as that seemed to be the safest.

Drew was going to pick me up earlier, to
take in some of the sights of LA, and invited Ri to tag along, but she said
she'd be fine on her own, and we didn't argue. He'd rented a car, so he drove
us through Beverly Hills, dazzling me with the sights on Rodeo Drive. He'd always
wanted to live in California, he explained. Somewhere warm in the winter,
instead of the desolate chill of Ogden, or even Salt Lake. If he was drafted to
the NBA, he'd want to make California his permanent home, even if an East Coast
team signed him. For the first time, I realized how much he was counting on
that NBA shot, despite always saying he was too small. I guess it was his
talisman against contrary luck.

Drew dropped me off at my hotel for a
shower and change of clothes, telling me he'd be back in an hour. He wanted me
to dress for a very special time. I'd brought a black cocktail dress that Ri
told me would be perfect no matter where Drew took me, so that's what I put on,
catching my hair back in a smooth chignon, and putting on a pair of 4-inch
heels that I was sure I'd break my ankle on before the night was done. At least
it would give me an excuse to cling to Drew.

All day, my anticipation for tonight's date
had built as we took in the sights together. Drew's deep, sexy voice, his easy
laugh, even the spicy cologne he wore combined to arouse my senses when I
thought of a romantic dinner. I didn't know what else he had in mind, he
wouldn't tell me, but I knew he'd prepared carefully for this evening, and that
it would be special. Justin was far from my mind and Gracie only a distant
nagging thought. Tonight was all about Drew and me.

~~~

Drew had remembered my pleasure in the Fire
and Ice roses last fall, so when he arrived at the hotel room shortly after
Greg picked up Rihanna, he was carrying a wrist corsage made entirely of Fire
and Ice buds except for the center rose, just beginning to open. I loved it and
couldn't stop holding my arm out to admire it. It set off my black dress
beautifully. I kissed Drew on the cheek to thank him, standing almost tall
enough in my ankle-endangering heels to do so without him bending down to me.

"I hope you like steak and
lobster," he said, ushering me out the door.

"I like steak. I've never had
lobster," I confessed. Drew turned and pressed his forehead to mine.

"I keep forgetting you spent most of
your life locked away in the boondocks," he said. Before I could decide
whether to be hurt by his reference to it, he said, "I'll bet you love
lobster. Do you like shrimp?"

That, I'd had. In fact, he should know I
liked it, because he took me to a seafood restaurant one night and I took
shameful advantage of the all-you-can-eat shrimp deal after getting one taste. 
I never told him that I was violently ill afterward, figuring it was the
overeating that caused it. I'd be more cautious with the lobster, but was
looking forward to a new treat.

The restaurant was perfectly suited to my
idea of a romantic dinner, with its heavy red velvet drapes and low, indirect
lighting. Our table was tucked into a private alcove. A vase of roses on the
table and a flickering candle set the ambiance in our own little world. The
waiter didn't approve of Drew's indication that we'd have water rather than
wine; his sniff and haughty look gave it away. I giggled when he was out of
earshot, and Drew took my hand, gazing at me with a tender expression.

"Sugar, thank you for coming. It means
the world to me; I want you to know that."

"Thank you for asking me, Drew. It was
very sweet, and I'm glad to be here to support you at your games, too." I
couldn't return the sentiment that it meant the world to me, because I knew
Justin still had a piece of my heart and mind. Drew was gaining on him, though,
and I hoped that my genuine affection for him would be enough for now. Until,
in fact, he was willing to scratch my itch. After that, we'd have to see.
Without having sex, just being friends wasn't enough to tip me over into love,
as awful as that sounded.

After our sumptuous dinner, complete with
me learning that I loved lobster, we strolled along the sidewalk, Drew's arm
around me comfortably until I stumbled, almost twisting my ankle. He looked at
my shoes with horror.

"Why do you girls torture yourselves
with shoes like that?" he asked.

"Because supposedly boys like
them," I said. "Ri calls these my fuck-me heels."

Drew gave a dry chuckle and said no more,
but held me tighter in case of another mishap. "I was thinking you might
like to walk on the beach," he said after a while.