Sophie

I’ll admit it: I watched the game.

Not all of them. Not every game he played in since he’d come back to the field. But that last one, the game he played the day before the watch campaign came out, right before it all ended—I watched that one. Sitting on the sagging sofa in the living room of my shared apartment, with my roommate microwaving something foul in the other room. Our TV was old, and it wasn’t HD or anything else, but you didn’t need HD to watch Dex in action.

“Here comes Dex Carter,” the announcer said as the team took to the field. “Back from his World Cup suspension, and he is playing better than ever.”

“It’s true,” the other announcer agreed. “And he’s a crowd favorite, just like he’s always been.”

The team was jogging around the perimeter of the field, greeting the fans in the stands before the game began. Dex looked up into the stands and raised a hand, hailing the stadium, and even over the TV I could hear the crowd go wild.

“He’s playing, huh?” my roommate said. She was standing in the doorway, a bowl of whatever weird vegan, gluten free noodle dish she’d just microwaved in her hand. Her name was Angela, and she was working as a bike courier as she paid her way through school.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s awesome.” She poked her fork into her gross noodle bowl. “That you, like, know him.” She knew Dex was my stepbrother, but not about anything else. If she’d seen the item on the Internet before it sunk into oblivion, she’d never mentioned it. Angela wasn’t a big one for gossip sites.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it is awesome.”

I was working for the nonprofit law firm Dana’s cousin worked at, clerking and helping the clients. The pay was low—so low I had no hope of affording an apartment on my own—and the work was hard. I’d dealt with people with no hope, who came in in tears. I’d dealt with women who had bruises under their eyes, towing small children with matching bruises. I’d dealt with addicts, both the recovered kind and the non-recovered kind. In the three months I’d worked there, I’d personally had to call the cops twice.

And it was worth it.

It was worth every painful day, every restless night. I was helping people, making a difference for the first time in my life, just as I’d imagined in college. Maybe I was just a poor little rich girl helping people poorer than me, but at least I was doing something besides take snide comments from rich lawyers on the way to their Saturday golf games. There were people who walked out of our offices with a grain of hope, and to me that mattered.

I’d started to build myself a good life, piece by piece. I did work that fulfilled me. I paid my own bills. I had a visit from my father, who I got to see only rarely since he lived so far away. I saw Dana for girls’ weekends as well as making new friends. I made my car payments. I was proud of myself.

On the TV, the game had begun. In the mass of bodies on the field, it was easy for me to pick out Dex. My eyes just recognized him, followed him so easily. It was obvious that he was born to play this game. There isn’t anything to figure out about me, he’d said when he wasn’t playing. That wasn’t true, I knew. There was more to Dex than soccer. But soccer was a vital piece of him, a part of his soul.

When he scored his first goal, Angela dropped onto the sofa beside me, her bowl forgotten. The crowd was rowdy; they were rooting for the home team, but Dex’s presence had them worked up. They stomped their feet in rhythm in the bleachers and threw things onto the field. The camera cut to Dex, jogging back across the field after his goal, his black hair tousled with sweat, his blue eyes blazing, his muscles flexing as he ran. Droplets of sweat dripped down his neck and soaked the collar of his shirt.

“Holy Jesus,” Angela said reverently.

“I know,” I replied.

Was he happy? I couldn’t tell. He had his game face on, intent and harsh. There was no sign here of the Dex who had whispered silly Italian in my ear while his body shook with laughter against mine. No sign of the Dex who had lain in the back seat of my car, fumbling for a roundabout way to ask me not to have sex with anyone else while he was away. No sign of the Dex who had whispered sweet, dirty things to me before he took my virginity with sweet, dirty mutual pleasure.

“Dex Carter,” the announcer said, “is on fire.”

We watched the whole game in silence. It wasn’t an important game, strategically—the announcers kept repeating that—but there was something special about it. Dex was like a comet, incapable of making a single wrong move. He scored three goals and assisted in two others. They kept him on the field the entire game, never rotating him off, and he never slowed down. When his team won, beating the home favorites, he raised a hand to the crowd as he trotted off the field, and the crowd shook the stadium again, throwing things and pounding until the place vibrated.

The next day, he was in the news again. The Osatori watch company launched its new ad campaign. It was supposed to feature Dex, but when the ad hit the stands, it actually featured two people: Dex and Sebastian Santos.

I stared at the ad on my computer screen at work, surfing the Internet during a rare break. Dex and Sebastian were side by side, an arm thrown around each other’s shoulders. On Sebastian’s wrist, the one that rested on Dex’s shoulder, was an elegant Osatori watch. On Dex’s wrist, resting on Sebastian’s shoulder, was another Osatori watch. Both men wore simple black t-shirts, with the tattoos on Dex’s bare arm visible. Their expressions for the camera were confident and relaxed and serious. Dex looked impossibly gorgeous, his blue eyes icy. Sebastian Santos was easy on the eyes, too, which was why he was so freaking full of himself, I supposed.

It wasn’t just a cool-looking ad—it said something. It said that even the greatest rivals in sport could treat each other with respect. It said that mistakes could be apologized for, forgiven, and forgotten. It said that brotherhood was more important than a petty rivalry on the field.

The caption below the ad said that both men had donated their fees for the ad to a charity that helped disadvantaged kids have access to play sports.

The next day, as I was typing up a deposition for a woman to get her kids back from foster care, my phone buzzed in my purse. I dug it out and found a text from Dex.

Did you see the ad?

I blinked, hardly able to believe my eyes. I’d heard nothing from him for four months. I hadn’t messaged him either, though I’d stared at my phone, thinking about it, more times than I could count.

I quickly texted him back. Yes. It would have been better if you were both naked, though.

Not going to happen, he wrote me. Though feel free to imagine it if you like.

I smiled like an idiot at my phone. I loved it, I said.

His reply was almost instant. I did it for you.

My vision blurred. I put the phone down on my desk and closed my eyes, put my head in my hands. Oh God, I was so in love with him. I knew it now; it was so clear. I had no idea when it had started, but now it filled my heart, my lungs, a crazy, wild heat in my bloodstream. I was in love with him, and it was never going to stop, no matter where I went or what job I did. Everything in my heart belonged to him; it was entirely his. I wanted Dex more than I wanted my next breath.

And now, when I thought about being with him, I felt no fear. Uncertainty, maybe. But the fear was gone. And the idea that I could actually see him, touch him—get him back—made my heart beat with wild hope.

Do something about it, Sophie.

But he’d asked me to marry him—actually marry him—and I’d said no. Was he even speaking to me? He’d just texted me, so maybe he was. We’re fine, he’d told me once before. Were we? Could we be? How many times could I ask him to forgive me for running away from him? Could we make it work?

Could I tell him how badly I wanted to try?

I straightened in my chair and opened my eyes. You know what? Yes, I could. I knew him better than anyone, despite everything that had happened. I’d woman up and talk to him. If he cared enough about me to do an entire international ad campaign, I cared enough to tell him I was sorry and I wanted him back.

The phone rang on my desk, and my busy work day swept me up again. But as I finished out my day, I felt better than I had in weeks, maybe months. I was horribly nervous. I knew I’d hurt him. Dex might be pissed at me, or he might laugh at me and break my heart. But the one thing that I’d learned from him, that he lived by, was that you never accomplished anything if you were too afraid to fucking try.

I spent the night thinking about a plan. What should I do? Phone him? I didn’t know what time zone he was in. If he was in the middle of practice or something, it wasn’t really a good time for me to beg for him back. But Dex was hard to pin down. Should I tell him I needed to talk to him sometime when he had time? That sounded needy, and a little like I was making an appointment. Should I do something big, like find out what city he was in, travel there, and show up in his hotel room? That type of thing wasn’t really me, but I was willing to try it if it would work. What if that just annoyed him, though? Worse, what if he had someone else in his hotel room?

But I didn’t think he did. There had been no reports of him dating anyone in the last four months. And I knew Dex. I knew how he’d been with me. He didn’t have anyone else—I knew that. I just did.

Okay, I thought the next morning as I got up and got ready for work. Maybe I could go find him. What if he was in Japan or New Zealand or something? I didn’t have much money, but I could borrow from our parents. I’d have to bring them in on this anyway, since they were the ones who probably knew where he was.

Jim and Patty had gotten over their shock at me and Dex. They’d actually been nice about it after they calmed down. My mother had never really been angry, just protective of me—she’d assumed, like most mothers would, that Dex had toyed with me and thrown me away. When I’d told her as much of the truth as I could bear to repeat, she’d changed into simply worrying about me. Now she called me almost daily, to see if I was dating yet and to make sure I hadn’t been murdered by a drug dealer.

If I told Jim and Patty I wanted Dex back, I thought they’d probably help me.

So that was the plan, then, I decided as I worked. How to woo a famous soccer player. Call my mother, find out where Dex was, borrow money for a plane ticket. Find his hotel and pounce on him. Tell him I’m in love with him and I’m not scared anymore and beg him to take me back, let me try again. Listen to him declare his passion for me in return. Then, hopefully, retreat to his room for sex. Lots and lots and lots of sex.

Because that should work, right?

I stared down at the photocopier as I ran off my copies. I shouldn’t have thought about sex. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about what he looked like naked, the wildly sexy ink on his arms, the intoxicating ridges of muscle over his hips, the taste of his tongue, the taste of his cock. The way he took over my body, putting his hands and his mouth on me until I was crazy, touching me to find what I liked before fucking me. How he was flirtatious in foreplay, but was all serious business when it came to making me come. Except for a number of unspoken nights in which I’d orgasmed alone into my pillow while pretending it was his fingers on me, I hadn’t let myself miss him. I hadn’t let myself crave him. But now, with a plan in mind that might lead to sex with him again, my body had gone haywire, flushing hot and cold like it had the night I’d drunk-texted him.

At four o’clock, my phone rang. I stared at it in surprise. It was Jim.

“Sophie,” he said when I answered. “Is it possible you can leave work early?”

Jim almost never called me. There must be something wrong. “I think so. What is it?”

“It’s Dex.”

The world went still. “What’s happened?”

“He’s in training,” Jim said. “At Havelock Field.”

I blinked in surprise. Havelock Field was just under two hours’ drive from where I was now. “I just watched him play,” I said. “I didn’t know he was in California.”

“He flew in yesterday. They were doing drills. He’s… he’s hurt.”

Oh, my God. “How bad?”

“It’s his knee. I don’t know much. He called me from the clinic. They had to carry him off the field, I think.”

I realized I had my hand pressed to my mouth, mashing my lips against my teeth. I dropped it. “Do you want me to go there?”

“I would, but I can’t,” he said. “We’re back in New York, and you’re so close…”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go. I’ll find him.”

“Just check on him. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” He was tiptoeing sensitively around our breakup. “And call me.”

His voice was laced with worry. Maybe he wasn’t perfect, but he was a good father, the very best. “Jim,” I said, emotion cracking my voice, “I know this might not be a good time, but I want to get him back. I’d already decided.”

“Honey, I wish you would,” Jim said. “What you see on TV is a show. These last four months, it’s like he’s been held together with cheap glue.”

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know if I can fix him. If I can fix us. But I’m going to try.”