Dante
My suspension was finally up.
I didn’t know what to think.
I was glad that I was finally playing again. There was a chance, there was always a chance with my fucking record that this time was going to be the time that they would just let me go completely. I was giving them a hell of a lot of reasons to do it, and they were probably being more patient with me than I deserved.
I know if I was them, I would have let my ass go long ago.
I was glad they hadn’t, however, and I was glad I could play again.
The air travel meant time on the road wasn’t all that long, especially since the games were scheduled in a way where there wasn’t too much time between them.
That was still time I got to spend in my house in LA, alone.
I hadn’t intended for the time to be spent alone. I had wanted to have some company. Specifically, the company of someone I had gotten pretty fond of lately, but she had fucked up and given me no choice but to kick her to the curb.
Fucking Quinn. Why did she have to go and do that?
I didn’t know what it was, the anger, or the fact that I didn’t hate her enough to disrespect her back, but I, in her absence, hadn’t had a single woman over.
Not one.
I was even shocked myself.
It had been righty and me every night—and I was getting sick of it.
Did I hate Quinn that much that I didn’t want to have her over, even for a fuck?
Okay, I didn’t hate her. That was saying a lot. I didn’t hate the woman. I was just mad. I couldn’t trust her. She had fucked up too badly for me to want to have her around anymore. Respecting me was never really something that I required of the women that I fucked, but Quinn…
I held her to a higher standard.
I held her to a standard higher than just the girl I was fucking.
She had to have known that it wasn’t just sex with us. It was a lot of sex… not nearly enough for my tastes or needs, but a lot regardless. I would make passes at her every opportunity I got because I liked to be inside of her, but that wasn’t all I liked or wanted.
If it was, I would never have asked her to dinner in Houston. If it was, I would never have asked her to come stay at the house with me.
I wanted her around because I liked having her around. I trusted her in my space. I trusted her with my secrets and my dark, sad, ugly past. Many times I had had to stop myself from thinking a person I heard in the house, Daniella or whoever, was her. I had to stop myself from picking the phone up and trying to call her.
The interviews were going to end soon. It felt weird because I had gotten so used to having Quinn around. She wasn’t going to be around that often anymore. I didn’t really know how I felt about it. I was so mad at what she had done. I didn’t want to see her again but then again, I did want to see her again. I wanted to see her every day if I could.
Was this what it was like to like someone?
She had tried the hell out of me when she started crying in the restaurant. First I wasn’t worried when I saw the tears well up because I had seen it before from her, and the last time, she hadn’t started crying. Not this time though. This time, she welled up and the tears ran over.
I nearly went around the table and hugged her. It nearly took me out. I couldn’t deal with women’s tears generally because of the pain I had seen from my mom and sister in the past, but this was different. It mattered less that she was a woman and more that she was Quinn. She was crying because of what I told her and probably also because I was so harsh.
Watching her cry, I knew I would lose my nerve if I went to her, so I didn’t. I just sat there like a bastard and let her cry. I let her believe that I didn’t care how much she was hurting.
She did me wrong, but she didn’t deserve that.
She didn’t deserve to think that I didn’t care about her at all.
For one thing, it wasn’t even fucking true. I did care about her. I cared about her a lot. Maybe too much.
I didn’t love her. Or maybe I did. I didn’t know. How would I know? I didn’t know how that felt. I knew what it was like to love a parent, to love a sibling, but I didn’t do romantic relationships with women. That wasn’t me. I didn’t love women like that.
Quinn… I just, I don’t know. I just liked spending time with her. I liked to talk to her and to listen to her talk. I liked to look at her because I thought she was gorgeous. I liked to touch her. I liked to fuck her. I didn’t like what I was feeling now, which was… what, sad?
I didn’t like thinking that she was somewhere mad or sad about what I had said to her. I didn’t expect her to hear those shitty things from me and just go on about her day and her life, but I also didn’t want to think of her somewhere still crying because of them
Quinn. She was the past. She was the past. If I repeated it enough times, maybe I would believe myself. I was still mad. I was still livid about what she had done. I could choose to be sad about it and think about her, or I could choose to be mad and use that anger for something.
I was choosing anger.
What was the use of my rage if I couldn’t crush it into something useful, like a win?
There was still a championship to win—and that shit had my name all over it.
Getting through the first series was a cinch. All I had to do was play ball and die. This was my job. If I could concentrate and take all that shit I was feeling about her and have it make me a better player, then all this shit would be worth it.
She sure knew how to stay on a guy’s mind though.
I realized with some anger that she had actually listened to me and wasn’t calling or trying to text me anymore. The communication from her directly to my phone completely dried up. Just like I had asked, she was contacting my agent through her network rep.
It was sort of funny how much it got to me. It was me who had asked her to contact me that way, but I couldn’t stand having messages from her filtered through other people. I didn’t want to hear her words through other people. I ignored the messages. Apparently, there were just two interviews left and she wanted me to confirm the second to last one.
This was it then, huh. Nearly the end. It would be sad to see the end of this era, but all great things, right?
I agreed to see her before a game because I didn’t want to stay behind after one and talk to her in an empty locker room. I probably wouldn’t be able to control myself.
I saw her walking up to me across the court.
The last game I had seen her at, she was in jeans and a sweatshirt. I almost hadn’t recognized her because she looked so different. She was completely stripped down and not in the way that I liked her to be. She even looked shorter. That was because she hadn’t been wearing heels…but still. She had looked defeated—like there was nothing for her anymore.
She looked like she was going through a breakup.
Today, she was back in her usual sexy skirt and blouse. They were sexy whether or not she intended them to be. She looked a little different, still sad. She wasn’t standing up quite as straight as usual or something. It was there in the way she was carrying herself. She wasn’t happy.
I didn’t want to care, but I did.
A little.
“Good evening, Dante,” she said.
Good evening? Were we in a damn classroom? When had she ever said that to me? Was she about to start calling me Mr. Rock, too?
“Hey.”
“Can we go back into the locker room, or do you want to sit here and talk?” she asked.
Alright then. Right to business. I wasn’t complaining.
“Here,” I said. The arena was totally empty, so we just sat on two of the courtside seats with her recorder between us.
“You seem well. The championship is coming up, are you nervous?”
“No, we're on a winning streak. Success is the only real option. It's expected. Playing an undefeated team rattles the opponent. They almost make themselves lose for you. It’s great.”
“That’s a pretty reckless thing to say,” she said.
I looked at her. I couldn’t read her face. I knew she wasn’t one hundred percent, but she wasn’t defeated either.
“I don’t think it’s reckless if it's true.”
“That is a pretty steep claim. Maybe too steep.”
I looked at her. What was she doing? More importantly, what was she implying? Usually, the reporter just took your quote and moved along. What was she asking me? Was she challenging me? Did she want to see me do it? Did she think I couldn’t do it? What was she trying to say?
“Nothing is too steep if it's true. Our record speaks for itself,” I said.
“Would you speak so confidently if you were on your opponent’s team?” she asked.
“Being on another team would not knock my confidence if that is what you are asking.”
“It isn’t. I’m asking whether you feel if talking like that isn’t a bit presumptuous.”
“The championship is ours. Half the work is believing that you are going to get it. The rest is working for it.”
“Winning a championship would be good for your career. You haven’t won one yet. With your recent record with the Yellow Jackets, would you say that you need it?”
I wanted to laugh. She was just taking shots now. She was basically roasting me and calling it an interview. What she had said about the championship game was not wrong. It was all true. I was in hot water with the team—and with the league in general. Being part of a championship winning team would do wonders for my standing and how much they would decide that they liked me in the future.
Them liking me was extremely important.
It was literally the difference between me having and not having a job.
It wouldn’t hurt winning a championship. That had never hurt anyone’s career.
“It would be good for anyone’s career. Not just mine. I play as part of a team. Not alone.”
“Hm. I’d say that sometimes you got carried away with your own victory on the court and not the team’s as a whole.”
“Oh yeah, why would you say that?”
“I ask the questions, Dante,” she said.
Oh shit.
It was like that? I smiled at her. She was letting me have it. Yes, she did. She did ask the questions. Maybe she was someone that I had to be more scared of than I was. I had been treating her like she was on my side all this time because, for a time, she had been. Who knew about now? Now she sounded mad. Now she looked like she was out for blood. Now I was in trouble.
What would she write though?
I knew it was way too much to say that she would want to defend me or see me do well or even to win that championship that we had been talking about. I thought about it. What I had said to her, she probably didn’t want to see me win anything or be happy in my life again.
I had maybe been a little mean to her, more than she had deserved to hear from me. I was mad, but I didn’t think that was an excuse. It was a reason. She had disrespected me. I didn’t want to apologize. I wasn’t going to because part of me just didn’t believe that she would really screw me over. I told her to say whatever the hell she wanted and to do what she wanted, too, but what she decided to say about me would likely have a huge impact on my career.
She was the reporter who had done my Inside the League interview after all.
What was she going to say?
“Besides yourself, and your team, and your reputation, who would you try to win this championship for?”
“You really think I want this win for anyone other than myself?” I challenged.
“Tell me. You have a lot of people who want to see you fail, but you have some who it's in your best interests to impress.”
“My family. My mom and sister.”
“Not your dad?”
I narrowed my eyes. Where was she about to take this?
“No. Not him. He isn’t a part of my life.”
What was she doing? Why was she talking to me like that? Nobody tried it. Nobody ever dared. I was used to having reporters kiss my ass, and she hadn’t. Not once since we had known each other, but then she hadn’t done this either. I never got the impression that she might hate me from any of our conversations.
Did she?
Did she circle around from liking me to hating my guts, and if she did, was it because of what I had said to her?
If that was the case then, of course, it was because of what I had said to her. I had been cold-blooded. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to hurt her specifically, but I had wanted to preserve myself, even if that meant hurting her in the process.
Guess I did it.
Was she…?
Was she over me?
She was sure acting like she was. She was acting like a girlfriend who really didn’t want anything to do with her ex.
If she was over me… did that mean there was someone else?
I hated how curious I was about her. What was she thinking? What was she doing? What was she up to? What was she going to do to me?
“So only select members of your family matter.” That one hadn’t been a question. She had just said it like it was a statement.
“Family is extremely important to me. I don’t think the people you share your genes with are all that make up your family. Blood relation is the thing that matters least. What matters is love. If someone is your family, you love them unconditionally and it doesn’t matter whether you are their blood or not.”
“Have you always felt like that?”
“Yes. For as long as I can remember.”
“From your public persona, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to find out… in fact, you probably already know that virtually nobody has you pegged for a family guy.”
“They're wrong.”
She looked at me and her eyes, for the first time, felt cold.
“How?”
“I love my family. There is nobody I have to prove it to but them. Fuck public opinion. They don’t care about what's important to me. They care about what I can do for them. I would die for my mom and sister. I got my mother a house in Calabasas so she wouldn’t have to live in the middle of nowhere anymore. I take her to church whenever I’m free and can make it.”
“You sound like a man trying to make a point,” she said.
Fuck, she really wasn’t going to let me win today. Her mind was made up, huh.
“I don’t have to convince anyone of anything. If they don’t want to believe me, then there is nothing I can do to make them. The public not believing me isn’t something I care about or can change. I don’t answer to them. I answer to my family, and I answer to myself.”
She paused and watched me for a second like she was waiting for me to continue talking.
“Good luck in your next games,” she said suddenly. She stood up and picked her recorder up, turning it off. I stood and looked at her.
“What? The interview is over?”
“Yes. It's over. Was there something else you wanted to say to me?”
Yeah. Yeah, there was. Why was she being like this? I didn’t like feeling like there was something going on that I wasn’t being told about.
“What are you doing, Quinn?” I asked her.
“My job. Your game is about to start. Go do yours.”