~ Twelve ~
Sam had never been so bored in her life.
The only redeeming quality of the party was that there were delicious cured meats—top-of-the-line prosciutto, razor-thin slices of capicola, and salami that tasted like something she had once had during a trip to Italy sometime after graduating from Georgetown. What made the party painful wasn’t the food. It was the conversation.
The Basketball Wives, as Sam quickly came to think of them (an unoriginal but apt description), all seemed to be the same. Even though they were different in appearance, in most ways they were scarily alike. It was so bad, that moments after meeting the hostess—her name was Tiffany, that much Sam forced herself to commit to memory—everyone else was a blur of bling, makeup, and expertly affixed lace-front wigs.
Sam had taken the train to Philadelphia two days after Colt, on Saturday morning rather than Friday as planned. He was still annoyed with her about that by the time they arrived at his teammate’s Chestnut Hill home that evening. It was a beautiful old brick house, built in the beaux arts style and restored with fidelity to the original. Inside, Sam noticed right away that all the new and modern features were tastefully and cleverly semi-concealed.
But none of the women were interested in talking about architecture, or even decorating. While they enjoyed pre-dinner cocktails, they talked about “the game” as though it was an entity, rather than an activity. They talked about other players, and about other players’ wives who were not present. A few catty remarks were tossed around. It was like being inside a reality show.
While she struggled to maintain a look of interest, Sam gazed frequently, longingly, in the direction of the room next to the living room, where the men were laughing boisterously, playing pool and apparently having a great time.
Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of Colt as he moved around the pool table, cue in hand, trying to set up a shot. A cigar dangled from the corner of his lips, and he squinted against the smoke. All he needed was a brandy snifter in his hand, and the picture would be complete.
Sam was going to kill him for dragging her to this thing.
There were three other couples, not including the host and hostess, and two of those couples weren’t actually married, though the women wore large engagement rings, and both had children with their partners. One couple—Carter Long, a power forward, and his fiancée Marnie—had three children. Three. And they had been ‘engaged’ for ten years. Ten. And the worst part was that Marnie shared that information with Sam, with a complete lack of self-consciousness.
After the third year, Sam wondered, wasn’t it time to give up the charade that they ever intended to get married? It wasn’t as though there was any shame in not wanting to be married … unless of course one party to the relationship did want it, and the other was holding out. It made her feel a little sorry for Marnie, despite her huge ring. And then it made her feel ashamed of herself for assuming it was Marnie who wanted a wedding and Carter who did not.
“How come Colt’s never brought you around before?”
Sam’s attention was drawn back to the group, and away from the room next-door.
The women all turned in Sam’s direction. She was sitting on an armchair that was a little way apart from the group and feared that her judgment of them was emanating off her in waves. Something in the woman’s voice told her that it was. The question wasn’t asked to include her, but as a way to exclude.
“I don’t know” Sam shrugged. “Probably because I don’t come to Philly much?” she suggested.
“The last time we had one of these he brought that reporter, whatshername?” the woman snapped her fingers and looked around at the others to help her remember.
“Alexa,” Tiffany supplied. But she gave the other woman, the one who was speaking, a warning glance.
“Yes, her.”
Sam smiled, and met the woman’s eyes evenly. She was probably meant to step in with some comment about how Alexa was in the past, and how Colt was with her now. But she didn’t feel the need. Alexa—and other women in general—felt like no threat to her.
Interesting. She hadn’t even considered it until just that moment, but she no longer had any jealousy whatsoever about Colt being, or having been, with someone else. She felt secure. Sure, she had natural discomfort when someone got too close to him, or too touchy-feely, but that was possessiveness, not true insecurity.
“So how long have you known each other?” the woman persisted.
“All our lives almost,” Sam said. “A long time.”
“Childhood sweethearts then,” Tiffany said, smiling and raising her glass of wine. “Like me and Eddie.”
Her husband, Eddie was a point guard, and since this was their house, Sam had been trying to look interested, at least whenever Tiffany spoke.
“No, not sweethearts,” Sam laughed. “Colt and I were never sweethearts. Just friends.”
The other woman, the one who’d brought up Alexa wrinkled her brow and leaned forward.
“Wait,” she said. “So you’re not …”
“Baby. We ‘bout to eat, or what? I’m in here gettin’ my ass whupped at pool, and losin’ all our kids’ college fund money.”
Eddie Washburn was standing at the doorway, tall, and imposing. He was the teammate Sam heard Colt talk about most often as a “good guy, a solid guy” which Sam took to mean he didn’t play around on his wife or get into the kinds of off-court drama that a lot of the other players were infamous for.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s go in,” Tiffany said, getting up and going over to join her husband. “C’mon, ladies. Let’s eat before my husband gambles us out of house and home.”
Dinner was buffet-style, so once everyone had filled their plates, they sat in smaller groups around the great room, some couples sticking together, others sitting apart. Sam found Colt and sat by him, where he was continuing a conversation with Eddie that seemed to have begun much earlier. When Eddie got up to refresh their drinks, she nudged Colt in the thigh.
“What’s a respectable amount of time before we can leave after we’re done eating?” she asked, lowering her voice.
“Why you want to leave?”
Sam looked at him. He seemed genuinely confused.
“No reason.” Reaching for her fork, she speared a green bean. “Food’s good.”
“Why you want to leave?” Colt asked again, this time tonelessly.
“No reason. Forget it. We’ll leave whenever.”
“You don’t like anyone?” he pressed.
“I didn’t say that. I just … they have like a little group, or whatever. And it’s obvious I’m not part of it.”
“They just met you, Sam,” he said. “You’ll become part of it. If you want to. If you put out some energy other than ‘I’m above all this’.”
Blinking, Sam swallowed to hide how much the remark stung. It stung mostly because it was true.
“I know these aren’t your people,” Colt continued. “The smart people. The public policy people. But maybe you could just try to have a good time.”
“Colt …” She put down her fork. “I don’t know why you’re picking on me right now, but …”
“I went to that thing at Leatrice’s when you wanted me to, right?”
“How is that the same?” Sam hissed. “Those people were your friends. Our friends. Here, I know no one. And most of them don’t want to know me.”
“Because you just …”
“I just what, Colt?”
“Look, I asked you to come on Friday for a reason. Because it was supposed to be a weekend thing. Last night everybody went out, and …”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“I told you it was a weekend thing. That it was Eddie’s birthday weekend. You could’ve gotten to know everyone then. In a much more relaxed …”
“I went to a company happy hour, Colt. It was the first time I was going somewhere with the lobbying team. The first time they could get to know me as something other than the little policy analyst who writes all their background papers.”
“And how long did that take? You were home by what? Eight?”
Sam shrugged. “Something like that, yeah.”
She couldn’t believe they were having a full-blown argument in the middle of a dinner party. Their first argument as a couple, and it was happening where they had an audience. This really was like a reality show.
“So eight o’ clock. You still could’ve taken the train. Made it up here last night.”
“In theory, sure. But I would’ve been exhausted. I wouldn’t have been in any shape to then go sit in a nightclub and …”
“You know what? Forget it? I was just trying to integrate you into the group so that …”
“Maybe I don’t want to be … integrated into the group. I don’t have anything in common with these women,” Sam said, careful to keep her voice down. “With their … manicures and their Louboutins and their …”
“Oh, so because they …”
“Hey. Everything good?”
Eddie was back, and standing over them, juggling three glasses. Sam took the one that was meant for her—the glass of wine—and gave him a tight smile.
“Yup,” she said, not meeting his eye. “All good. Thanks.”
She held up her wineglass as though making a toast
“I hope you’ll come again, Samantha.”
“Of course,” Sam said, brushing cheeks with Tiffany Washburn as she and Colt stood at the front door saying their goodbyes.
“No, I mean it.” Tiffany took Sam’s elbow and began walking with her, toward the end of the driveway where Colt’s car was parked at the curb.
The men were lagging behind, laughing about something, both of them loud enough to drown out Tiffany’s voice.
“You have no idea how hard it is to meet new people after a while,” Tiffany said. “Between the kids and the stuff that comes along with the … anyway, I know you know what I mean.”
No, Sam didn’t know what she meant. She hoped never to know what Tiffany meant.
“I would’ve liked to hear more about your work,” Tiffany continued when they were standing next to Colt’s car. “I used to work for The Children’s Defense Fund before Eddie and I got married. Colt told me you work on kids’ issues?”
Sam tried to mask her surprise—both at the fact that Colt had talked about her work, and that Tiffany Washburn had once been anything other than a prettily made-up doll on the arm of an NBA player.
“I work on lots of issues,” Sam said, nodding. “Kids’ issues among them, yes.”
“Well, I’d love to talk about it. I’ve been wondering lately, whether it’s too late for me to go back into something like that. You know, maybe part-time to start. Now that the kids are school-age, I’m craving that. A way to use my brain.”
“That’d be great,” Sam said. “I’d love to talk to you about it. But I’m still kind of junior in this field myself, so …”
Tiffany shrugged. “So maybe we can give each other advice. Anyway, we have to make plans to do that. Next time.”
They hugged once more, just as Colt approached with Eddie. There was another round of hugs, and an exchange of pleasantries as they all promised to ‘do it again sometime.’
The drive back to Center City, where Colt had his apartment was a quiet one. When they pulled into the garage, for a moment he just sat there, saying nothing. Finally, he turned off the engine and reached for the door handle.
Sam stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Colt,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m so…”
“Nah, you don’t have to … You didn’t like them.” He shrugged. “It’s not your scene. I get it.”
Sam unfastened her seatbelt and climbed astride him. In the confined space, it was awkward, and the steering wheel was pressing into the base of her spine.
Still, she leaned in and pressed her lips to Colt’s and waited for him to respond. When he didn’t, she pressed harder, slid her tongue between his lips and teased his tongue into action. His hands on her hips let her know she was forgiven.
“Wait,” he said. Reaching between them, he released his seatbelt so that Sam had to rear back a little, as he moved it out of their way.
Then they were kissing again, and his hands were sliding under her top, squeezing her breasts, and stroking them over the smooth satiny fabric of her bra. He sucked on the tip of her tongue and on her lower lip, and Sam pressed against him harder. It didn’t take any time at all, she was learning, for them to get to one hundred. As though years of holding back had worn thin, and all restraint was now shredded, and useless.
Colt slid a hand down, pushing aside the long skirt she was wearing, trying to get to the edge of her underwear, to touch her.
“No.” Sam held his hand. “I want to say something. I’m sorry. I was being a bitch. You were right. I didn’t even try, and I’m sorry.”
Colt looked up at her, and she could see that her words meant something. That it was important to him that she said that.
“You never saw this part of my life,” he explained. “I just wanted you to see it. See if you could see yourself as …”
“Part of it. I know. And I’m sorry.” Sam kissed his jaw, and this time it was Colt who stopped things, by pulling away.
“Can you?” he asked.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. It felt like a weighty and important moment. Sam sighed.
It would be easy to give him the answer he wanted. He would accept it if she did.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But why does that matter? I mean, I’m part of you. You’re part of me. That’s what should matter, right? Why should anything else have to change?”
Colt nodded. He seemed to be satisfied with that.
They went upstairs to his ultra-modern apartment. It was the smaller counterpart to his ultra-modern house, back in Maryland. And Sam disliked the décor here just as much as she did the other. But she wasn’t focused on that when they were finally inside.
Instead, she focused on Colt’s mouth on hers, his hands removing her every item of clothing. On the feeling of his fingers between her legs, his mouth on her breasts, her stomach, on her sex. She focused on the way he shoved deep inside her, leaving no space unoccupied; and on the way he kept his eyes open and fixed on hers as they moved.
She focused on the sound of her breaths, in almost perfect harmony with his. And on the feeling of his ultimate eruption inside her, only moments following her own. She focused on his solid weight, holding her down, holding her close, and on the gradual cooling of their hot skin, as they both fell asleep.