Chapter Seventeen
Heidi
I held it together long enough to push into my crappy apartment. But the moment I saw my packed boxes, I completely lost it. I stumbled to my bed and sobbed for an eternity. That’s the problem with living alone. There’s no one there to comfort you. No one to buy you ice cream when you feel shitty. And no one to pull you out of the doldrums unless you call them yourself. Which is what I eventually did, though God knows it took more energy than I thought I had to finally press Samantha’s speed dial number.
And then between choking sobs, I told her the whole fucking story. Every word, every mean bitchy thing I thought, and all the ways I wanted to die or strike out or just hide until it was all over. Samantha listened to every word and then, when I’d finally gone silent, she asked one question.
“So you just left and called me?”
I sniffed, then grabbed another tissue. “I cried for a couple hours first.”
“Oh.”
Shit. I knew that tone of voice. It was the one she used when she was holding back her real thoughts. “What? Just say it.”
“It’s just that you’re so black and white sometimes. I don’t get it.”
“What?”
She sighed. “Look, I’m with you one hundred percent. Whatever you need, I’m with you. But let’s just take a look at what happened, okay? Way back at spring break, you decide to cut loose a bit. But instead of a bit, you have this great sex-a-thon with a hot guy. But when he has to go back to his life, you mope over him for months. And that’s nothing compared to the way you cyberstalked him for years.”
“I never cyberstalked him!”
“Please. You’ve read every article written about him.”
“There hasn’t been that much!” Then I moderated my voice when I realized how crazy I sounded. “I mean, he wasn’t that big a deal until he made it to the majors.”
“Right. So let’s look at that. You do this Hail Mary pass at work and when that doesn’t work, you give it all up in favor of another sex-a-thon.”
“It didn’t happen like that!” I huffed.
“Of course, it did. I’m not judging. God knows, I thought it was great. Except that you did it at work and got caught on video. Are you seeing a pattern here? It’s a scorched-earth thing. You can’t seem to cut a little bit loose. You just dive in whole hog and let everything else go to hell. And then you’re surprised when the rest of the world can’t keep up.”
“That’s not what happened,” I protested, though I was thinking hard about her words. Nothing she said was wrong exactly, but it wasn’t exactly right, either.
“So now we’re up to your weekend in Nebraska. I get that it was a great weekend, but Heidi, it was one weekend and suddenly you turn in your press credentials and go move in with him.”
“I was fired! And you told me to!” I crumpled the tissue in my hand before throwing it into the wastebasket.
“Yeah, I did because I thought you could spend the time having fun and relaxing between sex-a-thons. We both forgot he has a job. More than a job—a multimillion-dollar career in baseball. And yeah, he’s definitely a shit for the way this played out, but you don’t want to be the hot girl on his arm at media events.”
I shuddered. “Never.”
“So you were going to keep this low-key while he does the publicity dance with bitch-face.”
“Brittany.” I spit out her name like bad meat.
“He wasn’t going to sleep with her, was he?”
“He hates her.”
“Then you believe it’s a publicity stunt. A shitty one, but just a stunt, right?”
“Yeah, I do.” My voice came out low and depressing. Because I did believe him. But I also hated him for doing it.
“So what did you lose, Heidi? You still need to find a journalism job. You never intended this to be permanent. What are you really crying about?”
I let out a slow breath. “I don’t know,” I muttered. I both hated and loved her for making me think about this stuff. “I had this idea in my head about playing house with him. An idea, by the way, that you put in my head.”
“My bad.”
“And now I have to move back in with my parents.”
“Okay, I’d be sobbing, too.”
There was a long silence as I digested what she’d said. Was I really that black and white? That I had no compromise in me? That it had to be my way or the highway? I felt like I compromised on a lot of things. I’d gotten fired from my job for him, not that it was much of a job. Being a stringer at a newspaper was like being an Uber driver. I could show up for work when I wanted to and on my own terms. It was a job, certainly, but one where I worked only if I felt like it.
“I wanted someone to choose me.”
“Did you really want him to give up baseball for you?”
“Definitely not.” I sighed.
“Then maybe the person who has to choose you is you.”
I blinked, trying to sort through her words. “Come again?”
“Come on. Forget Rob, your parents, and all the pressures in your life. Imagine your perfect future. What do you see?”
“I don’t know!”
“Yes, you do. Really think. What do you want to be doing in five years? Ten?”
The answer spilled out. “I want to be like Rob. I want to have what he showed me back at spring break.”
“Hot sex?”
“No. Doing what he loves for a career.” I took a deep breath. “Even under the spotlight, even when the bases are loaded and it’s all on him, he loves baseball. Even when he sucks, he loves the game.”
“So? What do you love?”
Asking the tough questions.
My answer to Rob all those years ago echoed in my head. I loved asking the question that could make someone think, maybe even change his point of view. So what was that question for me?
“I’m going to be an investigative reporter,” I said, the decision feeling both absolutely right and absolutely terrifying.
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to finish that piece on Rob, for one. Then I’m going to use it to get my job back.”
“The crap one at the Indianapolis Sun?”
“Nope. A better one. One that will train me in what I want.”
“And what about Rob?” she asked.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself to say the words. “I’m walking away. Because I can’t be with him until I figure out me first.” Then I moaned. “But I was falling in love.” That was a lie. I’d not only fallen in love with Rob, I was completely drowning in it.
She sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I was thinking about our babies. Twins. A boy and a girl.”
“What were their names?”
“Sam and Samantha.” It was a joke, and it made us both laugh. It also told my best friend that I didn’t hate her for making me face reality. And she returned the favor by inviting me up to Chicago to sleep on her couch if I couldn’t face my parents.
By the time we’d said goodbye, I had a plan in place. Twenty minutes later, I was burning through the internet looking for Jill Sullivan. Ten minutes after that I was driving to Nebraska. Because I didn’t think this was a conversation I could do over the phone.
It took forever to get there and then find Jill. Thanks to my miniscule savings, I didn’t have to sleep in my car. But what really took work was getting the woman to talk to me. She was a high school counselor and had too much on her plate to want to spend time digging into old wounds with a reporter. Fortunately, I didn’t have to resort to anything unsavory to get her to open up. All I had to ask was one good question.
“What do you want people to know about your relationship with Rob Lee?”
In one second, her expression went from dismissive to downright furious. “You’ve been talking to my asshole brother, haven’t you?”
I gave her a casual shrug. “I might have had a beer and nachos with him.”
She had some choice words about her brother, but in the end gave me everything I needed. Our discussion was brief and enlightening. And she had a really good answer for me.
“Here’s what I want you to know about me and Rob. If he’d loved me, I would have married him in a shot. But his whole soul is taken up by baseball. He helped me out of a jam. I got pregnant by another guy who my parents hated. Rob covered for me, helped me through the adoption, and paid for my counseling. Thanks to him, I went on and found my dreams. So there’s never been a relationship between us and never will be. That man loves baseball, and no woman will come between him and the game. But he sure as hell will come through if you need help.”
Words that were like daggers into my heart, but they were true. And now I had my story. I wrote it at a rest stop in Illinois. I just didn’t know if I had the guts to risk everything by printing it.