Quinn
Watching Dante play, it was like he was trying to make up for all the time he had had to spend on the bench this past season.
He was killing the opposition. Murdering them.
The Yellow Jackets were going to be in the championship. They had done it. He had done it. All that was left was winning that game. That and our last interview.
I had been an absolute bitch to him during the last one, but I really just didn’t want him to know how much I was hurting. I was rallying. I was busy. I wasn’t just moping around thinking about him. I was doing stuff while thinking about him. Important stuff. Stuff about him, actually, which was likely why I had been thinking about him so much. The story series.
I didn’t know whether he knew, but I had been spending a lot of time with his mother. I hoped she hadn’t told him because that would have just made things awkward. We were sat together at game two, watching her son basically dominate.
This last interview… I didn’t even want to have it. I was so tired with what I had been working on. I had hardly anything left to ask him about. It was the last one. I didn’t want to phone it in, but I felt like the real important stuff had already been said and done. I approached him after the game, and we greeted each other like strangers. Again, we just used some courtside seats rather than going back into the locker room.
“I wanted to ask you about women,” I said. He frowned. What a question. I was already bored.
“What about them? You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I want to know what women mean to you, as a man. As a person.”
“From the age of twelve, I was the only man in the house, with two women.”
“Did you feel you had to protect them?”
“Once my father was gone, not as much. I felt like I had to take his place, though, to some extent.”
“Provide for them?”
“Yeah. Sort of like that.”
“Your mother is obviously a huge supporter.”
“She’s my mother. I love her. She comes to a lot of games, but when she doesn’t come, I know she always watches them. She was, she is the most important woman in my life.”
“She raised you under pretty difficult circumstances.”
“She’s the greatest story of strength and recovery that I know. She had every reason to give up, but she never did. She just kept coming back. A lot of the things that happened to her should have killed her. They should have run her into the ground, but she didn’t let them. She just became stronger. I try my hardest to make her proud every day.”
“What about your sister?”
“She’s so smart. I wish I was as smart as her. She’s the person who I would go to prison for. The two most important people in my life are women. The most fantastic women I know.”
“You obviously love them, but what about the other women in your life?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You do have a reputation for womanizing.”
He looked at me silent for a while. I knew by now that I wasn’t going to get him to really open up. He was preparing himself to give me something generic and boring. Whatever. It didn’t matter as long as he answered the question.
“I respect every single woman I've ever been with. I don’t use women, and I don’t lie to them. I don’t think the fact that I've been with many women should say anything about… anything, really.”
I didn’t have the energy to pull apart what he had said about the women he slept with and try to apply it to me. I was done. I was finished. I wasn’t trying anymore. I had more pride than that.
I had met up with Pamela Rock, Dante’s mom after the interview. She didn’t seem to hate me the way her son did. I liked her, so I was glad that was the case. I wondered how many of his other hookups were that close with her.
“How was he?” she asked.
“Not the best interview we’ve ever had. He wasn’t that chatty. Sort of taciturn.”
“He's concentrating on the game, dear,” she said.
“Of course, he is—but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still hate me.”
“He doesn't hate you, Quinn.”
“I did something he asked me not to do, and he doesn't trust me anymore because of it. Even if he doesn’t hate me, he doesn’t want to see or hear from me again once this season is over and our professional engagement comes to an end.”
“Quinn, Dante completely changed when he met you,” she said.
“No way. He was still getting into trouble and being outrageous. The only thing I stopped—for a while at least—was him sleeping around.”
“Trust me, Quinn, I saw the change in him when you entered his life. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to him.”
I sighed and let her butter me up. It felt good to hear, but what the fuck was she talking about. She couldn’t mean Dante Rock her son, could she? Because that man wanted me as far away from him as I could get. I had made him madder than I had ever seen anyone get, and I had broken any trust or faith that he had in me. I didn’t think that that still made me the best thing that ever happened to him.
Maybe she knew something that I didn’t know. I figured that she and Dante had probably talked about me together, but who knew about what? I wanted to ask her what she meant, but would it make a difference if I knew? It wouldn’t make a difference if I knew. Dante hated me now, and the season would be over once this game ended.
That would be the end. The official end of the time that Dante Rock had to dedicate himself to me. After the final buzzer went off, it was game over for more than just the season. I would finish my pieces and that would be that. I would just watch Dante Rock on TV like everyone else. I would be able to say that I had experienced a side of him that so few ever got to see, but I would have to live with the fact that it was my own fault that I would never see it again.