Chapter 3

Van

The front door bursts open and Lucas is crashing through, going to his knees. When he stands up, he lurches, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he’s shit-faced.

I smile in amusement, sipping my own beer. On the evenings that Simone works, I can just kick back and relax. I don’t have to be on guard every damn second, keeping up a constant wall of resistance to her flirting and sexual innuendos as she comes on to me when Lucas is out of earshot.

Lucas tries to take a step forward, but stumbles to the right, where he slams into the living room wall.

Christ, he’s fucked up.

“You okay, man?” I ask as I lean forward from my perch on the couch. I set my beer bottle on the floor.

His head slowly turns my way and his eyes are completely glazed over. He looks at me like he doesn’t even recognize me.

He also doesn’t answer my question, but tries to walk again. This time he pitches forward and slams face first down onto the carpet.

“Jesus,” I say as I come flying up off the couch. I take a step and then go down to my knees, rolling Lucas over onto his back. I expect to find him passed out, but his eyes are open but not really seeing me. There’s a small rug burn on his chin from when he hit the carpet, and he’s lucky he didn’t bust his nose or some shit.

Lucas tries to sit up, and I put an arm under his back to help him. He continues to try to push up off the floor, and I help him do that as well by hauling him to his feet.

“You okay?” I ask again, although clearly he’s not. Not that Lucas doesn’t drink, but I’ve never seen him drunk like this.

“No, I’m not fucking okay,” he slurs, and shrugs my hold off him. I release him and he immediately starts to pitch to the side, so I grab him again.

“Okay,” I say like I’m talking to a child. “Let’s see about getting you to bed to sleep this off.”

“Fuck that,” he yells, and twists away from me so hard I lose my hold. He lurches into the kitchen, looks about blindly for a moment. His eyes land on a half-empty casserole dish with lasagna that Simone had baked earlier tonight. I refused to eat dinner with her, preferring to stay holed up on my room and out of sight of her sinful little body, but I did eat some after she left for work.

It was fucking delicious.

Lucas stumbles forward, picks up the casserole dish, and then to my utter fucking shock, he hurls it across the kitchen with an anguished roar. It hits the wall beside the refrigerator, lasagna exploding in all directions like a bomb had been inside.

“Fucking goddamn Stephanie,” he yells again as he stumbles, then rights himself. He stares at me swaying back and forth, raising a shaky hand to point to me. “Don’t do it, man. Don’t ever fucking fall in love. It’s the fucking pits.”

I don’t bother to tell him he doesn’t have to worry about that from me, because it’s wasted conversation. He won’t remember this tomorrow, I’m sure.

So instead I walk up to him so I can take his arm. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you into bed so you can sleep this off.”

Lucas doesn’t fight me this time, but manages a drunk walk back to his bedroom. I manage to lower him to his bed, where he just stares at the ceiling. I leave him for a moment, going back into the kitchen to get some water. I also grab the garbage can, because I have a feeling he’ll be blowing chunks before the morning hours.

When I walk back into his room, he’s still staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t lift his head, but he must have heard me walk in.

“You ever been in love, Van?” he asks me, his words weirdly not as slurred.

“Nope,” I answer as I put the can beside the bed. I untwist the bottled water and ask him, “Can you sit up? You need to drink this.”

Lucas struggles, but manages to pull himself up so he’s half leaning against the headboard. I hand the water to him and watch as he drinks it, a good amount spilling down his shirt.

“Stephy called it quits tonight,” he mutters after drinking more than half the bottle. I just stand there, not sure what to say. I’ve never had a close enough friend that I’d ever talk about this shit to, so I have no clue if he wants commiseration, advice, or just quiet solidarity.

I hope it’s the quiet solidarity, because that’s all I got.

“Fucking told her I wanted marriage and a family with her,” he mumbles miserably. “And you know what she told me?”

“What?” I ask, because I honestly have no clue. I can’t even identify with this conversation.

“She told me she wanted space,” he says bitterly, the words starting to slur again. “Wanted to just be friends again.”

“That sucks, man,” I say quietly, and it’s my best guess as to what’s appropriate in this situation. I don’t know Lucas all that well, but I have come to learn that both he and his brother Max have hearts of gold. Everyone on the team knows that, and I know the guy has to be particularly broken up because Stephanie is pregnant. That’s something he shared with the team a few weeks ago and his excitement was palpable.

“She’s a loner, Van,” Lucas says, bleary eyes try to focus on me. “She prefers it that way.”

Now that is something I can finally identify with.

“Her parents made her into that,” Lucas continues.

Can also identify with that.

“Really did a number on her. In fact, I told her she’d probably fuck our kid up the way her parents fucked her up.”

That is something I so acutely understand I get a fucking lump in my throat. This I identify with on a goddamn cellular level. I am fully aware of the dangers of dysfunctional families and how that shit gets passed down from generation to generation.

I’m terrified of it, actually, and this is why I understand Stephanie and why she’s a loner like me. I empathize with her. I really do. But she fucked up by letting someone in. The dysfunction that’s bound to be inherited and later manifested will never be known if you keep yourself removed from others. I’m a firm believer in that, but Stephanie must have been swayed otherwise.

And looking at Lucas so completely destroyed by this, I can’t help but fucking feel sorry for him as well.

“Drink the rest of that,” I tell him. “Then you need to get some sleep. Things will look better tomorrow.”

I hear the front door open and then softly close. I finish swiping the mop over the bathroom floor a few more times before I turn the light out and exit. I meet Simone in the hallway.

She looks exhausted.

Sinfully hot as hell, but completely drained.

Her eyes take in the mop, and I’m sure her nose can identify the smell of Lysol coming out of the bathroom.

“Mopping at 2 A.M.?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Cleaning up your brother’s vomit,” I say dryly as I jerk my head toward his bedroom door. “I think he’s done, though.”

“Vomit?” she asks with clear worry in her voice.

“Let me get this rinsed out,” I tell her as I walk past her to the kitchen.

She follows me in there, placing her purse on the small table. Her eyes take in reddish-orange stains of tomato sauce I’d wiped off the walls. I didn’t get to clean it well, though, because Lucas decided to start hurling his guts and I think he’s just now gotten it all out of his system.

“What happened?” she murmurs as I put the mop into the sink and start to clean it.

“He showed up a few hours ago drunk out of his mind,” I tell her. “Like blind, stinking drunk. Could barely walk.”

“His car isn’t out front,” she says distractedly.

“Thank God he must have been clearheaded enough to use a taxi or an Uber,” I remark.

“Why was he so drunk?” she asks.

I look over my shoulder at her. “Stephanie broke up with him.”

“Oh no,” Simone gasps as her hand comes to cover her mouth in surprise. “Oh, she can’t. He loves her.”

Yup. Got the whole story about it while I helped hold him somewhat steady over the garbage can, and then later in the bathroom when he’d tried to walk in there by himself. He puked all over the tiled floor and got very little in the toilet.

I wring the mop out and put it out on the deck that leads off the kitchen. When I close the door, I walk back to the sink to wash my hands.

“Is he okay? Physically, I mean,” Simone asks.

“Yeah, I think so,” I tell her as I pour a generous amount of dish soap on my hands. I fucking hate vomit and I feel like it’s all over me.

As I’m scrubbing my hands, Simone says, “Thank you for taking care of him.”

Her words punch into me…straight through me at the soft gratitude in her voice. It’s a far cry from the sassy talk, overt flirting, and sexual come-ons she’s been dropping like bombs all around me. It’s definitely not the same woman who whipped her shirt off so shamelessly four days ago. I hope to fuck she never finds out I’ve been jacking off to the thought of her amazingly fantastic tits since then, or she’ll never leave me alone.

Christ, I didn’t want her in my head, but she’s firmly planted there now. How could she not be when she’s always in my face, taunting me and then showing me her delectable body? When Lucas has been staying nights at Stephanie’s, Simone prances around in a tight T-shirt and little boy-short panties. I don’t hide my eyes because I’ll never give her the satisfaction she’s getting to me, but I do put on my blandest, most bored expression when I look at her. In turn, this frustrates her and she’ll usually stomp off and hide in Lucas’s bedroom.

But I appreciate her gratitude toward me. Simple words of thanks and not a single fucking thing in it for her. She’s truly sharing her appreciation for the friendship I extended to Lucas tonight, and nothing more.

“Not a problem,” I respond curtly, hoping that doesn’t encourage her to talk further.

“What happened to the wall?” she asks curiously as I nab a few paper towels to dry my hands.

I turn to look at it and smile wryly at her. “Your brother took exception to your lasagna. Hurled it in a fit of anger.”

“Oh,” she says as she stares at the pathetic attempt I’d made to clean it.

Her expression is clearly troubled, so I feel compelled to add, “I started to clean it up, but then he got sick. I’ve been nursing him on and off.”

“It’s okay,” she says distractedly, still staring at the wall. “I’ll scrub it tomorrow.”

I’m not liking this Simone Fournier. She stands before me now looking all lost and helpless, and there’s something unfurling inside of me that wants to make that better for her. The smart-ass but extremely sexual creature who I’ve been subjected to these past two and a half weeks is hard as hell to deal with. She’s not just hard to handle, but she’s dangerous to some extent, and not just because she’s offering sex. I can get that anywhere, on any given day, and have been on several occasions since she’s moved in.

So what if I’m thinking of her while banging some other chick.

But this young woman who is genuinely worried about her brother strikes a chord within me for some reason. I think perhaps it feels a little similar to the way that Etta cares for me and vice versa.

“He’ll be fine,” I tell her, and she finally turns her head to look at me.

She gives me the faintest of smiles and a nod of her head. “Yeah. Sure.”

I nod back at her, not sure if I like this stoically sad Simone. I’d almost rather have her come on to me right now, but I don’t dare think that. Karma is a mean bitch.

Turning away from me, Simone heads out of the kitchen without another word. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I have this overwhelming urge to run after her and ask her, Are you really okay? Because you don’t seem okay. This isn’t the rotten little deviant trying to get into my pants and it’s freaking me out.

But I don’t.

I let her walk quietly into the bathroom, where I can hear her start the shower. I’ve been awake on some nights when we’ve had home games, and I’ve heard her shower when she comes home from work in the early morning hours. She apparently has some job bartending or something like that.

Or at least that’s what I think Lucas told me, but I didn’t really listen all that closely to him. I was trying to keep all fucking interest in his sister to an absolute minimum.

Yes, I often hear Simone come in at night because I’m a light sleeper and because just her soft steps in the hallway irritate me. That irritation burrows deeper within me when I hear that shower start, and then I turn it inward when I start to get aroused at the thought of her in that shower.

I could almost imagine how beautiful her tits would be all soaped up with hard nipples, and yeah…I’d get off to the fantasy of it while I lay in bed and listened to the water run.

But as I walk back to my bedroom, past the bathroom door, and listen to the water hitting the shower floor, I also hear something else.

I lean toward the door, and fuck me…I can hear her crying in there.

Something completely different punches into me this time, and I don’t like that fucking feeling at all. I quickly pull away from the door and march staunchly into my room, determined that when the sun rises, I’m going to be putting Simone back on the other side of my wall.