October 18, last year

 

Etta was right.  I’d become lazy.  I still had my muscles, but a few weeks of laying around had made me softer than I’d liked. 

It’s amazing how easily a super disciplined person can forgo what he’d trained himself his entire life to do.  I know my mother would say it has everything to do with my depressed state.  Nevertheless, I blamed my daily trips to a fast food restaurant where they make an orange shake (that tasted just like Dreamsicles) and the wonderful programming on modern television.  All day marathons of Gator Boys, Deadliest Catch, and Man Versus Food?  Frigging classic TV right there. 

I never watched TV when I was in season.  I don’t know if the TV I had in L.A. even worked.  Lately, it was normal to find me riveted, ass rooted on the couch, remote in one hand, big ass 44-ounce  shake-filled Styrofoam cup in the other.  Pathetic.

No one knows how debilitating a knee injury can be until it happens to him.  Truthfully, one leg out of commission for an incredibly active person makes life pretty damned hard.  However, I knew deep down that the injury was just an excuse.  I could find a way to exercise if I really wanted to.  But that was the problem.  I.  Didn’t.  Want.  To.

I guess Mom was right.  As always. 

So last night, I gave myself a pep talk.  I was going to do whatever it took to change my attitude and get back what Gallardo (or fate or God or whatever Mom thought it was) had taken away from me.  Then, I worked my upper body in my weight room.  Hell, I even did those wimpy exercises Etta told me to do.  Felt pretty damn good about it, too.

But when the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. this morning, it had me rethinking last night’s epiphany, especially when I looked at myself in the mirror.  Damn.

I liked my beard.  I decided to grow it last Christmas, thought it made me look rugged.  Now I looked like one of those mug shots of some has-been celeb right before he is sentenced to rehab.  Grooming was in order — a quick run-over with the trimmers and a little shaping.  I was also due for a haircut, but that would have to wait.  My stylist in L.A. could not be surpassed. 

Wait.  A stylist?  Jeez.  What the hell was I saying?  The barber would be my first stop after physical therapy.

I did, however, spend a little time on my hair this morning.  I also put some thought into what I would wear – tight, dry-fit shirt I usually wore under my jersey and basketball shorts.  My chest and arms were still pretty well defined, even after not working out for six weeks, and this shirt accentuated my upper body, and more importantly, it hid my tattoo.  I just had to make sure my shirt stayed down.  She couldn’t see it, not yet. 

For some reason, looking my best mattered to me today.  No idea why.  It certainly wasn’t for Etta.  No.  I just had to prove to myself that this new attitude was for real.

Yeah, that’s it.

I entered the kitchen to grab something quick for breakfast.  Instead, I was greeted by Jacob’s shit-eatin’ grin.

“Oh, Nate Slaughter,” he sang in a high pitched voice.  “You’re so handsome.”

“Shut up,” I muttered, earning a laugh from my little brother.

We worked out the plan last night.  Since Jacob had a job around the corner from the clinic, he drove to the Med Center and dropped me off at my appointment.  Mom agreed to pick me up.  This non-driving thing was getting old.  I had forgotten to ask Dr. Woods about driving like I wanted, too focused on if I could play again.  It would have to be another topic of discussion with Etta today, and talking to her was something I planned to avoid as much as I could.

No one was there to greet me at the front desk, so I walked back to the same room I was in yesterday.  Etta was reading something on her electronic tablet at her desk.  I think my heart stopped for a second.  She was dressed in a tight-fitting V-neck t-shirt and yoga pants.  Again with the yoga pants, but today, no running shorts to hide her perfect ass.

“You’re late,” she grouched, not turning around to look at me.

I looked at the clock over her head.  “Two minutes is hardly late.”

She turned to face me for the first time, bravado evident in her body language.  “When…”  She focused on me and stopped talking.  Her eyes widened and she bit her lip.  Her eyes drug from my face, down my body and back up again.  I guess she liked what she saw.  Hmmmmm, interesting.

She didn’t speak, so I smirked and raised an eyebrow, bending down so her eyes, still staring at my chest, met mine.  “You were going to say…”  Smartass was probably not the way to go here, but I couldn’t resist.

She shook her head, forcing herself out of her trance, and looked me in the eye.  “When I said 7:00, I meant I wanted you here ready to work at 7:00.”  She stood, gripping her tablet to her chest.  “Tardiness is unacceptable.”

I put my hands in my pockets, flexing my chest.  “Am I your student now, Miss Sullivan?” I grinned.  She bit her lip again.  I was going to have fun with this. 

“I have a doctorate now, smartass.”  She patted the table and gestured for me to remove my brace.  “Okay, so based on your abilities from yesterday, I’ve come up with a plan of attack.”  She sat down on a stool in front of the table and rolled it over to the side of me.  “I’m concerned that you can’t fully straighten your leg or bend your knee more than 105 degrees, so working on flexibility is a priority.”  She set the tablet down on the table next to me.  “We also need to get your quad strength back,” she raked her fingertips across my thigh close to my knee.  Still touches like fire.  “And strengthen your hammys in the back of your thigh.  Those are two muscle groups you probably work out in your normal routine, but we have to slowly get back to where you were.  With an injury like this one, it’s normal for the muscles to atrophy a little, so we have to go slowly.  I don’t want to do too much and have your muscles go into spasm, which makes it hard to support the joint.”

I leaned back on my arms, causing them to flex.  “That would not be good,” I said, using my best bedroom voice.  Oh, yeah.  She noticed.

She swallowed.  “No, that would set you back a ways,” she said in a huskier tone than her normal one.  Hell yeah.  I was getting to her.

She looked back to my knee and stood up from her stool.  She leaned in on her arms on either side of my knee.  “I bet you don’t work out the muscles here…” she touched the outside of my leg with her left hand.  She locked her eyes on mine, leaned over so that her face was about six inches away, and I got a good look at her cleavage she was pushing together with her arms.  She licked her lips then ran the fingertips of her right hand down the inside of my thigh, “…and here, on the sides of the leg.  And what we do to this leg,” she ran her fingertips along the inside of my other thigh, “we’ll do to this leg.”

Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.  I couldn’t breathe.

“That charm didn’t work on me the first time you used it, Mr. Slaughter,” she crooned, looking at me with bedroom eyes.   “What makes you think I’d be dumb enough to fall for it now?”  Then she flashed a knowing smile.  She stood and crossed her arms across her chest, which I knew was her way of throwing down the challenge; she had flipped the tables on me.  Well, sonofabitch.  Do I let her call my bluff?

Yes, I totally do. 

But I did notice she still smells like Dreamsicles. 

I had to lean forward with my elbows on my thighs quickly because basketball shorts do nothing to camouflage the rapidly growing effects of playing sexy-flirtation chicken with a woman I have dreamed about for years.  I prayed she didn’t notice. 

So she won this round.

I cleared my throat.  “So, how do we do that, Dr. Sullivan?”

She narrowed her eyes for a second and grabbed her tablet.  “Several ways.  I’ll start you off at the bars with some of the same resistance exercises we did yesterday, and maybe a little stim for grins and giggles.  As you get stronger, we will increase the resistance of the bands and eventually move to the weights.  I plan to get you on the stationary bike, probably next visit, the elliptical or maybe the zero-gravity treadmill in about a week, and in the pool soon after that…”

“You have a pool here in the clinic?”

“It’s at a different location.”  She looked down at her tablet.  “But right now, I want you over at the bars working on the resistance bands.” 

She moved to the desk and plugged in her iPod.  Blues played over the speakers in the ceiling quietly.  Some things never change.  I recognized most of her old favorites, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Kenny Wayne Shephard, and the early releases (music she just discovered right before we parted) from The Black Keys, ZZ Top, and Fleetwood Mac.  However, mixed in were some artists I didn’t recognize and some songs by John Mayer and Black Pistol Fire, my current favorite band.

Unfortunately, we were back to the all-business Etta, so much so that the only talking she did was to instruct or to correct my movements.  I tried to get in my work-out zone, but honestly, her earlier flirtation still had me distracted.  Talk about a plan backfiring.

“Where is everyone else today?” I asked, trying to fill the awkward quiet between us.  I know I said I didn’t plan to talk to her.  Plans change.

“I let my staff have the third Friday of each month off.” 

“So, you came in on your day off... for me?”  I hoped I didn’t sound as pathetically hopeful as I felt; I wanted to know if she thought I was special.

“I said I gave my staff the day off,” she replied sharply.  She sighed and softened her tone.  “Sit back on the table, please.”

I watched her walk over to a shelving unit and remove some items.  She walked back to my table and began unwrapping something behind me.  She pulled a small machine on wheels over next to the table.

The song playing gave me an idea for a safe topic.  “You know, when I heard Black Pistol Fire for the first time, I knew you’d like them.”

She smiled.  “I discovered them at a bar while in Austin one weekend.”

“Yeah, that’s where they’re from originally.” 

She just smiled and said nothing else.  Awkward silences between us were a rarity when we were younger, but today, they seemed to be the norm.

She placed a foam cylinder under my right knee, and then attached three wired sticky things on my thigh. 

“How’s Emily?”

That earned a stormy grey death glare.  Not good.  Why would she get pissy when I asked about her sister?  Weird.

She attached the wires on the sticky things to the machine.  She took a deep breath before addressing me again, and I knew it was to control her voice before she spoke.  “I’m going to turn this on.  I want you to tell me when you start to feel more than tickling.”

She turned a knob, and the sticky things started to tickle.  The tickle rapidly became less tickly, more stingy.  “Okay, that stings.”

She smirked.  “Now, I want you to tell me when it hurts.”

“What the hell are you doing to me, Sullivan?”

“EMS, electro-muscular stimulation, or stim for short.  I need it to get to a painful level so we can dial it back.” 

“Oh, screw you! I’m not letting you shock me!”

“You always were a wuss,” she said under her breath.  She handed me her tablet.  “Google it.  It’s a tool in physical therapy to strengthen atrophied muscles without strain on the tendons and ligaments.”  I sat the tablet down, and she went back to the machine.  “I need for the muscles to contract, and in order to do that, it might be a little painful.”  She smiled.  “This is where the no pain, no gain comes in handy.”

She dialed it up until I indicated I couldn’t handle it.  Then she lowered the voltage, or whatever it’s measured in, down two levels, and the shock stopped. 

“Now, the stim is set for every thirty seconds.  It will deliver a charge for ten seconds.  When you feel the charge, I want you to push down on the foam with your knee, trying to straighten out your leg as best you can.  When the stim stops, rest for twenty seconds.  This will happen for ten minutes.”  She looked at me.  “Got it?”

“Is this one of your researched torture methods?”

“Can’t take credit for this one,” she smiled.  “My torture methods will come later.”  She turned on the machine and watched, I’m sure to revel in my discomfort.

Apparently satisfied with my progress, she focused on her tablet. 

“So.  The beard.  You like it?” she asked, not looking up from her work.

I smiled.  “You don’t?”

“It’s not my favorite look, on anyone really, and they sure do seem to be trendy right now.  Everyone is growing one.  At least yours isn’t a foot long.”

“I think it makes me look rugged, like Thor.”  She laughed.  “What?”

She looked up at me still laughing.  “Only cocky you would compare your looks to that of a superhero who is also a god.”  

Actually the supermodel I dated made that comparison, but I decided not to bring up past relationships right now, even ones that were only for publicity.  Mom was right about that, too. 

Walking away, she added, “I do like your longer hair, though.” 

Okay, so the barber is off the list for today. 

Jeez.  I’m hopeless.

After she gathered the ice packs and wrapped them in pillowcases, I decided to ask another question.  “Etta, yesterday, Andre said you insisted on treating me yourself.  Why?”

She stopped what she was doing and looked me in the eye.  “Because you’re a good ball player, Nate.”   Her calling me Nate still hurt a little.  She raised both eyebrows.  “I knew you wanted to get back on the field, and you deserve the best there is to get you there.”

“Who’s the cocky one now?” I teased. 

“You won’t think I’m cocky when you are back doing what you always dreamed about.”  The timer had stopped on the machine, so she removed the electrodes.  She replaced the foam under my knee with an ice pack and placed the other on top.  She moved back to the desk.

“I forgot to ask the doctor about this, but that brace makes it impossible for me to drive.”  I ran my hand over my head.   “Honestly, I’m tired of being a burden to my family, so what do I need to do to get out of this brace?”

“It’s funny how you think this is what makes you a burden to your family.”  She said flatly.

“Ha.  Good one, Sullivan.”  My sarcasm was spoiled by my smile.

She chuckled.  “Today, we will use some support tape so you can be a free man.  It’s supposed to stay on for a few days, but I’ll show you how to do it yourself and give you a roll of it just in case.  You shouldn’t be using the brace anymore anyway.  However, I’ll need you to promise me you’ll not do any strenuous activity on your own other than the approved at-home exercises I gave you yesterday.”  Rolling her chair to the table, she looked up at me with her smoky greenish-blues.  “Do you promise?”

I held up my pinky and winked.  “Pinky swear.”  She looked at my extended pinky and reluctantly smiled.  Slowly lifting her hand to mine, she linked our pinkies, forgoing the kissing of the pinkies to seal the deal.  I guess we were a little old to still do that.  Didn’t stop me from being a little disappointed though.

As she moved back to her work, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.  Being with her was not as torturous as I thought.  We even had flashes of our old comfortableness.  Maybe it was okay to hope…

Minutes of silence passed.  I looked at the clock and saw it was well after 9:30 a.m.  Mom should have been here by now.  I checked my phone and saw I missed a text from her saying she’d be here at 10:00 a.m.

“Mom will be here in a little while if you want to see her,” I said.  “I’m sure she will be glad to see you.”

“No,” Etta lowered and shook her head.  “She won’t.”

“Sure she will.  She liked you more than she liked me most of the time.”

“Not anymore.”  She started gathering the trash from behind me and cleaning up, her sign she was nervous.  “Your mother is not my biggest fan, Nathaniel.”

Ahhh, she called me Nathaniel.  Still as sweet as ever.

“That’s news to me.”  She still avoided eye contact with me.  I grabbed her wrist, trying to get her to look at me.  “What happened?”

Looking at the floor, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “About two years after you left, she told me off.  We haven’t spoken since.”

Sounds like Mom.  “What reason would she have to do that?”

She looked me in the eye for the first time since we started talking about Mom.  “You.”  She wiggled her wrist out of my grasp and moved to the desk. 

I knew from past experience with Etta that the subject was effectively closed.  She was too stubborn to give me any more information, and pressing the issue would destroy any progress we made today.  So I would wait for her to calm down before speaking.

I started absent-mindedly singing the song playing over the speakers, “Little Black Submarines,” a song that always made me think of Etta when I heard it.

“You still have a nice voice,” she complimented. 

I smiled, despite the memory of the last time I sang to her.  “Etta, I have to apologize to you for yesterday.”

“It’s not necessary,  Nathaniel.”

“Yes,” I grabbed her hand.  “It is.  I was more than a little thrown that you were here.  I had no clue I’d be seeing you.  I had no right to question your credentials.  I was really pissed at Jake who didn’t tell me you’d be here, and I took it out on you.”  I looked up at her, giving her my puppy dog face that used to allow me to get away with anything with her.  “Forgive me?”

She smiled.  “Depends.  Is Jake alive?”

I laughed.  “Yes.  I didn’t even hit him.”

“Good.  He’s really reeling from the Ashley thing.  The last thing he needs is to fight with you.”

I let go of her hand.  “You know about Ashley?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Of course I do.  He’s my friend.”

Except members of the opposite sex can’t be just friends.  Add that to the growing list of things Mom is right about.

 

***

 

Throwing the brace into the back seat, I slid into the seat next to Mom. 

“Yay, you’re not wearing the brace.  I guess the therapy is going well?  I’m sorry I ran a little late.  I took the car to get the oil changed.  Joey asked me to do it last week, so I had to make an appointment.  I had the first one of the day, so you wouldn’t think they would…”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Etta, Mom?”

Her face changed from happy and carefree to guarded and careful in a fraction of a second.  She blinked a few times.

“Your brother and I discussed it and decided it would be best if you didn’t know she was here.  We knew you wouldn’t have come if…”

“No, Mom.  She mentioned that you two haven’t spoken in years.  No doubt after you gave her one of your famous Tammy Nicole Brown smack downs.”

Mom narrowed her eyes at me.  “It didn’t go down quite like that, Nathaniel.  And that girl gives as good as she gets, believe me.  Don’t let her fool you.”

“I know.  I’ve been on the receiving end of both of your wraths.  What I don’t know is why.”

She sighed heavily.  “We had a difference of opinion.”

I waited for her to explain.  When it was evident she wouldn’t, I got mad.

“God dammit, Mom!” I shouted.  “Just.  Fucking.  Tell.  Me.  What is it with the women in my life being so fucking stubborn?”

“Nathaniel James Slaughter, you watch your mouth.  You may be thirty, but you still should not cuss at your mother.”

“Well, you had a fight about me, one that made you not talk to each other for six years.  I think I have a right to know the details, and neither one of you is very… cooperative.” 

She glanced at me.  From the look on her face, I could tell she was deliberating over what to tell me and measuring her words carefully.

“Okay, I will tell you this.  We met for lunch often after you left.  Despite how it ended between you two, I loved her.  Hell, I still do.  And when she was getting ready to start the clinic, I may have mentioned that she should go visit you in California.  She was less than receptive, and I may have lost it a little.”  I groaned.  “Look, Nate, I know how much you loved that girl, even if you never told her the right way.  You are my son and I will always fight for you, no matter who it is or what I will lose in the process.”

“So you told her off in a public place?” I smiled.  “I can imagine that didn’t go over well.”

“Like I said, she gives as good as she gets.”  She paused.  “A few dishes may have been broken in the process.”  She grinned guiltily.  “And she and I are banned for life from the Friday’s on I-45.” 

“Holy shit,”  I said under my breath.  I turned to her.  “Do you think you could ever talk to her again?”

She studied my face.  “Oh, damn.  I thought you were over her.  Are you really planning to go down that road again?”

Already on it.