Chapter Eighteen

Rhett

I didn’t even bother going back inside Tony’s Di Napoli. After Brenna stalked off, her face streaked with tears, I moped around Midtown for hours, trying to outrun the ghost of love gone wrong. Ernie texted me a few times – he was getting drunk at the Sapphire Club – and after a while, I decided to join him. No debauchery tonight, I decided as I strolled into the lobby. I just want a few drinks so I can relax.

Ernie sat at the bar with one stripper on his lap and another massaging his shoulder blades. When they saw me, they squealed and ran toward me, all flailing fake tits and limbs.

“Ernesto, you didn’t tell me you invited Rhett Bradshaw!” one of the girls squeaked. She had pasties with tassels over her nipples and a sheer pink thong that showed a perfect outline of her labia. She was gorgeous. On any other day, I would have grabbed her and paid for three dances in a row. But her green eyes and chestnut hair reminded me of Brenna, and shame blossomed in my chest like rot.

Bad idea, Bradshaw. You have to get the fuck out of here. Even being inside felt like a betrayal of the honest words I’d shared with Brenna only a few hours prior.

“Yeah, baby, he’s a good dude.” Ernie gave me a lazy grin and took a long gulp of his craft beer. “What’s good, brother?” From his voice, I could tell that he’d been drinking for at least three hours.

I groaned. The other stripper slid off Ernie’s lap, pouting as I sat next to him and made a shooing motion with my hand.

“Man, don’t scare the girls off,” Ernie said and slapped me on the shoulder. “I’m tryin’ to do you a favor tonight, man! That’s why we’re here. You need a little pick-me-up.”

“I don’t need any favors,” I said, venom seeping into my tone. I loved Ernie, but it seemed I’d outgrown him overnight. Maybe my priorities had changed. “I just need a drink. Straight liquor.”

Ernie rolled his eyes. “Brother, you’re into some heavy shit right now, aren’t you,” he said. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you all day. Check your phone lately?”

“I went out to dinner with my parents,” I mumbled. Ernie didn’t reply – he was too busy staring at the gaping ass cheeks of a girl “dancing” on stage just a few inches away. I made a fist and slammed it down on the bar. “Fuck it!”

The bartender noticed my sudden display of temper and sashayed down the bar toward me. A petite brunette in her early twenties, she wore the same look about her as all female bartenders in strip clubs – judgmental, bored, and a little envious. She’d probably auditioned for the lucrative gig on the stage but didn’t quite have the goods to make it.

I smiled. “Hey, babe, get me a tequila shot. Patron if you have it,” I said and passed her a fifty-dollar bill. “And keep the change.”

The brunette smiled and snatched up the bill, tucking it into her ample cleavage. Normally, I would have smiled back and started a conversation with her, teasing out the details of why such a pretty girl next door type had to work in such a sordid place with degenerates and perverts. And then it hit me. I was a pervert and a degenerate, so who was I to judge the comings and goings of other men. My social life had proved to be a marriage of convenience. If chicks made themselves readily available with their legs open, I’d availed myself of their offer. No more.

“I need to turn over a new leaf,” I mumbled, my mother’s grimaced face floating across my consciousness. If I hadn’t been an arrogant and selfish prick since I’d signed with the Yankees, I would have given Brenna Sinclair nothing to write about. My Ma had it all wrong. I’d made my own bed of thorns, and now I had to aerate my own skin by lying on top of them.

“So,” Ernie said. He leaned back in his chair, grinning. “How was din-din? You have a real nice time with the folks? Let me guess. Rhoda stroked your back and your ego, and now I’ll have to knock you down a few pegs. Huh, you arrogant bastard?”

He followed that analysis up with a slap to my back that caused a deep groan. “Not exactly,” I replied, not sure of how to explain the situation in a way that Ernie would understand or support.

The cute brunette pushed a shot glass toward me along with some lime wedges on a cocktail napkin, her eyes lingering a shade too long on my biceps. But I pointedly ignored her, glancing over her head until she rolled her eyes and stalked away.

“What happened?” Ernie frowned. “Oh, my precious baby genius Rhett,” he cooed, in an almost eerie imitation of my mother. “Did little Rhett have a bad time?”

“Shut the fuck up,” I growled. “You’re just pissed because you can only Skype with your mama. I took Brenna with me.”

Ernie hooted with laughter. Beer spilled down his lip, chin, and out of his nostrils as he wheezed and coughed and rocked back and forth on the stool. I found myself growing more aggravated toward him with every second of his ridiculous enactment. Until I realized it wasn’t a performance at all. I kind of felt sorry for him.

“Oh man, Rhett, you’re good,” Ernie said. He shook his head and slapped his hand on the bar. “You think I was born yesterday, man!”

“I wasn’t kidding.” I poured the entire shot down my throat and swallowed without even tasting it, welcoming the burn. Pain I deserved. “She met us at Tony’s Di Napoli.”

Ernie’s brown eyes went wide. “You’re fucking kidding,” he said. “What kind of an idiot are you, Rhettinator? Every tourist visiting NYC that likes Italian goes there.”

I groaned because he’d hit it square on the head. “I know. I should’ve known. I’m a fucking moron.”

Ernie snickered. “Yeah, man. I think all that sun standing on the mound is getting to your head. Fucking you up.” Before I could stop him, he clapped his hands together and yelled for the bartender to bring us more tequila.

“Fuck that,” I mumbled. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. I blew it. I blew it up so bad it looked like a fucking mushroom cloud spitting up nuclear waste. Except the waste is the shards of my imploded body.”

Ernie turned to me. He clasped his hands to his chest and made big eyes, batting his long Cuban lashes. “Oh, my sweet baby Rhett, what a monster this horrible journalist is,” he trilled. “I have to protect my baby at all–”

My fist connected with the side of Ernie’s face, effectively ending his mockery of my mother…even if it was well-deserved. For a moment, he stared at me, clearly stunned. Then he shook his head like a dog trying to shake off water.

“Ha, man, okay,” Ernie said. He rubbed his jaw. “Mama Bradshaw is off limits. I get it. Damn, you’re getting strong.” He batted his eyelashes again as if he couldn’t stop himself, and I braced my body for the next onslaught. “Little baby Rhett must be eating his Wheaties.”

I held up my fist in the air and growled. Ernie’s smirk vanished, and he held his hands up in the air, shaking his head and conceding defeat.

“Okay, okay, I get it, man,” Ernie said. He slapped me on the back again, and I almost spit tequila in his smug face. “Relax, Bradshaw. Have some tequila and enjoy the scenery.” He spread his arms around as if Sapphire Strip Club had morphed into the Promised Land. “We’re surrounded by the most beautiful girls in New York!”

But when I thought of the most beautiful girls in New York, only one came to mind.

Brenna Sinclair.

***

I didn’t hear from Brenna for the rest of the weekend. By Monday morning, I thought I might go psycho. Thank God the Yankees were on a home stand, and I didn’t have to get on a plane, and it wasn’t my rotation to be on the mound for another two days. Being cooped up in a metal tube with a bunch of testosterone riddled hecklers led by their ringmaster, Ernesto Alonzo Garcia, didn’t float my boat. I kept checking my phone – even going so far as to turn it off and then back on to make sure I hadn’t missed a text. But she didn’t call, she didn’t text, and she didn’t email.

She didn’t send a homing pigeon. She didn’t pass go. She didn’t collect two hundred dollars.

Her silence told me in no uncertain terms to fuck myself.

I wished I could go back in time and be honest with Brenna from the beginning. Whenever I thought about her learning the truth from a source outside of me, my stomach twisted into icy knots. I knew I’d have to talk to Riley, and soon. Tell her the game had reached a premature ending. If she spilled the beans – or god help me, somehow twisted the story to make me look even worse – I knew Brenna wouldn’t speak to me, ever again.

And that’s what hurt most of all.

When I called Riley, she didn’t pick up. I left her an irritated, growling voicemail and then paced around my condo for the next hour. Every sound made me jump – even the garbage truck outside made me run out of the bathroom when I heard the familiar beeping. Even though I knew it wasn’t my phone, I couldn’t help checking anyway.

I knew then that I had it bad for Brenna Sinclair. For the first time in my life, I was pussy whipped, and I’d only seen it once. Oh how far the great Rhett Bradshaw had fallen. So far down he lived in the sewers of NYC along with the other trash, rats, and shit.

Finally, two hours later, Riley called back. My heart jumped in my chest as I grabbed for my iPhone.

“Hello?”

“Oh, my gosh, Rhett. You have to see this thing I just wrote, you’re going to love it. Is that why you’re calling? To check on my feature?”

I sighed and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes. “No, I’m actually calling about Brenna. Do you have any time today, Riley? We really need to talk. Face to face. It’s that important.”

Riley laughed. “Calm down, stressorella,” she said. Her voice stayed as bubbly and chipper as if someone had just told her she’d gotten that promotion she was gunning for at the cost of everything else. “Stop sweating the small stuff, Rhett. Brenna’s fine. She came into work late, and she’s been keeping her head down. Nothing seems amiss on this end. What happened this weekend to have you so pumped up you need to pop a Xanax?”

“I’m not talking about it on the phone,” I growled.

“Geez, what is wrong with you,” Riley whined. “You’ve fallen off the deep end. Everything is running according to plan. Like clockwork.”

“Yeah, guess again, Sean Penn. We need to talk,” I repeated. “Meet me for an early lunch. Can you get to lower Manhattan in half an hour?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t be late,” I said. “Balthazar in forty-five minutes. It’s urgent.”

I hung up and shoved my phone in my pocket. As I walked out the door, I felt the runaway anxiety slink itself around my neck like a python, squeezing me until I struggled to draw my next breath. I have to tell her the truth and get her out of my mind. Getting her out of my heart would prove a more arduous task.

My nerves were a fried tangle of wires, and my heart galloped like I’d just snorted a huge rail of blow. Balthazar overflowed with the lunch crowd, far more patrons than I’d been expecting, and I had to push through a huge swarm before I saw Riley seated at the back.

“Hey, Rhett,” Riley said, standing and waving me over to her table. “You’re going to love this.” Before I could even sit down, she pulled a draft issue of Sport Taste out of her bag and shoved it in my direction.

I frowned. There I was, on the cover, looking smug and sunburned in my home uniform. The headline read: “Rhett Bradshaw – Modern Man and All-American Inspiration.”

“Are you kidding?” I flipped through until I got to the article. I quickly scanned the columns, suppressing a groan. The writing was the most fawning, awful dreck that I’d ever read in my life. No wonder Riley was a junior reporter. She didn’t have the chops to make it any further without some type of underhanded collusion.

“I love it,” Riley said, her voice oozing happiness and pride. Over this damn drivel? “And I wrote it all by myself.” She raised an eyebrow, looking smug and waiting for my response, probably thinking she had it all in the bag. “Looks like Brenna’s not the only girl who can succeed in sports journalism.”

I coughed to keep from laughing. Among other travesties, Riley had written sonnets of praise to my physique, my humble background, and the fact that I’d “gone out of my way” to be friends with a Cuban American. She called my eyes “beacons of hope for the American public” and compared my jaw to a majestic steamer ship.

“Right,” I said. “Riley, I don’t know about this – maybe this isn’t a great idea right now. Especially not after some new developments. I don’t think we should push to have this printed. There might be some major backlash.”

Riley frowned. She snatched the mock-up of the magazine out of my hands and held it against her chest, treasuring her dummy article in next month’s look book. “Why not? Why don’t you like it?”

I sighed and raked a hand through my hair. “Look, it’s not that I don’t like it,” I lied. “It’s just…well, I feel like it’s probably a good idea to come clean with Brenna. That dinner with my parents was a disaster. My mom remembered a piece Brenna wrote on me last year and Brenna had no idea why she was being berated in a public place. She didn’t remember it at all, and she was really, really distressed. There were tears, Riley.”

A torrential downpour of pain so severe that each droplet represented a moment in my life when I hadn’t put my best foot forward.

Riley snorted. “So? What’s the problem? If she didn’t remember, that’s good, Rhett. That’s what we want.”

I leaned against the back of my chair, tenting my hands and knocking my forehead with them. I wished I could knock some sense into myself, but I feared I’d already done too much damage. “Not really,” I said. “I didn’t intend to keep her in the dark forever. And I really fucking wish my mom hadn’t acted like that.” I winced as I remembered the angry glint in Ma’s eyes as she peppered Brenna with every undeserved insult and piece of rhetoric she could think of. “She looked like she wanted to rip Brenna’s head off right there at the table.”

Riley snickered. “Serves her right,” she said, and I didn’t like the way a satisfied gleam overtook her expression. Riley was bad news. And now, I’d pulled the pin on the next human grenade that might be able to take Brenna down with its lethal shrapnel. “That’s what she gets for thinking she can trash a player as awesome as you and get away with it. She thinks she’s above it all with her honors degree in Journalism from Columbia and her hotshot mentor, Janet McCall. But she’s nothing. Her articles aren’t even worth the paper they’re printed on.”

I shifted in my seat, so damn uncomfortable I couldn’t remain still. I’d never wanted to slap a woman more in my life. I tried sitting on my hands. My folks were good people in spite of their reaction to Brenna. Ma had taught me never to raise a hand against a woman in anger. And I’d never let my temper unleash to that extreme. “Riley, that’s really not the–”

“Of course it is,” Riley snapped. Her eyes blazed with wounded pride. In that moment, I thought she might be capable of anything. For sure, she’d hurt Brenna. She might even seek retaliation against me. Hell hath no fury and all that. I tried to ease the situation before it blossomed out of control. “You can’t tell her, Rhett. That would ruin everything.”

“Well, everything is kind of ruined already,” I countered and then I made a fatal mistake before I could temper my runaway mouth. “I fucked her. That’s what I wanted, right? So now I should tell her the truth and let her get on with her life. I don’t want her doubting herself anymore because of a lie, Riley. That’s cruel. It’s not me.”

“What would be cruel is if you told her the truth,” Riley said. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. “You really think she’s just going to be like, fine, okay, you deceived me so I could raise your flag?” Riley snorted. “Come on, Rhett. You can’t tell her now. She’d hate you.”

“I deserve her hate,” I said. “I welcome it. We did a shitty thing, Riley.”

“You’re going to confuse her even more,” Riley growled. She slammed her hand down on the table, making the bread basket jump. “You’re going to make her really upset, Rhett, and she’s going to be like, so alarmed. Especially since she doesn’t have her memory back in full.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to this.” I stood up, shaking my head. Talking with Riley had only made me more confused than ever – and why the hell was she being so argumentative? After all, we’d agreed to tell Brenna the truth…hadn’t we?

Riley huffed. “Whatever, Rhett. You are a poser, and I’m leaving. I have to get back to work.” She grinned. “I’m doing an online feature about you, and I know you’re going to love it.”

“Riley, don’t write anything else about me right now,” I insisted. “Come on – let me work this out with Brenna first.”

Riley licked her lips as if the pending article were a tasty morsel she just couldn’t walk away from without sampling it first. She stood up from the table and grabbed her bag. “No,” she said, a shit-eating grin lining her face. “That wasn’t the deal. Unlike you, I’m going to keep up my end of the bargain. I don’t have anything to lose and everything to gain.”

Before I could stop her, Riley waltzed out of Balthazar, leaving a trail of cheap perfume. I balled my hands into fists and resisted the urge to flip the table over. I knew that if I didn’t do something to work off my anxiety, I’d really lose it.

When I got back to my condo, I changed into shorts and shirt and headed to pre-game practice. There, I worked out hard, not needing to get ready for another game. I was benched that night, and it was a good thing I wasn’t starting or even finishing. My head was way too far up my ass to be effective.

Darkness had fallen over the city that never slept by the time I got home. I took a quick shower, then grabbed my laptop. Words meant the world to Brenna, obviously. After all, she’d strived and scrapped to become a respected journalist. I figured that I could write her a long email, explaining what I’d done. Even if I didn’t send it, writing it out might give me some ideas for how to broach the terrible subject.

Hundreds of e-mails littered my inbox, and I reared back as I stared at them. I frowned. There was an email from Riley, sent around four in the afternoon. The subject contained a winky face, and the message a sole link to Sport Taste: Online Edition.

With nervous hands, I clicked on the link. As soon as the page loaded, my jaw dropped. On the site, in all its full colored glory, was a photo of me, grinning, with my hands shoved in my uniform pockets. There was also a photo of Brenna, looking both cute and nerdy in glasses and a librarian cardigan.

And there it was, in big, black letters. The words that I’d never forget because they just changed the entire course of my life.

“Not So Innocent After All? Rhett Bradshaw….Manipulator and Date Rapist?”

I slammed my laptop shut and hurled it across the room.

I had to tell the truth.