“Where have you been? It’s been four hours since your flight landed, and I’ve been worried sick.”
I rush out to the foyer just in time for him to brush past me without meeting my eyes or saying a word. There’s relief in seeing him safe and sound, but that slams head first into anger when I smell the stale scent of alcohol. I’ve been worrying myself sick while he was in a bar somewhere drinking?
“Easton?” I follow him to the bedroom where he drops his bag on the floor and then walks right past me again on the way out without speaking.
This is bad.
He has to have seen the commentary online. The twitter storm of jerks using shitty hashtags #EastonEatsIt #DumbJockEaston, the memes already circling his wide-eyed stare into the camera. The pundits have had their say from behind their keyboards and harsh is putting it nicely.
I scurry after him despite his obvious desire to be left alone, because that’s what you do when you love someone. You try to help them.
“Please. Talk to me,” I say as he stops at the wall of windows and stares blankly at the view beyond. I reach my hand out, wanting to offer comfort, but hesitate.
“Don’t.” It’s a warning. A threat. A reflection of his mindset.
He wants a fight. It’s in the set of his shoulders. The clench of his fists. The aggression in his posture.
The silence stretches, his anger and malcontent sucking up the air around us until it begins to eat at me too. For being worried when he couldn’t bother to be considerate and let me know he was okay. Because he’s shutting down, shutting me out instead of turning to me like one is meant to do in a relationship.
“Do you know what it’s like to live your whole life as a lie?” When he speaks, the words are barely audible, but the resignation mixed with spite is what rings the loudest.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Tell me, oh Scout who wears the rose-colored glasses, how exactly would you rate my performance last night?” The question is so loaded there’s no way I can answer it and satisfy whatever it is he’s looking for.
“That’s not fair to—”
“That bad, huh?” His chuckle is self-deprecating at best. “So bad you can’t even lie to me and tell me it wasn’t horrible and that I’m not the laughingstock of baseball right now? The dumb jock who can’t manage to put two sentences together?”
“But you did,” I say trying to figure out my phrasing so I don’t light a match to ignite his temper broiling just beneath the surface. “You started out strong. You did an incredible job giving insight and feedback. You were a natural. And then the teleprompter didn’t work and Bud didn’t teach you the controls—”
“Do you know what it’s like being compared to Cal Wylder my whole life?”
“No one’s comparing you to him in this situation.” I’m desperately trying to follow his sudden shifting thoughts. “You’re not your dad, Easton.”
“You’re goddamn right I’m not,” he thunders, every syllable a combative verbal assault. “I could never be like him. The perfect fucking man who does nothing wrong and turns everything he touches to gold like Midas.”
The doorbell chimes, alerting us that someone is coming up the elevator.
“Ah, would you look at that? I’m sure that’s good ‘ol Cal right now coming to pat me on the back and thank me for being the fucked-up son tarnishing his perfect goddamn reputation.”
“Easton.” It’s a plea for him to think before he opens the door and unloads his temper on his father.
He pushes the button to open the doors and says, “Welcome to Easton’s fucked-up party!”
But it’s not Cal standing there.
It’s sorority-letters girl.
Her face softens when she sees Easton, while every part of me tries to make sense of why the girl from the lobby has access to the penthouse.
Access that only Easton can grant.
“Easton.” Her voice is soft, sympathetic. “I wanted to make sure you were okay and didn’t need me . . .” Her words fade off when she notices me standing there.
“Not now, Helen,” he says with a kindness he hasn’t afforded me since he walked through the doors. He glances over his shoulder at me—eyes wide with panic—and then back to her. “I can’t . . . just . . . not now.” His hands fist and he gently hits the side of the wall with one as if he’s not sure what else to say.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” She says something else he responds to—quiet murmurs I can’t hear from where I stand—which give the appearance they know and are comfortable with each other. She steps back into the elevator, glancing quickly my way with concern in her eyes before averting her gaze as the doors shut.
I stand in silence, stunned and confused over how they know each other when I’ve basically lived here for the past three months and a “Helen” has not been mentioned once. But I sure as hell have passed her downstairs more times than I can count. In my scattered emotional state I jump to the worst conclusion and even though I know it can’t be true—that Easton is cheating on me with the sweet co-ed from the lobby—my stomach revolts.
“Who was that?” Accusation is loaded in those three words.
“Let it go, Scout.” He shakes his head and continues to stare at his fist still resting on the wall.
“No. I’m not going to just let it go. Who the hell was that?” I become more insistent as the seconds pass. My heart races and that bone-deep mixture of disbelief and fear start to reverberate within me. Am I right? Has he fooled me all along?
Is the player really a player?
“Scout.” It’s a warning I don’t heed at all.
“Don’t Scout me. I love you, Easton. I love you when I never thought I could love someone, but I don’t deserve to get the shit end of the stick from you just because I’m the one here. I’m so confused right now. You had a rough go yesterday. I get it. You want to be pissed and go have a drink or ten before you come home. Fine, but next time remember there’s someone here waiting for you. Worrying about you. And that means you have to think of them even when you’re at your goddamn worst. You have to pick up a phone and tell them you need time and space—be considerate—so they don’t work themselves into a frenzy worried sick you’re not lying in a ditch somewhere dead when you’re MIA for four hours. That’s what you do when you’re in a relationship, Easton. Unless this is your way of telling me we’re not in one.” I choke over the words, the thought suddenly sinking in. “If that’s the case, Helen’s visit makes a lot more sense to me.”
“You’re delusional,” he barks and just stands there, blinking his eyes a few times as if he’s struggling with what I said. Then for the first time since he’s walked in the door, he finally meets my eyes. I see defeat in them. I see sadness. But most of all right now I see fear and that exacerbates the panic I feel. “You actually think she is . . . that I am . . . fuck!”
“What?” I plead. “Just tell me.”
“Goddammit!” he says throwing his hands up as he paces back and forth, agitated and needing to move. “She was coming because of last night.”
“Last night?” My head spins to understand how she’s connected to his broadcast last night, and his inability to explain freaks me out. “What about last night? You won’t even talk to me about last night but you’ve talked to her? Who the hell is she?”
He emits a frustrated growl like nothing I’ve ever heard from him before. It sounds like a man on the verge of breaking, and I don’t understand it and I’m scared by it.
“The teleprompter wasn’t broken. They didn’t forget to teach me shit.”
“Okay.” I stretch the word out as I try to make the correlation between that and her and whatever is going on here. “Easton, I don’t understand what—”
“You want the truth?” he shouts as he turns to face me. I always have.
“I thought you were telling me the truth.”
The little laugh he emits does anything but reassure me. “Ah fuck it . . . I can’t do this anymore.”
My heart tumbles to my feet and I feel like I can’t breathe. “Do what anymore?” I whisper, afraid of the answer.
Us.
This.
What?
He paces again. I can see his agitation. Can sense his hesitancy. Every step he takes freaks me out further. Have I lost him? I silently wait for him to say it. To tell me he can’t do this with me anymore. That we’re over. I feel sick.
After a minute he stops a few feet in front of me, his face a picture of despair. “I fucked up last night.”
Tears well. My pulse pounds. My mind spins. “You slept with Helen?” I can barely get the words out and when I do I’m met with his laugh. Loud. Hysterical. Disbelieving. And every part of me revolts at being mocked. I’m in his face within two seconds, my anger getting the better of every single part of me. “You asshole!”
He catches my hand before my slap connects with his cheek. I struggle to get away from him as my emotions tumble out of control and into a vicious eddy whipping through me.
“No, Scout. You don’t get it,” he finally grits out as if it pains him. I swear to God he better start explaining, because his words are implying one thing and his actions are saying another. “I’m not cheating on you.”
“Then what is it? What is so damn secretive that you can’t talk to me about it?” I pace from one side of the room to the other, my adrenaline amped and emotions frayed on all edges. “You tried to be a sportscaster. It didn’t go well. Big fucking deal. You move on. You find something else. You let it go. How fucking hard is that?”
“It’s not that easy,” he says, expression softening and brows narrowing.
“Yes, actually it is.”
“Not when you’ve lived a lie, it isn’t.”
That feeling of dread returns but for completely different reasons. The man standing before me now looks completely defeated and that’s ten times more unnerving to me than his temper.
“Easton? What is it?”
“Helen’s my tutor.”
His explanation is so unexpected I can’t help the laugh that falls from my lips, but it dies a short death when his face remains deadly serious. “Tutor?”
“I can’t read, Scout. Is that what you want to know? That my brain can’t read any better than an eight-year-old? That the words on the page shift and change when I stare at them and so I’ve skated by my whole goddamn life keeping this secret from everyone?” His voice escalates as his fear manifests with each word he speaks. My heart shatters into little pieces for him as he stands here in the middle of his foyer with the tears welling in his eyes. “So that’s my secret. Are you happy now?”
“No.” It’s a whispered answer reflecting how stunned I am while he stares at me, a man broken by the cloak of shame he’s wrapped himself in his whole life.
And it’s only a split second of time, but I see the minute he feels the weight of what he’s just confessed. He gasps and staggers backward a few steps before turning, pushing the button for the elevator, and getting on it.
I call to him as the doors begin to move but he doesn’t stop them from closing. He just lowers his head and lets them shut.
And I’m left staring at them in shock, with whiplash so violent my brain hasn’t quite caught up to grasp the magnitude of what he’s clearly struggled with for years.
I should run after him.
I should prevent him from leaving by telling him it’s going to be all right.
But I think we both need a bit of time to wrap our heads around what he just bared.
I am stunned.
Completely, utterly stunned.