I wandered my house, waiting while my individual lasagna heated in the oven, a beer hanging from my fingertips.
The space was way too big for me, five bedrooms, five baths, and an entire finished basement, and I explored the square footage like I’d never seen it before.
In some ways, I guessed, I hadn’t.
I’d never really paid attention to the four guestrooms down the opposite hall from my own bedroom, and I hadn’t been responsible for the decorating. Jilly had hired the interior designer for me, requesting a clean, masculine look, and I’d approved it with a nod. None of the stuff around me was really meaningful. I’d hung no personal pictures on the walls, and as I settled onto the bed in my room, I realized sardonically that I hadn’t even had time to bring Cat here.
My girlfriend—the woman I was in love with—had never even seen my house. Psychoanalysts would probably have a lot to say about that, but I wasn’t sure there was some deep-rooted hesitance to bring her that close to me.
No, the truth, I feared, was that it didn’t matter whether she’d been to this house or not because, to me, that’s all it was. A house.
A big, nice house, with a large garage for my truck and a fancy kitchen that I barely cooked in.
But a simple house all the same.
Homes, on the other hand, tell a story about the person who lives there. They reminisce with pictures past and point to things that matter. What tastes make a person feel at peace and what gets their blood stirring. What artwork moves them in such a way that they have to see it every day.
All my house said was that I didn’t really have time to be in it. It was big and empty, and right now, on the heels of such a horrible phone call with Catharine, all it did was make me feel alone.
Resigned to my thoughts, I stood up from my bed and headed for the door, eager to be in the kitchen where the smell of food could at least fool me into thinking this place had something to offer.
I was halfway down the stairs when my phone started to ring in my pocket.
Eager, fucking desperate, I clutched my beer bottle in one hand and dug into my pocket with the other, yanking the phone out and reading the screen as hope shocked me. I hadn’t spoken to Cat since last night, and to say the ending of our conversation could have gone better was putting it mildly. I’d called and left a message when I got out of practice, but she was just as fucking busy as I was. Catching one another on the phone was starting to feel like trying to catch a shooting star from the sky.
But optimism’s exit was swift as I read a name other than Catharine, and I settled firmly back into the depths of reality, where she wouldn’t be calling me back tonight to tell me that she loved me—that’d we’d work things out, no matter the hurdles.
Remorse flooded me as my phone continued to ring, time ticking away and almost robbing me of the opportunity to answer the call that was coming in—from my brother.
Quickly, I swiped to answer and put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“What’s good, Quinndolyn?” my brother said in greeting, and I smiled despite the unwelcome weight in my chest.
“Not much, Den. Not much.”
“Wow. That was seriously depressing. All’s not well on Romance Island?”
“Why does it necessarily have to do with Cat?” I deferred, wondering how he could so easily read me, but after so many years, I’d still been clueless enough to fail him.
I resolved to do better. To be better for him. He deserved a champion who didn’t provide different support based on conditions. He deserved my conviction, not hesitancy, when it came to dealing with my parents, and I swore to myself right then I would change. Denver would never feel like he was fighting that fight alone.
“Well, for one, it’s always about the girl. Watch a chick-flick, for God’s sake. And for two, you never ever sound glum unless it’s about something important. Ergo, new hottie in your life.”
After a deep sigh, I sat down, leaned into the stairs behind me, and explained, “I took her to meet Mom and Dad this weekend.”
“And you didn’t call me?” he shrieked.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” I said with a wince. My eardrum would be ringing for days.
“Well, no wonder you’re in a bad mood. A visit to the Wicked Witch of the Deep South and one of her royal monkeys will do that to you.”
I smiled at his colorful description of our parents, despite the leaden memories of our visit running through my mind. “They weren’t welcoming.”
“What a shock,” he deadpanned.
“They’re not always terrible,” I said automatically, my default setting to defend them. I slapped myself mentally for the offense.
“Yes, yes, they are. Not to you, maybe. Mr. All American, football, perfect, straight son. But to a boy who likes boys or a little mixed-race hottie—”
I was all ready to jump in and tell him I was sorry—tell him he was right about my parents—when what he said registered fully.
“Wait a second. Did I tell you she isn’t white? Did Mom and Dad tell you?”
His voice was blunt. “No, honey. The tabloid I’m looking at right now while waiting in line to check out at Kroger did that.”
“What?” There’d been one blip of a picture in a tabloid a little while back, but the impact had been relatively little—at least, for me. I winced as I recalled Catharine’s parents finding out about our relationship that way.
“You’ve got some big problems, Quinndolyn. And they ain’t got shit to do with dear old Mom and Dad. Your girl’s just been served up to the wolves.”
Fuck. What the hell was in this thing? Were they tearing her down?
I swear to God, I’d rip those fuckers apart…
“Holy hell, the two of you were in a clinch.”
“What? Where?” I asked, feeling fucking helpless that I couldn’t actually see the pictures he was talking about and trying desperately to remember when we might have been so public with our displays of affection.
“I’m not sure. Looks like a hallway maybe. The picture’s a little grainy. But I’m having absolutely no trouble seeing that your hand is on her ass and squeezing more than a handful.”
“Shit!” I yelled, and he laughed.
“Since when do you care if someone knows about your grabbing a woman’s ass, one who’s clearly asking for it.”
“Since it could hurt the woman whose ass I’m grabbing.” The last photo they’d published of us had been PG at best, and all of the commentary had been relatively harmless. I had a feeling from Denver’s initial reaction that this was different.
“Aww,” he murmured. “That’s pretty swoony, bro.”
“Can you just send me a picture of this shit? Please. And tell me why you were being so dramatic about wolves! What are they saying about her?”
“Sure,” he acquiesced. “Just a sec.”
He disappeared from our call while I suspected he was taking the picture and sending it. A text notification signaled in my ear as he came back on the line. “Okay, sent.”
I clicked to put him on speaker and opened the text, pictures of Cat and me at the Birmingham airport the other night spilling out like all of Pandora’s evil. “The fucking airport.”
“Yes!” Denver shouted. “That’s it! It’s an airport!”
I rolled my eyes as I scrolled through the other photos, a bunch of horseshit, meant to do nothing other than tear at Cat’s value and worth. “I was there, Den. I didn’t have to solve the mysterious clues once I saw the picture.”
“Right, right.”
He waited silently while I flipped through the pictures he’d procured, reading headline after headline that went after Cat. They called her trashy and fixated on her race, and I felt a little like I was going to throw up.
I swallowed thickly, murmuring, “Oh God.”
Denver didn’t need to ask what was wrong. He already knew. “So what are you going to do?”
I shook my head and tried to focus. Tried to understand why people tried to tear others down for no reason other than entertainment value. I wanted to go back in time and fix all the wrongs—the visit to my parents, the way they’d treated her, the tasteless fucking article. But none of it could be wiped away, no matter how many calls to Nathan I made.
Maybe I should call him anyway.
“Just keep calling, I guess. Keep being there, ready to talk to her, until she’s ready to talk to me.”
“How uneventful,” he grumbled, and I sighed. My hands were tied. She was in Cincinnati and I was here, and thanks to my probationary status with the Mavericks, there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
“Den,” I called before he could hang up.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for defending Mom and Dad. Just now, and for all the times before.”
His voice was gentle to the point of tender. “You just want to see the good in everybody, Quinn. It’s one of the things I love about you. Honestly, I hoped you’d never understand the real root of them because I knew it would mean you hurting.”
My head dropped forward, the grains of the wood on my stairs swirling before my eyes.
“Just be you. Be the brother I’ve always adored, and Cat will come around. Trust me, I know. It’s absolutely impossible not to love you—even when you’re an idiot.”
“Right back at you, Den.”