Chapter 49

Ryan

I had so much crazy going on in my head, I needed a way to release it before some poor soul walking past me on the street got the brunt of it. So, I joined Alec at the athletic club and took out my aggression on the racquetball court and on my unsuspecting best friend. With every swipe of my racket, I growled, hitting the ball as hard as I possibly could. It felt good to release some of the anger that had built up inside of me, but apparently to everyone else, I looked like a nutcase.

“Hey, hey,” Alec said, putting his hands up in the air. “I would wave a white flag if I had one. You’re about to take my head off with that ball, and I swear if that racket flies out of your hand, it’s going to end up taking down one of the poor saps standing on the sideline.”

I put my hands down on my knees and breathed heavily, giving in to his call for a cease-fire. Alec handed his racket to one of the kids on the sideline who worked there and walked over to me. He patted me hard on the back and chuckled.

“So, uh, do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” he asked. “Or do you just want to continue to try to kill me with the racquetballs? If I did something to you, a conversation would work a lot better than murder in the athletic club, especially in front of all of these people.”

“I don’t want to talk,” I said, tossing my racket to the kid and walking to the side to get my towel.

“Come on, man, you can’t hold this shit in forever,” he said. “I know you’ve had a rough go at it lately with that story of your past coming out and everything, but you’ve got to move forward, or you’ll never continue to build your company. I think you’re being too pessimistic anyway. I think in the end, that story coming out is going to do you some good. These old guys, the ones with the money, they like a good rags to riches story, and I think they’ll respect the balls it took for you to climb back up to the top.”

“Man, I don’t give a shit about that story anymore,” I said. “It happened, I said my piece, and now I have to try to move forward and wait for the drama with the damn reporters to die down enough to see where I stand.”

“So, what is it then?”

“I miss Sara,” I blurted out loudly. “She’s fucking gone, and she didn’t even say goodbye.”

“Ahh,” Alec said, nodding his head. “I forgot she left like that. I’m sorry, man. I know she was really important to you. I don’t blame you at all for missing her. She really cared about you. I could see it in her eyes that time we went out sightseeing. She gushed about you and about her feelings for you. It made me think for a second that I wanted to find me a woman like that, and then I remembered how much I like to be single.”

“Yeah,” I scoffed. “I can’t see you settling down until you’re at least sixty, and even then, I think you’ll be patrolling the damn senior cruise circuit.”

“Hey, I have put some thought into that.” He chuckled. “I want to know how long I’ll have options, and it’s looking pretty good out there. I go through the single girls, the divorced ones, and then on to the lonely widows. It’s a never-ending pool of women out there for me. You can have the same thing, man. You just have to loosen up a little bit.”

“I don’t want that,” I said, shaking my head. “I want Sara, but I royally fucked it up so bad I don’t even know if I’ll ever see her again.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “These things have a way of working themselves out.”

“If it were the first time she broke things off with me, I would say you were right, but this is the second time, and I sure as hell deserved it,” I said, walking back out on the court and waiting for him to take sides. “Everything had been so fucking perfect, dude. It really had been. I thought for sure this time she was going to stick around, that we were going to finally have a chance at things, and then I took shit out on her, and I regret every second of it. She was perfect.”

“Yeah, she was quite the catch. You probably shouldn’t have thrown her back.”

“I didn’t throw her back,” I groaned. “She jumped out of the fucking boat.”

“Wow,” he said, laughing. “I mean I’ve been on your boat before, and it’s pretty nice.”

“You’re a pain in my ass,” I said, shaking my head. “Like seriously a pain in my fucking ass. Do you ever take anything seriously?”

“I do,” he said. “But right now, I’m just enjoying watching the pity party you’re throwing yourself. I don’t blame that unfortunate thing at all for making the jump into the deep blue sea. If I had to deal with your terrible attitude, I might jump and keep swimming, never looking back. You aren’t yourself, and it’s to be expected, but damn, dude. You really know how to put yourself in a worse place than you already were.”

I shook my head and reared back, hitting the ball as hard as I could at Alec’s head. He dove to the right and landed on his back, looking over at me and laughing. I shook my head and took the next ball from the kid on the sidelines and hit another one and another, watching them bounce off the wall as Alec lay on the floor with his hands under his head just watching the show. Sometimes I wondered why I kept him around, but as he clapped for my monstrous attempts to get my anger out, I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Hey,” he yelled from the floor. “I think you got it all out. Come on, let’s head to the locker rooms and shower.”

I hit one last ball and tossed my racket to the kid, walking over and helping Alec up off the floor. We headed to the locker rooms, and I took a quick shower to wash off all the sweat and met Alec in the changing area. We put our street clothes back on and threw our towels in the hampers. I walked, put my foot up on the bench, and started tying my shoe. Alec closed his locker and sat down next to me.

“So, in all seriousness,” Alec said. “How intense had things gotten between you and Sara?”

“Pretty serious,” I said, feeling an ache in my chest. “Pretty damn serious, at least on my end. I’ve done my fair share of dating and had my fair share of women, you know that. I was a playboy like the publications said. You know I never took that shit too seriously. But with Sara, it was different.”

“How so?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, sitting down on the bench and staring at the lockers in front of me. “I wanted to protect her all the time, keep her safe from everything and everyone who wanted to do her harm. I wanted to be with her whenever I could possibly swing it, and when she looked at me, it was like I had to be a better man if for no other reason than to give her a man she deserved.”

“Wow, bro,” he said. “That sounds incredibly intense.”

“It is, or was,” I sighed. “I’ve never felt that way about a woman before. I had never even come close to feeling that way about a girl.”

“Not even the Russian?” he chuckled.

“I never cared about her,” I snorted. “It was about the excitement and the fun. You know that. It would take a crazy person to have feelings like that for that woman. She’s insane, and you can’t trust her as far as you could throw her.”

“So, would you say that with Sara, it was the dreaded four-letter word?”

I sat there for a moment thinking about it, not saying a word. I knew if I hadn’t already fallen for her, I was definitely close. Everything about the way I felt about her screamed love, but it was hard to imagine that I could have lost something that important. It made it hard to breathe to even think about.

“Look, man, I know I give you a tough time,” he said. “But if you love her, that’s a really good thing, something you deserve to have.”

“It was something I had, remember?” I said. “I fucked it up.”

“If it’s love,” he said, shaking his head. “You need to go to her, no matter what it costs. You need to win her back any way you can. Otherwise, you’re making the choice to be completely miserable for the rest of your life.”

“I know,” I sighed.

“And, if you do decide you love her, you make that huge, gigantic gesture, and you win her back, you have to remember one thing,” he said.

“What’s that, love guru?”

“You’ll still end up miserable for the rest of your life,” he said. “Because marriage is just a slow descent into death. It will be a quiet hell, but at least you won’t be alone in it. You’ll be able to torture each other and hopefully, if the cards are in your favor, torture some kids too with your bickering and hateful love.”

Alec stood up and turned toward me with a toothy smile. He reached his hand down to help me up, and I took it, scrunching my forehead. I opened my mouth to say something but stopped myself, deciding to raise one eyebrow instead.

“I feel like that was a pep talk, but then it got really weird at the end,” I said. “Are you advocating that I get her back, or are you advocating that I kill her? Your thoughts are really confusing me right now.”

“I’m advocating free love,” he said, laughing putting his hands up in the air. “The hippies really had something to that, you know? No marriage, no commitment, just doing it wherever and with whoever you pleased. No crazy bitches knocking on your door and no walk down the aisle that eventually would lead to a walk into the attorney’s office.”

I sighed and shook my head, grabbing my bag. I knew Alec disapproved of marriage. He had good reason. His own parents had a very nasty, long, and drawn out divorce when he was younger, but still, I kind of felt like he was being a tad melodramatic about the whole thing. But that was Alec, dramatic to the core about everything. Still, the first part of his advice actually made some sense. Could I go to her and make that romantic gesture? She had given me a second chance before, and I didn’t even have to beg, borrow, or steal for it. Just being me got her back into my arms. I just wasn’t sure if she would be willing to do it again, or if I was brave enough to throw myself out there for another chance. It could easily turn into yet another broken heart.