Chapter Thirteen — Ben
I'm lying on the couch, trying to relax and forget the fact that everyone I know is currently at practice, when I get the text from Bubba. Hey man, check yo sex tape, it says, with a link to a Twitter video.
I roll my eyes a little but click the link.
It's no secret that I put my sex tapes up online as part of this contest with my teammates, but it's always funny to me to see which videos end up trending. Usually, there'll be a big spurt of interest at first, and then weeks will go by before anyone else watches it—and then suddenly, out of the blue, some of them will take off again.
This time, though, when I start the video in the link that Bubba's sent, I'm a little confused. I actually can't figure out which video this is—it's as though I've never seen it before. The moans sound familiar, and I recognize the way my fingers clamp possessively around the woman's hips. But it isn't until I see the cast on my ankle and hear myself ordering Marissa to do...all sorts of filthy things to me… that I really clue in.
Holy shit, this is the video I shot of Marissa the other night. The virgin Marissa. The sweet woman that opened up to me. The one I would have never tried to post our banging online.
I'm totally baffled for a second. I know that we got drunk together, but I don't think that I was drunk enough that I would have uploaded this to the internet without her knowing. And I don't think that she was drunk enough that she would have consented.
Couple that with the feeling that I don't remember ever even watching this, and I'm sure that something must be wrong here.
Thanks for leaving your phone unlocked yesterday, comes the text from Bubba, and I realize with a sinking heart that he has taken it upon himself to post the video that I never meant for the world to see.
I try frantically to delete the thing, because I know Marissa is going to flip out if she ever catches wind of this—which I'm sure she will since she's a journalist, tasked with saving the image of the Knight despite my shenanigans. But I can't delete the thing: since it was posted by Bubba, the only person who can delete it is him.
I call him immediately, but of course, he's still at practice, and he must have left his phone behind as soon as he sent me the message about checking out the damned thing.
And when I check, I realize that the video has been posted to literally hundreds of websites already, and the play count is growing obscenely. I don't care about myself being seen on video, but I know Marissa is going to be mad as hell.
And I don't know how I'm going to convince her that I never intended for this. The other night had felt good; we had clicked in a way that I basically never clicked with women. And why here I definitely didn't want to hurt her—and hell, I'd kind of been hoping that maybe we could do it again, with a little more fire next time.
That was never going to happen, not with this video out there.
As though my thoughts had summoned her call, I suddenly had an incoming call from Marissa. I grimaced and answered it, not entirely sure what I was in for.
“How could you?” she asked, but instead of the indignant screech I had kind of suspected, she was in tears, and I felt my heart break a little. “I trusted you,” she told me. “It was my first time, Ben, and I-” She hiccuped on a sob, and I winced.
“Marissa, trust me-” I began, but she didn't give me time to finish.
“No,” she interrupted. “Ben, I-” but she doesn't finish her thought either. Instead, I hear her gasp a little, and then I can hear the noisy chatter of paparazzi in the background. When you've been in the business for as long as I have, the sound is unmistakable. “You sent paparazzi to my house?” she asks, her voice a horrified whisper, and I can hear the fresh onslaught of tears in her voice.
“I didn't,” I tell her firmly. Shit, this is so bad. “Marissa, keep driving,” I tell her, making my voice as authoritative as possible. She seemed to respond to my orders the other night in bed, so I can only hope she'll respond just as easily over the phone like this. “Keep driving, and come over to my place. I need to talk to you, and I don't think-”
“The press would have a field day,” Marissa interrupts, the scorn evident in her tone. “If I go over to your place, they'll all see, and-”
“That doesn't matter,” I insist. “Marissa, trust me-”
“Screw you,” she says, and it's the first time that I hear her upset. “Ben, you've ruined my career—do you realize that? You've utterly destroyed it. Mark's already fired me, and I'm sure that now, every news agency in the country knows who I am and that I was the one on that stupid video that you posted, and-”
“I didn't post it,” I insist. “Marissa, I swear—I would never-”
“But you did, Ben,” Marissa insists, and she sounds hurt, in a way that I never wanted to hear from her. “I gave you my first time, and you… Well, you put it up on the internet so that strangers I don't even know can mock it. Everyone's commenting about-” Her voice chokes off, and she can't say anything else, and I feel horrible.
“This guy on my team, Bubba, he's the one that posted it,” I tell Marissa.
She snorts. “Why would Bubba Reade post my sex video online?” she scoffs.
And I hate to admit it, but… “Because I did the same thing not long ago,” I tell her, raking a hand back through my hair. “I mean, not exactly the same. But I saw this sex video on his phone, and it'd been a while since he'd posted anything. So I thought that I'd just post it for him and… Well, I'm sure he thought he was just doing the same thing and-”
“I got fired, Ben,” Marissa repeats, as though I might not have heard her the first time. “My career is over. And I can't do this anymore. Clearly this whole thing wasn't for me. Clearly I'm just some dumb girl who-”
“You're not,” I interrupt before she can go any further. “Marissa, god. You don't even know how beautiful you are. You're smart and you're sexy, and I started this whole thing just trying to get into your pants, but from the time we went to that children's hospital thing… You're the only person who's made me open up, in a long time. There's a reason I wanted you to be there when I was stuck at the hospital. There's a reason-”
“Ben, stop,” Marissa says, her voice sounding raw. “I can't...” She sighs. “I'm going to leave Chicago for a while,” she tells me. “And probably get a new phone number. I'm sorry, Ben, but I just can't do this. I-”
“Let me talk to Mark,” I plead with her. “This was all my fault—let me explain that to him. There's no reason you should be losing your job. If anyone should lose their job, it's me. I dragged you into this. I should never have made the video. I should have waited until you were sober before I pressured you into something that you maybe weren't comfortable with. I-”
“That wasn't what happened,” Marissa argues, and I'm glad at least to hear that much out of her. But it does nothing to really assuage my guilt; I've still lost her her job.
“Come over,” I ask her again, my voice even more pleading.
“No,” she says though. “Ben, I'm sorry, but… Well, I really can't do this. I'm packing my bags as we speak, and I'm going out to my dad's place tonight.” I can practically hear her grimace in her next words. “He follows the Kings, so I only hope he hasn't seen...”
“Come over,” I tell her instead, almost desperately—and I'm not sure why I'm so eager to prove myself to her. If it were any other woman, I'd probably be laughing this whole thing off with Bubba, thinking about how stupid she was to let me con her into taking the video in the first place. But Marissa isn't just any other girl.
“No,” she says again. “No, I...” She trails off. “I'm sorry you weren't the person I thought you were, Ben,” she tells me, her voice sounding far away and wistful. “I really thought...” She trails off again.
“Marissa, wait!” I say. But I'm talking to a dead line already.