Quinn
What did I do?
What the hell did I do?
Was it a mistake coming to the first playoff game?
I had a good reason to be there… I was a journalist. It was their first game back after the games on the road. That was a thing. That was something people cared about. I was there to report on it. That was barely true. I was a journalist, that hadn’t changed, but I had come with exactly none of the things that I would need to report anything on the game. I didn’t have my recorder, not even a pen and paper. I was there alone; I wasn’t there with a cameraman or even my own camera.
The camera that had gotten me in so much trouble before.
Oh, my god.
What the hell did I do?
Why didn’t he say anything when I asked him?
He had been so mad. I had never been scared of him the entire time that we had worked together, but when he was yelling at me to leave, to get out of his house, for the first time, I was afraid of him. I didn’t think he would try and force me out, hit me or anything, but just the sound of his voice and the look on his face was enough.
He was livid.
I had done something wrong, and I didn’t know what it was. I felt like an idiot for not knowing what I had done to affect him that deeply. I thought I knew him, or at least knew more about him than a lot of people could say that they knew.
What was it?
Why wouldn’t he tell me?
I had tried calling him and sending him messages, but he must have blocked my phone number, or he was just ignoring me.
Both were bad. Both hurt as bad as the other. He didn’t want to talk to me. That was what he was saying without saying it.
Hell, he had said it. He had told me to get the fuck out of his house. I wasn’t dumb. I knew that someone avoiding communication with you meant they did not want to talk to you. I understood that. What I didn’t understand, was what I had done to make him feel that way. He had been silent the entire duration that the Yellow Jackets were on the road. He spent his whole four-game suspension silent.
I remembered the way he had asked me to go home with him. He had wanted me to spend some if not all the time that he was going to have off with him. I had spent less than one full day.
We had had such a good time.
Such an amazing time.
The flight back… what he did when he asked me to bend over… then in the pool.
What went wrong? What the hell did I do wrong? I wanted him to tell me so I could make it right.
I watched him the whole game. I never saw him looking over at me, but I hoped he could see me. I wanted him to look at me, just so I could see something on his face rather than the look of complete rage that I had last seen.
The game ended with a victory for them. I wasn’t paying attention to the game close enough to even notice what the final score was. When the game finally came to an end, I suddenly felt out of place. I should never have come.
He had made himself clear when we were last together that he didn’t want to see me. I stood and looked for a way out. I had gotten to sit courtside because I was technically press, but now I felt too close. I wanted to leave before he came over to me. That was if he even wanted to. I didn’t want to give him that option.
If he did, what would he even say? Would he yell at me the way he had when we were at his house? I looked down and fell in line behind some people making their way out.
“Quinn.”
I jumped, hearing my name. It sounded like Dante. I didn’t turn. I kept my head down and tried to keep moving.
“Quinn.”
There it was again. He had seen me. I couldn’t pretend like I couldn’t hear because I had stopped instinctively. He was getting closer. I turned around and saw him walking up to me. His arms hung loosely at his sides, and he didn’t have the same rage in his face and anger in his voice as the last time we had talked. He had a towel around his shoulders which he had used to dab his brow and neck. He looked… like he always did. I couldn’t tell what he wanted from his stance or the way he had called to me. I took a deep breath and waited for him.
“Dante,” I said weakly.
“We have work to do,” he said. Oh. Okay. So no hello then? No nothing? He wasn’t going to say anything else? He wasn’t going to ask how I was. That was a little presumptuous to think that he really wanted to know, but I wanted to know how he was.
I felt a little abashed by the way that he addressed me. Work? I had wanted to hear him make an apology, or at least ask whether the two of us could talk. He was asking whether we could talk, but I didn’t want to talk work, I wanted to talk us. About what had happened? About what I did and about what I could do to fix it.
“What?” I asked.
“The interviews?”
Of course. The interviews. The fucking interviews. The interviews that I had brought exactly zero things to conduct with. I wasn’t even in my usual work clothes. I was in jeans and a sweatshirt. I never wore those things outside of the house. Never. Unless I was working out, or something.
I suddenly felt self-conscious. I wasn’t in heels so I was a lot shorter than him than I usually was. My work clothes were like an armor—and I didn’t have that right then. I was just standing there, bare and open to attack. He had just asked me about work, so I wasn’t sure he was going to bring the incident up, but I wanted him to. I wanted us to talk. He was talking to me now after all that silence, so I wasn’t going to just keep standing there like an idiot.
“Uh, yeah, of course. When can we get back to work?”
“Not right now. I want to head out soon,” he said.
“How about tomorrow morning? Can I come to the house?” I asked carefully.
“No. You can't come to the house. We can go somewhere. A restaurant. I can have my agent or someone text you the details.”
He didn’t want me coming to the house. He wanted his agent to text me the details. Wow. I thought we were past that. We knew each other intimately. He didn’t have to go through other people to get to me, and he had never made me go through other people to get to him. This was horrible. He was pushing me away. In Houston, he had basically asked me to move in with him, and now he didn’t want me coming to see him at home.
It was clear what he had come up to me to discuss. It was work. He wanted to talk work, and he wanted to keep it strictly professional. I didn’t.
I didn’t want to see him at a restaurant and I didn’t want his agent to text me the details. I wanted to sit down somewhere where we could be alone and tell him what I was feeling. How sorry I was and how confused I was at his behavior. I wanted him to tell me what I did goddammit.
“Dante, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry—”
“Usually, I would be excited about sitting down with you again. I know how you get after the interviews, what we end up doing together… it’s done.”
“What is done? You can’t back out of the interviews.”
“No. The interviews we can do, but everything else… it's over. I don’t want to see you unless we have an interview.”
I had been rejected in the past. It was nothing I couldn’t handle, and it wasn’t anything I was particularly mad about when it happened. This rejection, though… it stung. He was giving me what I wanted in the first place from him, professional distance, but now it came at a price.
When we would have sex, it wasn’t just the expression of the lust we felt for each other. It went hand in hand with everything he had told me. It wasn’t just fucking. I wanted to believe so much that it was, but it wasn’t. It was an extension of the intimacy that we were sharing when we talked, when he would open up to me.
He was giving himself to me when he would let me in, both in the interviews and sexually—and now, he was taking himself away. He was erecting a wall between us. It felt like a smack in the face. I didn't know what to do. I caught myself before I allowed any tears to fall.
“Dante. I’m sorry, but whatever I did I’m so sorry. Please tell me what I did wrong.”
“I don’t have time for this today. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to start walking away from me. His face, his voice, his posture, everything was strong and hard. Did he really not care? Was he really unbothered by this, and was I the only one losing my mind, desperate and on the verge of begging?
“Dante—” I grabbed his arm, making him stop and turning him to me. I searched his green eyes for something. For anything, but there was nothing. They were empty. I didn’t see the warmth, the honesty, or the affection that I had seen in them before. Not even the lust. I wanted something. Anything from him, but he was giving me nothing. It hurt.
“Quinn. Stop. Okay. Just stop.” He gently moved my hand from his arm and walked away from me.
A part of me, the idiotic part that was hung up over Dante and wasn’t thinking straight, couldn’t process what he had done and said as an absolute rejection. I was hanging onto the hope that I would receive the text message directly from him.
I didn’t.
Just like he said. I got a message from a number I didn’t recognize, asking me to meet Dante at Republique at eight in the morning.
The restaurant opened for breakfast, but I didn’t think that he wanted a breakfast date with me. I was way too nervous to eat anything anyway. I made my way to the restaurant and scanned the room for Dante. He was nowhere to be found. I asked a waiter where I would be able to find him or where I could sit to wait for him since he didn’t seem to be there yet, and I was directed to a private room. I had no idea that the place even had private rooms.
It wasn’t dark or mysterious in the room when I walked in. It looked very much just like a regular room. It was probably very expensive to eat there, but it wasn’t as if Dante couldn’t cover the cost. There was one table in there and Dante was sitting at it.
I walked over to it suddenly feeling like I was going into an interrogation. He and I were alone once the waiter left. He was sitting, but I could tell he was dressed casually, jeans and a shirt. He didn’t say anything to me so I decided to start.
“Dante—”
“Do you want anything to eat? Drink?” he asked. Why was he cutting me off so much all of a sudden? I suppose I might have deserved it since I had made him so mad somehow, but I still had no clue what I had done to him.
“No. Dante—”
“Sit down, Quinn,” he said.
I sank into the seat. There was nothing on the table between us, but I wished suddenly that there was, then I would have something to do with my hands.
“Dante…” I waited for him to stop me, but he didn’t that time. “Dante, please tell me what I did wrong. I've been wracking my brain and I can’t come up with anything. It’s been killing me to think that I did something to you. Please tell me what it is.”
“I was wondering whether you were listening when I would talk. So you do only care about what I say when the recorder is out?”
“Dante, how could you say that? Don’t just say things to hurt me. You know that isn’t true.”
“Remember early on, when we were just beginning. Remember the agreements we made. You made me agree to not do any of the things I did usually for the sake of your story series.”
“I did. And you agreed to it. Those were the conditions of our professional agreement.”
“Wow. You really did forget.”
“Forget what?”
“I asked you one thing. One thing Quinn. What was the one thing I asked you not to do?”
I sat across from him looking into his eyes. They were hard and inscrutable. It finally hit me. The camera thing. He didn’t like being recorded without his consent.
“Oh my god,” I said to myself. “Oh my god,” I leaned forward on the table, putting my face in my hands. The camera. I hadn’t told him that I was taking my camera out and that I was filming him. He probably thought that I was trying something rotten. He probably thought I was trying to take advantage of him while he was sleeping.
“You got it now? I thought you were smart, Quinn,” he said.
“I had the camera out… Dante. I broke your one condition by doing that and I apologize. It was a mistake—and I can’t make excuses for myself. I just hope you can forgive me.”
“I can’t.”
“I would never disrespect you like that on purpose. It was wrong and I’m sorry.”
“I can’t trust you again, Quinn.”
“Dante—”
“No. I changed everything about my life for you, and you couldn’t do this one thing for me? It was all I fucking asked, Quinn. I changed everything for you.”
“Dante, I’m so sorry.”
“You can’t apologize and make it better.”
“Dante. I’m sorry I made you question whether you could trust me. It was a mistake. I would never use footage of you that I took for anything against you. I would never sell it or use it for anything gross.”
“It’s too late for all that, Quinn.”
“Can I at least ask you why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you so sensitive about being filmed?”
“I’m a public figure. Do you know how much footage of me would sell for?”
“Even if you won't forgive me, I know you know I would never use footage of you for anything shady. Why are you like this about being filmed?”
He sighed deeply.
“Remember what I told you about the bullies and the bottle?” he asked, “Of course you do, your recorder was out then.”
I ignored that jab though it hurt. I quietly nodded.
“The bully, Billy… sometimes he would have his friends videotape it. Billy would hit me with the bottle while one of the others filmed. They would hold me still so I couldn’t move. They would yell at me so I could look at the camera. When I cried… they would just laugh.”
Everything he had told me had been so hard to listen to. Every time I had tried my hardest to keep it together so I wouldn’t cry. It was a bad look, and it was unprofessional, even if the story was moving. I couldn’t that time. I didn’t even try. I felt the tear run down my cheek and silently brushed it away.
“Dante…. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
It made sense. It made sense why he was so camera shy. They had been used to intimidate and humiliate him in the past. Of course, he didn’t like being filmed when there was nothing he could do about it.
He shook his head.
“You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you. It wasn’t enough that I asked you not to do it?”
“I didn’t mean any harm,” I said to him. That didn’t excuse the action, but I had to let him know, let him hear from me that whatever he thought I wanted with the footage, it was not a plot against him or anything wild like that.
“It was one fucking thing, Quinn. Why couldn’t you do it?”
“Dante,” my voice cracked as I cried, “I’m so sorry. What I did was wrong, but you have to know that I would never do anything to hurt you. I would never knowingly do anything to hurt you.”
“I used to put a lot of stock in the things you told me, Quinn, but not anymore,” he said quietly.
“Dante—”
“I trusted you with things that I have never told anybody else. I put my entire career in your hands when that crazy woman was accusing me of hitting her. I trusted you with things that you could use against me, and I believed that you wouldn’t. When I asked you not to do something that I didn’t want done, you did it anyway.”
“I’m trying to apologize, Dante. I would never—”
“But you did. You did it anyway, and now, I can’t look at you the same way, Quinn. I can’t look at you and see the woman I trusted and thought wouldn’t do me wrong. It's too late. You’ve ruined it. I don’t care what you write in your stories. I don’t care whether or not you believe me anymore. I’m done. I felt… I felt something special with you, Quinn. I did, but now… I feel nothing. I owe you nothing. The season is nearly over. You can have your interviews, but that’s it. I don’t want to see you without that recorder in your hand. I don’t want to talk to you unless it is for work. I don’t want to hear from you unless it is to ask where and when we should meet for work.”
“Dante… I’m not going to sit here and try to understand the trauma that seeing what I was doing must have brought up for you. I won't try and convince you of anything. All I can do is tell you the truth and hope you have it in yourself to believe me.”
I couldn’t imagine how my face must have looked. I had given up on wiping the tears and they were just flowing down my face.
“There's nothing to be sorry for, Quinn, because I can’t forgive you. I won't, and you can’t ask me to. If you want to talk to me, do it through your network rep. Don’t call me again.”
He got up and left the room without a look back in my direction.
I felt sick.
I hated that he was angry at me. I hated that I had done what I had to him. It was the one thing that he asked me to do—and I didn’t do it. It was all he asked. I had asked him to practically become a different person and all he had asked was I respect his one wish.
His anger hadn’t been explosive like it had been at the house, but the silent, stony anger that he had just now was almost worse. He looked at me like he hated me. He had good reason to, but when he was yelling, at the very least you could say that there was passion there and passion was something that was applied to both negative and positive emotion.
I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. I couldn’t imagine being in that position as a child, overpowered and humiliated in that way. I felt like the worst piece of shit, having made him feel anything like the way he must have felt at the time. When he was angry at me in the house, it wasn’t just anger. It was terror—with trauma and fear mixed in with it, too. It was something he had probably fought for years to overcome back in his life again. And I was the one who did it to him.
I shattered like a mirror when the door closed. I put my head in my hands and I sobbed. Why did this feel so painful? Why did this feel like a loss? A real loss. There was the guilt that I was feeling over making him feel any of the pain from his past again, but there was something else. The only other time I had felt this way was when I was going through a breakup.
It just didn’t add up, though. It wasn’t a breakup. For it to be a breakup we would have to be… together.
It hit me, and when it did, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized. We were together. Dante and I were together. That was why this felt like a breakup. We had never stated it, but we were seeing each other exclusively. We were romantically intimate, and we were personally intimate, sharing our inner selves, him with me primarily.
I could only speak for myself. Dante Rock had me. He had me, and it was more than just the sex. I had fallen for the man he was when we were alone. He was always arrogant and pushy, but he was deep and insightful, too. He was fearlessly honest with me, and he had stood in the memories of things that were traumatic to relive.
I felt so stupid. I felt stupid because how many other people thought they loved Dante Rock, too. I felt it again because not only did I love him, I had him. I couldn’t speak for him, but I knew. I knew that what I felt was not just one sided. There was something there on his end, too. It might not be as strong as what I feel, or as deep, but there was something. If he tried to deny it, then I knew he would be lying.
Dante was mine…and I had lost him.
I had to get him back. I had to do something. Anything. I was ready. I was not too proud to beg him, but that would only make him mad. If nothing else, I had to make him see that it was nothing that I was trying to do to hurt him. My words weren’t going to cut it. He didn’t want to hear them. That was fine. I would just have to act.