I was the clean-cut kid from Nebraska. Or so the Bobcats claimed. I couldn’t afford to let anything damage that. Certainly not in my first season. There were too many ways to get bounced back to the minor league.
“She’s not going to print anything,” I said. Then I looked at Heidi.
She was flushed and angry. Her entire body was rigid with fury and her eyes blazed. But there was nothing either of us could do and she knew it. She’d come here for an interview, and now she couldn’t even print the scores without risking having that piece of filth plastered all over the internet.
“Heidi—” I pleaded, but I didn’t know where to go from there. I couldn’t fix this. I didn’t know how. Which left her blinking fast against tears she refused to let fall.
“Fuck you,” she whispered at Nico. Then she spun on her heel and left. The only thing that remained of her in the room was the Bobcats cap she’d flipped upside down on the desk.
Chapter Nine
Heidi
I slammed the door to my apartment, my eyes burning and my throat clogged with tears. Never in my life had I felt such humiliation, and it made me clench my teeth against the scream. Then I realized it was Saturday night and in this complex, I could scream all I wanted and no one would care. My next-door neighbor was playing techno loud enough to aggravate my headache. Even so, I buried my face into a pillow before I howled until I was hoarse.
And then—eventually—I stopped. It wasn’t as fast as turning off a faucet, but a girl can only scream so long until she starts searching for a weapon. Question was, what exactly was I going to grab? And how should I wield it?
I chose my phone. I wasn’t really feeling violent. I just wanted to talk to my best friend. Seconds later, she answered the phone with a sleepy, “Yeah?”
I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even midnight and I’d woken her up? “Sam? Are you okay?”
“Hmm? Oh yeah. Just fell asleep watching something. Movie, I think.”
“Wow. What happened to my party-girl, best friend?”
“School loans happened. And Janet just moved in with her boyfriend, so I’ve got to cover all the rent. Why the hell didn’t I go to bartender school? At least I would have something to do on a Saturday night.”
“Because you work ninety hours a week in real estate and will start making billions any second now.”
“Turns out it’s not so easy to make billions. And just because I got my Realtor’s license doesn’t mean I can close a sale.”
I winced. Of the two of us, I thought she’d be rolling in the dough way sooner than me. We both thought that her looks and personality would bring in the male clients. Add in her smarts and she ought to be closing deals left and right. Apparently, not so much.
“You’ll figure it out. I believe in you.”
She chuckled. “God, I love you. Now give. Why’d you really call? You’ve got that I’ve-been-screaming-into-a-pillow hoarseness.”
Did I? Yeah, well maybe my throat was a little raw. I got up to get some water while I explained. “I did something stupid. Really stupid. I even knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway.”
“Oh, those are the best mistakes.”
“They are not!”
“Did it involve blood? Brain damage?”
“No!”
“Then they’re the best mistakes.”
“Career suicide isn’t good in any way.”
She snorted. “You don’t have a career. You got laid off, remember?” I could hear her open up a soda can, and I wished I was sitting right beside her making popcorn while she poured the diet sodas. Two years ago, we would have sat facing each other on the couch, doing each other’s toenails while dishing about life. Now we had to settle for late-night phone calls to a muffled techno beat.
It totally sucked, and my misery deepened by another fathom.
“I wish you were here,” I moaned.
“Quit whining and tell me who you slept with.”
