Chapter Seventeen
Heidi
I held it together long enough to push into my crappy apartment. But the moment I saw my packed boxes, I completely lost it. I stumbled to my bed and sobbed for an eternity. That’s the problem with living alone. There’s no one there to comfort you. No one to buy you ice cream when you feel shitty. And no one to pull you out of the doldrums unless you call them yourself. Which is what I eventually did, though God knows it took more energy than I thought I had to finally press Samantha’s speed dial number.
And then between choking sobs, I told her the whole fucking story. Every word, every mean bitchy thing I thought, and all the ways I wanted to die or strike out or just hide until it was all over. Samantha listened to every word and then, when I’d finally gone silent, she asked one question.
“So you just left and called me?”
I sniffed, then grabbed another tissue. “I cried for a couple hours first.”
“Oh.”
Shit. I knew that tone of voice. It was the one she used when she was holding back her real thoughts. “What? Just say it.”
“It’s just that you’re so black and white sometimes. I don’t get it.”
“What?”
She sighed. “Look, I’m with you one hundred percent. Whatever you need, I’m with you. But let’s just take a look at what happened, okay? Way back at spring break, you decide to cut loose a bit. But instead of a bit, you have this great sex-a-thon with a hot guy. But when he has to go back to his life, you mope over him for months. And that’s nothing compared to the way you cyberstalked him for years.”
“I never cyberstalked him!”
“Please. You’ve read every article written about him.”
“There hasn’t been that much!” Then I moderated my voice when I realized how crazy I sounded. “I mean, he wasn’t that big a deal until he made it to the majors.”
“Right. So let’s look at that. You do this Hail Mary pass at work and when that doesn’t work, you give it all up in favor of another sex-a-thon.”
“It didn’t happen like that!” I huffed.
“Of course, it did. I’m not judging. God knows, I thought it was great. Except that you did it at work and got caught on video. Are you seeing a pattern here? It’s a scorched-earth thing. You can’t seem to cut a little bit loose. You just dive in whole hog and let everything else go to hell. And then you’re surprised when the rest of the world can’t keep up.”
“That’s not what happened,” I protested, though I was thinking hard about her words. Nothing she said was wrong exactly, but it wasn’t exactly right, either.
“So now we’re up to your weekend in Nebraska. I get that it was a great weekend, but Heidi, it was one weekend and suddenly you turn in your press credentials and go move in with him.”
“I was fired! And you told me to!” I crumpled the tissue in my hand before throwing it into the wastebasket.
“Yeah, I did because I thought you could spend the time having fun and relaxing between sex-a-thons. We both forgot he has a job. More than a job—a multimillion-dollar career in baseball. And yeah, he’s definitely a shit for the way this played out, but you don’t want to be the hot girl on his arm at media events.”
I shuddered. “Never.”
“So you were going to keep this low-key while he does the publicity dance with bitch-face.”
“Brittany.” I spit out her name like bad meat.
“He wasn’t going to sleep with her, was he?”
“He hates her.”
“Then you believe it’s a publicity stunt. A shitty one, but just a stunt, right?”
“Yeah, I do.” My voice came out low and depressing. Because I did believe him. But I also hated him for doing it.
“So what did you lose, Heidi? You still need to find a journalism job. You never intended this to be permanent. What are you really crying about?”
I let out a slow breath. “I don’t know,” I muttered. I both hated and loved her for making me think about this stuff. “I had this idea in my head about playing house with him. An idea, by the way, thatyouput in my head.”
