“No, I don’t mind. We’ve been together for ten years and married for seven.”
“Wow. Congratulations. Is it everything you’d thought it be?”
“Marriage or being the wife of somebody in the league?” she asked.
I shrugged before taking a sip of my champagne. “Both, I guess.”
“It’s definitely an adjustment, and with everybody thinking they know your every move, it can get annoying sometimes, but as long as you know who you married, or in your case, dating, then you gotta be able to overcome the bullshit if he’s who you really want.”
I gave her a warm smile. “Yeah, I’m not sure I’m ready for the limelight and all that comes with it. Being famous was never something I wanted to be.”
“He’ll always be the famous one, honey, while some only see us as glorified groupies who lucked-up and got rings.”
I nodded, appreciating the gems she dropped about her experience as a wife, and I tried my best not to let her get in my head. I knew damn well I was more than a glorified groupie.
“Well, the game is about to start. I’m going to get back over to my seat. You’re more than welcome to come sit with me and a few of the other ladies if you want,” she suggested.
“Thanks, but I think I’m going to kick it here for a while and watch the game. I might join you ladies at halftime though.”
“Sure. Suit yourself. Enjoy the game.”
Hendrix’s sweat-sheened skin looked so good playing under the bright arena lights as the jumbotron camera zoomed in on him. He was on fire, dropping twenty points before the half. After a few moreglasses of champagne, I’d loosened up enough to cheer him on out loud when he made a basket and move over to meet Tori’s friends. By the middle of the third quarter, my feet hurt from jumping up every few seconds, and my voice had gone hoarse from chantingdefensewith all the other rowdy spouses in the suite. I was more than ready to head back to the hotel, shower, and wait in the bed for Hendrix like he’d asked. When I was too worn out to stand up, I scrolled through my news feed when my heart dropped to the soles of my yelping dogs. Suddenly, the posts on my feed had gone from hilarious photos of the Elf on the Shelf to photos of Hendrix and another woman flooding my timeline. I looked up and saw everyone’s eyes focused on me, including Tori’s.
She drifted over to me with a look that told me she already knew where my head was at from past experience. “Are you okay?”
“I—I gotta go,” I stammered, realizing that wearing Hendrix’s name across my back made me even more of a target.
Unable to hold my head and face the ridicule and embarrassing stares a second longer, I ducked out of the suite, pulled off the jersey, and tossed it in the first trash bin I could find before darting out of the arena before the game ended.
four
. . .
Hendrix
We won the game 110 to 87, and I couldn’t have been happier. I’d been riding the high of a three-game winning streak and coming out on the winning end against my old team had been icing on the cake. I figured the dip inside Cassidy I’d taken before the game was a good luck charm. On my way out of the arena, I pulled my phone out of my bag to call and ensure she was naked and in my bed as I’d requested. Before I could navigate to dial her number, I noticed I had several missed calls and unread texts. I instinctively knew something bad happened. In fact, I’d miscalculated how bad things were. It turned out the paparazzi had leaked photos of me with a woman outside of my hotel after an away game in Phoenix. The way the photos were angled, it looked like we were kissing, when in reality that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“Man, fuck!” I barked, ready to toss my phone in the trash.
I quickly called Cassidy and was sent straight to voicemail. Then, I called my agent, knowing I was possibly facing a PR disaster. Hours before Christmas, my face was splashed across every tabloid magazine and blog in the country over some shit that I knew looked worse thanit was. I knew if Cassidy had gotten wind of it, she was going to be expecting an explanation.
When I got back to the room, all her things were gone. I pulled out my phone to call her over and over, leaving a slew of voicemails in my wake.
“You’ve reached Cassidy. Leave a message after the beep,”her voice recording echoed through my speakerphone.
BEEP
“Cass? It’s me. Answer your phone. Where are you? I’m in the room and all your shit is gone.”
BEEP
“Listen, I know you probably have a million questions running through your head right now, let alone people in your ear. I just wanna talk, aight? Please, just call me back. Did you get another room? Just tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you.”
Anger seared my skin as I spent the next hour calling her while waiting for her to call me back. On what seemed like the hundredth time I’d called, she answered.
“What do you want?” she asked as if I was nothing but a nuisance to her.
A frown etched into the side of my mouth. “What the fuck you mean, what do I want? I wanna talk to you, Cass. I’ve been calling your ass non-stop for the past hour!”
