Page 55 of Base Block

I nodded and hurried from the bar, rushing to my rental car. As soon as I was seated in it, I looked for the picture…shoot. It was awful! At least there were no other posts about me from the account, just this one, terrible image.

Sage. It had to have been—or Millie? Because who else would have had access to a reject shot from two years ago? I was afraid to read what people were commenting on it, if they mentioned Callum. Of course they would! And he was now the official face of a local restaurant, one owned by a former Woodsmen offensive lineman, and he was going to get paid for wearing a particular brand of cleats. Would they take those things away because I looked like a drugged-up slut?

Maverick acted even worse when I got home that night, running around and barking until I took him out for another long walk that didn’t seem to tire him at all. “You’re supposed to make me feel safer,” I told him. Instead, I was only more upset. Callum would call to check in but he never looked at social media unless I showed him something, and I didn’t want to bring this up before his game tomorrow. Jory Morin had a sore knee so Callum was definitely going to play and would I mess that up for him?

But the truth was that I didn’t want to tell him at all. I didn’t want him to see that picture, although he had seen me when I looked even worse. I thought of myself in the gold dress, which I had finally thrown away when we’d moved out of the motel and into this condo. I had been a complete and total mess the night we’d met, but he had liked me anyway. At least, he had felt sorry enough for me that he’d let me stay in his house. He still seemed to like me, even more now.

He did call and my mood was hard to hide. “I just miss you,” I said when he wondered why I sounded weird.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “Did the dog do something?”

“He ate my flip-flop.”

“We can get other—”

“No, it was one of the pair that I got when we went shopping in Indianapolis, when I was going to get on the bus to leave but then you said that I could stay. I wanted to keep them.”

“Those shoes don’t matter,” he said.

“They do. That’s why I have the orange juice bottle, too, so I can always remember how I showed up at your house and you pushed me into your trunk—”

“Hell, that sounds terrible! I was trying to keep you safe,” Callum said.

“I know. You were great and I was keeping the shoes because I want to have mementos now. And he ate one.” I needed my mask of calm, because I was doing the opposite of what I had wanted. He didn’t need to be worrying about me instead of the other team and what he needed to do to win.

So next I announced, “I don’t really care about the shoe. I’m frustrated because Maverick was hard to deal with today but he and I are doing a lot better than before. We’ll have a great day tomorrow.”

“Maybe we should get some kind of trainer.”

No, we didn’t need to spend more money. I had tried to anticipate how expensive a dog would be, but I had been totally wrong so far. Costs had been more than twice (2.1 times) what I’d predicted. “I’m going to ask Anara to help me,” I said. “She’s really good with animals and when she was over here today, he behaved himself perfectly.” It was only with me that things fell apart.

“Ok, that sounds good.” And he sounded relieved. “How was your night with Victoria? You got home early.”

“I have to work tomorrow,” I explained. My job had been presenting a real problem, also larger than what I’d anticipated. No one had taken care of Aunt Simone’s dog when we had left the house, although that had happened rarely enough. But when I went to work, Maverick went to a daycare because he couldn’t be left wandering the condo and eating everything. I was supposed to provide them with a schedule—something that was hard, because my hours were still strange and there was no consistency. Like, suddenly Beau had scheduled a meeting for Saturday morning and I needed to be there, but the daycare place liked their clients to be predictable. That was supposed to be better for everyone.

I asked him about his hotel and we chatted for a while, about ideas for the Thanksgiving party and Anara’s latest wedding plans. Things seemed ok until it was time to hang up so that he could get enough sleep to be ready for the next day.

“I still feel like something’s wrong with you,” Callum told me.

“What? No.”

“Yeah, I think so,” he disagreed.

“If there was something, it wouldn’t be a big deal. And we could talk about it when you got home instead of you worrying about it now, since it isn’t a real issue. It would be minor, ok?”

“Ok,” he answered slowly, and I told him good luck and of course, I would be watching. Beau had scheduled our meeting early so that it would end well before game time, because he was also a huge Woodsmen fan and wouldn’t have missed it himself. He had shown me pictures of his son in a custom orange outfit that he’d designed and had made, and that I thought the team might have wanted to market it for babies everywhere.

The next morning, I rushed to get the dog to his daycare and myself to work. After the meeting and trip back to the daycare, I went home to watch the action alone (except for Maverick, of course). It was strange to sit in front of the TV without my new friends, but I’d decided that I needed time away from Anara.

Also, I was afraid that they might have seen the post about me. I had reported it but it was still there when I made myself check. I didn’t look at the comments and I didn’t look at our accounts, either. Everyone had probably seen by now and they were asking themselves if everything I’d posted before had been a lie—and it was. I had pretended that Callum and I were a couple and I had pretended that my past didn’t exist, but there it was staring with heavy-lidded, glazed eyes from that awful picture. The best thing would have been to post something fun and distracting, like when Damian had fainted at a restaurant after he was served a beef kabob instead of tofu and Matheus had to carry him to the car in his arms, like a baby. Millie had immediately filmed me and Sage dancing to one of his songs and rubbing up on him.

I tried to put it out of my thoughts, which was easier because the game was great and Callum was playing so well. And luckily, Maverick hardly stirred during the action—maybe he had picked up on the scent of my extreme focus? We went for a long walk during halftime and I told him my opinion of how things were going, and while I talked and we listened to Herb and Buzz report, he didn’t seem to pull as much. At least my shoulder didn’t hurt when we got home, just in time for the second half to start with Callum on the field.

“You were so good,” I texted him after the clock expired. Of course the Woodsmen won when he was out there.

It had been a different experience for me to watch alone, not as fun as in the past, but it had also been great in taking my mind off that stupid post of “Roxy.” Unfortunately, everything came right back into focus as I lay in bed, listening to Maverick whine although I’d walked him again after the game. I wanted to see what people were commenting but at the same time, I couldn’t bring myself to even look. I also couldn’t sleep so I was still awake when, hours later, I heard the front door open.

Maverick immediately started to bark.