Page 46 of Playing for Love

“The kiss,” she said, lowering her head. I took her chin and lifted it, seeing the trouble in her eyes.

“It’s okay—”

“No. It’s not. I-I lured you—”

“Believe me, Mia, I was willing. You didn’t—”

“Denise put me up to it.” She blurted the words, then watched me with a pained expression. I felt suspended, not getting what the hell she was talking about.

“What?”

“I mean Denise asked me to kiss you, to tempt you into kissing me. She wanted to make you feel guilty, knew you would. Wanted to prompt you into buying her a diamond.”

I went cold, felt the betrayal squeeze my chest, churn my gut. But it wasn’t Denise’s betrayal that made me feel ill, it was Mia’s. The same kind of sick feeling I got the first time we lost in the playoffs—times a hundred.

A damn kiss shouldn’t make a grown man get tied up in knots, but it did. Maybe it was too much added to the shock of my mother’s heart attack. But I knew, we both knew what the kiss meant, that we were crossing a line, changing our relationship. Or at least that’s what I’d thought.

“So the kiss meant nothing to you but a plot to help Denise trap me. Is that it?”

She blanched at my accusation and I felt mixed between going for the jugular, pressing my advantage to destroy the opponent or, instead, pulling her into my arms to hug her, to erase the hurt and worry I saw on her face. I did neither.

“I was just going to call Denise,” I said. “It should be an interesting talk.” I turned from Mia, walking away without touching her, my hands shaky with the effort. She didn’t stop me.

I went farther down the corridor toward the elevator and stood in a recess in the wall that probably housed pay phones back in the day. Heart thudding, maybe I should have worried about a heart attack myself. The day had stressed me more than any day I could remember for a long time. But I didn’t go searching my memory too hard to find one. Instead, I took a deep calming breath, focused on the task at hand and pulled out my phone.

Denise’s number was the first on my favorites list, the only one with a photo icon next to it. I stabbed at her face, allowing the one spike of anger before tamping down, knowing I wasn’t blameless. After three, then four rings, when I was about to swear aloud, Denise answered.

“Hi Gabe, honey—”

“I’m at the hospital, Denise.” First things first. I had to tell her about my mom. “My mother had a heart attack at dinner.” I paused to allow her to process the news with a screech of concern and words of consolation and the main question.

“Will she be all right?”

“She’s stable now. Mia was at dinner. She saved my mother’s life, Denise. She did CPR until the ambulance got there.”

“Oh my God. I’m so glad she was there for you.”

“Are you really?”

“What? Never mind.” She paused and I heard a shuffling as I prepared myself to tell her what I needed to tell her. She continued, “I can be there tomorrow. I can catch a flight at—”

“Don’t bother. You don’t have to come. Your good friend and accomplice Mia will sub in for you.” There was a beat of dead air. She paid attention this time, maybe registered my unfriendly tone of voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she finally said.

“Mia told me about your plan—that you wanted her to tempt me into a kiss, to cross the line, purposely wanted to guilt me into buying you a diamond, as she put it.” The pause was shorter this time.

“Don’t pretend you’re all hurt about it, Gabe, because we both know all you really care about is playing football. If I’m going to put up with that the least I deserve is a diamond ring to show for it.”

I had to give her credit for not trying to deny anything. But as the bitterness in her voice registered, I took in a long breath. Knowing she was right about my part in the demise of our relationship, my anger at being duped vaporized in one exhale.

“A fine pair we are.”

She was silent for a beat and then said, “It’s not that I don’t care about you, Gabe.”

“I know. I care about you too. Always will.”

“It’s Mia, isn’t it.” She wasn’t asking.