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I’m watching how well they mingle with each other. How much they enjoy each other. How they’re laughing and thumping each other on the back.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen all this but still.
It’s so fucking strange to me.
I’ve always believed that nothing should take away from my focus.
Not friends, not parties. Nothing should stand between me and the game.
I don’t think that I’ve ever thumped anyone on their back. Well, unless they’ve scored a goal on the field, but still.
As I look at them now, I wonder.
Maybe there’s another way. Maybe I should try to… enjoy things more, for the lack of a better word.
But then all my thoughts vanish except for one.
Sarah.
She’s just entered the room and I viciously take a gulp of beer from the forgotten bottle in my hand.
For a second there I thought it was her.
The girl with thirteen freckles and witchy eyes. That’s what she calls them; she told me one night.
“See how they turn up.” She pointed to the corners, sitting on my motorcycle, her legs dangling. “My eyes are witchy. Like my name. Salem. It’s a witchy name, isn’t it?”
She blinked up at me with such a wide, innocent look that I bit out, “Says who?”
“I don’t know. People.”
“Fuck people.”
She smiled then. “So do you think you like it?”
“If I say yes, you won’t make me write a poem about it, will you?”
“Shut up. Do you think you do?”
“I think I’ve never met a Salem before you.”
“Yeah?” She grinned. “So I’m your first Salem?”
"Yes.”
“Good. Because you’re my first Arrow too.”
She blew me a kiss then and I had to retaliate. I had to eat up her lips, painted with I Jinx U and her smile.
It’s not her though.
It’s not the girl with witchy eyes, it’s her sister.
The girl who betrayed me. The girl who catches my eye a second later and begins to walk toward me.
I clench my fingers around the bottle as I see her approach.
Back when I first started dating her, she was pretty. Hot too.
But over the years, she’s turned into a beauty. In a tight but tasteful black dress, she is easily the most beautiful woman in the room.
Someone I could have by my side while I focused on soccer. Someone who’d travel with me if she wanted to but have her own career, someone who knew how to handle the attention that being with an athlete brings.
Sarah was a perfect partner.
Well, until she wasn’t.
Until she chose to fuck my friend behind my back.
“Hi,” she says as soon as she slides the glass door open and steps outside.
I take a pull of the beer. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
It’s the truth.
She still lives in our apartment and so I chose to stay at a hotel for the duration of the week, which reminds me that I’ll have to look for a different place before I move back.
Apart from that she has been scarce from all the events, which has been welcome but pretty strange. Given the fact that her team came up with this whole bullshit idea.
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Bobby is my friend too. Plus it’s business. Everyone from the team and management is here.”
“Except your new boyfriend.”
I was wondering if I’d finally see Ben.
Like Sarah, I haven’t seen him all week and I’m guessing it’s because everyone is trying to keep us apart.
Good thinking.
“I told him not to come,” she replies. “I knew you wouldn’t like that.”
“Still taking care of me, huh?”
This time when I clench my fingers around the bottle, I almost feel the glass give under the force of my grip.
She sighs, a frown adorning her face. “I told you, A. I still care about you. That doesn’t go away just because of what happened between us. We were together for eight years.”
“Yeah, or maybe you’re afraid that I’ll break his jaw again.”
Sarah steps closer to me and I’m hit by her familiar scent of lilies. “You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t. You care about the game. You care about your place on the team. You’ve worked so hard for it. You wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. I know you.”
Well, she does know me.
Because she is right.
I can’t afford to lose my place on the team. I’ve worked very, very hard for it.
I’ve worked my entire life for it.
I’ve worked my entire life to be The Blond Arrow, my father’s son.
And as angry as I am at the sight of my ex-girlfriend, I’m not going to wreck my life’s work for her.
I refuse to break another rule.
Especially for my ex-girlfriend.
“You know, the therapist you found me?” I say, massaging the neck of the bottle. “I’m not sure she’s as helpful as you think she is.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means that I’m very close to stopping giving a shit and breaking something. So if you don’t want to get caught in the middle of it, you should leave.”
