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“Alex, did you play in the thesaurus today?” I ask, laughing.
“Maybe.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “What do you say? Can I be your boyfriend?”
“Oh, God, you two are cute. Julius, take notes,” Autumn says as she jabs Julius in the ribs.
Alex and I laugh.
“Yeah, boyfriend has a nice sound to it.”
“Thank God.” He kisses me again, and then pulls my chair out for me. While I’m okay now, I am questioning the earlier interaction. Estelle seemed mighty pissed that Alex had moved on, which I don’t get it all. Isn’t that what people do when they break-up?
FOURTEEN
ALEX
Early morning flights, after a long night, are no one’s friend. Of course, when the Children’s Museum fundraiser scheduled their event, they had no idea we would have an away game. Coach always gives us an out, if we want to, but no one takes it. We all know it makes him proud to see us there, as a team, enriching the lives of children in Portland and the surrounding suburbs.
Dropping Kelsey off at her apartment last night and having to leave her there was pure torture. More than anything I wanted to spend the night with her. To take my time undressing her. To make love to her until it was time to leave for my flight, but I knew if I went upstairs, I wouldn’t make it back down in time. If I missed the flight, my ass would be grass, and disappointing my team isn’t worth the way she makes me feel. Neither is the fine I’d get. I had to remind myself there will be plenty of time for us once the season’s over.
The sound of the landing gear coming down wakes the entire team. The flight attendant turns on the overhead lights, and window shades start rising, letting in the sun.
“Shit, I can’t believe I slept the entire flight,” Julius says. He’s sitting next to me.
The plane we fly on is a private 737 that’s been modified for comfort with each seat similar to those you’d find in first class. It would be near impossible to seat over fifty big ass dudes on a commercial plane. Not to mention the coaching staff, team media, trainers, equipment managers, doctors, and other personnel. The list goes on and on. Only the coaches sit in first class, including Peyton. Their seats are four together, two across from each other with a table in the middle. Most of the time they work or watch game film while we’re flying. We used to tease Noah that he was going to have to sit with the coaches, but he never has and none of us know if it was something Peyton said wouldn’t happen or what.
As soon as the plane touches down, I power on my phone and toss it into my bag. It’s going to take a couple of minutes for it to cycle through and download all my notifications. The last thing I want is to feel it vibrate in my hand constantly or start answering messages and having to swipe away at the other ones.
The plane finally comes to a stop close to where our bus is. It’s still early on the East Coast and from here we’ll go to practice, then to our hotel. We have strict rules in place—no going to the bar, hotel restaurant, or ordering room service. Our meals are all prepped for us, by someone employed by the Pioneers. They work with the hotel on what the team will eat.
While I’m at the stage in my career where I can have my own room, I often offer to share. I hate being lonely, and it’s not going to hurt me to let someone sleep on the extra bed in my room. This year, I’m sharing with Riley Mitchell, the rookie center, aka my back-up in the event I need one. I won’t ever need one, but that’s beside the point.
The Pioneers travel staff is like a well-oiled machine. They work tirelessly during our away games to make sure we are well taken care of. By the time we’re off the plane and boarding the charter bus, half our equipment and bags are already transferred, and as the last rookie boards, we’re ready to head to the field.
I sit back, put my headphones over my ears, and pull my phone out of my bag. As soon as I tap my screen, dread fills my entire being. I have hundreds of notifications. Text messages from Kelsey, my mom, my sister, a ton of Maggie’s friends, and Maggie—WTF?—as well as alerts and notifications from Instagram and TikTok. There are so many, I’m afraid to open my screen to see what in the hell is going on.
Except, I have no choice. I open Kelsey’s first. She’s the only one I really want to hear from anyway. The first message is a link to a series of photos taken of us last night. I save a few of them to my phone and keep thumbing through the images she sent. My smile from seeing us together starts to fade and then morphs into a sneer. Photos of me, with other women who are not Kelsey and who I didn’t even communicate with, are on my screen. With each swipe, a new one shows. And then the icing on the cake is a slew of images of me kissing another woman. No, not just any woman, but Maggie. Maggie who wasn’t even there, but the headline states otherwise.
I know I need to read and respond to the texts from Kelsey, but I also need to see what’s being said online. I open the internet app on my phone and type my name into the tool bar, something I rarely do because I stopped caring about what people said about me a long time ago.
There’s story after story about how I left my date at the table to rendezvous with Maggie. There are so many images of us together, in compromising situations. Someone clearly spent a good amount of time photoshopping Maggie and I together. She’s on the other side of the country, for God’s sake.
And even if she was at the fundraiser, I wouldn’t have left Kelsey. At all.
But does Kelsey know that?
Kelsey Sloane
So, yeah. I woke up to these in my email. Not sure how they got my email since it’s private, but they did.
Hello?
Alex?
Are you seriously going to ignore me?
Well, you’ll be happy to know they have my phone number as well. I’ve lost count of the numbers I’ve had to block.
Seriously, Alex?
