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“Maybe not,” she counters.
Our food comes and she asks me more about Tracy, which I answer with complete transparency.
Yes, she started out as a hookup.
Yes, she became a convenient hookup.
Yes, I liked her and we dated exclusively.
Yes, we had our problems and when they never got better, I broke it off.
We order our second beer near the end of our meal, before our waiter approaches about dessert, and I ask Stevie, “You going to tell me about your mom?”
“Yeah, sure… why not,” she says as she pushes her plate away. She left a few bites of steak behind and I’m an opportunist, so I reach over and stab a piece with my fork.
Stevie smiles at the intimate gesture. “It’s not all that long of a story. She left me and my dad when I was two. Said it was too difficult to be a mom.”
“She said that to you?” I ask, horrified.
“Well, not when I was two. She told me later when I got older and asked.”
“You continued a relationship with her?”
“Not at first. She left and didn’t look back and for a long time, it was just me and my dad. She ended up getting married a few years later to a guy who had loads of money, and they had two daughters.”
“Two half sisters,” I muse.
“Liza and Maggie. They’re now twenty and twenty-one, respectively.”
“Are you close?”
Stevie’s nose wrinkles slightly. “No. A relationship was never encouraged.”
I frown at that phrasing. “What does that even mean?”
“It means my father tried… he invited the girls over, but there was always some excuse why they couldn’t come. And I was never invited over to their house.”
“What the fuck?” I growl, because despite her solid backbone, I hear the vulnerability in her tone. “You were never invited over to your own mother’s house?”
“My mom’s an odd duck. She married Cameron for his money and gave him two daughters. But she once again discovered she wasn’t mother material and left them. She ended up divorcing Cameron and he remarried. His new wife is a good mom to the girls… supposedly.”
“Do you have any relationship with your sisters?”
“Not really. It’s all very fractured and honestly… they’re a bit spoiled by their dad, and we don’t have anything in common but a deadbeat mom. We follow each other on IG and text once in a blue moon, but they have their lives and I have mine.”
“And your mom?”
Stevie doesn’t mask emotion, and I see the disappointment in her eyes. “She’s not a mom. She just couldn’t do it. She found the responsibility to be too much. It was too hard.”
“That doesn’t sound like supposition.”
“We’ve had conversations about it. She’s at least honest in her inabilities.”
“So you do have a relationship with her?”
Stevie shrugs. “I’m not sure what we have. We talk. We have lunch sometimes. She has moments when she tries to act like a mom, but that doesn’t really work for me at this stage of the game.”
“I imagine not,” I murmur.
Stevie’s smile is quick and easy. “I’ve got a healthy enough ego to acknowledge her weaknesses and know they didn’t have anything to do with me. I had a father who built me up to be the best version of myself, and while it hurt for a long time when I was younger not to be worth her effort, I made my peace with it. But still… I give her my time not because she needs it, but because I do.”
I study her a moment, focusing on her wistful words. “You want to have a mom in your life.”
Stevie laughs, clearly at herself. “I’m a glutton, right?”
I shake my head. “Not at all. You’re aiming for something you want.”
“My father says I’m destined for heartbreak with my mom. That she’s only using me.”
“Maybe,” I muse, reaching across the table to take her hand. I study the delicate bones, soft skin, and midnight polish on her nails. “But you’re ready for it. You’re older and wiser since the last time she broke your heart. You’re a tough woman with a strong parent at your back if she fails you again. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to make something with her.”
Stevie blinks at me in surprise, mouth parted slightly. I’m thinking she needed someone to give her permission to go for it, knowing it might be a flop.
And without questioning the sanity of her wanting something from a woman who hurt her.
“You’re definitely not what I expected,” she says, her eyes dropping to where I’m holding her hand.
“What did you expect?”
Her eyes lift to mine. “That you just wanted to get in my pants.”
“I totally want to get in your pants,” I tell her truthfully, because I’m insanely attracted to her. “But that’s not the primary agenda.”
“What is, then?”
I consider the question and admit a truth I’ve never told any of my teammates, especially since they all rode my ass to dump Tracy. “I think there’s this sort of image professional athletes portray, at least around each other. That we’re hot shit and can have any woman we want in our bed.”
