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Head bowed; unable to hold my tears in any longer, I let them fall. They splash to the floor, leaving mini puddles on the red tiles beneath me, making them look like shiny dots.
“Fuck. This is an emergency,” I hear Buster saying, then calls time early, closing the bar and asking everyone to leave.
I can’t look up as their patrons grumble and argue with my buddies as they herd them out of the door.
Resting my forehead on the bar, because my head feels too heavy to hold up, my body is full of nothing but sadness and regret.
“Cheers, Ricky. We’ll clean up,” I hear Leon tell him. There’s a loud clank of what sounds like someone locking the door, leaving just me and my four friends in the empty bar.
“Are you dying?” Troy tries guessing what’s wrong with me.
I feel like I am.
“Much worse.” I lift my head and stare at the mirrored wall behind the bar. The skin on my face is blotchy from crying, my eyes red and sore looking. I wipe my running nose with the back of my hand and finally tell them. “Lily moved out.”
Stunned silence, much louder than any words could express, tells me they knew this was coming.
I think we all knew this would happen, eventually.
I’ve let work consume me. Striving for success made me selfish.
I work longer and harder than anyone on the team.
None of that matters now. If I don’t have her, I have nothing.
And I took her for granted.
Eventually, she had enough. My beautiful Lily is lonely, and that’s the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, knowing I wasn’t there for her.
“Has she already gone?” Buster asks.
Dazed, I stare at my reflection, “She was too upset to drive tonight. I left her in the house.” Pausing before I admit, “I put her bags in the car for her. I don’t know why I helped her.” I should have hidden her stuff.
What a fucking idiot I am.
“She won’t be there tomorrow,” I add. Or the next day, or the day after that, or the one after that either.
Then I tell them everything. About how lonely she is, how we never have any time or energy for one another. How late I work. I’m never there for her, and the fucking kicker, no family to even keep her company.
“I couldn’t give her what she wanted,” I mutter.
“You gave her everything, Ash. But she didn’t want things.” Brayden pauses before he says what I know is coming next. “She wanted you. All of you. Not just the leftovers after everyone else had their bite of you. I don’t understand why you don’t utilize your assistant coaches more. That’s what we are there for. And you should be using the video coaches to review all the tapes, to catch the bits you don’t. You are shit at delegating.”
I've become a control freak.
Brayden grabs my face between his hands, making me look at him and squeezing my cheeks. “Is she still at the house?”
“For tonight,” I say between my squashed lips.
“You’re an idiot.” He releases his tight grip, then pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket.
“Gee, compassionate, Brayden. My world just imploded and you’re calling me names? What the fuck?” My voice raised; he’s properly got my back up. “And what else was I supposed to do? She’s moving out. I couldn’t stand and watch her leave.” My heart’s already broken. I couldn’t take much more. “I had to get out of that fucking house.”
Ignoring me, he taps on his phone, then holds it against his ear.
“Hey sweetie, can you call your mom and tell her to come over to take care of the kids? It’s just for a couple of hours.”
“You can’t tell Candy.” I try grabbing the phone away from his ear, but he bats my arm away while Buster grabs it and pushes it behind my back, locking it in place.
