The Option Play, page 3
He still didn’t speak and for some reason, my voice kept emerging to fill in the silence.
“If my dress was see-through, I’d get in huge trouble. I only get one other strike before I lose my job, just like in baseball, I can have two—I mean, you get three strikes in baseball, but in my case...”
The way he stared at me reminded me of how you might look at a kid who was picking his nose. It was like Karma was disgusted by what he saw but still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
“I’m letting go of you,” he announced, and did. His hands released my arms and I realized that he had probably been holding me away from himself, like it was for his own protection. “I’m not signing an autograph or taking a picture,” he informed me.
“I don’t want a picture with you! If I did, I could get one anytime. I’m a Wonderwoman,” I explained.
“You’re Wonder Woman?”
“I’m a Woodsmen football cheerleader. I’m on the Wonderwomen cheer squad. We’ve met, kind of.” It didn’t seem like he remembered. “At the stadium, there was a meet and greet with all the staff and we were introduced to each other, the players and the cheerleaders and security people, ops people…”
A drop rolled off his belt and plopped onto my toe. “Oh, you’re so wet!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.” I put down the half-empty pitcher of water and used that hand to wipe at the front of his pants. They were really nice, not just jeans or something, and I hoped my remark about everything coming out in the wash had been true.
“What are you doing?” he asked me. “Stop. Now.”
I did. “Sorry,” I repeated. “At least it isn’t so cold out anymore, so nothing’s going to freeze. I meant your clothes! At least your clothes won’t freeze, is all I was trying to say. I wasn’t referring to your…you know, your penis. I don’t actually think that happens. Does it?”
He just stared at me, that same kid-eating-a-booger expression and it started to make me mad. It had been an accident, something that could have happened to anyone in a crowded bar! I opened my mouth to tell him that and also that this wasn’t, as my mom often said, the end of the world. But I got interrupted.
“Caitlyn!” a voice bellowed from across the room.
I turned away from the wet football player and toward Brown, my ex. A lot of other people in the Silver Dollar turned to look at him too because of how loud he’d been, and we all saw him stand and dump Shae off his lap and onto the floor. Then he bolted across the bar, right towards me but in a weaving, wavy way that told me how much he’d been drinking tonight. He almost fell and had to grab onto a table, but he made it over.
Just before he crashed against me, a long arm shot out from over my shoulder and Kellen Karma’s big palm planted in the middle of Brown’s chest. It stopped my ex’s movement but not his mouth, which was yelling again. He was talking about me and Karma but it didn’t make any sense.
“What the hell are you doing?” Brown asked me. “Are you with him, now?” He swayed on his feet. “Was this what you were waiting for? You were holding out for a football player? Were you actually cheating on me with him?”
He was so loud. The bar had been noisy and bustling just a moment before but now everything was dead quiet.
“No!” I said. “How dare you, Brown? I don’t have to explain anything to you, not anymore. I shouldn’t even talk to you.” I directed my eyes to a place above his head. “I’m not, either. Go away.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he answered immediately. “I’m sorry, Caitlyn.”
“Those were mean things to say and also not true at all,” I informed him. “And that’s not the first time that you’ve been a real jerk to me.”
He nodded, leaned and almost fell, but straightened. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said those things to you, all of them. I’m ashamed of myself and I’m so sorry, baby. I miss you.”
“You do?”
He nodded, making himself sway. “I messed up. I lost the best girl in the world and I’ll never forgive myself.”
I thought I heard Karma make a noise, kind of like a snort. But when I glanced back at him, his face hadn’t changed.
“Can’t we hang out again?” Brown asked. “You and me?” The smile he gave me was only a sloppy, drunken version of his usual charming grin, but it was still pretty charming. And the words were super slurred, but they were so nice. He was sorry. He was worried about me talking to another guy and he missed me. He hadn’t meant what he’d said and he realized that it had been a mistake. All in all, it was everything I’d been hoping for and waiting to hear for the last few weeks.
“Brown,” I answered, and felt myself start to smile too.
He stepped toward me, kind of lurching, and he reached out. I raised my hand to take his but he stumbled again. His momentum carried him forward and he grabbed the top of my dress instead of my hand. And when he fell, he took the fabric with him. It yanked on my shoulders and I almost fell, too.
The ripping sound was so loud that for a second, I was shocked by the volume of it—and the next second, I looked down and saw that my dress was torn completely open. The two sides flapped apart and there I was, in my bra and underwear in front of everyone in the bar. In front of all their phones, which were out and filming, flashing, because of the presence of a Woodsmen football player. I froze for much too long, staring back at the faces and the lenses all focused on me.
“Mercy!” I spun around to hide myself and pressed my face against the body behind me. The large, muscular body of Kellen Karma.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, and he held my arms again like he was going to remove me from his chest and expose me to the room for a second time.
“My dress! He tore my dress!” I croaked out. I heard Brown getting up from the floor and saying my name. His heavy, dragging fingers landed on my shoulder, and Karma pushed him off me.
“Get out of here, you drunk asshole. Here.” That last word was for me. “Take this and go.” I felt his body shifting but now I had my eyes closed, blocking out the bar, so I didn’t know what he was doing until he put what I thought was a coat around me. Then he did move me away from himself and I looked up at his face above me, frowning. Not in my direction, but at all the people behind me. “Vultures,” he muttered.
I stepped back and clutched at his coat, pulling it closed. The bar was still pretty hushed but I heard murmurs, talking, whispering.
“Thank you,” I said, but he didn’t act like he’d even heard me. He was busy glaring at the rest of the people in the crowd as I started to creep away. I kept my eyes down and held the huge coat around me as I slunk, but it was really, really fast slinking. I even ran once I was on the sidewalk but by the time I got to my car, my phone was already blowing up with notifications. Probably my friends were trying to get in touch, or people were responding to the pictures. I was sure they were already up and tagged: @CaitlynWooodsmenWonderwomen, @KellenKarma, @WoodsmenFootball.
I didn’t want to see.
I drove home and let myself in through the side door. My parents had friends over and they were laughing in the living room as I tried to sneak past to the stairs.
“Hi, honey!” my mom called. “Did you have fun tonight?”
“It was fine,” I answered, and slunk even faster. She would know immediately that I was upset if I said any more than that, so I walked into my room and closed the door. As I flicked on the light, I spotted my reflection in the long mirror on my closet, the mirror where I’d carefully scrutinized every aspect of my hair, face, and clothes before I left to meet the girls tonight.
I studied myself again. There were black rings beneath my eyes because I’d been crying and smearing makeup as I drove, and my blonde hair was in matted tangles because I’d opened the windows of the car to let the air wash over me, to blow away my embarrassment. The coat, Kellen Karma’s coat, hung off my body. It had fit him well through his broad shoulders and the bottom of it hit around his hips, but it made me look like I was swaddled in a giant, black blanket. Like I was a child undertaker or something. And when I took it off, my mouth fell open as my jaw dropped.
This situation was even worse than I had imagined. My reflection showed that both my bra and underwear were a lot more sheer than I’d known, because why would I have cared before? But now I realized that the bright light from the flashes on the phones had probably made them even more invisible. So everything underneath, all the parts of me that that were supposed to have been covered, all those parts were right there. Practically right in the open.
Everyone looking at those pictures could see…me. That was what a lot of people were doing right now, examining me and writing horrible things, and there was nothing I could do about it. I crawled into bed and put my pillow over my head, but I wasn’t going to be able to hide from what was coming. I knew what this meant:
Strike two. I was out.
∞
“Oh my God, Caitlyn, it’s so bad!” Shae said. “Have you been online? I can’t believe they posted those horrible, naked pictures! I’m so embarrassed for you! It’s so awful!”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, it’s unbelievable how far they’ve spread! Everyone knows! Everyone has seen them, and now there’s also a video going around that someone took last night and it shows everything. Even my mom was like, ‘I think I saw a nudie video of your friend posted on my gardening group’s page. Isn’t she a Woodsmen cheerleader?’”
Not anymore, I was sure. I’d gotten a bunch of messages from Coach Rylah and even one from Sam, who didn’t usually use his phone at all except to call his wife and to show off cute pictures of his daughter. But I hadn’t read any of them yet. I hadn’t looked at the video or at any of the pictures, either, and I didn’t want to see the comments under them.
My mom and dad had gotten up early and driven to visit my grandma so the house was empty and also way too quiet. I’d woken up alone with my phone—and that wasn’t quiet at all. I’d only answered Shae because she hadn’t stopped calling, letting it ring and ring and then restarting and I knew she wouldn’t quit.
She was telling me now about the Wonderwomen group chat, how everyone on the squad was so worried about what was going to happen to me, that somehow everyone had found out about the baseball strike thing so they all knew that I’d had only one more chance and now it was gone. They were all writing to Rylah and Sam to support me.
“They just can’t believe that you did it again, Caitlyn.”
“I did it? I didn’t! This wasn’t my fault! Brown tripped and tore my dress,” I answered her angrily.
“Well, even if that’s true, you were standing there flirting with a Woodsmen player. The worst pictures—besides the ones where you look totally naked—the worst ones are of the two of you practically making out. The video was terrible, too. What were you doing to him? Were you giving him a hand job in the middle of the Silver Dollar?”
“No, I spilled beer on him and I was wiping it off!” I said furiously. “We weren’t doing anything! And then I hid against him and he gave me his coat.”
Shae started talking again but I said I had to go, which I really did or I was going to throw my phone out of the window. I actually got up to open it, but then I saw the mess on the floor: my shoes, my torn dress, the black coat. I pushed at that with my bare foot and touched something hard. Instead of throwing my phone, I pegged the shoes toward my closet and wadded up the dress and shoved it under my bed. Then I examined the coat more carefully.
The hard thing was tucked in the inside pocket, and I pulled out Kellen Karma’s wallet. I didn’t open it, because it was private. I certainly wouldn’t have liked it if someone went through my purse. I certainly didn’t like that people were staring at me in the bra and underwear that I hadn’t known were so skimpy…
Mercy. I started crying again, just as my phone vibrated on the nightstand with new (and probably horrible) notifications. I stuck it between my mattress and the box springs and went to take a shower and I stayed under the water for a long time, crying even more, and trying to plan what I was going to do—how could I fix this? If it was as bad as Shae had said, that widespread, then I would never be able to escape it. The pictures and the video would follow me everywhere, every single place I went in this town, always. Forever. That would be what people thought of when they saw me.
Afterwards, I stood in my room, dripping, wearing only a towel. I still didn’t have a plan but I’d realized that I had to leave my house before my parents returned. They’d have heard by now what had gone on and probably some of the texts and calls had been from my mom—I couldn’t talk about this to her, not yet. So I threw on clothes, just jeans and an old shirt, and quickly combed the snarls out of my wet hair. I looked at my swollen eyes in the mirror and remembered the last time I’d gotten dressed here, thinking I’d have fun and make a good impression.
I glanced over at the bed and it actually seemed to be vibrating due to all the action from the phone hidden under the mattress. Slowly, I reached for it and then I read the texts from Coach Rylah. They weren’t angry, they were shocked. She was hearing again from the Man Upstairs and no one was going to be able to overlook this. Was I all right, could I please answer her? And finally, she wrote that I had to meet again with her and Sam and I needed to prepare myself for bad news. I jammed the phone back under the mattress.
Then I turned and headed for the door, but just before I did, I grabbed the coat and wallet off my floor. I ran down the stairs and sprinted through the rain to my car in the driveway. I’d almost expected to see people out there waiting to take more pictures or something but the street was as peaceful as ever. That was why my parents loved this neighborhood, because it was so quiet and safe, perfect for raising me.
Once I’d buckled my seatbelt, I thought about where I was going to go. I didn’t want to see any of the cheerleaders, since Shae had said that they blamed me for what had happened. Everyone else I knew, every single other person in my life, was going to want to discuss it, too, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand there talking to the people I loved after they’d seen a video of me practically naked! They’d all know how I’d ruined my chances as a cheerleader…
My eyes flicked over to the coat folded on the passenger seat and the wallet on top, and now I opened it. Kellen Karma had a Michigan driver’s license and I read his address. I typed it into the ancient GPS of the car, the one that still showed a Traverse City Zoo (but that had been closed since I was a kid.) I swung my head back and forth, paranoid again about people staring and taking pictures, and I put the car into reverse and rushed out of the safe neighborhood.
Kellen Karma lived pretty far away, if my knowledge of the roads and the old navigation system were right. I drove and drove through the tree-covered hills and cherry orchards until I got to a big, black gate, which looked very serious and out of place here. I turned in my car and rolled down the window to push a button on a speaker thing.
“Yes?”
“Is this Kellen Karma?” I asked the box, which didn’t answer. I pushed the button again. “My name’s Caitlyn Waite. We were together last night. I mean, we were at the Silver Dollar together and I have your coat and your wallet,” I told it. Nothing.
I waited for a second before I started to move the stick shift into reverse, but then there was a click and the heavy gate slowly swung open. I waited again, hesitating for a moment longer before I drove in and up to the big house where I saw that yeah, it was Karma. He was standing at the front door with his arms crossed over his chest, watching my car.
“Hi,” I said when I got out. I brought his stuff with me and held it toward him as I walked over. “This is yours. I guess you forgot that your wallet was in the pocket when you gave it to me. Remember? You let me wear it out of the Silver Dollar.”
He took his belongings but still didn’t say anything.
“I know that there are pictures and a video going around from last night,” I went on. “I’m sorry that you were involved in it. Are you getting in trouble too?”
“In trouble?” he repeated. “Why would I?”
“I did. I lost my job.” I rubbed my eyes with the cuff of my shirt. “I had one strike against me and I got another last night. It’s like baseball.”
He stared at me with an expression that showed me just how extremely dumb he thought I was. “In baseball, batters have three strikes before they’re called out.”
That comment suddenly made me so mad, I wanted to kill this big football player with my bare hands. “I know that!” I bawled back at him. “Who wouldn’t know that?”
“You just said—”
“Batters get three but I only got two, and the first one was my fault, it totally was, but what happened last night wasn’t! I wasn’t giving you a hand job or making out with you and I absolutely didn’t mean to be almost naked on camera! I never wanted everyone to see me that way.” I stopped as a big sob shook me.
Kellen Karma didn’t say anything, but his fingers clenched around his coat. Then he opened his wallet and looked in the billfold, checking the money, and I got so mad again that I stopped crying.
“You’re welcome!” I told him. “I could have kept that wallet but I drove over here to give it to you and I didn’t steal anything out of it. I didn’t even look to see if you had any cash! I guess Bexley was sure right about you. Remember the cheerleader you ordered out of your way in the tunnel at the stadium?”
“What? What cheerleader?”
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t remember but she sure did, and she’s right. You act like a jerk. I wish I’d thrown your wallet into the toilet and flushed it except I don’t want to cause plumbing problems for my parents.” I stopped. I was so angry, but what had happened the night before certainly wasn’t this guy’s fault either. It had been an accident, as I’d been saying to myself over and over. I was upset because this just sucked—but it wasn’t fair to Kellen Karma.
