The Option Play, page 6
He twitched his arm and I let it go. “I’m not saying no,” I told him, “just that this is really weird. Really, really weird.”
“The consultant suggested it,” he told me again. “He thought you might jump on the idea of getting the hell away from here. We’d go to Florida, California, and New Mexico. The trip would last for fifteen days. More than two weeks away.”
Two weeks away to those places…like a paid vacation. “It has seemed like a small media market lately,” I said, thinking out loud. “I’ve been so, so tired of everything, of all the mean attention. People are—they’re not being very nice.”
“I thought you said it was like a car accident. They stared and went by.”
I looked at the teddy bear peeking out from under my comforter. I’d been hugging him at night and doing some crying. “It kind of feels like I was in that accident. It, um, hurts. But it’s getting better, I think. I’m sure it is.” He didn’t answer. “I guess I’m also kind of upset about the Wonderwomen. It’s hard now that the tryouts have started and I’m not a part of that anymore. It’s like I lost almost all my friends in one night. They’re still there, they haven’t left the state or anything, but they’re busy without me.”
Karma seemed to be focused on my trophies. He didn’t answer or really give any sign that he’d been listening, but I went on.
“The girls from high school are either away at college downstate or they’re married or busy with jobs and kids and stuff and anyway, I haven’t seen any of them in a long time.” I bit my lip, running my teeth over it. “School’s out and I’m not taking classes again until the fall. All I’m doing is going to the gym sometimes and working for my dad, but he could hire someone else, like my cousin Baylee will need a summer job soon.”
“I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me. Are you saying you want to do this or not?”
I thought for another moment. A paid vacation, getting away from everything that was making me so upset. “I could be saying yes,” I told him, the words coming slowly.
“You don’t want more information? What if I told you that we were going to sleep in the same room? What if physical contact was required?”
“Mercy.” I sat back down. “Is it?”
He joined me with a loud squawk from the bedframe. “What did you do with that guy who ripped your dress to shreds? Did you hold his hand, let him put his arm around you?”
“Of course! He was my boyfriend. My real boyfriend,” I explained. “Did you mean that kind of contact? Because that’s ok with me, but not more. No.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to send you a contract with everything explicitly spelled out. You have to read it, every word, before you initial and sign it. You have to think about what you’re putting your name on.”
I shifted on the bed. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You should be,” he told me. “You’re agreeing to travel with a stranger, to sleep in the same room, to touch him. You’re sitting alone in this room with me right now.”
“I thought you wanted me to do this,” I said. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
“I’m telling you that you have to be careful.” Karma shook his head again. “You don’t know anything about me except that I play for the Woodsmen but I know quite a bit about you. I know how much you earned last year, I know that you get mostly Cs at Emelia Schaub College, I know that you were voted Best Smile, Best Eyes, Best Dancer, Most Popular, and Most Likely to Marry a Millionaire in your senior class yearbook in high school.” He looked around. “I know you’re messy and you still sleep with a teddy bear. Don’t bring that with you.”
“Ok, you convinced me the other way. Now my answer’s no.” I pushed his leg, his thigh, which was equally as hard as his arm muscle. “Time to leave, Kellen Karma.”
He reached past my face and picked up another award from the shelf. “I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I’m just warning you. You haven’t been anywhere or done anything in life—”
“I have so!” I told him. “I’ve been to Florida already. It wouldn’t be my first time there. I even went to Hawaii once when I was fifteen! We visit my cousins in Minnesota every other year and I’ve been to Zion National Park and Yellowstone. Mostly we drove in the RV, but we flew sometimes. We definitely flew to Oahu.” I didn’t think there was another way to get there, right? No bridges or ferries or anything and the flight had taken forever.
“We.”
“What?” I asked.
“You said, ‘We.’ You mean you and your parents. This would be you and me. Are you ready for that?” He put down the trophy, kind of hard but not really—and boom. The shelf came off the wall.
Quick as anything, quicker than I could think, Kellen Karma caught it. He’d had to lean completely over me to do it, making the bed creak like it was dying, but he had both hands on the wood shelf and stopped its fall so that only one of my awards thumped loudly onto the floor.
A moment later, footsteps rushed up the stairs and then someone knocked, hard, on my door. “Caitlyn?” my mom asked at the same time that my dad called, “Little Bit? You all right?”
I looked up at Karma’s face. It was only inches from mine, close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek and smell the mint of it. He hadn’t moved since he’d caught the shelf and his chest was pressed against me, too. I could now testify to the fact that it was as hard and cut as his arms and thighs.
“Do you know what they think we’re doing in here? The bed creaking, the thumping?”
I gasped. “We weren’t!” My eyes flicked to the door. “I don’t want them to think that.” It was hard to breathe, but not because of his weight. He was holding that off me but mercy, he was close.
“All we can do is try to craft an image,” he said. “No matter what the truth is, perception is what matters.” He looked into my eyes.
“I—the truth—”
He got up fast, springing to his feet almost like a cat—a very large, very beautiful cat. “I’ll send over the contract when you’re ready to sign.”
“Caitlyn?” my mom yelled.
“We’re fine! I’m fine,” I told her through the door. “Nothing’s happening.”
“You’re an adult, Caitlyn,” Karma said. “Does it matter what they think? Who’s in charge of your life?”
“I am?” I told him. Why did it sound like a question? “I am!”
He opened the door and my parents practically fell into the room. “Here,” he said to my dad, and handed him the shelf. “You didn’t use anchors in the drywall or screw it into studs.”
My dad took it and both my parents now stared at the Woodsmen player. He didn’t look back at me as he left and I listened, but I couldn’t hear him go down the stairs. He was as quiet as a cat, too.
“What was that about?” my mom asked, and all I could do was shrug. I had to think about it first, because I didn’t really know yet.
Chapter 4
“Karma. Kellen Karma. Kellen Karma?” My friend Gaby shook her head. “Kellen Karma, the Woodsmen wide receiver.” Her baby came off her breast and sighed, and she smiled down at him briefly before shifting his tiny body around and returning her attention to me. “You’re dating Kellen Karma?”
Now the baby burped on her shoulder, and it sounded like he didn’t believe it, either. I’d come over to see him and Gaby, and he was just as cute as the last time I’d been here at her beautiful house. She was a lot more questioning, though. I had known that it was going to be very hard to break this news to her, and she was my test case before I lied straight out to my parents. Which would be worse.
“Yes,” I answered her, nodding firmly. “Me and Kellen Karma. Kellen Karma, the Woodsmen wide receiver and me. Surprise.”
“I am surprised,” she answered. Gaby was a few years older than I was and had been like a big sister to me since we’d met at the cheerleader tryouts a few years before. She’d left the team to have this sweet baby but seemed to feel that it was a good decision.
“Ben,” she called to her husband. “Did you know about this? Caitlyn is dating Kellen Karma!”
Ben carefully took the infant from her shoulder and kissed her before straightening up. He rocked side to side, snuggling their son against his chest. “No, I hadn’t heard that, but I never hear anything.”
“Well, I heard something. I got it from someone who’s in the position to know that you’re a really good offensive coordinator,” I said to him, smiling. I’d always liked Ben and he and Gaby were pretty much my ideal of couplehood.
He looked at me, eyebrows drawn down. “Did Kellen tell you that?”
“Um, yeah.” That was where I’d heard it, when I’d been at his house to return his wallet and he’d complained to me about the quarterback situation on the Woodsmen team. He’d mentioned that the new offensive coordinator had done a good job, and that was Ben.
Gaby’s husband shook his head. “I’m amazed. Please tell him thank you,” he answered. “I’ve never heard Kellen say anything if he doesn’t have to. He didn’t even mention that he’d dropped a can on his foot and broken his toe, he just played right through it.”
Oh. That was what he’d meant when he’d talked about a bean can ending his career.
“Is he…” Gaby stopped and fussed with closing her shirt and I could tell that she was choosing her words carefully. “Is he…how is he?” she finally blurted out. “I don’t know him very well, and we know almost all the players on the offensive side. He’s never come over to the dinners we’ve had, or the swim parties, or picnics, or the Thanksgiving meal we threw for the guys who don’t have family around here.”
“He’s…” But then I didn’t know what to say, either. “He’s very handsome.”
“But what about his personality? Is he nice? Is he funny? Does he treat you well?”
I thought of the strange conversations Karma and I’d had, but I also thought of how he’d helped me at the bar and again with the delivery guy who didn’t want to deliver. I also remembered all the money that the contract had promised.
“I would say that he treats me very well,” I stated. He’d already paid me, giving me one-third of that money when I’d signed the document an attorney’s office had emailed to me. It was a lot to read but I’d done what Kellen Karma had said and studied every single word before I’d put my “Caitlyn Laurel Waite” e-signature and the “CLW” initials where it directed me to. I’d hit the “finished” button and about an hour later, money had appeared in my account, transferred in from a corporation whose name I didn’t recognize. It was a lot of money. There would be more at the halfway point of our trip and the final payment when our plane landed at Cherry Capital Airport when we came home.
The money had made it real, even realer than when I’d signed the contract, and it also made things feel more normal. This was a job, that was all I was doing, I’d told myself. But now that I was sitting here in Gaby’s house and having to lie about it, I was rethinking this whole thing. It would be easy enough to return the money, to say I’d changed my mind and was calling it off.
“So, you met him at the Silver Dollar that night with the—that night, and now you two are a couple?” she asked me, and I nodded again, but with less certainty. “Is it because of what happened? Is that why you started dating?”
Yes, this was all because of that night, but not how she thought. I’d decided to go forward with the fake relationship about a week after Kellen Karma had suggested it, on the day that a man had taken a picture of me as I pumped gas. He’d said that he couldn’t see as much since I had my hoodie on but he still liked the view, and he’d laughed as he zoomed in his camera.
He’d stopped when I’d asked him to, saying please don’t and it was really mean. But I’d watched him in his car for a minute playing with his phone and I’d been sure that he was either sending a picture around or posting it. I’d gone home after that and told Karma that I was in. I’d had to do something.
But I shrugged now and didn’t answer Gaby’s questions. “I think it’s going to work out,” I mentioned.
“Well, if this makes you happy then I’m really glad, Caitlyn. I’ve been worried about you. This has all been awful, both what happened and how the Wonderwomen dealt with it. I told Rylah and Sam that they deserted you, and they should be ashamed. I don’t want you to feel that way, though.” Her eyes got wet. “And I want you to find someone nice. I hope that person is Kellen Karma.”
I swallowed, feeling tears start for me, too. “Thanks, G. I have been pretty sad and this—this just seems like such a good opportunity.”
“Opportunity?” she repeated, but at that moment, Gaby’s older daughter got dropped off by her friend’s mom and we abandoned the topic of my new boyfriend until I had to leave. Then she tried to bring him up again, but I said that I had to rush home for dinner.
And I was glad that I had an excuse to go, because this lying stuff was harder than I’d imagined. It made me nervous and uncomfortable with Gaby, but it was even worse when I told my parents about him that night at the table.
“I’m seeing Kellen Karma. Like, the two of us are together. A couple. A thing,” I blurted out as my mom spooned noodles onto my plate. I breathed hard and blinked fast, my heart racing as I braced for their reaction to this massive, monster lie. I expected both of them to look at me and immediately see through it, to see through me.
My mom only smiled slightly. “Well, I’d thought when he came over that there might be something between you,” she said. She glanced at my dad and then dropped her smile and tapped her lip with her finger, like she always did when she was nervous or something was bothering her. “You haven’t been willing to talk to me about him, and that isn’t like you, Caitlin.”
“I know. I was thinking about things.” Mulling over his offer had taken me a while and then after I’d signed the contract, I’d been considering how I was going to pull off this giant fraud. And I’d also been thinking a lot about the stuff that Kellen Karma had said, those things about image and the truth and about who was running my life.
I am? I am, I decided. But this felt like the ickiest thing I’d ever done, ever, including the time when I’d skipped school and driven with a bunch of people to an amusement park in Ohio. I’d told my parents that I was doing school-sanctioned research on roller coasters for a science project in order to pass the tenth grade. It had taken less than a minute for them to figure out the truth about that, and I’d spent the summer after I’d gotten home practically in leg irons.
“I’m glad we got a chance to meet him, unlike your last boyfriend,” my mom said.
“I didn’t meet him,” my dad put in. “He handed me the shelf and left.” That was now sitting in the garage while he reassessed drywall anchors. “Is this a serious thing, Little Bit?”
“I think so,” I said carefully. “Yes. Yes, definitely.” I paused. “I’m going to go with him when he visits some other football teams for a couple weeks to talk about trades, so that’s serious.”
They erupted like volcanos. “What? You’re traveling with him, traipsing around the country?” my mom demanded.
“I wouldn’t say ‘traipsing.’ We’re flying first class!”
“I have to meet him,” my dad announced. “He has to come here, like a man, and sit down and talk to me. You are not going anywhere with him until that happens.”
Who’s in charge of my life? I am!
“Dad, I’m twenty-one now,” I said. “I can traipse if I want, which I’m not. I can go with Kellen Karma to Florida and New Mexico and California and wherever. I’m an adult.”
He calmed slightly. “I know you are, Bit. But you’re still our baby. And Karma better come to this house and discuss more than how to hang a shelf.”
“I’m doing that tonight,” my mom broke in, and the conversation went on a short tangent about studs and wood screws before returning to Kellen Karma.
“He can come for dinner tomorrow,” my dad declared. “I’ll barbecue.”
“It’s going to be thirty degrees,” my mom said, but he answered that it was spring and barbecue season had started, no matter what the thermometer told us.
Somehow, Kellen Karma had gotten my phone number, probably the same way he’d figured out how much I’d made last year and my grades in college. He’d texted me before to say that I should tell him when I was ready for the contract—not if, but when. Then he’d texted me that his lawyer had received it after I’d signed, and later sent over our flight information, which was how I knew about the first-class thing. After I started the dishwasher, I went to my room and sent a message to him.
Me: My parents would like you to come to dinner tomorrow. 7?
His answer came back fast.
Kellen Karma: Do we need to involve them in this?
Me: Yes. I am an adult but they’re my parents and they’re involved, so come at 7. Please.
This time, his answer took a while, but he wrote back two words: Fine. 7.
The end of our meal tonight hadn’t ended the discussion with my parents. First, my dad came up to my room to probe for details while I worked on my eyebrows. Then my mom quizzed me the whole time she hung the shelf about what I was doing, if I was actually serious about him, and what this had to do with the unfortunate incident in the bar. That was what she was calling it now, “the unfortunate incident.”
“I thought you would be glad that I was with someone new,” I deflected. She had never said “I told you so” about my breakup with Brown, but she hadn’t been happy to see me missing him, either.
“I am glad, if you are,” she said, and then exclaimed, “Got one!” as the light on the stud finder came on. “It just seems sudden. You’re dating him and you’re going on a vacation with him? You’ve never done anything like that before, Caitlyn.”
“I think it’s time that I do.”
She tapped her lip gently with the drill bit instead of her finger. “Don’t you think this is moving very quickly? How long have you been together?”
