The Blueprint, page 23
“I wonder what the headline will say.” I thought about it briefly. “Maybe something like ‘World-class athlete dies after falling off a ministepladder’? ‘Best friend taken in for questioning’?”
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“You are that,” I agreed. “Now come down from there.”
He did and hobbled over to one of the bar stools. “I was just looking for the granola.”
“I’ll get it.”
I fixed us both breakfast—his healthy, mine not. If ever there were a time for French toast, that was it. He eyed my plate as I poured on the syrup with an undeniably heavy hand, but he opted not to comment. We ate in relative quiet, and I pretended not to notice the looks Blue kept sneaking my way as he picked at his granola with fruit.
I knew what was bothering him. He was well aware our hour-long sex session had completely trounced all over the “nothing but friendship” boundaries he created.
I shoveled in another bite of French toast saturated with syrup. He was probably wondering how to rebuild those “nothing but friendship” fences without me stabbing him. I eyed my knife thoughtfully. I was certainly fresh out of ideas.
Finally I couldn’t take the small talk or the looks anymore. I put down my fork. “Just go ahead and say it so you don’t spontaneously combust. I just mopped these floors.”
A sliced peach fell from his spoon, and he looked at me, startled. “Say what?”
“Whatever it is that’s making you look like that.”
He shrugged. “I’m just trying to have a peaceful breakfast here, Kel. And then I have to call the rehab center to set up my first therapy appointment. Nothing on my mind other than that.”
“Good.”
“Yes, it is good,” he said, eyes narrowed.
“So… nothing else on your mind?”
“Nope.”
“Not even us fucking like bunnies last night?”
“Jesus, Kelly.”
“Yeah, you said that a lot. Especially when I put my tongue on your—”
“Fine. I am thinking about it.” He stabbed his spoon in his cereal and left it there. Then he sat back and folded his arms. “I’m thinking I don’t want a few minutes—”
“Try forty-five minutes—”
“I don’t want forty-five minutes of fucking to end our friendship,” he continued doggedly.
Fucking. I wasn’t exactly a romantic, but the word made me flinch. I didn’t see last night as just fucking.
He went on, determined to have his say and rebuild his precious fences. “I don’t think us sleeping together was a good idea. And maybe… maybe we shouldn’t do it again.”
“Fine by me.”
“Is it?”
“I said it was, didn’t I?”
“Okay.” He blew out a breath. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
Same page, same shitty book.
“I’m glad we won’t have a problem if we decide to go out with someone else.” I smiled. “Like Graham, for example.” I wouldn’t use Graham like that, but something in me enjoyed the way Blue’s face darkened. And something else in me liked twisting the knife. “I think we should probably finish our date, since we were interrupted.”
“You’re a free agent.” Blue gave me a smile that was mostly teeth. “Do what makes you happy.”
“I will,” I said. “You should finish your breakfast.” Then I picked up my fork and took my own advice.
When he tried to stand and take his dishes to the sink, I gave him a sharp look, and he sank back in his chair and watched meekly as I took them myself. As I rinsed dishes and loaded the dishwasher, I could feel his gaze on my back.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he finally said.
I put a soapy hand on my hip. “Okay. I didn’t take offense at first, but if you keep apologizing, I just might.”
“No, not for that. For not remembering to put on a condom.” When I glanced back at him, his face was pink, but he soldiered on. “I just got so into it I forgot.”
I went back to loading dishes. “It was my responsibility too.”
“I’ve been tested, you know. They’re pretty strict about that down at the facility.”
“Okay.”
The only sounds in the kitchen were the water rushing in the sink and the clatter of dishes as I ineptly loaded them. After a few minutes, Blue made an irritated noise. “What about you?”
“What about me what?”
“Kelly.”
“I think it’s a little early in our relationship to accuse me of being a skanky, disease-ridden whore. Don’t you?”
“Just answer the question.”
I ground my teeth. I guessed it was only fair. “I’ve been tested. I can show you the paperwork.”
“Good. We probably should’ve had that conversation beforehand, but good.” When I didn’t respond, he sighed. “I guess I’ll go make that call.”
I listened to his bar stool scrape back and his shuffling footsteps as he headed into the living room. It wasn’t long before I heard the slight murmur of Blue’s voice as he talked on the phone, presumably to the rehab center. He didn’t sound all too pleased, and that sounded about right too. He kind of had a love-hate relationship with rehab.
I finished fucking around with the dishes and gave the dishwasher door a slight kick to close it. Then I decided to do something productive, so I brought my laptop downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. I graded practice quizzes with the low babble of the TV in the background. It should’ve been peaceful, but it was hard to settle my thoughts.
On the other side of the wall, I knew Blue was probably thinking about us too. I should have been happy. I had my best friend with me, and for once, he wasn’t getting pummeled to within an inch of his life on a football field. And as a bonus, we’d finally had sex. I should have felt good, but instead I felt as though we’d made a colossal mistake.
He was only a few feet away. I sighed as I clicked through another exam. It might as well have been a million miles.
Chapter 24
Kelly
THE NEXT few weeks were an exercise in patience.
To be more specific, in those first few days of cohabitation, I thought we might kill one another. I seriously underestimated how much Blue would hate being laid up with an injury, and he didn’t fully understand or appreciate how to be lame. He was supposed to sit on the couch, put his feet up, watch a lot of crappy TV, and eat a lot of bad food. At least that’s how I interpreted the word convalesce.
He wasn’t used to being stationary, so he was constantly, annoyingly underfoot. He always wanted to know where I was going and what I was doing.
I’m grading exams, Blue. What do you mean what am I doing now? I’m creating a PowerPoint presentation. No, I will not explain what torque is.
He also had a lot of visitors—well-wishers who collectively delivered enough bouquets to make me swear off flowers for life, fellow teammates who assured him things were going just fine and his only job was to get well, and his agent, an impeccably dressed man named Ari who insisted that, although Blue couldn’t play, he could promote things. He shoved a dark-blue bottle under Blue’s nose. As Blue sniffed cautiously, Ari demanded to know whether Blue liked that brand of aftershave enough to endorse it.
His father popped in and tried everything he could to convince Blue that his injury was just in his head—advice that almost made me toss him out. His coach came by, nosed around Blue’s workout schedule, and told him to ramp things up a bit—advice that did get him booted out on the lawn.
By the second week, Blue’s therapy had started, and I saw him less. He worked out more and accelerated his schedule. I routinely came home to find him doing stretches to prepare for a walk. He convinced me to join him for a little while, but after a few days, our slow pace got a little brisk for my taste.
When he ramped up to a slow jog, I broke out my nephew’s hoverboard to keep pace and make things fun. I hovered ahead and crowed about how slow he was. And Blue enjoyed it when I tripped and fell into a row of hedges.
All of that led to my current predicament—standing next to Connor at the kitchen sink, our arms folded as we watched Blue through the crack in the slightly parted curtains. He was in my tiny backyard in a hammock, of all things, reading his playbook with a pen and a highlighter and looking right with the world.
“Isn’t his knee healed enough for him to go home?” Connor asked.
“Yes.”
He paused while he digested that. “So… how long is he staying?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
What I did know was that he didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. It was hard to believe someone who usually lived in luxury could be so comfortable in my small condo, but he was thriving.
Three weeks in, and we had the cohabitating shit down to a science. I cooked or brought home takeout, and he cleaned. If one of us was going to be late, we called or texted the other. To put the icing on the nauseatingly perfect cake, sometimes he even came up to the school and brought me lunch. I guess we’d figured out a pattern that some couples took years to work out.
I scowled.
There I went again. Couples. Blue and I were not a couple. “Roommates” would be a more adapt description—if one of the roommates wanted to fuck the other within an inch of his life.
None of the cohabitating shit was real. Blue didn’t really live with me. He wasn’t my boyfriend or fiancé or husband or whatever. One day he’d do all of those considerate things for someone else. And clearly I wasn’t the only one caught up in the delusion. One night I saw a commercial about the ASPCA and wondered aloud about wanting a dog.
“I’m surprised you don’t already have one,” Blue said. “You always complained about not being allowed when we were kids.”
“I’m not sure if I could give him enough exercise with my schedule being what it is.” I frowned. “Doesn’t really seem fair for him to be cooped up all day.”
“You might be saving a shelter dog’s life. I’d rather be a little cooped up in a comfortable home with someone who loves me than put to death. But that’s just me.”
“Ass.” I hit him on the shoulder, but he’d given me food for thought.
“Besides,” he added casually, “we’ll just make sure our nightly walks are extra long. To make up for a short one in the morning.”
We. Our nightly walks. Like that was going to be an ongoing thing. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten it wasn’t a permanent setup.
He said we as though we would be walking our dog through the neighborhood and coming back to our house at night. Why not go all out with the fantasy? We’d probably eat dinner and watch a little TV. Then we’d shower and put on pajamas and get into bed. Our dog would curl up at the foot of the bed, and everything would settle. The house would be quiet and dark and cool, and I’d curl up against Blue… who would then proceed to rip my pajamas off and fuck me into the mattress. Our dog would sniff in annoyance and stalk off to her own bed, and I would proceed to make noises wild enough to make the raccoons at our trashcans pause.
It wasn’t quite as romantic as a Disney film, but it sure as hell pushed all my happy buttons.
I sighed.
Blue glanced up from his playbook. He looked around with a slight frown on his brow, as though trying to figure out a disturbance in the atmosphere. I snapped the curtains shut.
Connor looked at me knowingly. “So how’re things going?”
“Things are going well, thank you. As they were the last three times you asked.”
“And how about the turning?” He blinked at me innocently. “Is Blue turning like you’d hoped?”
“Connor,” I growled.
“I meant the rooming situation. Is it turning out all right?”
That was so not what he meant. “Keep it up.” I glared. “You won’t even be the first person I’ve kicked out of my house today.”
Chapter 25
Blue
MY PHONE dinged somewhere around the end of my therapy session, during my cooling stretches. I glanced over at Kai, my physical therapist, and made sure he was still occupied making small talk with another therapist. Then I pulled out my phone. Kai, a former NFL running back, was a perpetually optimistic guy. But if I tried to shirk my stretches even a little bit, the pleasant attitude would disappear in a flash, and the drill sergeant would pop up.
I glanced at the display and found a message from Ivanovich. Pizza. Beer. Game film. Your place at 6?
I’m still at Kelly’s, I texted back.
Then Kelly’s place at 6. Cool?
I wasn’t sure if it was. No offense to the guys, but I wasn’t in a hangout kind of mood. If it were anyone but Ivanovich, I would’ve cheerfully told them where they could get off and the fastest way to get there. But E was my boy, and I knew he was just trying to make me feel better.
I was doing my best not to be bitter, but while the guys were working out at the facility in Aventura, I was doing every stretch known to man at a rehab center in downtown Miami. Kai spent the morning leading me through a series of exercises that had nothing to do with football. And the mantra of “don’t push too hard too fast” was hard to get used to.
I sighed and texted Ivanovich back. Yeah, why not.
Gee. Don’t sound so excited.
He put a smiley face, so I didn’t bother to respond.
It would probably do me good to get outside of my own head for a little while, maybe think about something other than my physical training progress… or lack thereof.
I tuned in my earbuds to the station of the mounted flat-screens and turned it up. Then I leaned over my knee and reached for my foot, determined to do the stretches correctly. By the time the sports portion of the news came on, I was leaning back on my elbows, waiting for Kai to free me from cool-down hell.
Suddenly I saw my rookie photo on the screen. My shoulders got tense as I debated taking out my earbuds. I couldn’t quite place the sports reporter with the dark hair and checkered tie, but I vaguely remembered his passive-aggressive digs over the years. Sure enough, when I increased the volume in my earbuds, he was talking shit. Surprise, surprise.
“—breaking news that Montgomery reportedly may miss the next four games of the season. As you may or may not know, the Outlaws have had a lot of trouble protecting some of their key players over the years, and this has caused a lot of serious injuries that could’ve been avoided. It really is bad news for the team and should affect the rest of what was starting to look like a promising season.”
He looked appropriately sad before he continued, his voice grating and harsh in my ears. “This just goes back to what I was saying last week, Jim. I wouldn’t pick Montgomery over a lot of other players—”
“Injuries are a part of the game, Ted,” his silver-haired counterpart interjected and immediately became my favorite. “He’s an elite athlete, and when he’s on his game, he puts up amazing stats. There’s only about two tight ends in the entire league I’d take over Montgomery.”
“Yeah, and one of them just so happens to be on the Outlaws’ bench. McAdams is—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. McAdams doesn’t have the sheer power that Montgomery brings to the game—”
Suddenly the channel changed, and a popular cooking show came on. A heated discussion panel was well underway about the right way to sear a good steak. I was pissed off and hungry as the piece of meat sizzled in hi-def with a sprig of rosemary on top.
I turned to see Kai setting the remote back on the edge of the mounted TV stand.
“I think you’re about done for today, Blue.”
I gave him an eyebrow that told him I knew exactly what he was up to. “You can’t protect me from the news, Kai.”
“I can, and I will.” His dark-brown eyes could be gentle and sweet, but right then they were all steely determination. “Why don’t you hit the showers?”
“I can go a little longer,” I said, my jaw tight.
“That’s what I like to hear.” He turned my irritated reply into a positive thing, which he was an expert at doing. “Slow and steady wins the race. We’ll get you back in optimal shape, but we need to do it in stages.”
“Nothing is going fast enough for my liking.”
“I don’t think you should rush your recovery.”
That irritated me even more. “I don’t understand why we’re working on every fucking part of my body except the knee,” I groused.
“That’s because you’re not a fucking expert like me,” Kai said with a grin and threw my attitude right back in my face. He was really good at that too. Fucker.
His dreads swung forward as he leaned down and offered a large, calloused hand. I grabbed it, and he pulled me up with little effort and slapped me on the shoulder. “Haven’t you noticed it’s mostly you football guys who face knee problems? That’s because you guys have to do all kinds of multidimensional moves out there on the field, which can cause a sprain to the ligament.”
“Well, unfortunately for me, they don’t allow us to play football in a straight line.”
“Smartass. Come on,” he gestured as he headed for the hallway. “I’ll walk you to the showers.”
Grumbling that I knew where the fucking showers were located was a little too cranky, even for me. Kai was too nice, and he was just doing his job. So I followed behind obediently.
“How are we going to strengthen my ligaments?” I finally asked.
“You can’t strengthen ligaments,” he informed me cheerily.
Great. Just what I was hoping to hear.
When he glanced over at my face, he rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t finished.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face spoke volumes. It said, ‘Fuck off, Kai,’ as clear as day.”
“I would never say that,” I said with a scowl.
“I think you’re starting to get crow’s feet.”
“Fuck off, Kai,” I said clearly.
He laughed. “As I was saying, while we can’t strengthen your ligaments, we can work on the muscle that covers the ligaments. So once the muscle is strong, your joints can take the load, even with all that twisting and turning.”
