I’m able to stay focused for most of the rest of practice, with only a few lapses where I catch myself watching Addie read. Deanna comes into the pool cage just as I’m sending the team to the locker room.
“You still free tonight?” she asks.
I am, but the growing sense of unease sitting heavy in my gut makes me want to lie. I can’t explain it. Deanna is every guy’s wet dream.
Just not mine, apparently.
Addie walks past on her way to the gate. She lifts the hand holding her book in a wave. “’Night, Coach.”
“Have a good night,” I say, hoping the cold sweat that breaks over my neck isn’t as obvious as it feels.
I turn back to Deanna and force my full attention on her. “Yeah, sure.”
She’s in snug layered tank tops and a sort black skirt, looking nine yards of sexy. I need a distraction right now and she might be enough.
“What did you have in mind?” I ask.
“I’ve still got that bottle of wine,” she says, and I know by her smile that she has more in mind than just a drink.
“I’ll meet you at your house after I’ve had a chance to clean up. Around eight?”
She smiles and turns for the path to the faculty lot. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
Once the team clears out, I lock the pool cage and head home to shower.
On my way to Deanna’s an hour and a half later, I take the long way past Sam Hill. I’m surprised when I don’t see Bruce’s car. When I pass Addie’s house and the green Crown Victoria isn’t there either, I worry that he drove the extra ten miles to Crazy Eights, where there’s no bartender who cares enough to take his keys.
I slow when I see a light on in Addie’s front window. I slow even more and stop at the curb when I see her seated at the kitchen table, hunched over what is probably homework. I turn off the car and watch her for longer than I should. She fingers the bandage on the side of her head as she works.
But sitting out here in the dark isn’t helping her. The only thing I can do right now that might be even slightly helpful would be to go out and round up Bruce. But without her asking for my help, that seems pushy. And in the end, considering the way Bruce feels about me, it would probably land me in jail.
So I crank the engine and drive to Deanna’s.
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” she says when she opens the door.
“Nope, just had something I needed to do on the way.” Like obsess over how to help a girl who doesn’t want my help.
I step through Deanna’s door. She pours the wine and starts one of those Nicholas Sparks movies. We sit together on the couch and she curls against me.
She combs her fingers through my hair. “Has anyone told you how hot you are, Marcus?”
“It might have come up a time or two,” I say, laying my hand on her leg.
“And so modest.” When she presses her mouth to mine and opens, I slip my tongue through her lips. She tastes like wine and smells like flowers and feels soft under my hands. All woman. I close my eyes and let my body take the lead, pulling her deeper into our kiss.
She lifts my T-shirt over my head, then peels off her tanks, leaving her in a white lace bra. We kiss as she pushes me down onto my back. But even when she straddles me and sits up, reaching for the button of my jeans and flicking it open, nothing’s happening down there. Or anywhere else.
I want to want this. Deanna knows what this is and she’s okay with it. No strings sex is just what I need to take the edge off all the growing frustration I feel over my dead end life.
But I find myself lifting Deanna off me. I slide to the edge of the couch and stand, looking down at her stunned face.
“Again?” she says.
I scoop my shirt off the floor and pull it over my head. “I’m really sorry, Deanna.”
She stands and looks at me. “You get that I’m not asking for anything long term, right?”
“I do, but that doesn’t really change how I’m feeling about this.”
“So, mindless sex doesn’t appeal to you anymore?” she says, and now the surprise in her expression is turning more to incredulity.
I think about her question and come to the same conclusion as I did a minute ago. “Apparently not.”
“Do you know why I came on to you in that bar this summer?” she asks, fisting her hands on her hips.
“No clue.”
“I heard you were up for a good time and didn’t jerk girls around.”
I nod slowly because that doesn’t surprise me. There are still enough of my high school conquests in town that it wouldn’t have been hard for her to find out about me. But for the first time, the thought of how I was then makes me feel more pathetic than proud, and it hits me like a bolt of lightning that I don’t want to be that person anymore.
“I’m feeling pretty jerked around, Marcus.” She lifts a hand and rubs the back of her neck. “I think I have whiplash.”
I knew I didn’t want to be here before I ever came. I should have listened to my gut and told her I wasn’t into it.
“I’m really sorry, Deanna. You’re amazing and I might end up regretting this, but I don’t think I can do what we’ve been doing anymore.”