She didn’t say anything for a long time. I wondered if I could take it all back between now and the next traffic light. She was so soft, so vulnerable. I’d never do better than Vivian Foster, but the conversation was like quicksand. I was in up to the knees and getting sucked down.
“I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” she said, “or how I can help.”
Of course she wanted to help. She was that wonderful. I wanted to touch her. Take her home. Reveal the body under her clothes and crawl into it until her hurt was mine.
“I have my routines. If I break them, shit goes crazy. And already I’ve broken a lot. I have to put it back together. I have ADD, and I know everyone says they have it. Everyone blames the fact that they can’t pay attention on their ADD. Well, let me tell you this is different. Measurably different. I should be a failure at this sport. I shouldn’t be able to play, but I am. And the only way is through medication and managing my input and my distractions. I get up at the same time. I do the same things. I make sure that when I do something outside the routine, I’m prepared for it. The season is coming. I walk a tightrope six months out of the year. And I do it by keeping control of my environment. You turn my life upside down.”
“I get it.”
“You do?”
She nodded, and I took it at face value. I believed her. She was good. She understood. And that made the next suggestion seem sane and hopeful instead of insulting and demeaning.
“So we could just keep it geographic.”
“What does that mean?” She sounded hopeful, as if I’d thrown her to the wolves then told the wolves to take a cigarette break. I felt filthy.
“Well.” I had a moment to stop myself and say something else, but when I glanced at her, she looked so optimistic and beautiful I forgot who I was, and mostly, I forgot who she was.
Stop it, Dashiell. You’re going to lose her, and it’s going to hurt like fuck.
“We could do it this way.” Not being able to look at her while I drove made it easier to say. Stupidly easier. “I have mostly night games, and you’re off in the summer. I could fuck you senseless every afternoon I'm in LA.”
“And when you’re not in LA?”
I didn’t know what made me think she wouldn’t ask that or that it could be answered easily. Maybe I’d hoped she’d just know and be okay with it. But no. She was too smart for that, and I was too stupid to understand why.
“Well, when I’m not in LA—”
You’re really going to say it?
Dance around it.
Say but don’t say.
“Then we’re not together.”
“Meaning?”
Meaning she was going to make me say it.
Stand firm.
Everything is riding on this.
It hurts already.
“Meaning, I just… I have routines. Things I do to make sure I perform. And I can’t do them if we’re together.”
“Such as?”
Fuck it.
I came to a choice in the road, where I could go toward figuring us out or trying to go back to normal. I chose the hard-won routines that had made my career possible.
I continued south on Beverly Glen instead of turning east.
I knew that wasn’t just a direction on a compass. It was a decision made too quickly, under pressure, when all choices were cruel.
She didn’t look at me. When I glanced at the right side mirror to make a turn, I saw the back of her head. She lived close by, in her father’s house. He’d be there for her. That seemed important. If she was upset, she’d have someone who loved her better than I did because before it was even out of my mouth, I knew that even if she agreed to be my LA fuck, I wouldn’t do her the disrespect of allowing it.
“There are women I see,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Not like you do. But it’s a ritual, and I can’t stop because of you.”
“I see.”
“Look, you can’t come between me and what I’ve worked for my whole life. I love fucking you, but if I stop playing ball because of it—”
“I never told you to stop playing.”
“If I slump, I stop.”
“Everyone slumps.”
“I do not.” I roared it, pointing at her, leveling the truth. My truth.
If I stopped fucking * from the city I was playing, I stopped winning. I wasn’t turning back. Shit was going to get really blunt and really ugly if she pressed me. I was going to tell her where exactly I needed to come and how. Then she was going to cry.
God. This was a mistake. All of it. I hated anyone hurting her, and that night, I hated myself. I was repulsed by my own heart because it was small and mean and only had room for my own desires. I was a disgusting man.
“If I didn’t like you,” I softened it because I cared what she thought of me, “if I didn’t think about you every second of the day, I would have just left. But I can’t do this.”
“You intended this the whole time,” she said, looking out the side window.
“No. No, I didn’t.” I pulled up in front of her house.
“Liar,” she whispered so softly I barely heard it.
“I thought it would solve itself.”
“Whatever.”