“Bull,” I scoff.
She raises her hand. “Swear to God. Dead bird in a satin bed of sicko. Black satin. It was so depressing and disgusting.”
“Wow. I wonder if it was dead before they put—“
“Don’t!” she stops me solidly. “I can’t think about it. Everything you’re thinking, I’ve considered, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s fair.” I stand up straight from the desk, smooth my shirt over my stomach. “Speaking of crazy fans, I’ve got a new load of mail to sift through for Trey. I better get on it.”
“Does he get anything good?”
“A lot of nudes. Men and women. A lot of ass shots. There’s usually a lei involved, but it’s never very sanitary.”
“Those poor flowers.”
“It’s a shame.”
“Where is he this week?”
I crease my brow, trying to remember. “Um, Miami this week. They’ve got the Dolphins.”
“Oh that’s right,” Rhonda searches her desk, finally finding a pink sticky note. “You had me send tickets to Demarcus Sawyer and his family to go see the game.”
“Did they get them?”
“FedEx confirmed the delivery.”
“I’ll call him to make sure he has them.”
“Probably a good idea. If the guy left them on the porch they could have been snagged by someone walking by.”
“Or eaten by an alligator,” I grumble, digging for another candy. “Who knows down there.”
I get what I’m looking for, a green apple, and disappear down the hall. Demarcus is a sore subject for me. When he came stateside right after the Draft I went out to Florida to see him. He was happy to be home but unhappy about the idea of going back. So unhappy he decided not to. He quit the Canadian league. Quit football altogether. It’s a huge change for him, but one I was hoping he’d be good with in the long run. Unfortunately he was only home a week when his girlfriend broke up with him. Two kill blows in one month isn’t healthy for anybody. He called me drunk and despondent in the middle of the night rambling about how his career was over and I had every right to drop him. Why wouldn’t I? Everyone else was. Broke my heart.
I told him to sober up and we’d see what was what in the morning. Since then I’ve been more active reaching out to endorsements than I probably should be, looking for someone stateside to pick him up. It’s put me on Brad’s radar, not somewhere I want to be, but I have to do it for Demarcus. He deserves every effort I can give him.
Three hours later and I’m almost to the bottom of the bag of fan mail Trey has accrued. Last week he came into the office on delivery day and saw the stack. It blew his mind how big it was. He offered to take care of it himself but I told him that’s my job, let me do it. Then we made out in my office for an hour and he went home smiling like the cat that ate the canary while I spent the better part of the day trying to remember when the hell he unsnapped my bra. The man is a magician in every sense of the word.
We’re idiots. We shouldn’t be doing any of the things we’re doing, but put us in a room together and shit just happens. He shows up at my house late in the night and doesn’t leave until dawn. Some nights we have sex. Some nights we have a lot of sex. And some nights we lay together until the sun peeks in through the window, sending him away.
“I have to go,” he always whispers.
“Stay.”
“What will you give me?”
I always lie, “Everything.”
He never stays. He unlaces his fingers from mine, kisses me softly, and disappears without a word. I think he knows I’m lying. We both do. We’re both holding something back, something too big, too real, to give to anyone, but I say it because I want to. Because I wish I was stronger than I am.
Those nights leave me the most raw. The most emotional afterward. I don’t know what to make of them other than joy. I’m left with a swelling in my chest that comes from being close to him and stays with me for days after. That redoubles when he messages me. That threatens to burst me wide open when he sends me pictures of himself sleeping in hotels across the country.
He’s always alone when he leaves. He’s only here when he stays.
I’m not dense. I know what this is. I know what I feel even though I’ve never felt it before. It’s exactly what we call it when we say it without saying it. When I tell him to love me slowly. When he asks me to love him faster. We say these things and we know what they mean, but they can’t be what they are. We can’t be what we are, so we pretend that we’re not. We pretend that every kiss isn’t stolen. Every touch isn’t taboo. Every smile isn’t loaded with a million questions and problems that will come bursting out in a wave of confusion the second this eggshell cocoon of ours is broken.
I can hear the clock ticking. I can see the egg cracking.
Still, I don’t stop.