Page 86 of The Game

I snort. “Yeah, but if it happened in this country, something would be done about it.”

“Maybe. But there are scandals in sport here, too.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Anna, you got out.”

How is he so calm? I think it’s Adam Miller’s superpower. He’d be unruffled during a nuclear holocaust: dealing with problems, working out solutions.

Adam blows out a long breath. “Maybe I should tell you something about my own history, too. Would it help if I shared as well?” He gives me a small smile. When I nod, he takes hold of my hand and weaves his fingers through mine. “When you broke up with me, I accused you of turning on me like someone else once did, and I want to apologize for that before I tell you the full story. It wasn’t true. You’re nothing like Celine.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway …” He purses his lips. “You know that thing about boiling a frog?”

“Boiling a frog?”

“Well, if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will leap straight out. Whereas if you put the frog in water and heat the water up slowly, it doesn’t jump out and boils to death. That’s what happened to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

He sighs. “You of all people probably get how relationships can appear to be so good in the beginning.” He gives me a wry smile. “I sat next to Celine in one of my first math classes. Janus and Fabian had taken the last two seats in the row behind her, so I took the seat in front of them. Then I realized I was sitting next to a beautiful woman.” He huffs. “Even now I hesitate to say that because she wasn’t beautiful, not in all the ways that matter.”

He turns to look at me, and his eyes are sad and crimped.

“Celine seemed lovely and kind, and she did lots of things for me. My family isn’t like that: My mom is judgmental, my father as quiet as the grave. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to make stuff happen for myself. If that sounds like I’m whining, it isn’t meant to; it made me resilient, but perhaps it explains why I got so sucked in.” He sighs. “I’ve spent ten years trying to justify this.”

Oh Jesus.I squeeze his forearm.

“After a while, I felt like I’d hit the jackpot with Celine, and I was all in. I could see my future with her mapped out, and would have done anything to protect it and make it work. But looking back now, there were signs even at the beginning that something wasn’t right. Celine would become agitated, and I would calm her down. She was angry sometimes. But everyone has stuff that pushes their buttons, right? So, I didn’t think much of it.

“As I got to know her better, the times when she was troubled became more frequent. She’d freak out about random stuff, often other people’s behavior. Not mine at first. The oddest thing was that she’d be bent on getting revenge, and I …” Adam runs his long fingers through his hair. “I thought it was silly, you know? The incidents were trivial. They weren’t things people had done deliberately; they were just someone being busy or thoughtless. But she took them as a personal slight, and I would reason with her, explain a different point of view, and she responded to that. But then there were a few occurrences …”

“Like what?”

“Her roommate, Ali, turned up one evening at my dorm saying Celine had killed her cat. She was in floods of tears. She told me that Celine was dangerous, and I’m ashamed to say, I laughed. I thought it was some stupid fight they’d had. No one kills someone else’s cat, right? Afterward, I realized some people are capable of that, and Ali had been trying to warn me.”

“She killed her cat?”

Adam runs his hand through his hair again. “Given what happened later, I’m almost sure she did. After we broke up, I had a conversation with people she’d mistreated in the past.” He examines his hands. “Boy, I wish I’d done that sooner.”

“God, killing an animal … That’s just …”

“I know.” He reaches out and squeezes my hand. “So, I asked Celine about it, and she said Ali was crazy and obsessed with her cat. She said it was always catching rodents and eating bad stuff from the trash can outside and she assumed that’s what had killed it.” He gives me a wan smile. “I feel like such an idiot telling this story.”

“Don’t. Really. Don’t. I understand. People can be so convincing.”

“After the cat incident, things took an even more unsettling turn. Increasingly, she wanted me by her side and to spend every evening with her. I even accompanied her to her classes sometimes, and she’d show up formyclasses too, even though they were for courses she wasn’t taking. It was like some weird reverse kind of stalking with my consent. When I tried to talk to her about it, she said she was anxious and kept dreaming I’d be killed if she didn’t keep an eye on me. It’s one of the reasons I stopped competing in jujitsu. She was agitated whenever I had a match and then … one time when someone defeated me, she squeezed my arm and said, ‘Don’t worry, Adam, I’ll get them back. They don’t beat you and get away with it.’ I laughed it off at first, but I caught a glimpse of fury in her face and I … I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“Did something happen to them?”

“No, thank fuck. After we split up, I went back to people because I wanted to check. You must understand that, at first, I didn’t think the incidents were anything to do with her. She was always as surprised and as horrified as I was.”

“What do you mean byincidents? What else did she do?”

“Sometimes it was a small thing like letting the air out of the tires on somebody’s car. She also spray-paintedbitchon someone’s parents’ front door.”

“She did that?”

He nods. “There was a pattern. She’d complain about a person, or I would, and the next time I saw them something would have happened to them or their family. Sometimes they got sick. I just didn’t connect the dots.” He tips his head back. “I can never forgive myself for how long it took me to see it.”

“Adam, it wasn’t your fault.”

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