Page 17 of Play the Last Card

All my life, I’ve done what I could to avoid this kind of thing.

The flirting over texts. The dating. The relationships. Sure, I had a girlfriend in high school. She’d been a cheerleader and I’d been a football player. It’d felt more like we’d had to date, less like we’d actually wanted to. We didn’t last. In college, my one and only focus had been football. The hook-ups I’d had were mainly when riding the high of a win. Jersey chasers, sorority girls, study group partners. Not one had caught my attention for more than a night or two. We’d have fun before I’d get up the next day and go to practice and that would be it. When I’d gone pro, I couldn’t tell who was there for me and who was there for the spotlight and free seats, so it had just been easier to not bother. So, I haven’t.

I’m not celibate. I’m just not dating.

Ivy caught my eye through the window. That was three weeks ago and I’m still thinking about her. I itch to know more, to know everything. This isn’t high school and it definitely isn’t college. Whatever this is, I haven’t felt it before and fuck if that doesn’t scare me just a little.

Ivy:Kidding … it was nice of him to sign the coaster for her, she’s very happy.

My fingers hover, motionless.

Football starts soon. Ivy doesn’t like football. I’ll have to tell her and she probably won’t want anything to do with me after that.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe she’s caught my attention so keenly because sheisn’tthrowing herself at me immediately. It’s probably because she has no idea who I am and that hasn’t happened to me in a long time.

So better to get her out of my system right?

That’s if I can even get a girl like her out of my system.

Yes. I’ll get her out of my system. A date—maybe dinner and a drink, maybe two drinks … what do people do for dates these days?—and then out of my system. Once I know more, once I know enough to satisfy the low burn that seems to simmer beneath my skin at just the thought of her, I’ll be able to focus.

Right?

Scott:Ivy?

Ivy:Scott?

Scott:Do you want to have dinner with me on Sunday?

I watch as the conversation bubble appears at the bottom on the screen. It disappears, and appears once more. I feel like throwing something. What if she was just being friendly?

I remember the easy smile that slid across her soft lips when she asked where I’d come from, the practiced curiosity in her voice that comes from being in a job where she has to talk to people for a living.

I remember the way her wrist would twist when she poured a beer.

The small crease that appeared in her forehead when she’d been talking to one of the chefs about a meal that had been returned to the kitchen.

The way her shirt had lifted up her back, just slightly, when she’d reached up on her toes to replace a bottle on the top shelf.

With all of it, I remember the curves of her hips in the jeans she’d been wearing and the way her shirt had hung low as she’d leaned toward me across the bar. I’ll be damned if I ever forget the pale pink lace of her bra. I feel like a bit of a creep, remembering it all, but she’s hard to forget.

Ivy:I’d love to.

Chapter Five

Ivy

For a moment—when mykeys are still hanging in the door and I can feel the strap of my gym bag slipping from my shoulder—the low chatter of the TV presenters travel down the hallway to greet me and I forget that no one else is supposed to be in my house. I forget that Pops is in hospital, I forget that he won’t be sitting in his recliner with the blanket Nan knitted for him thrown over his legs when I round the corner.

My bag finally slips from my shoulder as I toe off my sneakers but as the realization washes over me that it can’t possibly be Pops in the living room, I manage to catch the strap before the bag crashes against the tiles.

Pops is in hospital, a twenty-minute drive away, and the knitted blanket is with him. My stomach turns over, the delayed disappointment squeezing my lungs. I press a hand to my chest, feeling the expansion of my lungs and focusing on the deep breathing exercises Nan used to have me do whenever I felt overwhelmed. The shaky but controlled breathing works and the disappointment fades to a dull throb, setting my lungs free.

It still takes me by surprise at times that Pops isn’t waiting for me whenever I come home. That he isn’t sitting at the kitchen counter doing his crossword, or sitting in his chair watching something likely football related, or listening to music from the fifties while flipping through a years old car magazine. It makes my chest ache that this ‘temporary solution’ could become my new normal, that he may never come home again.

No.I close my eyes and take another deep breath in. He’ll be fine.

I refuse to think about a time without him, regardless that it could be right around the corner.

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