Page 22 of The Progressions

“I don’t think there’s a lot to dig,” I told him. “There may be some really bad pictures of me playing the flute in band, butI haven’t even looked at my accounts in about five years. I had only posted some bad poetry I wrote and it’s already set to private, anyway. I can delete it all now.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“No, because it’s stupid,” I told him. “You and I had lunch together when I went to a Woodsmen family event, and you only asked me to come because your actual girlfriend was too busy and you didn’t want to be the only guy there who was alone. A picture got miscaptioned. None of this is a big deal and I don’t really understand why she’s crying about it.” I looked at the other responses to the video. “The comments are saying that I’m a slut and they hate me.”

“They’re also saying that about me.”

That was too bad for him, and I hoped it didn’t mess with his endorsement stuff. But on my end? “I don’t actually care what any of her followers think. What would the opinions of these strangers mean anything?”

“People will recognize you. They’ll say shit to your face.”

“So?” I asked. “So what? Shay Galton will come here soon enough and you’ll make up, and everyone will forget. Are you sure I shouldn’t try to talk to her?”

“I’m very sure.” He was looking at me like he was confused. “You’re not upset about this,” he stated.

“I guess I am, some,” I admitted. “I don’t like being called names and I don’t like having my own name broadcast around. I don’t want to be famous like that.” I paused. “I don’t want to befamous in any way at all, but it’s not like we can do anything about it now. Unless Shay Galton admits that she was wrong and says that it was all a misunderstanding, which it is. Are you upset? You must be, if she’s acting this bananas. What did you say to her?”

“She’s not talking to me right now. She blew up my phone when she saw that picture and then she blocked me, and I saw the video when I got out of practice.”

“So she did all this without even talking to you about it? Why?”

He took his phone from my hand and looked at it for a moment before he clicked it off. “She flies off the handle sometimes.”

“I guess so! This is full-on stupid, though. Unless…well, she said that you’d cheated on her before.” And I had read plenty about the football players and their women. There was a lot of gossip about a lot of them having a lot of partners. I’d witnessed it happening, too, after the away games I’d attended, when I’d waited with the other Woodsmen fans to see the guys come out of the visiting teams’ stadiums. There were always beautiful, dressed-up girls waiting there with us and at first, I hadn’t known what was going on but some other people had clued me in. Those women were trying to make connections with the guys, and they were in the lobbies of the hotels the night before the games, too, and at clubs where the players liked to party in those cities. I also knew that a few of the married or otherwise-taken Woodsmen had girlfriends on the side right here in Michigan, either in our area or down in Detroit.

So it wouldn’t have been so farfetched that Tyler Hennessy would have stepped out on Shay Galton, but he got very pissed off when I said it now, even though I’d only been echoing her words. “No, I haven’t fucking cheated on her!” he told me angrily.

“Ok, great,” I answered. “It’s none of my business anyway, so calm down. I don’t care.”

He apparently cared a lot, because he continued to defend himself. “When we first got together, we didn’t have any ground rules. We were both doing whatever we wanted.”

“With many other people, whenever and however,” I said, and I meant that comment to demonstrate my understanding of the situation.

He took it as a criticism, and it only pissed him off more. “Why the hell not? She wasn’t thinking about me when she was with someone else, and I didn’t give a fuck what she was doing.”

It seemed like a great way to begin a relationship, with neither party caring about the other. “Ok, fine! You can add my name to the list of people who aren’t interested in your sexual history, not of either of you.”

“I wasn’t cheating any more than she was,” he continued to insist, a point which I now totally understood.

“Got it,” I assured him. “You weren’t exclusive but when you decided to be, you stuck that way.” He nodded and seemed to calm. “Does she really think that you and I…”

“It’s hard to tell. It might just be for clicks.”

“So she’s saying this because it sounds good to paint herself as a victim? Or to be relatable or something?”

“She likes the drama. It’s good for her, for her brand. Anything that makes people pay attention is a positive,” Tyler told me. “She was really worried about leaving California and moving so far away from the pulse of things. She thought that she’d be out of the loop, living up here in the middle of nowhere.”

“She doesn’t really live in Michigan,” I pointed out. “She visited twice but she never even slept in your condo. She came and made a mess with the movers and then left again, and that might also have been for attention. Attention from you.” He was glowering and I got the feeling that I wasn’t helping matters. “If it’s all about drama, then she’ll get over it fast when you see each other and the two of you can discuss things,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me that she was coming here?”

“Yeah, she was supposed to. I’m leaving tomorrow for a place called Mackerel, something like that.”

“Mackinac Island,” I filled in, and he nodded.

“Shay was supposed to show up when I got back. Now I’m not sure what she’ll do.”

“I have to think that this will work out, because as I said, it’s just so very, very dumb. Maybe she can find something else to be dramatic about,” I suggested. “Like, she could pose at the beach I showed you. There are no big snakes, but she could do something suggestive with a tree or she could put sand in…uncomfortable places. That could be sexy.”

He looked up at the low ceiling above us and mouthed a word which I assumed was obscene.

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