Page 86 of Who's Playing You
He introduced me to one of his best friends. He introduced me tohis mother! But in all of the years that I went home with Nat and spoke to her mom and stepdad, I always called them Mr. and Mrs. Soba. And if in any of those visits I heard one of them call the other by their first name, it hadn’t registered in my consciousness enough to recognize it when I spoke to his mom.
That all said, Nicholas hadn’t necessarily lied to me.
I didn’t want to flatter myself, but I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t connected the dots and knew who I was. Unless… unless in the half a dozen or so times that I’d gone to his house yearsago, he just regarded me as one of his sister’s friends and that was that. No big deal. Nothing remarkable or memorable about it - about me.
Well, that was perfectly plausible too. I mean, he was all of like fifteen when I first met him. What fifteen year old boy cares about his older sister’s friend?
Yet, still…Gah!I hated it when I was so non-judgmental sometimes and always gave the benefit of the doubt instead of jumping to conclusions.
I really wanted to jump to conclusions about this and get mad, but my logical brain was weighing both sides and everything that was plausible in the situation.
All the moving guys were leaving and Mr. Handlebar Mustache Moving Boss lingered behind the last guy, “Alright, Mrs. Soba, you should be all set. If your husband has any problems, he’s got my personal number and I’ll be up here to fix it. Just tell him to give me a jingle if need be. Have a good evening missus.”
I mumbled out a thank you from where I still sat in a daze. That’s where another shocking thought hit me: why did I like it so much that he called me Mrs. Soba?
38
NICK SOBA
“Honey, I’m home!” I yelled into the house as I walked through the door just after six.
Tomorrow is our first game of the season and they released us on the earlier side from practice today so that we could get home to rest up for the game. I hauled ass up the Thruway to New Hope not jonesing about my first official pro game being tomorrow, but rather jonesing to see my woman.
“In here,” Scottie called back.
As I walked into the kitchen, I saw the new couch through to the living room and the new dining room table and chairs. It was all perfect.
I hope she loved it.
I found Scottie stirring something on the stove and I walked up behind her, wrapping my arms around her while I breathed her in and kissed my favorite spot behind her ear. “How was your day?”
She leaned her head to the side, allowing me to snuggle into her neck even better. “Interesting,” she replied very nonchalantly.
“Oh?” I questioned.
“Mmm,” she replied.
“Care to share? Somethinginterestingcome up at school today, or something with one of your art pieces?”
“No. Nothing too interesting there,” she responded as she kept stirring and leaned further into me.
“Hmm. Well I don’t know, hun, you’ll have to tell me then.”
“The moving guys were here when I got back…” she trailed off.
I grinned. “Oh yeah, do you like it all? It’s what we picked out so I hope you like it. From what I can see, it looks incredible!”
“The furniture is beautiful, Nick,” she replied.
Nick?
I stuttered, “We-well, what’s interesting then? I told you it’d be coming this week after we picked it all out. I didn’t realize it’d all come today, but I had hoped.”
“You did tell me that, and the head mover guy was very nice. He said to give him a call if something wasn’t where you wanted it,Mr. Soba.”
Well shit.
“Umm, I think it looks perfect from here, don’t you think, honey?” I tried to play it off, knowing full well that the cat was out of the bag.
