Page 2 of Steamy Diamond
Blake took his seat next to Quinn's locker with a more serious look at his teammate. "What's with the sad face?"
"Jaclyn sent me a text to come pick up some things at her apartment."
His teammate cringed and shook his head. "That was a certified mess of a relationship."
"No shit."
Quinn dropped the phone in his locker with a thud.
"You going to get your stuff then?" Blake asked.
"Yeah, at some point."
"You could just leave it there and never see her again."
That would be the smart thing to do. Quinn could just never go back there and let Jaclyn toss it out when she left. But he also needed to be a mature adult, suck it up, and get his stuff.
"I've been putting it off for weeks already," he said. "I'd rather have it than let her do whatever she wants with it."
"Yeah, you don't want her leaking those nudes to some gossip site."
"How did you..." Quinn's voice trailed off as he saw the shit-eating grin form on Blake's face. "I never told you there were pictures in there."
"You have now."
Blake slapped Quinn's shoulder and headed for the showers while Quinn could only stand there in frustration and embarrassment.
His relationship with Jaclyn was a mess from the beginning until the end, and it was a mess now too. He just needed to pick up that box and never see her again.
Quinn looked down at the phone in his locker, knowing the dark screen wasn't going to erase her text message. He really needed to get that stupid box and move on with his life -- well, after he destroyed everything inside of it.
The Sturgeons had the day off tomorrow so it would be a good day to finally close the last chapter on his relationship with Jaclyn. Get the box, take it home, and burn it in his fireplace. Make sure there was cold beer in the fridge. It was the perfect plan.
Chapter Three
Ella walked into her apartment after another day at her new job and dropped her keys and phone on the counter.
It felt good to be home.
She had only been living in this apartment in Detroit for a month but for some reason, she felt like this was where she belonged. For the first time in a long time, she didn't feel like she needed to get in her car to go somewhere else. Her job was going well, she was starting to feel comfortable around here, and even the guy behind the counter at her local Coney Island restaurant recognized her now.
On the other hand, her dry spell with men was still dry. She should probably be more frustrated about that, but she wasn't. She had herself to take care of her needs and she had the man with the baseball pants.
Oh, the man with the baseball pants.
Around her second week in the apartment, she felt guilty about exploiting the pictures that had been left behind by the previous renter. They didn't belong to her. She didn't even know the person in them. But, well... she liked them. She liked him. She would lie in her bed wondering what his voice sounded like or how blue his eyes were when he looked at her. She thought about what his mouth would feel like on her lips and his fingerstrailing down her skin. She imagined his lanky body spread out beneath her or hovering over her.
Whoever he was, he made her feel happy and warm. She hadn't felt that way in a long time.
At one point, she dug through her own box of trinkets from the past, grabbing her things from her relationship with her last ex-boyfriend, Nick. He was definitely not like the man with the pants. Nick never gave her that look of desire like the one from the man in that photo.
Nick had an old Polaroid camera, and she kept some photos he had taken with it when she moved. But they didn't do much for her, so she dropped them in the shoebox that was left in the closet. Perhaps seeing Nick the next time she lifted the lid would make her desire stop.
Instead, all it did was make her want to see more pictures of the other man. After awhile, her Polaroids got mixed in with the things that had been left behind in her apartment. A picture of her with Nick got stuck underneath the car keychain. Nick's picture of her skinny dipping on a beach in Virginia sunk down under a picture of the man with the baseball pants sitting at a restaurant with a smirk on his face. And at the very top of that pile was always that picture. Baseball pants slung so low on his hips that she could see everything including the desire burning in his piercing blue eyes.
Sometimes she wondered who he was and how he ended up on her bed with those pants. Maybe he played in some rec league or it was part of a Halloween costume. She knew Detroit had a professional baseball team, but she couldn't bring herself to actually look up the team and see if he played for them. That would be just too unbelievable and make her feel guilty again.
Ella had just finally decided to stop feeling guilty about that photo and stop trying to distract herself from what made her feel good. After all, she paid a security deposit and first month's rentfor this place, dammit. It was her place now and the things in it were hers too. If those pictures were so important that people shouldn't see them, then people wouldn't have left them.
