Page 130 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
“What is it?” I ask when Faye and I finally pull back from each other, finally tune back into the rest of the world.
To find my teammates and their women looking at me with concern.
No.
More than concern.
With matching expressions of horror.
And then Smitty lifts his cell, pointing it in my direction.
“Fuck man, but you need to see this.”
He taps the screen, hits play…and I watch the thirty seconds.
Thirty fucking seconds.
That’s all it takes to go from loved and complete, secure and wanted…
And dive headfirst into destruction.
Forty-Two
Faye
“I don’t understand,” I say to Marie. “You were just talking about how this would be a great thing.”
A hot hockey captain to play inspiration.
A shit-ton of books being sold.
Social media gold…
Except somehow, it hasn’t worked out that way.
Probably because the top headlines linked with Gray and my names on Google are?—
Grizzlies Captain’s New Flame Pens X-Rated Tribute—and It’s All About Him
Fallen Hero? Captain Roberts Linked to Erotic Novelist Amid Divorce Drama
And maybe worst of all?—
Love Scenes on Ice: Local Smut Writer’s Real-Life Hero Revealed as Grizzlies’ Gray Roberts
My fault. This whole mess is on me.
Marie sighs and the dark circles under her eyes tell me she’s spent the last day since this broke not sleeping. Familiar, that. “Maybe if we’d pushed the fire and rescue angle earlier, had gotten ahead of what was happening with you and Gray instead of it being turned into this weird, titillating story that’s gone viral and now crossed into the world of sports bros…”
I rub at my temple, at the throb that’s been there from the moment our impromptu family breakfast was shattered by a video.
And then another.
And then ten.
A hundred.
More.
