Page 63 of Show Me How to Heal
I wasn’t sure, but I still stumbled towards the chair in the corner — Avery’s spot — feeling weirdly numb and too much at the same time. What photo were they talking about? What mysterious knowledge was I supposed to have? Had Luke been keeping things from me? I didn’t think so. We were open with each other, talking about our feelings, fears, and hopes. I’d never had a boyfriend I could talk to so freely before.
“His career?”
“Oh, yeah, I do know about what happened,” I said, feeling relief. This was just some kind of mistake.
“Good.” Avery sighed. “That’s great. Props to you for keeping it a secret. I almost fell for it. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that someone posted a photo of you guys kissing and being all cute, and someone else recognized Luke, so now the headlines about the soap shop owner who turned the soccer player gay are everywhere.”
“The…” I blinked, trying to make sense out of Avery’s words. “Come again?”
“Headlines… about you turning Luke gay?” Avery repeated slowly. “Are you all right?”
I didn’t think so. There was a weird buzzing in my ears. “The other part…. You said soccer player?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you mean?”
My heart was doing weird things, sputtering, beating fast, beating slow. My whole body seemed to not know what it was supposed to do. I was hot all over, cold all over. Shaky, tense…
“His career?” Avery asked like he expected me to know about it. But I didn’t. I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was talking about.Soccer?That was a huge deal in Europe, and… basically almost everywhere, right? But not in the US. My college had had a soccer team, but yeah… I’d never been to a game, and the games hadn’t been that popular if I remembered correctly. Nothing close to football.
“Yeah… he had to switch careers because of an injury,” I said hollowly.
I was in some kind of daze. Everything felt distant, even the phone clutched in my hand. I had no idea what was going on — and I hated it.
“Switchingcareers? Uhm… Zayne, what are you talking about?”
What washetalking about?
He didn’t make any sense. His questions didn’t make any sense. They just hurt my head, sparking a crippling headache to life. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware I was losing time because of this conversation. Time I didn’t have, yet I couldn’t just hang up.
“What areyoutalking about?” I shot back, though I started getting the sinking feeling that it really was me who was missing crucial information. Aboutmyboyfriend.
“His soccer career?”
“His what now?” My voice was so high pitched it hurt in my own ears, but I couldn’t control it. This was… a nightmare. I was sill in bed, dreaming up weird shit because I was too stressed out.
“I can’t listen to this any longer,” Mason interjected. “Zayne, do you know that your boyfriend Luke is the German ex-soccer player Lukas Richter who suffered a career ending injury on live TV in the middle of the semi-finals of the European Championship while leading his team to the finale as captain?”
I heard Mason say words. Many words. But they held no meaning. They just didn’t make any sense. Luke was no soccer player. He’d… he’d worked a physically demanding job… with irregular hours… and he’d earned good money…
“How do you know that?” I asked almost inaudibly.
“I googled him out of curiosity when his lawyer contacted me about him buying the old Dickinson place. It’s right there. If you search for his name, there are hundreds of thousands of results. The video of his accident being the first one.”
“He told me…” I croaked, voice trailing off.
My eyes were burning, shivers were still wracking my body, and my teeth were chattering.
“I’m sorry,” Mason said.
“Me, too,” I whispered.
Our future. His sweet promises of a future. Luke, Sammy, and me. Together. It shattered right in front of my eyes. It’d all been a lie. Nothing but lies. One after the other.
He’d fooled me, and I’d been too blinded by him to realize it.
“Photos,” I finally said, trying to find my way out of this mess, get to the bottom of everything. It might still be a giant misunderstanding, right? I didn’t believe it, but there was a chance. “You said there were photos.”
