by Sarina Bowen
“What if we just put a moratorium on big decisions?” I ask him. “What if we order takeout food and watch hockey and go back to where we were before I made everything complicated?”
Tank puts an arm around me as I sit down on the couch. “Is that fair to you? You’re the one who said that every time we’re alone together the result is always the same.”
“I left out the part about how good it is, though. Every time we’re alone together I’m happy.”
“Me too.” Tank takes a shaky breath. “I’ve missed you like crazy, honey. So much that it hurts.”
“That’s important, Tank.” I lean in and take a deep whiff of his clean scent. He pulls me closer to his chest, which is exactly what I needed him to do. “I understand your hesitation. You don’t want to be responsible for changing my big plans. Too late. Sorry. You can’t make me stop caring about you. You can’t make me stop wanting you.”
“Well, I’m a lucky guy, then.” He eases me off his body, and for a moment I’m disappointed. But then he lays me down on the couch, and covers me with his delectable self. “I just want you to know one thing,” he says quietly.
“What?” I’m drowning in his serious green eyes.
“If I could, I’d give you everything. A baby. All the babies.” He smiles down at me. “I love you, Bess. I like your quick mind. I love your sense of humor. I want you in my life, even if it’s selfish.”
“It’s not,” I whisper. “Because I want it, too.”
Just as my poor, battered heart is trying to understand this wonderful reversal of fortune, Tank kisses me. It’s a very serious kiss—slow and intentional and full of new promises. I moan into the firm press of his lips, because I missed him so much.
His fingers weave into my hair as he kisses me again. I’m all in for this kiss. I catch his head in my hands and sigh against his mouth. “Need you,” I whisper as his lips trail off to tickle my jaw and then kiss the spot below my ear.
I close my eyes as his lips move down to caress my neck. And I feel lucky.
His arms close around me, and we stay in this nice place for a while, kissing slowly. Remembering how much we need each other. It lasts until Tank’s phone rings from somewhere in the vicinity of his back pocket.
I’m so eager to ignore it that I slide a hand down his hard stomach and over the bulge in his jeans. He chuckles happily as the ringing stops. He’s unbuttoning my blouse as it starts up again.
“Is that someone important?” I sigh between kisses.
“It’s my agent,” he grumbles. “If you would have taken me on as a client, Eric wouldn’t be calling when I’m trying to kiss you.”
The phone rings again, and I push him off me. “Answer the man or silence your phone before I throw it across the room. I can’t work in these conditions.”
Tank sits up, tugs his phone out of his pocket and taps the screen. “This better be important.”
Since we’re lying so close together, I can hear Eric’s voice respond. “It’s not like I really want to disturb you. And please don’t tell me what you’re up to at the moment, because whether it’s good or bad I really don’t want to know. But I need to remind you that Wilson is waiting to hear about the apartment. Those realtors aren’t going to sit around and sip tea while you two decide whether or not to buy it. They’re probably working the phones as we speak.”
Tank groans. “Okay, man. You’re right. Can I call you back in ten minutes?”
“Of course.”
Twenty-Eight
No Picket Fences
Tank
After I set down the phone, Bess and I gaze at each other for a moment, trying to take it all in. “So much for your moratorium on big decisions,” I say slowly. “Is one of us buying that apartment?”
“You are,” Bess say immediately. “It isn’t even a question. I already have a place to live. That place gives me sticker shock, but you could make a cash offer. They’d have to say yes.”
I lean down and kiss the side of Bess’s face, because I can’t stop touching her. But I feel uneasy about this. “I would step aside if you wanted that place. You still might decide you need a two bedroom.”
“Nope.” She gives her head a slow shake. “The moratorium on big decisions is still in force. Buying that apartment would be a huge decision for me. But for you, not so much. Take it, Tank. If someone else snaps it up while you and I are tiptoeing around each other, that will be a travesty.”
I let out a grunt of agreement. But it makes me all kinds of uncomfortable that Bess would throw away her plans to be with me. “I’ll call Wilson, the realtor.”
“You do that. I’m going to order some Indian food. You want your usual?”
“Yes,” I say easily. Because I’m a selfish man, and I do want the usual. I want Bess’s usual smile, and the pleasure of eating dinner with her and then taking her to bed.
She has no idea how much she means to me. And I intend to prove it. But first I call Eric back, and together we make a cash offer at the asking price, just like Bess suggested.
After I hang up, we eat Indian food and drink a bottle of cheap white wine that Bess had in her kitchen. “You’ll need furniture,” Bess says. “I’m not sure Eric will be much help. He’s not very interested in home furnishings.”
“You can help me, then.” It takes all my willpower not to add: and why don’t you just move in with me? But I’m not going there, not yet anyway. In the first place, we’re not supposed to make big decisions. And more importantly, I need Bess to take her time and really think through what she’s giving up if we stay together.
Having kids, or not, is a huge decision.
“I cannot help you with furniture,” Bess scoffs. “Look around yourself. Is this the home of someone who knows anything about home fashion?”
“I like the new rug and the pillows,” I say, noticing them for the first time.
“Yeah, me too. Becca picked them out. She made me buy them. My toenails are Brooklyn Bruisers purple right now, because Rebecca redecorated my feet as well.”
“What a handy friend,” I say, pulling Bess into my lap. “Tell me again why you chose this apartment.”
“The commute. Duh.” She loops an arm around my neck, and now I have everything.
“The commute rocks,” I agree. “But I have a theory about you and this place. About why you chose a cheap walk-up with no doorman.”
“A theory? You think I’m afraid of doormen? Or their shiny gold buttons?”
I shake my head. “I listen to the calls you have with players. You’re always telling them to work hard and dream big.”
“Uh-huh. That’s, like, day one at agent school.”
“But I don’t know if you do the same thing for yourself. You’ve definitely got the hard work part down. Nobody works harder than you.”
She runs a hand through my hair. “Thank you. That’s a nice thing to say.”
“It’s true, though. I just wonder why the dream big part is so hard for you. You got an apartment that’s good enough, but not great. You fly coach. You buy cheap wine, even though you could afford the nicer stuff.”
“I’m not a connoisseur,” she sniffs. “Expensive wine would be wasted on me.”
“No,” I argue, tracing a path across her nose, where there’s a light smattering of freckles. “You spend a lot of energy making sure your athletes get all the best things in life. But you deserve those things, too, you know. I’m a simple guy. I like hockey and Tex-Mex. But I want to treat you to another dinner at Sparks, okay? Soon. Just the two of us.”
“Okay,” she whispers, and her smile wobbles. “That’s a lovely idea.”
“If we’re going to be together, let’s enjoy it. Let’s have fun. No holding back. When I got on a plane to New York, I didn’t expect to find you here. And maybe I could have handled everything better. But I love you, and I want you to know that you deserve the world.”
“Tank.” Bess blinks. Her eyes look a little red. “Wow. That’s the nice
st thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“Can you forgive me for not explaining why I freaked out before?”
“Yes.” She gives me a watery smile. “I already have.” She tucks her cheek onto my shoulder and sighs.
We stay here a while in silence. And I feel more peace than I have in weeks.
Eventually, Bess speaks up again. “L.A. Is playing Vegas right now. Want to watch some hockey? That’s what I was going to do before you showed up.”
I wrap my arms around her and then stand up quickly. Bess squeaks with surprise. “That’s not what we’re doing.”
“No? Why.”
“Because I’ve got something better for you to do, if you catch my drift.”
I take Bess right to bed, because I can’t wait any longer. I peel off her clothing and kiss her everywhere until she’s whimpering and begging, and I’m shaking with need. When I take myself in hand and nudge her knees apart, I feel pure gratitude as I slide home. Her tight body grips me, and she makes a low sound of satisfaction.
My body flashes with heat as I begin the age-old dance. Bess has no idea how she freed me from the mind-fuck that sex had become for me. “I love you,” I whisper as her heels dig into my ass. She lets out a keening moan and wraps her arms around me. “I love you,” I repeat as I immediately pick up the pace.
“Oh, Tank… me too.” Bess sighs.
I smile as I sink into our kiss, because I already know she loves me. I already knew, even as I tried to leave her. “I love you,” I murmur as I slow my strokes to try to delay my gratification. Bess isn’t having it, though. She arches her back and takes me deeper. She doesn’t want to let go. Neither do I.
“Love you…so much,” she gasps as her body grips me tightly. She takes one more deep breath and shivers as she comes.
“Do you want me to go back on the pill?” she asks much later.
We’re curled up together after several rounds of lovemaking. We’re having the kind of soul-bearing conversation you can only have at midnight in the pitch dark, naked and sated and raw.
“You have to make that call yourself,” I tell her. “It’s your body. You should do whatever makes you comfortable. I can use condoms if you’d like. You probably thought I was an idiot for never thinking about them before.”
“I thought you were so used to married sex that you didn’t remember what it was like to be single. And I knew I had us covered.”
“So used to married sex,” I repeat slowly. “Not in a good way. I stopped caring about sex.”
“Why?”
It isn’t easy to talk about this. But hiding my pain from Bess has only caused us more of it. “At one point I asked the team doctor for Viagra.”
“What? No way.”
I run a finger across the swell of her breast. “And after the third round of failed IVF, she wanted to try naturally again. And the pressure really got to me. If it was day fourteen, I’d get psyched out.”
Bess groans. “Okay, we’re never going there. I’m thinking all kinds of judgmental things about your ex right now.”
“As do I sometimes. But it wasn’t all on her. There’s a lot of cultural bullshit wrapped up in being a man. My day job is, like, the essence of masculinity. But I’d go home from the manly art of hockey to a wife who blamed my body for failing to get her pregnant. And then I made the mistake of telling a teammate that we were struggling with infertility…”
Bess grips my hand a little more tightly when I break off the sentence. And I guess I owe her the whole story.
“Palacio caught wind of it. And that man lives his life just looking for weaknesses that he can exploit.”
Bess sits up. “He was a dick about it? About that?”
“He’d be a dick about anything, Bess. It wasn’t even personal.”
“That’s why you punched him,” she whispers. “It didn’t have a thing to do with his wife or your wife.”
Slowly, I shake my head. “You’re right. He started chirping at me all the time in the locker room. Like—how could Sure Shot be my nickname if I couldn’t get my wife pregnant?”
Bess makes a low noise of rage.
“One day I’d had enough. I leveled him in front of the whole team.”
“He had it coming!” Her body is full of tension now. Like she might leap from the bed and go after him.
I slide my palm down her knee, and give her leg a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay now, baby. But you can see why I wasn’t too keen to explain why I punched the guy.”
“I get it, Tank.” She flops down on the mattress again. “I get why it happened, and why you can’t go through that hell again. And whatever we are to each other, I don’t ever want us to be like that. We can’t be all about having a child. We have to just be us and see where that leads.”
My heart gives a squeeze of pure hope. “Nothing makes me happier than coming home to you, honey. I’m happy to be on your team. But we have to take it slow, because you’re the one with a five-year plan that includes a pink nursery and a picket fence.”
“There are no picket fences in Brooklyn,” Bess says, poking me in the belly.
“What’s the Brooklyn equivalent of a picket fence?”
“Twenty-five-thousand-dollar preschool tuition,” she says.
“Twenty… Did you say twenty-five grand?” That can’t be right.
“It’s true. There’s a Manhattan preschool that gets forty. They have ten times as many applicants as they can handle.”
“What a scam.”
“Right? You’ll have a home office in your new apartment. Or a TV room. Paint that pink room another color,” Bess says. “Anything but Dallas green.”
I laugh and her hair tickles my bare chest. “Seriously, can you and Eric find me a decorator? Someone to pick out some furniture, have the place painted, and remind me to buy things like towels and a bath mat.”
“Of course.”
“I need a bed. It should be enormous. The more space to roll around with you, the better.”
“Did you see that shower in the master bedroom?” Bess asks, her smooth hand stroking my chest.
“No, I didn’t make it that far.”
“It was spectacular. There were three shower heads and a marble bench.”
“Nice. I can’t wait to try it out. You can add that to your five-year plan.”
“Oh, I will.” She settles against me. And then she falls asleep in my arms.
Twenty-Nine
What If
Tank
Life is good again. Really good.
After a brief negotiation, Eric and Wilson agree on a closing date for the apartment in the Million Dollar Dorm. In three short weeks I’ll be leaving the hotel for my new place.
Even better—Bess is back in my life full time. She attends two home games in a row—against New York and D.C. We win both of them.
The second victory was especially sweet. Castro passed to me in the third period—finding my stick after a beautiful deke that sent our opponent’s eyes in the wrong direction. All it took was an airborne shot to the upper left corner of the net. The lamp lit, and ten thousand Brooklyn fans yelled my name.
“That was beautiful,” O’Doul said afterward.
“Nice job, Sure Shot,” someone added.
It was hard to hate the nickname under the circumstances.
The following night, I take Bess out for a steak dinner at Sparks. She orders the filet mignon and the creamed spinach, just like she did all those years ago. And I indulge in a pricey bottle of red.
“Have you been back here without me?” I ask her as the candle flickers between us on the white linen table cloth.
“No,” she admits with a sultry little smile. “But even so—” She leans close to whisper in my ear. “Every time I have creamed spinach, I get really turned on.”
I laugh so loudly that people turn and stare. I order a sinful dessert that Bess picks out, and we eat it together.
When we finally emerge from the restaurant, t
here’s a limo waiting to pick us up. “Hop in, baby?” I ask, opening the door for her. “This time I won’t have to convince you to come back to my hotel room, right?”
“If I recall,” she says, sliding onto a leather seat, “you didn’t have to do much arm-twisting that first time, either.”
We make out like teenagers all the way back to Brooklyn. In my hotel room, Bess strips me down and gives me a back rub in the middle of the bed, while the Manhattan lights twinkle in the distance. “Are you going to miss this view?” she asks as her hands do amazing things to my shoulder muscles.
“No,” I say quickly. “I need a kitchen and some more space. Besides, I want to live across the street from you.”
Soft lips meet the back of my neck. I close my eyes and let out a happy sigh. Spending time with Bess is everything I didn’t know I needed. I still don’t deserve her. But I’m learning to live with the guilt.
And Bess is happy, too. I can’t deny how she lights up when we’re together. Or how sweet and happy she looks as she falls asleep in my arms. Sometimes I lie awake just listening to her breathe in the dark. And I wouldn’t trade the sleepy weight of her against my body for anything.
Now she stretches out on top of my bare back and lets out a contented sigh. “The decorator wants to know if you prefer light-colored towels or dark. I told her you wouldn’t have a preference.”
“True story,” I grunt. “As long as I can dry off my hiney with them, it’s all good.”
“This designer is fantastically efficient. The day you move in, the delivery trucks are going to descend. By cocktail hour you’ll have an apartment that’s more comfortably furnished than any other in New York.”