Page 89 of Curveball
“I’d love to be able to say I know you, but I think you have me confused with someone else,” she tells Gunnar.
“Or maybe you saw her at the ball field?” I suggest to him.
“Maybe,” Gunnar answers, and it could be to either of us. “You ever been to Texas?”
Palmer shakes her head. “Never. I moved here from Southern California years ago.”
“That’s it. Yeah, yeah. Orange County, maybe. Or San Diego. I had an off day and some finance dude had a box, invited me. You were there. It’s your hair. Memorable. I bet you get that all the time.”
“Yeah, I was there with you,” Gavin cuts in. “Who was that guy? Hoo-wee, dude caused a shitload of trouble shortly after that.”
He asks the question idly, but I know the answer. Palmer does, too. This is the shit show she’s managed to avoid on her own for ten years, and I just dragged her into the middle of it.
“Yeah, he did,” Palmer says. She tugs her hand from mine and takes a step to the side, as if distancing herself from me. “His name is Alex Lopez.”
Palmer seems calm and unruffled, discussing her ex and his shenanigans with these two men she hardly knows. At the risk of looking like I’m chasing her around, I move half a step closer, just so she knows I’m here. I support her. I’m so fucking proud of her.
“You knew him?” Gunnar asks, then doesn’t wait for her to respond before he tells his tale.
“Man, I was hella mad, at the time. I was still young, had a new contract and money to burn. Dude made promises and I was sold. Fuck, I was stupid.”
“Lucky, too,” Gavin says. “We both were.”
Gunnar doesn’t seem angry at all, and I can’t help but ask.
“Lucky? Doesn’t seem like luck if you get taken in some sort of Ponzi scheme. Isn’t that what he was doing?”
“True, that,” Gunnar says. “Money was gone for years, which was a bitch, of course. I thought I finally hit the big time. But there was recourse—the courts, insurance—I got most all of it back. Then, I think there was some sort of tax help. My accountant made bank unraveling the mess.”
“Yeah, same,” Gavin says, then shakes his head, as though removing the images from his brain, before he pulls Palmer back into the conversation. “I hope you didn’t get taken by him, too.”
Palmer’s been silent, letting them speak, but now, she reaches out, lays her hand on Gunnar’s bare forearm.
“I’m sorry that happened to you. I didn’t have any money, but he got everything else from me.”
“Bummer,” Gunnar says, but he doesn’t understand everything Palmer just revealed. “Whatever happened to the guy anyway?”
“He got eighteen years. It’s been ten.”
“Sounds like you knew him well,” Gunnar says, and both men are watching her closely.
Palmer reaches for me, squeezing our hands together till our palms are flush. I furtively feel for her stone, but it’s not there. I look down and see she’s turned her ring back around, and the diamond glints in the sun.
“Yeah, I knew him,” Palmer admits, chin high, as regal as the fucking Queen of England. “He was my first husband.”
We stick around for a few platitudes from Gunnar and his brother, but all I want is to get my woman away from here. She’s fine, relaxed and smiling, as if she’s at a barbeque and enjoying herself and she didn’t just own her worst fear with grace. She even pauses to say hello to Christy on our way out.
“So, where to?” I ask as I help her climb into the Escalade.
I give her a minute to think about it while I round the hood and climb in.
“I was thinking I’d like to FaceTime the kids. You want to do that from your house?”
“First off, before we go any further?—”
I pull away from the curb in front of the neighbor’s house. She buckles in.
“It’sourhouse.”
