Page 5 of Playing to Win

Chapter 2

Brooks

It’s a little after five in the morning when Jennie leaves. I close the door behind her with no intention of seeing her again. It was fun, hot, a distraction. Nothing more.

I slump down on the sofa, naked but for my shorts. My abs are decorated with scratch marks from Jennie’s nails. I lie back and stretch my arms above my head. I’ll try to catch a few hours’ sleep before I get ready to pick up Cady for breakfast.

When she was a kid I would see Cady every weekend, without fail, and as often as she wanted to see me any other time. As she got older—and found boys—she came to stay over less and less. Now, we tend to meet for lunch or coffee, or she’ll come by the gym if she’s in the city. Does it get me down sometimes that I don’t see her as often as I’d like? Yes. Do I fully understand having raging hormones and feeling like the world is on your shoulders as an eighteen-year-old? Yes. In fact, it’s remembering so well that scares me so goddamn much.

I tossed and turned but I must have dozed off at some point because I wake with a start, vaguely aware that in my mind I was sixteen and lying in a bed with Alice, listening to music.

The clock tells me the time is 8:20. I’m not meeting Cady until ten. After mixing up a chocolate K-Z protein shake—courtesy of one of my sponsors—I move back into the lounge. I live in a fairly modest place, given how much money the gym turns these days, but it is a city apartment with a basement garage for my truck and it’s within running distance of the gym. True, my view is of the red bricks of another high-rise, but I’m not around a lot to see the view in any event. It’s a two-bedroom place and I really don’t need more space than that. The living room/dining room/kitchen area is airy. The walls are white throughout. Some are decorated with bright abstract art, mostly picked by Cady. In the living room I have a large flat-screen TV and an L-shaped sofa. Some might say it’s a man’s apartment. They would probably be right.

I grab a guitar from the three set in stands along the living room wall, choosing my six-string acoustic over electric or bass. To be honest, I don’t play electric or bass much these days, even though they were my preferred option when Drew and I had our band in high school. Planting my protein shake in its plastic bottle on the coffee table, I sink into the corner of the sofa with my guitar and start to strum. Soon, I find myself slipping into the rhythm of the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” and start singing along. It doesn’t stop my mind from wandering.

Alice is having another baby.

I know there’s no chance for us. Yet, for some reason, each time she marries, gets a boyfriend, or becomes pregnant, it’s like someone taking a fucking ax to my chest.

I don’t want to feel this way. I want to be over her. But how the hell do you get over a first love, the mother of your child, and the woman you have spent your life trying to impress?

Everything I have done since I was sixteen years old has been about her. For her.

What the fuck is the point? What is the point to any of what I’ve done?

The lingering thought that I should expand and franchise the gym comes to me now. Drew is right, it would be a sound business move. A natural progression, even. But who would I be doing it for if not Alice?

* * * *

The suburb where Alice now lives is like a real-life version of Wisteria Lane. Not that I watch Desperate Housewives, obviously. Cady has the show saved on my DVR, that’s all.

Despite not being too far out of the city, the houses are large—real family homes—and painted white, blue, yellow. A life I couldn’t have even dreamed of giving Alice, not back then.

The subdivision could be idyllic, except Cady gives me the lowdown on the residents. The Georges and the “big affair.” The Hamiltons and their illegitimate child. The fight between the Smithsons last week that led to Mrs. Smithson throwing Mr. Smithson’s clothes out of the upstairs window.

Despite all this, if I’m honest with myself, I’m envious of Alice and her pretentious home in her pretentious neighborhood. I’m jealous that she’s living the life I always wanted to have with her. A family. A family home. Our daughter.

I can’t bring myself to drive up to their house to collect Cady. When Cady was a toddler, I would be forced to carry her to Alice’s door, usually after she had fallen asleep in my car. As she grew up, my ability to withstand my own emotions weakened and my reasons for taking Cady to her front door lessened. For years now, in this suburb and the last, I’ve parked at the end of the street and waited for Cady to come to me.

It’s 9:58. I’m two minutes early and Cady will be five minutes late, at least, so I turn off the engine of my truck and wait, my elbow hanging over the window, the sun warming my skin beneath my T-shirt.

You’re probably thinking this is ridiculous—a broad, muscly man like me, waiting out on the street like he’s running scared. But see, I am afraid. Having to pick my own daughter up for coffee, instead of being there to tuck her in at night, to help with homework, to tell her things will be all right when she’s having a bad day, that’s hard enough. I don’t need to see Alice and really tear my wounds open.

I flick radio channels as I wait, settling on Blake Shelton’s latest Billboard hit. Cady eventually comes toward the car at six past ten—not too bad for her these days. Gone are the times when she would run along the street toward me. Now, she struts in her skater black skirt, her black ankle boots, and a black leather jacket. All despite the fact it’s seventy-seven degrees out.

She doesn’t meet my eye as she moves around the truck and slips into the passenger side. She pulls her bag—black—from over her shoulder in silence and dumps it in the footwell. Then she sits back, clicks in her belt, and sighs as she straightens her thick bangs and usually blond bob.

I brace my hand on the steering wheel and look at her. “Morning, Dad. Oh, hey, morning, Cady. Yeah, I’m great, thanks for asking. And you?”

I watch as her lips fight to keep their belligerent expression, then break into a smile. Eventually, she flashes me those huge blue eyes that are so like her mother’s. “Hi, Dad.”

“You have pink hair.” I point out the obvious.

She shrugs as she smirks. “It’s just a wash. Mom hates it.”

“I guess that means you’ll continue to do it?”

“Maybe.”

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