My gaze falls to his shoulders, his muscled pecs curving beneath a white V-neck t-shirt. “If you don’t want me here, that’s cool. I can leave all this stuff, and you can do whatever you want with it. Feed it to the neighborhood cats. I don’t care.”
“What did we talk about last night?” His hands hook on his hips, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of his navy sweats.
“Lots of things.”
The bag slips from my grip, nearly sliding down my body and hitting the ground until he catches it. His hands graze my hips as he relieves me, and my arms, now tired and shaking, quietly thank him.
“Come on up.” Ace nods toward the stairs. I kick my shoes off and follow him. When we reach the top, it’s all I can do to keep from gawking.
His place is nice.
Better than nice.
It’s modern and industrial and edgy.
I pull in a lungful of what smells like spice and leather and tobacco and take a good look around. The floors, particularly hard and cold beneath my feet, appear to be some kind of stained concrete, and his kitchen is completely open. The island, which anchors that space, is wrapped in brick and covered with a stainless countertop. His fridge is enormous, easily holding enough to feed a small village, and a rack holding shiny, neatly organized pots and pans and utensils hovers above it all.
With a kitchen like this, there’s no doubt in my mind Ace knows how to cook.
My mistake. I never should’ve doubted him.
He places the bag on his counter, pulling out eggs and OJ as I nonchalantly peer around the rest of the space.
In the far corner is a fireplace, covered in worn brick with names I can’t read stamped into random places. Oversized leather furniture is arranged conversationally, and a cable knit blanket hangs haphazardly over the back of one of the chairs. On the table, a lamp is clicked, providing a small amount of light, but every window in his palatial townhome is shaded and dark.
I stand in silence, glancing around as he unloads the groceries.
This place is hard like him. Dark. Walled off.
“So,” I say, almost breathless for some reason.
It’s as if all of a sudden, I’m realizing how silly it is that I picked up groceries at the store this morning and carried them all the way here, thinking he’d be appreciative of my efforts. If he truly doesn’t remember our conversation, it makes all of . . . this . . . seem a little ridiculous. “You want me to make you breakfast or you want me to leave?”
Ace stops unloading groceries and locks his gaze onto mine. “No. Stay. You can make breakfast, and then you can tell me exactly what we talked about last night.”
Sixteen
Ace
* * *
“I’m going to shower really quick.” I carry my plate to the sink. “Don’t clean up. Just leave everything. Make yourself at home.”
Aidy dabs the corners of her ruby red lips with a napkin and swallows the last of her omelet.
“When I get back, we’re going to talk,” I call out before disappearing down the hall. We didn’t talk over breakfast. I watched her cook, and we sat in silence, side by side, as we ate. I’m sure I smelled like alcohol and dirty sheets, and I wasn’t about to blast her with all that in the name of getting a few answers.
As soon as I step out of the shower, I dry off and then slip on a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt. Slicking my hair back with my fingers, I finish getting ready and come out as soon as I’m confident that I don’t smell like I slept in a pile of garbage all night.
“You ready?” I ask, startling her. “Thought we could get some fresh air. Do a little walk and talk, as my old coach liked to call it.”
She was standing by the mantel, examining the assortment of photographs lined up in varying sizes. Most of them are of family, but there are a few pictures of me with some Firebirds.
“Yeah.” She exhales, smiling. Her eyes drift to the mantel once more, to a picture of me and my four younger brothers, and then she spins on her heel. “Let’s go.”
Outside, the streets are almost vacant. I’ve always loved the way the city clears out on the weekends. You never know how much you need that breathing room until you experience it firsthand. Holidays are like that too. Labor Day. Fourth of July. Memorial Day. Everyone scatters to the Hamptons or Cape Cod. Me? I prefer to stick around and enjoy the depopulated city before they all come back.
“So,” she says.
We kick along, our shoes scuffling lightly on the sidewalk.
Aidy shoves her hands in the pockets of her white denim shorts and her blouse hangs off her shoulders. I’m beginning to think it’s intentional, this look of hers.
“You going to tell me what I said?” I ask.
Fuck me if I rambled on about Kerenza.
Her lips pull up on one side as she looks up at me. “I don’t know where to start. You said a lot of things. I never knew you could talk so much.”
Massaging my temples, I pull in a sharp breath. Whatever I said, it must have compelled her to come here today, because I can’t think of another reason she’d show up at my door offering breakfast and a listening ear.
“You were vague about everything,” she says. “Mostly. You didn’t give a lot of details about anything really.”
Oh, thank God.
“First you apologized for calling me.” She laughs, reaching for a dainty gold necklace hanging around her neck, twisting it between neon pink fingernails. “Took a while for you to realize you weren’t dreaming. And then you said you’d been having a rough year, and that you haven’t been yourself lately, and you were sorry for being an asshole.”
I exhale. Okay. Not as bad as I thought it’d be.
“You also mentioned you’d made some poor choices over the last year and you had a lot of regrets, but you wouldn’t go into detail,” she says, releasing her words slowly and carefully. “I actually Googled you after we hung up. I mean, I was wide awake anyway and curious as could be. All I saw was that you were in a car accident about a year ago, and that it shattered your right shoulder in five places and forced you into early retirement.”
I find it hard to believe she hasn’t Googled me until now. But it’s also refreshing.
“Yeah,” I say, jaw clenched. “That’s pretty much what happened.”
“I don’t know what kind of regrets you have,” she says. “I’m almost afraid to ask. Not that you’d tell me anything. And not that it’s any of my business. But you seem really unhappy, and I’m pretty sure it has to do with your regrets. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you want to talk about them, I’ll listen.”
I don’t respond. I don’t know her well enough to explain the things I’ve done or to fully express the magnitude of my regrets. They run deep. Deeper than the gash on my face and the wound in my soul.
“Anyway, then we talked about how ever since you retired, you feel like you’ve been treading water, and you’re kind of at a loss as to what to do because baseball was your life for so long,” she says.
“I said that?”
Aidy bumps her elbow against mine. “Sure did.”
“I, uh . . .” Slicking my hair back, I clear my throat. “I don’t usually tell anyone those things.”