“I guess,” Teyler says. “I’m sure there were stories about me out there that weren’t true, but be careful, Taylor. You’re a great girl. There’s a guy out there waiting for you. You just need to wait for him, don’t throw yourself at every one you meet.”
19
2019
Tampa, Florida
“Jake.”
“Yo, Tey,” Jake said as Teyler answered his call. “Haven’t talked in forever. You doing okay after that game in Nashville? Got your asses handed to you, huh?” He chuckled.
“Fuck off. You think your boys are ready to get theirs handed to y’all next week?”
“Home court advantage. That’s what you’re going with?”
Teyler laughed. “Nah, just more talent.”
Then it’s Jake’s turn to laugh. “Okay, old man. Whatever. I’m not staying at the fucking hotel with them this time though. I can use some R and R from the younglings on this fucking team. This coming out of prep school shit is ridiculous. Man, I can’t much longer. The demands, the entitlement…I’m ready to…” He sighs.
Jake had left the game about fifteen years ago to open a company with his brothers, one focused on the law while the other was a sports management expert. Three Kap Boys opened its doors and the first professional athlete they signed had been Teyler Walker. Since then, Jake had been managing the monies of more athletes than any other agent had.
Jake still traveled with his old team. Only now he traveled with them as their owner and every year when they play Teyler Walker, the two old friends make a vacation of sorts out of it.
“Yeah, I feel you. I’ll have the room ready for you. You able to hang for a few after?”
“Course. We’ll hit Seventh Avenue.”
Teyler was sick of the nightclub scene and the women his celebrity status brought him. With his best friend and longtime wingman by his side, the paparazzi was sure to also be there to document every interaction. It was a disaster in the making, a train wreck waiting to happen, but Teyler saw no way around it.
He’d been fed up for some time, thinking about retiring at the end of the season. He, like Jake, was sick of the antics of the nineteen-year-old recruits. But it was worse on him because he had to deal with his teammates day in and day out. Jake only had to deal with their bitching as an owner when they weren’t getting their way or he traveled with his old team.
He was too old to withstand many more charges from guys less than half his age with chips on their shoulders and everything to prove. Teyler was done proving anything to anyone.
He was also done with the girls, not old enough or mature enough to be referred to as women, throwing themselves at him. Jake might still like to spend every night with a different woman, but Teyler was getting to the end of his dating rope and fast.
He wanted to settle down, wished he had a good woman by his side. And he knew hitting the clubs wasn’t the answer. There was only one place where Teyler could find that woman and it wasn’t in a Ybor City bar.
Teyler had thought about returning to Falls Village throughout the years, but now, as he got older, that thought took up more and more of his time.
He’d seen the news about the small Maine town where he spent the most memorable summer of his life and had met the only woman he’s convinced he’ll ever love. There’s a girl who is spearheading a revitalization of the town named Mallory James. Her brothers, one of them the Hollywood actor, Matthew James, were rumored to be heading that way as well. Teyler couldn’t blame the guy, he’d read the tabloids. Matthew James was having a different kind of trouble with women than him, but Teyler still felt for the man.
He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be told he was going to be a father. Teyler had been meticulously careful with the women he took to bed. He’d always used a condom and pulled out as an extra precaution. The last woman he enjoyed an orgasm inside was Colleen. She was also the only woman he’d been with when a condom broke.
It makes him think for a minute…what if?
What if, that night they made love, and the condom broke, he had gotten her pregnant? Would that have changed things between them? Of course, it would have.
Had Teyler fathered a child with Colleen, she would have told him, and he would have gladly accepted his responsibilities. They would have figured out school and if his playing basketball was still a possibility. If not, who cares? All Teyler would have cared about was Colleen and his child.
He brushed the thought off. No use in what ifs. It was a nice dream to think of he and Colleen ending up together with a family, but he knew it was just that, a dream. If he’d gotten her pregnant almost three decades ago, he was pretty sure he’d know by now.
Teyler’s mind returned to the article he’d scanned for any mention of Colleen Hamilton’s name or her mother’s saltwater taffy and fudge shop but had found no mention of either.
Teyler’s team came out on top, but he and Jake were close enough to let it go and enjoy their few days back in each other’s company. They shared meals and talked about the end of Teyler’s career getting close; he was contemplating calling it quits at the end of next season. Teyler took Jake sightseeing and they discussed their feelings of loneliness as they aged without families.
“You still think about Colleen, don’t you?”
“Every day. I know she was the one and only woman I’ll ever love. I fucked up, man. I know I was young, but I should have gone after her when she blew me off. My fucking pride back then kept me from the best thing I’ve ever known. Now, it’s too late.”
“Is it ever really too late?”
Teyler shrugged. “How about you?”
Jake laughed. “I have my brothers and the company to keep my mind off life shit like that. I never had a Colleen. The closest I came was a chick in a bar once a million years ago at school that made my heart sink to my feet.” He shrugged. “I never even fucked her. Maybe it would have been terrible.”
Teyler rolled his eyes. “Yeah, who knows? What I do know is, over twenty years is more than my body can handle. I’m serious about next season being it. Honestly, I’m hoping I can hold out that long.”
“I hear you. Every game I’d watch you, and all I could picture is the broken hip, back, collarbone that sends you to the nursing home and cuts off my money supply,” Jake teased his long-time best friend who has also been his client since the day he opened his firm with his brothers.
“All I am to you is money,” Teyler joked back.
Jake smiled sadly. “Hey, maybe we’ll go to that same nursing home and play for the ladies.”
Teyler laughed from the pit of his belly as they pulled up outside of his house. Not a home without a family, a house to sleep in alone every night.
“Maybe you should call Colleen. Have you ever thought about looking her up?”
Teyler sent Jake a knowing glance over his shoulder as he entered the code into his security system.
Jake laughed. “Aw, man. You have, haven’t you?”
Teyler shrugged again as he hit the lights. “I might have seen something about the small town she’s from. It’s going through a revitalization. The article didn’t mention her, so who knows? Maybe she never went back after school.”