Page 49 of Renegade Rift
PAIGE: When do I get to meet him?
ETTA: You want to meet him?
PAIGE: If you’re just friends then as your friend I’d like to meet your other platonic friend.
ETTA:
ETTA: He’s leaving tonight for his first game back.
PAIGE: I’d like to point out the only reason he has a first game back is because he punched a guy in the face…for you.
ETTA: I’ll see if we can figure something out when he’s back in the city.
PAIGE: I’m going to hold you to it.
ETTA: I’ll be there in ten minutes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FORD
I throw my duffel down on the X-ray machine, silently going through every move I made during the game tonight.
Because I fucked up.
Royally.
I’m not sure why I expected things to be the same. I’m not the same. And time didn’t stop just because I was injured. The team continued on like a well-oiled machine.
I step forward and assume the position for the airport security scanner: feet apart, hands up. I vaguely notice the metal whooshing around me as my mind continues to spiral.
Maybethat’swhat has me feeling like I’m about to bounce out of my skin. Maybe the team really doesn’t need me as much as I need them. Considering I’m the reason why we lost tonight against San Diego. If I hadn’t let that throw from Bishop get by me, we would have held onto the lead.
Maybe I just need to chalk it up to getting back in the groove. Four weeks is a long time to be off the field. Even if I was keeping up with workouts and physical therapy. And it doesn’t help that my first series back is on the road. Or that it’s a road series that has us gone for ten days, traveling up and down the west coast.
Or maybe?—
It definitely has nothing to do with my mind continuously wandering back to the woman I left behind in New York.
No.
Left behind implies she is something more than just a friend. She’s not, but I’d be lying to myself if I said she hadn’t become a staple part of my routine over the last month.
Working room by room in my apartment, we’ve created a tentative friendship. She berates me for my organized chaos, and I remind her we can’t all be perfect. I poke and prod her into sharing with me her dreams for the future, and she reminds me we can’t all know what we want to be from the age of six. There’s a give and take that comes easy as long as we don’t bring up Tyler or her time married to him.
Not that I haven’t wanted to. Believe me, there have been plenty of times I’ve wanted to ask follow up questions to the little tid bits she lets slip. But Juliet meant it when she declared Tyler would no longer be the puppet master in her life. And I’m so fucking proud of her for it.
It just all still feels a little surreal. Like at any given moment the other shoe is going to drop and she’ll realize she’s actually free.
She’ll reach out to her parents and find out I’ve been dodging their phone calls. She’ll learn they’ve cared all along about her well-being and have supported my quest to find her.
But the biggest thing she’ll realize is she’s got more than me as family.
And that’s the crux of my fears. Because I’m afraid once she does, she’ll also realize she doesn’t have to stay in New York.
I thought I was ready to let her fly. Now I’m not so sure.
Stepping out of the scanner, I grab my back and make my way over to the only convenience store they have in the private terminal. Smitty and Espinoza are already there and from what it looks like, Espinoza is about to lose his shit on the poor woman behind the counter.
