Page 74 of Play With Me
“Nora!” I say, gasping. The room spins a little, but I’m so relieved I barely notice.
“Jude?”
I close the distance between us and get down on my knees so I’m eye level with her. I have to brace myself on the bench, my arms bracketing her legs. This might be sexy if I didn’t feel so fucking woozy.
“You ran out,” I pant, “before I could explain.”
Nora’s staring at me with her eyes wide. She’s not wearing her glasses, I realize. Of course not, they’d get all fogged up in here. The fur from my coat’s hood, I notice vaguely, is sticking to my cheek. Or is that my hair?
“You pushed me away,” she says, folding her arms. “What did you expect?”
“I haven’t touched a woman in seven…almost eight years, Nora.”
Her mouth hangs open. “That’s not true.”
“It is true.”
“You’ve dated—”
“I went on a couple of dates.” I’m breathing like a dog now, gasping almost between sentences. “I didn’t do anything with those women, Nora. We didn’t even kiss.”
“Why?”
“When—” I take a breath, suddenly swaying. I finally clue in that I need to shed some of this gear. When I take my arms off the bench I nearly fall. Between the fog and her lack of eyeglasses I don’t think she can see me, but she’s frowning at my movements.
“Jude, are you okay?”
“When I played…the championships…I didn’t…” I swallow, trying to stay upright as I aim my fingers at my coat’s zipper. “I didn’t have sex with anyone. It was the only thing that kept me sane under that pressure. Kept me focused. All I cared about was winning. I thought maybe it isn’t for me? Then knee, and lots of sex, and…”
Shit, I’m not making sense. I’m trying to tell her I went to a dark place after my injury. I started having sex with anyone who offered. It didn’t last long, and it felt like shit, but I could barely remember any of it through the haze of painkillers and booze.
I grasp the bench again, giving up on my coat. “Farrah, I couldn’t remember her, and she was…” The world fades a little.Fucking finish, Jude.“She had a baby.”
Can she hear my shame through my puffy-feeling lips? Because it’s the greatest shame of my life. That I can’t remember sleeping with the woman who had my son. Worse, I’d hoped, for a moment back then, that Cap wasn’t mine. I’d insisted on a paternity test, which showed he was. It also showed me Farrah’s age for the first time. She was eighteen. My math told me she’d only just turned eighteen when we slept together. I’d thrown up after that.
In my delirium, I suddenly picture that old TV talk show, the host holding up the results of the test.Jude, you are the asshole!
“It was all my fault, Nora.”
“Jude—”
Nora puts a hand on my shoulder, then gasps. “Jude, you’re still in your coat?”
“She left. Nora. She left. I had a baby and no fucking clue how to handle it. I didn’t, I can’t touch, no sex after that.”
“Jude…are you telling me you’re celibate?” She whispers that last word.
“A priest,” I say.
I lift my hands to make a praying symbol, a bad, unfunny, delirious joke.
Then I feel myself toppling. The couple sitting on the adjacent bench, their faces agog, are the last thing I remember before the room turns upside down.
* * *
“Jude!”
The voice is distant at first, but I know it’s my Nora.
