Guess gift-giving is my fucking love language.
But now, seeing her reaction to the subject I know caused her the most pain, I can’t help but feel like I want to peek behind those curtains too, if she’ll let me.
“Are we still operating under nothing’s off-limits agreement?”
She smirks as she places the glass on the low coffee table between us. “Is this my karma for asking too many dick-related questions?” A soft sigh escapes her as I keep quiet. “You already know what happened, Mateo. If your mother didn’t tell you, ESPN sure did.”
“I know what was reported, but I want to hear it from you. What did he do to you?” I half pray that she refuses to answer, because if I didn’t like the guy before, I sure as hell won’t be able to hold myself back when I’ll eventually have to play against him.
She nods solemnly. “I’ll try to give you the short version. But I’m Dominican, and I’ve had wine, so listen at your own risk.” She sits up from her lying position, and so do I. She brings her socked feet onto the couch and hugs a pillow. She hasn’t spoken a single word, and already, I can see how she is crawling back into herself at the thought of retelling her story. And it fucking guts me.
This time, when my body pulls toward her, I don’t stop it. Not until I’ve taken the seat cushion next to her and pulled her hands into mine. “Please, Isabella. You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry I asked.”
She stares at our joined hands, then into my eyes. I thought I would see tears, sadness, or a sense of helplessness. Instead, what I find is pure determination. “It’s fine, really. I’m just warning you that it’s a bit of a mood killer, and I’ve had such a great time tonight… mostly at your expense.” She smiles brightly as she gives my hands a gentle squeeze. “Besides, I’m going to my first baseball game in over five years tomorrow, so it only seems fitting I get this story out of my system.” She leans back on the couch. She doesn’t move to untangle our hands, and neither do I.
“We met during my freshman year in college. I thought I wouldn’t really be getting the college experience since I decided to stay in the city, but boy, was I wrong. Living in the dorms, attending parties, classes with guest speakers who I’ve only ever seen on TV… it was incredible. And then, I met him. I think I was enamored immediately by his confidence and charisma. He was a senior, and somehow, he was interested in someone like me.” I don’t realize I’ve squeezed her hand until she squeezes mineback. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not trying to sell myself short here. But he always seemed larger than life, with goals of making the major leagues, and I was happy to be along for the ride, to bask in someone else’s glow.”
I start to rub soft circles on her wrist, which pauses her momentarily.
“Anyway, we dated for two years, and near the end, he had made it to the minor leagues. He said he probably would have been drafted to the major leagues from college, but he had a shoulder injury that he was still rehabbing.” She rolls her eyes, and this time, it carries none of the sass I’ve grown to appreciate. “We never talked about marriage. I’m sure I assumed it was something that would have come up at some point down the line, but I was only twenty years old.” She looks up briefly, and I ache to comfort twenty-year-old Isabella. “When the day came for the draft, as he got the call that he was being drafted to his dream team, with cameras he paid for to have there that day, he got down on one knee and proposed to me. And do you want to hear what’s funny? When it happened, all the blog sites gushed about how I was so stunned by the ring that I was left speechless. When in reality, in my mind, I was freaking out about what my mom was going to say.”
She laughs, and the sound alone makes my shoulder release some tension I was apparently holding in tight.
“Like, I’m technically a grown-ass woman, being recorded on live TV as my boyfriend proposes to me, and all I could think about was how my mom would not approve. And wonder how I managed to be with someone for so long and not explicitly talk about our plans for the future, like engagement timeline, family planning… all of that. I think for the longest time it was all assumed, probably by the both of us. Because I obviously wanted those things, and he was the person I was sharing my life with, so maybe we subconsciously put two and two together. But Itruly had no clue. And this man was publicly professing his love for me, yet he didn’t even know that I loathe the idea of a public proposal. And the ring was too large and generic for someone like me, who loves jewelry that’s more sentimental and artsy rather than showy. If he really knew me, he would have known that I was not in a place in my life to think about marriage. I was still knee-deep in figuring myself out.”
Removing only one hand from her hold, I lift my glass of wine and offer it to her. She smiles as she takes a sip, then hands it back to me. I drink from the exact spot her lips touched before I set it back down and reclaim her other hand.
“But even with my racing thoughts, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything but yes. I got swept up in the moment and decided we could talk about the engagement at a later time, like when there weren’t cameras pointed at us. But that time never came. Because immediately after the cameras went down, he kissed me goodbye and said he was going off with his old teammates to celebrate. And truthfully, I needed a moment to recover from the whirlwind that I had been thrust into. By the time I got home, his proposal had gone viral everywhere. People on campus knew my name, acquaintances were coming out of the woodwork, and every wife and girlfriend of every MLB player infiltrated my social media, asking if I wanted to collaborate on brand deals. And yes, I did find it weird that a man proposes to me and immediately goes MIA, but everything about my life had just been turned upside down, so nothing felt normal. Three days later, the infamous ‘seventy-two-hour engagement’ came to a crashing halt when photos of him partying in Vegas were plastered everywhere online. Pictures of him with a woman’s head between his legs while he made out with another topless woman.”
She removes her hands from mine, and it takes everything in me not to ask for them back.
“The betrayal? The pain? It was brutal. But what he did, or claims to have accidentally done after I dumped him?Thatwas earth-shattering. Because gone were the photos of me with a ring on my finger on the internet, and in their place, sexy photos I had sent him in private were now available for the entire world to see.” She looks at me with a pained expression.
“I swear to you, Isabella. I never saw them.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you had. They were everywhere.”
I shake my head. “Even though I didn’t know you personally back then, I would never have done that to you, or anyone else who had private images shared without their consent.”
She points to my glass on the table. “I’m gonna need a little more of that now.”
I grab the bottle and top off her glass before I hand it to her. “I didn’t even show any nipple,” she mumbles into the wineglass, and I’m hit with a coughing fit. “No, seriously. He always asked for nudes, and I always told him I wasn’t comfortable with that. But he kept pushing and pushing. Eventually, I sent him something that I hoped would knock his socks off, even though I strategically covered my face and body in ways that wouldn’t show it was me. But when the guy you’re engaged to ‘accidentally’ posts those photos on social media after getting caught in a cheating scandal… yep, it didn’t take much of a leap for people to know who the mystery woman was.” She takes a large gulp of wine before handing it back to me. Her tongue peeks out to wipe a rogue droplet away. “And then I dropped out of school, ran to Puerto Rico where my cousins were attending college, registered there for a semester, and ended up staying the whole two years it took to wrap up my bachelors. I finally came back to New York with my tail between my legs once I felt the coast was clear. And ta-da, sob story complete. Okay, you next. Go.”
“Isa…”
“Mateo, I said nothing is off-limits, but I didn’t say pity party included.” She looks at me sternly. “Will I ever recover from that kind of public humiliation? To be determined. But I’ve slowly clawed my way back into society, and I’ll be damned if I spend another moment sitting here, watching you feel sorry for me, when I could be asking you really inappropriate dick questions.”
“You’re deflecting with humor.”
“Ding, ding, ding. Yes, my therapist thinks I’m very funny too, thank you very much. And maybe I just need to get laid so I stop thinking about dicks, but regardless of where I was going with that, I would like to take my baggage back now and put it in a nicely contained compartment, away from the world to see, and specifically, your sad eyes,” she pleads.
“What do you mean you need to get laid? Are you, uh, seeing someone?” Try as I might, I didn’t hear a word of what she said after she mentioned getting laid.
She bursts into laughter, barely saving the couch from being splashed in red wine. It’s cute that she thinks I would give a damn. I’m still waiting for my answer.
“This might be hard for you to believe, but this hot mess is still single. Haven’t been in a serious relationship since I was engaged for a millisecond. Of course, after a while, there were some guys in Puerto Rico who were fun to—”
“Got it. Message received loud and clear,” I bite out, much rougher than intended.
