Page 17

17

SARAH

“ S urprise!” and “Congratulations!” are thrown out when Kamryn and Mason walk into Sotto’s that night. I rush to my bestie and hug her with all of my strength.

“I can’t believe you two are finally engaged,” I cry.

We all knew this was going to happen. The girls and I helped Mason set up his proposal at the house he recently bought. Not only was the house a surprise, because Kamryn is tough to get anything past, but the engagement was something that I predicted in college.

“You all are masters at keeping things from me,” Kamryn points out. I know that’s a subtle dig at the way Emily hid Adam.

“I thought we moved on from that?” I question quietly.

Emily and Adam hit a rough patch recently and have taken some time apart. It’s been hard seeing her fall back into her shell, but I know for a fact they’ll find their way back to one another. It’s just that Emily needs to work through her own baggage before she finally hands herself over to him.

“Sorry. We have,” Kamryn says. Mason comes over and I give him a hug as well. They share a look that they seem to only know what that means and suddenly I’m nervous.

“What?”

“We know it’s early.” Mason starts and wraps his arm around Kamryn’s waist. “But, we’d like, actually we’d love, for you to be the one to marry us.”

“What?” I ask again as tears form.

“Sarah, you’ve been our number one champion for ten years. You’re the only person we could think of to see us get our happily ever after.”

“Yes. I would love to,” I say through my tears before I’m engulfed in a hug from my friends.

“We’ll talk about the date later. But you marrying us would mean the world to us.” With a final hugging squeeze, they move on to celebrate with more friends and family.

I take a moment to compose myself before wandering over to the open bar and snag a glass of champagne.

“I see they asked you?” Emily asks as she slides next to me at the bar.

“You knew?”

“Of course I did. It was only right that you marry them off.” She says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

She shakes her head and looks at me with glassy eyes. “No. But I will be.”

Emily backs away from the bar and I watch as her retreating form is swallowed by Kamryn and Mason’s guests. I feel for her. And while I understood her reason for breaking things off with Adam, I’d never seen her more alive than with him. Granted, I didn’t know her during her James phase. But Emily blossomed during her time with Adam.

I watch on with a smile as Mason drags Kamryn to the makeshift dance floor. Which is really just the center of the basement space the restaurant set up for us. When I had my slip about Liam, it wasn’t that I thought they should be together. Far from that. But more than that he should’ve still been alive. Do I think Kam and him were end game? No. I always knew her and Mason would end up together it was just a matter of how.

The harp from the speakers begins before the hauntingly beautiful voice of Florence Welch pours from the sound system. She sings about the sun, the moon, and the stars. And if that isn’t a poetic representation of Kamryn and Mason’s story, I have no clue what is.

“So I hear you’re dating a hockey player.” One of Mason’s former teammates, Mac, says as he sidles up next to me.

I choke on my drink and wipe my chin with the back of my hand. Thank goodness for smudge proof liquid lipsticks. “Where did you hear that? Hi, Shannon.”

“Hi, Sarah,” she responds. “The way my nosey husband meant to start, was that there is a very cozy photo of the two of you floating around from seeing the Northern Lights.”

“What?” I exclaim rather loudly and turn to the married couple.

Mac whips his phone out and shows me the picture. My mouth drops open. It’s of us looking up at the sky. The colors dance over each of our faces. Riley’s arms wrapped solidly around me with my hands curled around him. We look…NOPE! I can’t even say it. I hand Mac his phone back and give a quick bye before heading to the enclosed patio. I pull out my phone and see texts from Jeff.

Jeff: *1 attached image*

Jeff: Anything you want to tell me now?

Me: Can we talk Monday?

Jeff: Sure.

I guzzle down the last of my champagne and open the next text from Riley. He’s been on an away stretch for games these past couple of weeks, so I haven’t seen him since that night. The space has been good for us. It’s helped me get my head back on straight and I’ve managed to finagle us back to athlete and publicist. Out of sight and out of mind works better than I could have hoped.

Riley: At least we photograph well.

Me: Not the time for jokes.

Riley: I know. That’s how I cope.

Me: Let me put on my publicist hat and I’ll talk with you sometime next week.

I don’t wait for Riley to respond before I turn my phone on airplane mode for the rest of the evening. Tonight is about love. And as I dance and drink while my best friends make-out all around the room, I don’t think about the shit show that will be at work on Monday. I think about love.

“Dating?” Jeff booms.

I have never seen him angry. Okay, that’s a lie. But it’s never been towards me. So I sit on the chair in front of his desk as he paces back and forth, stomping like his feet are made of bricks.

“If it counts, it’s fake.”

He halts and turns his angry glare onto me. “Sarah, you already have everything stacked against you in this line of work. What made you think that this was a smart plan?”

“I was thinking it was going to help him,” I speak up.

Jeff quirks a bushy eyebrow at me. “Explain.”

“It happened after that day trip to Columbus, for that camp he was doing?” I look at Jeff and he nods his head as if jogging his memory. “We went out for lunch and some fans recognized him. All of a sudden, a couple gossip blogs were running stories of us dating. I managed to kill any of the stories that were floating around, but…”

“Okay. I still don’t see how that got you to here.”

“Sponsors tend to dish out more money for teams and players who are responsible. With Riley looking not so responsible because of his last agent and publicist, we decided that if it looked like he was in a committed relationship, then the sponsorships would flow.” I sit back in my chair with a huff.

“So you’re doing it for money?”

“No. We’re doing it so Riley doesn’t get kicked off of the Blue Jays before he’s well into his signing year. Jeff, his reputation was terrible. He had no sponsorships because his fuck-face agent and publicist were only in it for the free things he could get them. Now, his jersey sales are climbing through the roof and I have so many brands emailing me for a chance to work with him that I can barely keep up. Trust me when I say that this is for him.”

I am passionate about my job. But I’m even more passionate about my clients thriving outside of their job as an athlete.

“You care about him. Don’t you?”

“I care about all my clients. Don’t turn this into something it isn’t.” Thud, thud, thud , goes my heart behind my ribcage. I’ll admit that deep down I like spending time with Riley. My first impression of him was based on the articles. But now that I’ve gotten to know him, he’s so much more than that.

“Okay,” Jeff says skeptically.

“Don’t worry. Besides, I drew up a contract that our arrangement ends in April.” The calendar faded to November in the blink of an eye. My heart thumps a steady beat at realizing we only have five months left of our arrangement.

Jeff gives me a look, but doesn’t press any further. With my “dating” news out of the way, he loops me in on some new agents he’s thinking of bringing on. He fills me in on what his daughter, Zoey, is up to as she prepares for her middle school choir concert and how Frankie is begging him to start baseball. And as I sit, watching him glow with pride, it makes me wonder if being hard to love and closing myself off from wanting love will stunt any personal growth I’m wanting to make.

I glare at my therapist from my seat on the couch. While I don’t have the same one as Kamryn, they do work in the same building so we’ll sometimes cross paths. But, luckily today is not one of those days.

“So you’ve talked about this,” she checks her notes even though I know she knows his name, “this, Riley. Have you talked to him about your aversion to love?”

“No. Because this thing between us is fake.”

“Was this your idea or his?” She asks me with raised eyebrows.

“It was mine. Why does that make a difference?”

“Why don’t you tell me. There seems to be a lot of questions going back and forth between us. But have you told Riley your true aversion to love? Because despite the obvious reasons you two are tip-toeing around, whatever it is you're doing, he seems like he would be all in.”

“I don’t want to open myself up to love again, because that makes me too vulnerable. Opening up to love, means it would be so easy to get hurt again. And I don’t think I can do that.”

“Think or won’t?”

“Ugh.” I drop my head to the back of the couch and swallow hard. “Won’t.”

“Sarah,” she starts and sets her iPad on the table in front of her. “Courage and joy are two of the most vulnerable things you can be. And you are both of those everyday. In your job, with your friends. So why not love?”

“I have been loved with conditions too many times to count–” I stop talking when tears clog my throat. “I see the love my friends have with their significant others. I see the love my clients have for their sports. And it’s all free. It looks easy. In my experience, love was neither of those two things.”

“So you’re wondering when love will come without conditions?”

I nod my head. Too at a loss for words on what to say.

“You know what I think?” Lindsay asks rhetorically, but I shake my head and shrug my shoulders because I know she’ll tell me anyway. “I’m telling you this as a friend and not a therapist. I think that you’re so conditioned to thinking that love is connected to pain when in reality, it’s the most freeing intangible thing you’ll ever feel. You say you’re scared of being vulnerable, but this, coming to therapy is one of the most vulnerable things that anyone can do. Why not take that next step in admitting that somewhere along the way, Riley crawled over that twelve-foot brick wall you reinforced with steel and instead of him convincing you to deconstruct it, he’s helping you reinforce it with him inside? When will you realize that this thing between you two may no longer be fake?”

“He’s my client. I can’t even think about crossing that line.”

“Haven’t you already?”

She’s right. Without even knowing who Riley was last year, we already crossed a line. But we flat out swept it away when we got into this arrangement. Things with Riley may no longer be treading on the line of fake. But I have no clue if what we’re doing is considered real.

After my session I drove to Whole Foods to pick up wine and junk food. Well, whatever Whole Foods considers as junk food, and some ice cream. When I get home, I change into my loosest and comfiest clothes and camp-out on the couch. To punish myself, or treat myself, I pop on No Reservations and begin my self-imposed rot marathon.