I haven’t come to terms with the fact that I’m missing the first three games of the season, but I take as much aggression as humanly possible out on the punching bag at the gym, and then I run a solid ten miles before I head home.

My head isn’t any clearer, and I’m sort of glad Harper’s over at the Wilkinsons’ place right now.

I could use a few minutes alone with my wife. She seems to be the only one who can make any of this feel any better even though that small part in the back of my head is starting to place a little of the blame on her shoulders.

I didn’t have to go over there and take the ball back. There are hundreds of other ways I could’ve handled that situation, and I chose the worst one of all. Okay, maybe not the worst , but definitely top five worst.

When I walk in, the house is quiet. Her car was in the garage, so I know she’s around here somewhere. I head to the shower first since I’m a sweaty mess, and then I find her on the couch in her casita with a book.

I stalk over toward her in just my basketball shorts. I know how she loves the abs, so I have them out on display for her. She glances up at me and sets her book down.

“Hi.” She presses her lips together.

“Hi. You wanna do this?” I ask, showcasing my abs. Usually that would get a laugh out of her, but today she shakes her head.

“Not right now.”

The sting of rejection pulses inside me. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t, okay? I have a headache.”

I roll my eyes. I’m not going to push her into something she doesn’t want to do, but that’s the oldest excuse in the book and it’s feeble at best when typically she can’t keep her hands off the goods. “Whatever.”

I move to walk out of the room.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asks.

I turn around to face her and shrug as if to tell her to go for it.

“Why did I find out your league punishment from your Instagram live and not from you?”

Her question confuses me. “Um…that was me on my live, so you did hear it from me.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean why did I hear it at the same time as everyone else in the world? As your wife, why didn’t I get a call first with the news?”

I consider that for a beat.

I called Ellie as soon as I heard from Jimmy even though I thought about calling Victoria first. I still called Ellie, but she’s right. It should have been her.

“I’m sorry. It was all so fast, and I panicked. Ellie thought I should get the news out ahead of the media, so I just hopped right onto a live. If you’re wondering, I’m also required to attend anger management and complete twenty hours of community service. I didn’t mention that on the live, so you get the breaking story first.”

She sighs at the end of my rant that comes out just a touch more aggressive than I mean for it to. “I saw the rest of it on ESPN.” She picks her book back up as if she’s done with this conversation.

But I’m not done. “Okay, so you know. Why are you giving me a hard time? I just learned I’m going to miss the first three games of the season when my only goal this year was to start all seventeen games. Can I maybe get just an ounce of sympathy from my wife when this entire thing happened because I went and got your goddamn ball back?”

She throws her book down and it bounces off the couch cushion and onto the floor. She rises to her feet. “Excuse me? You’re blaming me for this mess?”

I shrug. “If the fucking shoe fits, then yeah.” My voice is louder than I intend for it to be, but I’m fucking mad right now.

God, this woman presses my buttons like no other.

“Well I’ll have you know I just got a call from the district office rescinding their offer of my fucking dream job because having the paparazzi tail me to school is disrupting the educational process, so I guess I can go ahead and blame your stupidity for that!” She’s yelling, too, and this isn’t going to get us anywhere.

I don’t respond to the part I should respond to. Not when we’re fighting. We’ll get to it later when cooler heads prevail. Instead, I harp on the part I shouldn’t. “You’re calling me stupid now? Some nice language from a reading teacher for a guy who you diagnosed yourself with a reading disability.”

“Oh fuck off with bringing that up right now,” she says, and she glares at me. “You know one has nothing to do with the other.”

I blow out a breath. “What are we doing?” I finally ask. My voice is strained and tired because I am strained and tired.

I’m referring to this fight, but she takes it a totally different direction.

“I don’t know.” She sets a hand on her forehead for a beat. “I think we might’ve made a mistake rushing into this.”

I press my lips together as her words curl all around me, and then I nod once and head out of the room before I say something that’ll damage us both beyond repair.

When I stalk into the other room, my eyes land on Harper, who’s just walking through toward the kitchen. “Oh, there you are,” she says nonchalantly.

“What are you doing here?” I ask cautiously as I force a calmness I don’t really feel through my system. I will not yell at her. She had nothing to do with any of this.

But how long has she been here? Did she overhear our fight?

“Mr. Wilkinson had some charity dinner to get ready for so they dropped me off a little early,” she says. “I was coming in here to get a snack.”

It appears she didn’t overhear. “Did you have fun?” I ask.

She nods. “It’s always fun over there.”

“Good. Listen, I’ve got some things to take care of upstairs. You need anything?”

She shakes her head. “Where’s Victoria?”

“In her casita.”

She nods and opens the fridge, and then I head upstairs to try to calm down after that fight with Victoria.

And when I finally come back down, I hear the two of them singing Imagine Dragons at the top of their lungs over in the casita.

I want to smile at that. I want to feel happy for them.

And a part of me does feel happy for Harper that she’s feeling the stability we’ve worked hard to create for her despite the horrendous circumstances that brought her here.

But instead of savoring that feeling, I harp on something else entirely. Victoria and Harper are growing closer and closer, and that notion that hit me recently that my wife is hanging around because of my kid, not because of me, is getting stronger. I feel the two of them gravitating closer and closer to one another while I feel like an outsider in my own home.

Maybe it’s just the league’s punishment being handed down.

I try to tell myself that. I try to pretend like there isn’t something much larger at play.

I try to act like everything will be fine.

But one thought continues to plague me. It keeps circling back to me over and over.

If she’s only hanging around for my daughter’s sake, and if the two of us are placing blame on each other and living in resentment, in the end…how is this going to work for us ?