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“I ’m calling the police.”

“Iva, no.” I took the handset from her and hung it up. “He comes and yells for a minute, and then he leaves.”

“This is private property!” she said, as the words “whore” and “skank” reverberated around the parking lot. “He’s scaring you and he’s bothering the tenants.” She picked up the phone again, and this time she did call. I had done that myself, and the cops were aware of what was happening. He would be gone by the time they arrived but maybe, with someone else reporting it too, they would go to his house. But maybe that would make him madder…

“I can’t believe this is still going on,” she said when she hung up again.

“It really is better, though. There are a few people stuck on it, like that guy, but mostly they’ve moved on. Luckily for me, their attention spans are short.”

“It doesn’t seem lucky.” She shifted in her desk chair. “Was this always so uncomfortable, or is it only because I weigh as much as my car now?”

“It’s the chair. You look beautiful,” I assured her. She was very large with the baby but I thought she was gorgeous. “Are you positive that it’s ok for you to be out of bed?”

“I had to leave my house,” she said. “I can’t stare at those same walls anymore. This is the closest place I could think of where I could sit down and look at something else.”

“And you came on water delivery day, so thank you for that,” I told her, and she nodded. I hated dealing with Cody at any time, but especially when I was alone. “Lucky you. You got to see him, and you also got to hear a nut screaming trashy stuff in the parking lot,” I added, smiling, but she didn’t think that was funny.

“What has Tyler Hennessy done about it?” she demanded.

He’d finally talked to his girlfriend, for one thing. When he’d gotten back from the team trip, he had told me that she’d unblocked him. “Shay is going to be quiet about you now,” he’d stated, and that was true. She hadn’t said anything else about me breaking them up, which also meant that she hadn’t said that she had been wrong, and she certainly hadn’t apologized. Instead, she had started a feud with another influencer over a post that she’d claimed copied one of hers and that took a lot of the heat off me as her fans rallied against some other girl.

“What was he supposed to do?” I asked Iva, and she had ideas. The top one was that Tyler should have come out in my defense and announced that he wasn’t involved with me at all.

“No. No, they would have said that he was lying,” I told her. “That would have made it seem like he cared enough to defend me, that I actually meant something to him. He was getting crap, too.”

“No,” she told me back. “Not like this. People were saying he was such a player and whatever, but it was like…it was admiring,” she said, finding the right word. “He’s a dog and he sucks, but they could excuse it because what did anyone expect from a guy like that? What should any of us expect from our boyfriends?” Then she put her hand over her eyes, like Shay Galton had done in the video that had started all the problems for me. Unlike the woman online, Iva didn’t pretty-cry. Tears started to pour down her cheeks and snot came out of her nose, and she got blotchy fast.

“Iva!” I ran over and bent to hug her, very awkwardly. This clearly wasn’t about my problems, because only one person made her upset like this. “What’s wrong?” I asked, but the real question was, “What has he done now?”

She shook her head. I got a box of tissues and some water, for when she uncovered her face. Then I rolled my chair over to sit next to hers and waited for a moment, until she looked up, wiped her cheeks, and took a sip from the glass.

“Is it Dominic?” I asked, because it always was.

She blew her nose. “He moved out.”

“What? He moved out of your house?”

“He said that there’s a job in New Jersey producing music videos. It does sound like an amazing opportunity.” She blew again.

“He doesn’t have any background in video production, does he? Why would he get hired for…ok, I’m sorry,” I said, because she was bawling again.

“He took everything,” she said, gasping out the words. “He packed everything. If he was only going for a while, why would he need the boxes of his stuff from when he was a kid? Why would he need the pictures of his mother and father? Not just one, but all of them! He took everything he owns, even some of the furniture. He said he’d be back and I asked him for a forwarding address, but he doesn’t have one yet. And now his phone isn’t working.”

“If he doesn’t have a place to live, then where is he putting the furniture?” Good grief, I needed to stop with the questions. “We’re going to find him and make him help you with the baby. We will.”

“I don’t want to do this on my own!” she wailed, and I managed not to ask how she had thought it was going to go, even if stupid Dominic had stuck around. Iva already did everything for them, handling every aspect of their lives just as she had handled things at this complex.

But my silence didn’t help, either. “I know you think that he’s a bad partner,” she accused me, but that wasn’t correct. He wasn’t any kind of “partner” to her at all. “He used to take out the trash sometimes. Did you know that?” she asked. “He bought groceries. He picked them up when I ordered,” she corrected herself. “He would hold me…he was there!” She took another tissue and covered her eyes again.

“I’m not criticizing him,” I told her, and I was not doing that anymore, as of this moment. “Now isn’t the time, because we need to figure out how you can go into the future.” The house in which she lived had belonged to stupid Dominic’s parents and they had left it to their son even though Iva paid for its maintenance and took care of all the bills out of her salary. I wasn’t a real estate lawyer yet, but I was aware that it wasn’t great if her residence depended on the guy who’d just taken off. “He’ll have to give you child support,” I mentioned, to reassure both of us. But how, and with what money? I didn’t know.

“You mean that I’ll go into the future alone. I don’t want to go without him!” she told me. “Dominic was really excited about our baby. Didn’t I tell you that he put the crib together?”

“That’s nice,” I said. He hadn’t contributed any money to its purchase, though, and I was pretty sure that he had…my thoughts on this didn’t matter, and they never had. Iva didn’t want to hear a word against him. She kept talking about the things he’d done for her and their child, all of which she was able to list because there were so few of them. I only nodded and didn’t argue with her, even when she paused and eyed me, waiting for it. But eventually, she got tired, maybe due to her pregnancy or maybe because she was sick of trying to convince me and make herself believe it, too. She needed to go back to the place that her boyfriend legally owned, to rest in the shelter of the same walls that were making her bananas.

We checked the parking lot but it was clear of weirdos, and I walked her out to her car. She had already installed the seat in the back, ready for her baby, and I thought about her doing that by herself. Not that stupid Dominic was such an amazing partner (no matter what Iva said), but if he was gone? Then she was going to be truly alone. She had moved up here to be with him; she didn’t have any family and besides me, she hadn’t met a lot of people. Her life had been all about him, like working two jobs sometimes so that they had enough money, helping him with the various schemes he dreamed up, and taking care of their house so that he had a comfortable place to live.

“Booty hole,” I muttered to myself. I was upset and worried and I should have been excited and happy today, since tonight was the first Woodsmen preseason game. They were playing on the East Coast against a team, the Nautilus, which had been bad the previous year. Very bad. But they’d made some great changes in the off-season, as had the Woodsmen. They’d managed to get ahold of Tyler Hennessy, after all, and it would be his first game in the orange uniform.

I had seen him since he’d gotten back from the team trip to the island. He’d stopped by the office on his way home from their morning practice, the day after he’d returned.

“You didn’t capsize,” I had greeted him when he came in, but he’d been in no mood for my hilarious banter. He had wanted to tell me that he and Shay Galton were talking again.

“Texting,” he’d specified. “I’m writing and she’s reading it, then having her assistant answer me from her own phone.”

“Whatever works, I guess,” I’d said.

“She’s sorry,” he told me, but she hadn’t conveyed that to the rest of the world, only to him.

“Can I see what she says about it?” I had asked, and he’d blushed, a faint raspberry-colored wash over his high cheekbones.

“It’s, uh, personal.”

I stared for a moment before I understood. “Ugh, do you mean that she’s having her assistant write sexy stuff to you? Some poor girl has to transcribe it?”

That was correct, as far as I could tell, but he wouldn’t discuss it any further. He had wanted to know if the harassment by her fans was continuing and that really was getting better, since they did seem to have the attention spans of aphids (and that was probably disparaging to aphids). There were still problems, like the guy screaming insults at me, but I didn’t bother to relay that information. After all, as I’d asked Iva—what was he supposed to do about it?

In the few days since he’d been back, Tyler had been visiting fairly regularly. He would knock, since I was locking the office door now, and hang out for a while, or he’d invite me to come up to his condo instead, where he generally liked to be barefoot, shirtless, and often bottomless (just underwear). We didn’t do a whole heck of a lot, like, we weren’t involved in deep conversations about world issues. We talked about his practices, the guys on the team, the upcoming season. He asked a lot of questions about my dad, about my classes, and about law school. He was always interested in discussions about cooking. I also tried to bring up his family and his relationship with Shay Galton, but he was very close-mouthed about those topics. I knew that he had grown up with his mom and that her name was Gail, but I had already learned those things months before when I’d researched him as news of the impending signing got leaked.

Once, he’d even asked me about my own mom. “How did she die?”

“She had an accident.”

“Driving?”

“No, with taking too much medicine,” I’d said. “An accidental overdose.”

He had looked exactly like everyone else did when they heard those words: entirely disbelieving.

“It’s true,” I insisted, because I had never been able to let this go. I always had to convince everyone. “She had a chronic back problem from an actual car accident when she was a kid, and she took pain medication for it. She had stopped when she was pregnant with me but her old injury felt worse, and afterwards, when she started taking it again, her body didn’t react the same. She overdosed.”

“That’s what your dad told you.”

“That’s the truth,” I had responded, my voice brittle. “He doesn’t lie, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

It was exactly what he had been insinuating, because it was what everyone insinuated. “I can’t imagine having the picture of my dead wife hanging across from my bed,” Tyler had commented next, and it made me even angrier.

“He misses her!” I’d exploded, and his eyes had widened and then we’d talked about something else.

I went home that night after Iva’s visit in a terrible mood, worried about her and upset about the guy yelling names in the parking lot. As much as I tried not to let that stuff get to me, it wasn’t fun. No, it was nothing like fun, and I was glad to be home. “Daddy?” I called as I went inside, and I always had a moment where my heart didn’t quite beat before he answered.

“I’ve got the pregame on,” he said, and I smiled. The radio already sat on the table to broadcast Herb and Buzz, the Woodsmen announcers. It would stay there until the end of the season, and hearing their voices was like meeting up with old friends. We ate dinner as they chatted and as soon as they pivoted to their pregame TV show, we turned to that. They did interviews and stood on the sideline as the guys did their warmup, so you could usually get glimpses of a lot of the players in the background.

I watched as they talked with the Woodsmen quarterback, who looked relaxed and excited. That was a good sign. We listened carefully and I took some notes on my phone, as I did during every game. I liked to monitor improvements throughout the season, to see how players progressed.

I glanced across the couch. “Daddy? You ok?” I asked. His eyes had been closing.

“I’m awake,” he told me, and when I looked at the screen again, I saw that they were now panning along the sidelines. During the actual game, there were strict rules about who could hang out there, but before the real action started, you could often glimpse the players’ friends and family, former Woodsmen, and celebrities, especially at home games. And there was someone I definitely recognized.

“That’s Shay Galton,” I announced. “There, behind Herb and Buzz.” She stood with her hip cocked forward, her shoulder back so that her breasts extended, and her chin tilted down. It was a pose I would try later when my dad was asleep in the bedroom and I had the living room to myself.

I’d had to tell him a little bit of the story of what had happened between her, Tyler, and me, because Dad looked at the different websites dedicated to the Woodsmen. There was definitely information about the trouble between the new tight end and his girlfriend, and my name got thrown around a lot. But in my retelling, I had downplayed the situation by saying that it was just preseason nonsense, that people were looking to stir things up to distract the Woodsmen, and that the two of them were a solid couple. My father had been very mad about the names that some people had called me but the Woodsmen fans weren’t as bad as Shay Galton’s crowd, so he hadn’t read the worst of it. Despite that, he hadn’t been totally convinced by my explanation that it wasn’t anything and it didn’t matter. He was concerned about my feelings and very sure about Tyler’s.

“I’m not surprised that he fell in love with you,” Dad had told me. “I know you wouldn’t act on it, not when he has another girl. No matter what people said.”

No, I wouldn’t ever behave that way, and of course Tyler wouldn’t be acting on anything himself. He did have a girl, one who was as stunningly beautiful as he was handsome. Despite what my dad thought about me and my own attractions—

I watched the screen and saw Tyler jog over to see his girl as she waited on the sideline. They were right behind our Woodsmen announcers so they were perfectly in the frame, and they stood close together and seemed to speak quietly. Shay Galton pressed up even closer, her body against the pads that protected him under his Woodsmen uniform. She ran her nails up over his orange jersey, although now he wouldn’t have felt that, and then traced one around the edge of his jaw. He bent to kiss her, and it turned into much of the same situation as when I’d been trapped in the bedroom with them on the condo tour. I stared, just as thousands of other people must have, as they made out.

“Whelp,” my dad said, and that summed it up. Whelp.

I cleared my throat. “See? I told you that they were fine. Everyone can see.” Good, I told myself, that was good. It was exactly what I’d needed to happen, in fact, because now everyone in the Woodsmen world could attest to the fact that they were very, very together, and hopefully some of her fans were recording the moment and would post the same things. Iva saw, because she texted me, and I was also glad that it had distracted from her own problems.

Good.

The game was also good, kind of. At least the Woodsmen won. Despite their work in the offseason, the Nautilus still largely sucked, so our defense was able to control them, allowing only five first downs—yes, only five, and in the entire game.

“Preseason,” Dad said briefly, and I knew what he meant. This was the time when teams were supposed to work out the kinks and work in new personnel.

And that was why we were both trying not to be upset about our offense, which had also struggled. It wasn’t a “five first downs in the game” level of struggle, but you could see that they had things to work on—Tyler, in particular. It kind of seemed like he was confused or wasn’t familiar with the playbook, and he missed some blocks. I’d never seen him do that before, never. As the clock ticked onwards, it became clear that he was the last option as Matthews, the quarterback, moved through the progression of eligible receivers. But maybe since Rami Nour was new this year as the offensive coordinator, we needed to give everyone a minute. After all, it was the preseason.

“It’ll be fine,” my father said, and I went to help him up. Then I hovered (although he always told me not to), in case he needed me in the bathroom, and I helped him into bed.

“I liked him,” Dad told me as he settled against his pillows. “He’ll be great.”

I knew who he meant, and I nodded and said good night. I went into my room, the living room/kitchen/dining room, and pulled out my own bed. Then, with the bathroom door open, I stood next to the arm of the couch so I could see my whole body in the mirror. I moved my hip so that it protruded slightly; I considered the effect, and moved it out more. Then I rotated my shoulder back, elevating my breasts. I pushed forward my lower lip as I tilted down my chin and I looked at my reflection.

I looked like I had some severe joint injuries and needed immediate medical attention. “Sweet Jesus,” I muttered, and went to wash my face.

There was plenty of information flying around that Sunday, and as I worked around the house and outside in the yard and the garden, I listened to Herb and Buzz’s postgame wrap-up. They said a lot of the same things that I had thought about Tyler’s performance, and they seemed equally puzzled by it.

“We know how he played for the Seals last season, hot as a pepper in July,” Buzz reminded us all, and I had been watching replays of those games since he’d signed with us. Tyler had been underutilized in their offense but ours should have been tailor-made for him.

During breaks from weeding, I also checked on Shay Galton and what people were saying about her. Her fans seemed happy about the make-out session on the sidelines but also a little confused by it. “I guess she really took him back??” one asked, and that was the general attitude. Like, she forgave him, all was well, and she and Tyler were moving on? Her followers had questions.

But I could tell that it was totally better, all fixed, which I knew for sure when I went inside for water and saw Shay Galton’s first post of the day. It was of herself, of course, smiling sleepily at the camera with her shiny hair gorgeously tousled. Her cheek rested on the naked back of a man and the lower half of his face was visible, the curve of his full lower lip and his strong jaw. You could also see the tattoo of a moon and stars over his trapezius and deltoid, which were quite well-defined: it was Tyler Hennessy, obviously.

“Just woke up with the love of my life. Good morning, big boy,” she’d written. How was her makeup so perfect? She might have gone to fix it before taking the picture, but I tended to believe that she was always like that, naturally. When I woke up (alone), nothing was perfect or even close. Granted, I didn’t wear a lot of makeup most of the time…why not? Iva was always suggesting different stuff for me to put on.

I zoomed in on the picture of Shay Galton, at the way her eyeliner smudged around her eyes but looked sexy, not like a sad raccoon. And her hair wasn’t messy and bedraggled, like she’d been mashing it into her pillow and tangling it. It looked sexy, too.

“Kasia? Where are you, honey?”

I put down the phone and went outside but that night, after my dad had gone to bed, I studied the post again. I looked in the bathroom mirror and carefully drew a thick line above my eyes. Then I put on one swipe of mascara, and then another. Not bad, I congratulated myself. It wasn’t for nothing that I had taken all those art classes in high school! I took some creamy blush and smoothed it over my cheeks…nope. I had gotten enough color today as I’d cut down a dead tree and split it into firewood for the winter. No need for the blush, and I wiped it off. But a little shadow was good, and so was some gloss. I stuck out my lip again, trying it.

The next morning, I looked through my wardrobe, such as it was. I had never developed much of a sense of style, and I wasn’t even very sure what I liked. Anyway, clothes were the last thing I spent money on, and only after every necessity was covered and I’d put away enough in our savings, too—and since those things never actually happened, I wasn’t out shopping. I got a lot of Iva’s leftovers because we were about the same size and about the same height, although she was on the medium-short side and I was medium-tall, and she was a lot curvier. My curves were nothing much to speak of, so nothing fit exactly right. I had never cared too much and it hadn’t bothered me that she’d been ready to give the stuff away, sometimes because she thought it was ugly. Like her mustard dress: yes, the dark, dirty yellow wasn’t the best color, and maybe it was a little short on me, but when I’d gotten actual mustard on it as I ate in my car? It didn’t even show. It was hard to argue with that.

I went through my closet again and chose my best outfit, the one I reserved for the days when I knew I’d have a tour with prospective tenants. It had been what I’d worn when I’d shown Tyler and Shay Galton their new condo, but neither of them had been overly impressed. I looked down at the shirt underneath my vest and popped open the top button. Then I popped the next two, and I was ready.

I was aware, due to my familiarity with the team and due to the reporting of Herb and Buzz, that the orange plane had flown home on Saturday night with no problems and that the day of meetings and practices would be delayed this Monday morning to let everyone sleep a little more. Just like Iva and I had always done after a weekend game, I watched for our Woodsmen tenant going to his car. The two of us had always liked to assess how they were walking and if they had suffered any unreported injury, but we always said something like, “It’s raining and oh, there’s Marcus Sears and he’s moving fast like he’s going to be late.” Then we had felt relieved and went about our day.

I saw that Tyler Hennessy was early getting to his SUV this morning, and I thought that he might have been heading to the stadium to visit with a trainer. But he made a right from the footpath and knocked on the door to my office, which I had locked behind myself when I’d come in. Maybe the kiss and Shay Galton’s post had solved some of my problems, but maybe not all of them.

“Hi,” I said as I opened the door for him. “Good game.”

“It wasn’t,” he answered as he sat down in the uncomfortable chair. “That was one of my worst performances since I came into the league.”

Statistically, that wasn’t true, which I knew because I had checked. I thought he might have meant that it felt worse, though, so I nodded in sympathy. “Sorry.”

“You have a bunch of crap under your eyes,” he said, and mimicked wiping something away on his own face.

“It’s called makeup. Good grief, I know you’ve seen it before.”

“It looks different on you, I guess.”

“You just don’t know what looks good,” I said. “This does.” He seemed skeptical. “Is Shay still sleeping?”

“I guess,” he repeated. “She stayed in New York. Did you see what happened before the game?”

“You mean, you two swapping spit on the sideline? Yes, I saw. Everyone saw.”

“Good,” Tyler said, nodding like he was satisfied.

But I didn’t understand. “How did she take that picture of the two of you in bed together this morning, if she stayed there and you came home with the team?”

“It was from a few months ago,” he explained. “She has a stash of potential posts and it fit with the sideline show.”

“So that was…a plan?A scheme?You got her to kiss you?”

He nodded again.“She wanted to, anyway.The kiss went viral and she loved how her eyebrows looked in that picture.She wanted to help the situation because she was sorry about the shit with you.”

“I haven’t heard that from her yet.” And I wasn’t going to hold my breath while I waited to hear it, either. Shay Galton had gotten her start by posting videos that demonstrated her extreme lung capacity (and her nipples, because she’d worn see-through shirts), but I thought I would definitely pass out before she ever apologized to me.

“Rami is going to want to beat my ass today,” he mentioned, and I assumed that he was tacitly agreeing that Shay Galton wasn’t going to stroll in here with flowers and a big cake that said “Sorry!”

It was true that Rami Nour, the offensive coordinator, wouldn’t be happy with Tyler’s performance, and I pointed out several reasons why. Like, had he memorized the playbook? Really? Because it hadn’t looked like it. He’d seemed confused several times and the quarterback’s frustration had been clear.

“I was distracted,” he told me. “I’ve been distracted for the last week or so.”

“Now Shay Galton knows that you’re not cheating, and you can relax,” I pointed out. Things would get better and he could focus on what was important: football.

“My mom got hurt.”

“What? What do you mean?” I had never heard him talk about his mom, except for very briefly when I’d asked very direct questions.

Tyler had put his head down, resting his forehead in his hand. “She fell and she busted up her hip and her knee, and she had to have surgery. She needs help.”

The poor lady! “Can’t you hire someone? Yes, you can,” I answered myself. “Give me her address and I’ll do it.”

“I already got somebody for her, home care, as much help as she wants. She’s not complaining but I…”

I probably understood his feelings better than most people would. “You want to do it yourself, because nobody else will with the same love,” I filled in. “And maybe she isn’t telling you everything, because she doesn’t want you to worry, and that makes you mad, too. It’s also really scary that the person that you depended on is now depending on you.”

“How old were you when your dad had the stroke?”

“Sixteen,” I said. “It was a real turning point. It was the moment when everything changed in our lives.”

“This isn’t as bad as that,” he told me. “And I’m worried more than mad.” He paused. “I’m very worried and I was thinking about having her come here. She didn’t get to visit much over the past few months. She never even saw my old rental house.”

“Why?”

“She and Shay don’t see eye to eye. That’s why.”

“So you excluded your mother? You wouldn’t let her come to your house?” I asked incredulously.

“I didn’t exclude her!” he told me, and maybe he hadn’t been angry before, but he was plenty mad now. “She didn’t want to intrude, so she didn’t. I went home to Georgia to visit her instead.”

“Oh, that’s good. Would it be ok for your mom to visit now?” Maybe Shay Galton would be more sympathetic.

He looked toward his new home and frowned. “There are too many stairs in that place.”

“Just up to the front door, and we can put in a ramp. You can take one of the upstairs bedrooms for a while,” I suggested. He would have to be the one to break that to Shay Galton; she had already proclaimed that the main bedroom wasn’t big enough, so I had ideas about how she would respond to an even littler one.

“I could hire someone to fly up here with her. I can rent a private plane.”

“I’ll help you get a ramp installed,” I said. “No charge.”

“Generous of you,” he said, and smiled. He did look a lot more relaxed, now. “I always do this. I always have a hard time separating out parts of my brain,” he explained. “I want to focus on the game and then I’m thinking about my mom, and all the shit with Shay. The quarterback doesn’t want my hands on the ball, anyway.”

“That’s not true.”

“You have no idea what’s happening in our locker room.”

“So tell me,” I suggested, and he talked for a while. Mostly, he shared little things that the other guys had done, like not holding an elevator or like messing with the stuff in his locker.

“It sounds like stupid kid pranks,” I said. “Why do you think they’re doing those things?”

“Who the fuck knows? I’m going to be late to the stadium. I’ll be back after lunch,” he mentioned, and I took that to mean that he’d be back to see me. Was that right? Then he paused, looked down at my face, and reached for my chin. “Hold still,” he directed, and he used his other cuff to wipe around my eyes. “You had a bunch of crap there. It’s better now.”

“That was on purpose. It was a morning-after, smokey eye.”

“It was crumbly shit all over the place. You’re better without it.”

Maybe he was right. I watched his yellow car pull away and thought of what I might have said to Iva about him, if we’d been watching out the window together. “Tyler Hennessy is in a hurry this morning,” I could have remarked. Then I might have continued, “It’s because he spent so long hanging out with me.”