Page 17

Chapter 16

Tyler

S o either inviting her out on the boat today was the best idea I’ve ever had, or the worst.

The thing is, I watched her closely at the barbecue to see how she was handling being surrounded by another organization, and she absolutely had a good time. There was no faking the laughing and the smiles, and I would know because I’ve seen a lot of different sides to her over the years.

I’ve seen the giddy teenager who still had a side of immaturity to her. I’ve watched her grow into a young woman who’s more composed. I’ve seen her happy, I’ve seen her in love, I watched her silently vow to be the best aunt ever, and I’ve now seen her sad. Well, maybe less sad and more anxious, but regardless, I think I’m able to get a good pulse on her emotions, and right now, she’s sitting next to me, relaxed and smiling. Just like I want her to.

I want her to be happy.

I like making her happy.

Which I definitely don’t want to think too hard about why.

“It’s very quiet out here,” Lily says, leaning toward me so I can hear her. I slow the boat to quiet the sound of the engine a bit. She’s wearing a white tank top and cutoff denim shorts, with a bikini underneath. Lord help me, I’m not sure that I’m ready to see her in a bikini. She has on one of my ball caps, her hair pulled through the hole in the back, and a pair of sunglasses. She looks casual, and she looks comfortable being with me, and that makes me rub the spot on my chest just over my heart.

“Yeah, the locals have gone back to school, so the only people still vacationing are the northerners and the foreigners. Plus, it’s a Tuesday.”

“I like that the water is somewhat empty. It makes me feel like it’s just the two of us, and I like that.”

Just the two of us.

I’m not sure how that sentence makes me feel. When it comes to her, I’m not even sure anymore how I’m supposed to feel.

“Yeah, I like it too,” I tell her as I gently press down on the throttle to pick back up speed.

It doesn’t take long for me to get to the restaurant, grab our sandwiches, a couple of bags of chips, and drinks. As we approach the place I want to bring her, I kill the engine to let us idle in.

“Look right there.” I point, and she follows my gaze. Sure enough, my two feathered flamingo friends are right where I thought they would be.

She sits up straight and gasps. “Oh, wow! What are they doing here?”

“From what I can tell, they live here. I spotted them over a year ago, and they’re always here when I boat out.”

They watch us as we watch them, eventually we’re close enough for me to throw the anchor.

“They’re so pretty,” she says, standing at the front of the bow to watch them. There are other birds on this little island too, such as seagulls, pelicans, ibises, and sanderlings. It’s a great place to bird-watch, and no one is ever here. I’m always surprised but more grateful for the solitude than anything else.

“Want to know some fun facts about flamingoes?” I ask as I pop up the table and lay out our lunch.

“I take it you’ve looked these facts up?” She grins and takes a seat across from me.

“Of course. Flamingo nests are made of mud, they get their pink color from their food, flamingoes can sleep standing on one leg, and that’s not their knee but their ankle that bends backward. We actually can’t see their knees. They’re tucked up underneath their feathers. Oh, and a group of flamingoes is called a flamboyance.”

Her grin turns into a large smile, and although I know I shouldn’t, my gaze behind my sunglasses drops to her lips. Lips that are starting to look more inviting the longer she stays with me, and the more I get to know her.

“You have done your research,” she says, popping open her box to display the most beautiful blackened grouper sandwich to ever exist. Caught fresh, always flaky, and they never skimp on the size.

“I majored in marine biology. I kind of can’t help myself.”

She tilts her head and frowns. “You did? I didn’t know that. I thought it was just regular biology.”

“Why would you?” I ask, popping open my box and picking up my sandwich to take a bite.

But as I think about my question, it dawns on me that I know she majored in marketing with a minor in data science.

Behind my glasses, I watch as she picks up the sandwich and takes a bite. She groans, “This is so good.”

“I told you,” I tell her, trying to forget how she sounds when she makes that noise. The sun is bright, but there’s a haze today muting it a bit, and making every color about her pop even more. Her hair seems lighter, her pale skin definitely needs to be slathered in more sunblock, and that black bikini she’s wearing outlines the lushness of her boobs perfectly under that tiny shirt.

“The fish tank makes sense now,” she says between bites. “Do you take care of it yourself or have someone come in and do it for you?”

I chew my bite before answering. “I have a company that comes in. It’s one of those things where I just let the experts do their thing.”

“I really do love the fish tank. It’s by far my favorite part of your house.”

“Thanks. The boat and the fish, what more does a man need?”

Behind her shades, I can see her eyes flash up to look at me. She licks her lips. “I can think of a few things.” And then she smiles, and my heart skips a beat.

What just happened?

Is she flirting with me?

This somehow feels like it shouldn’t be allowed? I’m her brother’s best friend and right now her friend. She came to me because she needed a safe place. Hell, I’m the safest place there is, but flirting feels like we’re bordering on dangerous.

“Well, maybe a few,” I toss back at her. Her cheeks turn pink as she looks back at her sandwich and continues eating it.

Minutes pass as we eat in silence. The boat rocks a little as the tide tries to push us toward the shore. The smell of the salt, the sound of seagulls in the distance, the beautiful girl sitting across from me, I feel a contentment I’m not sure I’ve ever felt.

“Did I ever tell you I watched you get drafted?”

My gaze pops to hers. “You watched me?”

“Umm, hello.” She waves her hand at me. “You aren’t just some guy who I met in passing. You are important to us, to my family. I was so excited for you, and I wanted to see who would choose you, your reaction, all the good stuff.” She snickers to herself. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but right before your season started, I went out and got a Tarpons T-shirt with your name on the back. Dean was so pissed.”

“You bought one of mine? Why?”

“I was proud of you. Proud for you. I wanted to show you off as much as I could. He wasn’t in the league yet, so I didn’t think it was a big deal, but he did. He said it was dumb that I was wearing it, and that I was his girlfriend, and if I was going to wear anyone’s name, it should be his.”

Hearing her say she was proud of me and supporting me at a time in my life when I was probably at my lowest and didn’t even know she was doing this, my fondness for her instantly strengthens in a way that feels really intense. She doesn’t even realize how much this means to me, and in a way is healing a moment ruined by someone else.

I clear my throat. “I hate to say it, as much as I love that you did this, but I kind of agree with him, given that football is his career too. If he was an accountant or teacher or whatever, it would be different.”

Her grin grows larger. “I wore that shirt a lot.”

She wore it a lot. Her. Lily.

It does something to me to realize that she’s always been there for me, even if she was silent and in the background. Years and years, and as strange as it sounds, I’m beginning to understand that she has been a constant in my life without me even comprehending it.

One corner of my mouth tips up. It’s the thought of her, just her, and the thought that she was pissing off that asshole on purpose brings me great joy.

“Speaking of the draft, why don’t you have any pictures up at your house? Isn’t that supposed to be like one of the greatest days of your life?”

I break eye contact from her and grab my napkin to wipe my hands and my mouth.I wish I had fond memories of the draft, but I don’t. Lily knew my college girlfriend, she met her several times, and she also knows that we broke up right around then. It’s the lies and deceit that overshadowed and consumed everything else in my life.

“Marissa is in all of the photos. Every one of them. I’m not sure how she managed that, but there isn’t a single photo, not that I would probably put it up anyway.”

She watches me as I clean up and place it all in a garbage can that slides out from the wall.

“You know I have Photoshop. I can delete her or change her face to someone else's if you want me to."

Her comment surprises me, and I look over to find her face is so serious, so matter of fact, a chuckle slips out.

“It’s fine. I don’t want the reminder anyway.”

Just the thought of her makes me sick. Of all the things I’ve done, dating her was the worst mistake of my life.

“What happened between the two of you?” she asks.

I should have known this was coming eventually. I’m surprised it took her this long to ask, considering she just went through her own breakup, and commiserating over a past trauma is something that people have a tendency to do. But other than Lance, my parents, my agent, and my lawyers, this isn’t something I’ve spoken about to anyone else.

“She wasn’t who I thought she was.” I lift my hat, run my hand over my hair to smooth it down, and replace it. It's a nervous movement, one I’m certain she sees, but she presses anyway.

“Really? Weren’t the two of you together for like years?”

“Not quite, but a year and a half, yeah.” I lean back into the bench and sling one arm out across the top while placing the other in front of me. “You sure you want to hear about this?” I ask her, soaking in her gorgeous and calming face.

She mimics my body language and leans back too. “Only if you want to tell me. Which obviously you don’t have to. I was just curious. Lance never said anything, and it was like one day y’all were together, future looking bright and all that, and then the next you weren’t.”

It’s hard to talk about Marissa. It’s not something I want to relive, and I hate how she made me feel, how she still makes me feel all these years later, but Lily isn’t some random person, and as much as every cell in my body is screaming not to say anything, don’t trust her, I do. She makes me feel better. She makes me feel like I am moving on and it’s okay to open up to someone.

I let out a deep sigh. “She wasn’t who I thought she was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters, it turns out her name isn’t Marissa. It’s Clarissa.”

Lily’s face scrunches up. “I don’t understand.”

“She faked it all. The whole thing. Turns out, some people will do anything for money.”

She thinks about this for a moment and then asks, “How do you fake a relationship for that long?”

“Very easily, apparently. Turns out, she was with someone else the whole time. The two of them planned the whole charade. The night I was drafted, she had gone to the bathroom in our hotel room, and her phone dinged in her bag. I went to grab it for her, and it was a different phone. She had two. The text on the phone said, “Get the watch,” and every alarm in my head went off. Over our time together, random things had gone missing. I didn’t think anything of it, between the locker room, hotels, people coming and going, whatever, but that one second it took for me to read that text, everything I thought I knew changed. It was her.”

Her mouth falls open. “Oh my God. Did you confront her?”

I shake my head. “Not that night. I waited to see if my watch disappeared, and it did.”

She gasps. “What did you do?”

“I went to my agent, Michael, and asked him what to do, knowing there is more than one person suddenly in on it. We planned for me to have meetings at his office in Atlanta, when really, we set cameras up around my apartment and at the front door. While I was supposedly gone, Marissa and the guy came over. They snooped through my things, and he called her Clarissa. This had Michael hiring a private investigator to learn exactly who she was, who they were.”

Redness is climbing up Lily’s chest and neck. She’s upset for me, and I know it shouldn’t, but it does endear her to me. Even more so than she already is.

“Who was she?”

“Someone who, in the end, tried to blackmail me for a lot of money.” Just saying those words has my insides hardening. It’s such an appalling situation, and I hate that it happened to me. That I let her manipulate me so much that I never even saw it happening, and right under my nose too. In my own home.

“Tyler.”

That redness moves to her cheeks and ears.

“They planned the whole thing. From beginning to end. Marissa was not twenty-one, or a student at Miami. Clarissa was twenty-six, married to a guy named Ian, kept a fake fully furnished studio apartment to throw me off, and was a thief. They had stolen from me without me knowing, opened credit cards under my name, videoed her and I together being intimate, all kinds of stuff. Their threats to release it all were quickly squashed by my attorney and his computer forensics colleagues. The whole thing was premeditated, right down to the bar where we met. They saw the dollar signs of the NFL coming from a young ‘hearts in his eyes’ guy, and thought they would be able to capitalize on it. Dumb fucks are what they are. Instead, they landed in jail. It was supposed to be eight years, but both were released early after five. Last I heard, the lawyers slapped them both with restraining orders, and they’ve since moved to Texas.”

She reaches across the little table and places her hand on my arm. Her hand is warm under the sun. “I don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say now. It was a long time ago. I’m over it, but as you’ve already figured out, I keep my cards close for good reason, and I have trust issues.”

Her hand rubs up and down my arm a few times until she eventually reaches my hand where she tangles our fingers together. Lily’s hand is so small in mine. Her nails are painted a light pink, and I like it. I like her.

“You weren’t stupid. They tricked you in the worst way.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” I tell her, tightening my fingers around hers.

“It does. I hope you know I will never break your trust.”

“I know. That’s why I told you.”