Shutout, p.13
Shutout, page 13
But all that shit, it doesn’t matter.
As many times as I lay awake in my bed, remembering her simple touches, her soft lips against mine, it’s to the point where I can rub one out alone just because I’ve memorized everything in my head. I could ace that test with my eyes literally closed.
Sucks that she never studied the same criteria that I did.
When she told me that she didn’t know it wasn’t me, she might as well have ripped my heart out with her bare hands and lit it on fire then. Maybe take a bite out of it, for good measure like some vampire ass shit, and spit it out. This is why I never dove headfirst into this game they called love. Because it was literally just that, a game, and may the best man or woman win. I wasn’t used to losing but, man, this shit burned like a motherfucker, and I’ve just learned my lesson a little too quickly to the point where I can’t even comprehend all of it right now.
My phone buzzes on my passenger seat, my hand immediately reaching for it. And when her name shows up on my screen, it takes every ounce of self-control to not throw it out of the window of my fucking truck. I need it for phone calls from Coach, for schools that might be trying to get ahold of me. For any one-night stands that I’m going to be in desperate need of right now.
Sawyer Boyd needs to be erased from my head, permanently.
I never want to hear her name again.
Never want to see her again.
I need to fuck, smoke, and drink the reminders and visions from my mind because like a damn fly to shit, she wouldn’t be someone easy to wave off.
It’s like looking in a mirror at myself twenty-eight years ago. I’ve seen my baby pictures, Dad would pull them out from time to time, bragging about how much I looked and acted like him.
And Easton isn’t anything short of my lookalike.
Chocolate brown hair, dark eyes that glinted in the sunlight from my windows. He was me, everything except the dimples from Annabelle and pudgy cheeks.
I watch him crawl on my hardwood, finding my couch as he begins to pull himself up. Not a care in the world, an inkling of how his life is going to change because I’m in it. A world full of happiness and peace, something I can envy.
“Is he supposed to do that?” I ask mindlessly, waiting for him to lose his balance so that I could catch him.
“He’s trying to walk,” Annabelle conveys next to me on the couch. “He’s pretty good at it.”
“Is he?” I keep my vigil on him, afraid to look away. I also don’t want to catch anything in Annabelle’s eyes about what happened.
How this changed my whole world, flipped it on its axis and dropped on me like an anvil. Shouldn’t have, not that seeing Easton hasn’t sparked something in me to be a better man to him, but because it should be Sawyer sitting next to me.
But she’s gone.
Has been for three weeks. Her landlord threatened me to stop showing up, that she’d call the cops, but we both know how idle that threat is. Everyone in Freemont knows about Sawyer and I, have since we were teenagers on our baseball/softball team.
Taylor says she’d heard from her through vague text messages but nothing more. Won’t go into detail about where she is or who she’s with, but it kills me.
It breaks me down more and more every single fucking day to the point where I’m on the brink of losing my entire fucking shit. Sleep evades me, I can barely focus on my coaching with the boys, and I feel like the walking dead in and around town.
“His middle name is Everett,” Annabelle states softly. “Like your dad.”
A staggered inhale goes through me and I’m on the verge of a panic attack. A violent surge makes its way through my body while I feel like I just got electrocuted by lightning.
I can’t do this.
I can’t be a father to a child. I’m not ready.
I’m not ready without her.
My lifeline, my sanity that is somewhere roaming this world because she saw something that she shouldn’t have seen because it should have never happened. I handled it. I did the best I could because Annabelle was the mother to my child and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
“Why did you do that?” I mutter, watching Easton stand but keeping his hand on the safety of the couch. “You didn’t even ask me if I wanted to—”
“You talked about it,” she says. “Once. I remember we were lying in bed, you asked me how many kids I wanted, and I said three. Two boys and a little girl with my eyes and your hair. You said you wanted to name your first son after your father. So I did it. I did it for you.”
A burning sensation hits my eyes, and I refuse to break down here. I will not lose every ounce of my shit when meeting my son for the first time.
I need to remember this.
Every moment, every flicker of his eyes so that I can look back and retrieve how he was at such a young age. How I became a part of his life today.
“He’s probably hungry, do you want to—”
“Why did you wait so long?” I blurt. “Why didn’t you just tell me when you were pregnant so that I don’t feel like such a stranger to him?”
Silence fills the space except for Easton’s coos as he looks around my living room.
He’s going to be hell on wheels, he never stops moving. Never stops looking or learning. I already want to protect him from the trials and tribulations he’s going to face in his lifetime. The heartbreak and the deceit, everything he’ll need to go through to become a man.
One better than me.
“I didn’t even know if I wanted you in our lives,” Annabelle voices. “I was hurt, so hurt, that it was hard to accept the fact that you were Easton’s—”
“He’s my son,” I snap, directing my words at her.
Her eyes widen, then soften as though she understands what I’m going through.
She doesn’t even know a quarter of it.
But then, she did. She knew a little about Sawyer, knew how much my heart was literally chipped and broken from her. Also knew that I didn’t like to fucking talk about it much.
“I know.” She tugs a piece of her blonde hair behind her ear. “It was immature of me, I’m sorry. But I came to make it right.”
“It’ll never be right. I should’ve held him in my arms and woken up in the middle of the night with him. I should’ve been able to pick out his name and baby furniture. Known the excitement for months so that I could prepare myself to become a parent.”
“You’ll do fine,” Annabelle chants.
I shake my head. “You don’t get it. You don’t understand the level of—”
“It’s because I’m not Sawyer,” she accuses. Her tone lit off from sweet to pissed within thirty seconds, and I could give two fucks in this particular moment or ever.
Because I’m not wrong.
Not here.
She kept him a secret then sprung him on me just as quickly as she developed the balls to show up on my doorstep.
“Don’t ever mention her name to me again,” I snarl, returning my focus back to my son. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know that you’ve probably told her and that she didn’t like it.” She sounds confident about it, like she knows everything about what happened and why. I want to tell her it's because of her that Sawyer isn’t here. That her dad died, and she’s spiraling in grief and loss.
“Again, don’t overstep your bounds, Annabelle.”
“Then where is she?”
“What?”
“Why isn’t she here?”
“Because I’m meeting my son for the first time, why would I—”
“Fine,” she snaps. “If you’ve already ruled out Easton and I, then I’ll need to learn to deal with your ex-girlfriend.”
“I’m not ruling out—”
“You’ve already chosen her,” she seethes into my right ear. “You’ve already decided that the three of us aren’t going to be a family. Never decided to give this a shot.”
I ball my hands into fists. I need a wall to smash them into.
“I’m not going to magically turn my feelings back on for you because you showed up with our kid.”
“Exactly, he’s our child. Ours. Don’t you want him to grow up with his mother and father? To not know what a broken home feels like?”
I turn to face her. Her blue eyes are steel, piercing into my face as she hooks me with a glare.
“Don’t get all in your fucking feelings about how I’m not talking about us being a family. He’s my son, he’s my family, I don’t need you to complete that.”
She scowls at me. “You owe me a chance. A fighting one, Colson. We loved each other once upon a time, just how you loved—”
“I never loved you the way I love her,” I chide. “She is everything to me. Everything. And you fucked that up.”
“By bringing a child into—”
“By kissing me and her walking in,” I stress. “By thinking you had the right to even touch me anymore.”
Annabelle stands, pulling her T-shirt over her jeans, and strides for Easton. “We’re done for today.”
“I want to see him tomorrow...alone.”
She picks him up and reaches for the denim diaper bag on the floor. “Not happening.”
I straighten my spine and stand, keeping my sole focus on the woman who saved me. The one who made life a little bit more tolerable. I’m not blaming her for Easton, that was the both of us. I’m pointing my finger at her because now she’s telling me that since we have a son that I need to pick her over Sawyer.
Not. Fucking. Happening.
“Do you want this to get ugly?” I carp, lifting my chin. “Because it can and it will, if you want to pull this sort of shit on me.”
“Your threats mean nothing,” she bites out, heaving the diaper bag over her shoulder with Easton in her arms.
A mirthless laugh escapes my lips, and she’s lucky.
She’s so lucky, in fact, that she’s never seen the real me. The one who’ll go out of his way to make things happen. The man who will make sure that every petty ass little action that I design, will make her crumble, cry, and break down.
I kept that side of me here, in Freemont, away from anyone else because Sawyer held that piece. The ugly and real one.
But now Annabelle is in my town, my territory. The monster inside me resides here, and if she thinks she is going to keep my son away from me when she decides that she doesn’t like what I’m saying, she’s going to meet him real soon.
“You’ll hear from my lawyer tomorrow,” I consent.
And I mean it.
Every damn word. Easton won’t grow up thinking I didn’t want to be there to support and love him. That I chose another woman over his mother because I didn’t care. It’ll all be on her head, not mine.
Easton will know who I am. I’ll go to his baseball or football games, his debate class, if he wants to run for class president, I’ll be there for everything.
Even if I have to do it alone without Sawyer, I had to do it.
“Whatever,” she dismisses, striding toward the door. Easton’s eyes meet mine, and I give him a weak smile and wave as his mother disappears in the foyer.
“Annabelle,” I call out.
I don’t hear the door open, so I slowly make my way to it. Her back is to me when I round the wall, Easton playing with a strand of her blonde hair.
“Don’t do this. Don’t make this ugly.”
“It’s already going to be ugly,” she stammers. “I had to bring Easton back to you.”
My brows knit as I take another step. “It doesn’t have to be, we’ll have to learn how to do this together.”
Slowly, she turns her body to face mine, her eyes red from trying to hold back tears. I open my mouth to tell her to not cry, but she beats me to it.
“I might not be around when he grows up,” she pledges. “And not by choice. I needed to know he’ll be safe in case—”
“In case, what?”
“When I was pregnant with Easton, I had a difficult pregnancy. I had issues with preeclampsia, an arduous labor, and the doctors found holes in my heart. After I gave birth, I went to several cardiologists, looking for a different answer, they were all the same. I’m on the list for a heart transplant.” She looks up at me. “So, trust me, if I didn’t have that, you wouldn’t have to worry about your precious Sawyer accepting this for what it is.”
“Annabelle.” I choke out her name, wanting to reach out to her to give her a hug but she’d push me off.
I’ve already said enough without knowing the whole truth.
“I need him safe. So just fucking make sure he is.”
Turning on her heels, she leaves, taking my future and our past with her.
“I brought you some bagels again, those ones that you like,” Jake announces as he comes through the front door of his apartment.
Sitting on his leather sectional, I continue to watch Netflix as he drops the bag in front of me, tempting me to eat the best bagels I have ever had in my entire life.
But today, I’m not so hungry.
Today, thoughts have flooded into my brain non-stop, so quickly and violently that I almost had a nervous breakdown on the shower floor today.
I’ve been doing decent, haven’t cried in over three days. I have a schedule of things I do during the day. I watch the news in the morning, watch some of the soap operas and try to figure out the plots and characters, watch Ellen in the afternoon then reality TV at night. I’ll squeeze food in there, respond back to text messages from Jake when he’s at work, it’s productive.
“Thanks,” I force myself to say, as he takes a seat next to me, kicking his feet up on the coffee table.
“The Office again?”
“What do you mean, again?”
He crosses his legs. “We’ve watched this already.”
“You didn’t watch season two, you were in meetings until midnight that week,” I retort.
“So you’re saying you cheated on me and watched it without me?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “Your mom called me again today.”
I glance at it, then return my attention back to the flat screen. “Tell her I’m alive and well, please.”
“Why don’t you tell her?”
“Are you new here?”
He chuckles. “Freshman, c’mon, you know that you can’t stay cooped up in here forever.”
“Are you kicking me out?”
“No, but you’re cramping my style.”
“Go fuck someone in your office, Jake, it’d be safer if psycho bitches didn’t know where you lived anyway.”
“True,” he agrees. “But not as fun.”
I lean forward, grabbing the bag of bagels to appease him. I’ve learned his “eat or I’ll talk you to death” routine. When he wants me to do something, he’ll just continue to go on and on about whatever the hell he can think of.
To get him to shut up, you just do what he wants you to do.
Pulling out an everything bagel, I take a bite. “Yum.”
“Wow, you couldn’t sound anymore enthusiastic about it if it gave you a real orgasm.”
“Lord knows I need one.”
He holds up both hands defensively. “Don’t look at me.”
“Why?”
“Nuh uh.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to be your rebound.”
I shrug. “You were before.”
“That was before I knew everything.”
I take another bite. “I already told you everything, and did you grab cream cheese?”
“Not the fact that he was still in love with you.”
“Yeah, because leaving you without an explanation is love.” I move some of the other bagels around in the bag. “You forgot the cream cheese.”
“Like what you just did?”
I let out an exasperated sigh and drop the bag on the table. “Jake.”
“You know I love you, Freshman. I always have, but you gotta hear this man out. He needs you right now.”
I cross my legs underneath me. “I need peace, absolute silence away from that town.”
“I get it...I do, honestly.” He crosses his arms, doing what I just said—being silent.
“But?”
He lifts his shoulders. “But how long do you plan on staying away? Bobbie can’t run the business on her own for much longer, you can’t let your dad’s business burn to the ground.”
I grunt. “Why not?”
“Because he busted his ass for years to build it up. What did you think was going to happen to it when he…” He allows his words to linger in the air, letting me fill in the rest on my own.
I don’t know. I never thought about what would happen after Dad was gone. How I would grieve, what would happen to Mom, and we all know about Skylar. I guess I always considered Dad as Superman, he was just going to always be around.
Which reminded me how naive I was with everything in my life.
Every single aspect of it.
Jake’s hand falls on my shoulder blade as he starts to rub gently. “You can stay as long as you want.” I nod. “I mean it. If I need to send someone out there to...Freemont, Oklahoma, to help Bobbie for a little while, I’ll do that.”
I look at him, my best friend since college. The guy who made me feel good, beautiful, sane. Jake could’ve been something but turned into nothing. He had a great job, a beautiful penthouse apartment, kind and generous. I couldn’t use him like that.
“You’re sweet, thanks, but I’ll go home soon.”
He scooches closer to me on the couch. “How about I go ahead and do it now so that there’s no pressure on you when you have to go back?”
“The poor person you’d hire would hate Freemont. They may just kill themselves from boredom and having to drive forty minutes just to get to a mall.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“It is. Also give that town some time to get to know you and your name will eventually end up on the front page of the newspaper.”
“Alright, drama queen.” He kisses the side of my head. “Let me go make a call.”
“Jake, you don’t have to—”
He stands. “It’s done. Shut up and eat your bagel, I walked six blocks for the damn thing.” He scoops up my cell off the coffee table. “And text Taylor back.”
