Page 102 of Play the Last Card

I move toward the couch, wanting to touch her. I feel her slipping. Like ever since those fucking photos got leaked, somethings been off and she’s pulling away. Becoming distant.

I feel helpless. Her hair is tired on top of her head in a messy bun. There are dark circles beneath her eyes. She’s tapping her foot against the edge of the couch in a random rhythm. I know she’s spiraling but if she doesn’t let me in, there’s nothing I can do other than watch from the outside as I lose her. It only makes me want to grab a hold of her tighter, lock my arms around her, do whatever it takes to convince her that we can work through this.

I kiss her but she doesn’t melt into me in the way I’m used to, in the way she normally does, like the weight of the world washes away when my lips touch hers.

“Did they follow you here?” she asks quietly.

Goddammit.

“I don’t know, baby.” I take a seat on the couch next to her. “They’ll get bored eventually. Someone will get done for drinking too much ora newbie will get in trouble for their celebration dance and they’ll move on.”

She shakes her head the tiniest amount.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Because there really isn’t anything else I can say. Her walls—the big ones I spent months breaking through—are back up and this time, they’re a few extra meters thick.

She’s staring at me again. Or, staring through me.

Then she’s moving. She flies off the couch, the blanket that was wrapped around her body falling to the floor. Ivy moves around the couch and into the kitchen, away from me.

Her hands wring together in front of her. It’s like she’s itching her palm, scrapping her nails over and over the skin. I stare at the movement. Her anxiety is flowing off her in waves. I slowly get up from the couch and move around it to stand with her in the center of the space between the living room and the kitchen. It feels so fucking familiar.

It feels like the night I told her about playing football and she told me to leave.

Except this time, there’s an edge to her movements. My bet is on her feeling like she’s losing control of the emotions she keeps locked up inside. All the stuff around her parents, losing her pops, the way she blames all of it on football.

She’s unraveling right in front of me and there is nothing I can do about it.

“Ivy,” I say. I don’t move toward her. I don’t reach for her even though every bone in my body is begging to touch her. The tension ripples between us and I fight with myself about what to do here. How to handle this. She’s pushing me away. She’s soft sand falling through the cracks of hands desperately trying to stop something as inevitable as gravity. I can’t help it when the doubt starts to creep in.

Have we been headed here the whole time?

Was I fucking naive to think we could work this out?

After Christmas, after she started watching the games, I thought maybe there was a chance. Get through the season, see how we land in the off season and figure it out.

Contract talks and deals are being put on the table and I haven’t touched any of it because I’ve been terrified of this very moment. The one where she tells me to leave and I won’t be able to change her mind.

If deep down, I thought she really was done and really didn’t want me, I’d leave.

But she doesn’t want this to end either. It’s a hunch but my gut is telling me there’s more to whatever is going here. That this grudge about football, the anxiety around the press is only surface level. That they are masking feelings much deeper and much more unresolved after being left to simmer for so long.

She’s blinded by the past, and the unresolved feelings, and the hurt she’s been carrying around for so, so many years. I want to shake her. I want to make her talk to me. To talk about it all. If she got it all out, we could have our chance to make this work.

Instead, I am helpless. I stand on the other side of her walls simply praying for her to build a door to the other side for me. I can help her tear the wall down from the other side, but here? I’m stranded.

“I told you … I told you I can’t do this … I don’t want to deal …” she hiccups. There’s no tears on her face. Her eyes are glassy and the firelight is reflecting back at me as her chest heaves with the words. But she’s not crying. Not yet. Like she’s holding herself back

“Baby.” I start towards her. She takes a small step back but I decide that I need to touch her. I need to remind her that we, public or not, are still us.

I reach for her face, cupping her cheek in my palm.

“Please don’t call me that right now,” she whispers.

“Don’t do this,” I plead with her. My thumbs stroke the soft skin of her cheeks. I memorize her beautiful face and commit her every expression to my memory.

Silence falls around us. A single tear runs a lonely path down her cheek.

I don’t move away or remove my hands from her face or break away from her gaze.