I knew I couldn’t go on like this forever. It was getting too hard to watch her date Chad—the guy who pretty much seemed to suck the life out of her these days.
The guy had cast some sort of magic spell on her when they first met—charmed her with his polished demeanor and the charisma that helped him in boardrooms across the country where he would win his clients.
But even though I had been sure she was about to kick him to the curb on several occasions when she’d come to my house with tears streaming down her cheeks, because of something he’d said or done to break another piece of her heart, she kept going back to him.
I didn’t get it.
I was the one to put her back together—put a smile back on her face—yet he was the guy she couldn’t imagine living without.
It was like just because he had been the first one in Denver to sweep her off her feet, she couldn’t even imagine trying out a relationship with someone else. They’d bonded over the death of a parent—Chad’s mom had passed away when he was in high school, and he’d been the first on the scene after Arianna’s father’s brain aneurysm. This initial bond was blinding her to all his faults and any of the positives another guy might bring to the table.
Another guy like me, of course.
For years I’d been biding my time, just waiting for her to realize that the perfect guy for her was the best friend she had friend-zoned when we first met. But if my plan to get her to finally see me in the way I wanted failed, I might have to take the 49er’s offer and leave the Denver Dragons.
Because moving to another state was probably the only way I’d get over her.
I sighed as I imagined what moving on would look like—playing for a new team and readjusting to a world where Arianna really was meant to be with Chad and I was meant to be with someone else.
But whenever I tried to picture sharing my life with another woman, I still only ever saw the woman currently buzzing off the sides of my head.
It was stupid, since the only time she’d ever given me any indication that something could happen between us was over a year ago—a stolen moment we’d never talked about after it happened.
Even though we pretended the night of my twenty-sixth birthday never happened, I’d relived it a million times. Because even if she instantly regretted it, that night and that kiss had given me hope that deep down, even if she didn’t realize it, she wanted me.
Delusional hope? Maybe. But still hope.
5
Cole
“Have you thought more about which woman you’re going to ask on an actual date first?” Arianna asked me after she’d finished shearing off the majority of my hair.
“I haven’t looked at my app since last night, so not really,” I said as she used her scissors to make the top portion of my hair match whatever vision she had in her head.
That was the part about this plan of mine that I wasn’t really looking forward to.
I liked the idea of spending one-on-one time with Arianna where she coached me and looked more closely to tell me which parts of myself to bring out when on a date with a woman, since that would tell me exactly the parts that subconsciously attracted her to me. But the actual ‘going on dates with women’? It just sounded like a chore.
Plus, it felt almost wrong to do something like that. Ask other women out on dates and pretend to be interested in the possibility of a relationship with them, only to dash any hopes they might have in becoming the girlfriend of an NFL player with all the perks that came along with it, because I just wasn’t invested in moving on from the woman I was still secretly holding a candle for.
I mean, the only way I could actually feel okay about leading someone on like that was if it was obvious she was only after me for my money and notoriety. If I could weed out all the sweet and sincere women and only keep the gold-diggers, then maybe I’d keep my conscience clear.
Or maybe I just took dating too seriously. Growing up, I’d been taught that you date who you marry, and since I couldn’t imagine ending up with anyone besides Arianna, I’d decided not to date at all.