Because regardless, it had taken ten years for him to remember I existed.
But at least this time, I was prepared for what could happen next. It wouldn’t be a shock to my system again. I knew where I stood, and that would be the difference between now and before.
Mostly though, I didn’t want to be a jerk.
Me: Yes. [smiley face emoji] Need something?
That was good, right? I thought so. Hoped so. Maybe a little cold and blah, but oh well.
He replied five minutes later, but it took me twenty more minutes after that to read it because someone came in and signed up for a month-to-month membership.
512-555-0199: I just wanna see you if you have time for me.
Okay. So he wanted to catch up? All right. I hadn’t been very nice to him, but he was still trying, which was so like him—or at least how he used to be. And that made me feel a little worse.
But….
He was asking for it, not me. The fact was: I didn’t cry myself to sleep at night because he’d stopped caring about me. And if he wanted to come back into my life, even if it was just for a couple of hours?
That was all right too.
Expectations.
And he loved my cousin. And maybe I’d see him again during Boogie’s wedding. Might as well get used to the idea.
I peeked again to make sure the coast was clear and replied.
Me: I get off at 4. Let me know when you’re free. [smiley face emoji] No pressure.
No pressure. A smiley face. Passive-aggressive much?
It took three minutes to get a response.
512-555-0199: Come over when you get off work.
What?
Me: Today?
512-555-0199: Yeah
Yeah.
For one brief second, I thought about all the things I needed to do at home. Laundry for sure. Meal prep for a couple of days. Respond to some emails. And brainstorm some more ideas for upcoming recipes. Watch another episode or two of the Turkish show I was hooked on….
But an image of Mamá Lupe settled into my brain right then—specifically an image of Zac standing beside her on his twenty-first birthday with his arm over her shoulders, slouched over so much that his cheek rested on her head. She had loved the hell out of him.
And I knew what she would want me to do.
I also knew what would keep me up at night and what wouldn’t.
Shit balls.
Four hours later, I was pulling up to a house that looked even bigger without three hundred cars parked in the driveway and in front of the street. There were cars in the driveway but only two, a newish Mercedes and a red Jeep.
Parking on the street after pulling a U-turn, I headed up the pathway and shot off a text to Zac letting him know I was there. I wasn’t nervous. My stomach didn’t hurt in any way either. I’d had hours to come to terms with the fact that I was going to hang out with him—as in physically drive to his house and spend some time with him one-on-one. Because he’d asked me to.
And I was planning on apologizing for how I’d acted.
Okay, maybe I was a little nervous, but just a little.
And really, my nerves came from me not wanting to talk about certain things. But that was it.
At the door, I rang the doorbell and waited, glancing down to see if he’d replied; he hadn’t. But not even thirty seconds later, someone approached the glass and iron door. Someone that couldn’t be Zac from how much shorter and beefier he seemed to be built.
I remembered during his days in Dallas, he had lived with some big-name player for a couple years. Toward the end of that living situation was when he’d been released from that team, the Three Hundreds. Boogie had told me he’d struggled during that time a lot; that had been when he had been working in London long-term. It had been before Zac had been picked up to play in Oklahoma.
The door swung open, and the guy who had called Zac’s phone, the one with the bleached, platinum blond dreadlocks, stood there, dark eyebrows already up and aimed at me.
I lifted my hand and offered him a smile, a real one. “Hi again.” I held my hand out. “I’m Bianca.”
The muscular guy looked down at my hand. He looked at it for so long I was more than halfway expecting him to just keep on looking at it, but he finally took it, giving