The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,16
that had grown in overnight. I’d overheard people talk about his scar when they didn’t know I was listening. They thought he’d gotten it during a drunken night in college.
I knew better.
Through the lens, Aiden grimaced and his trainer urged him on from his spot right beside him. I snapped more pictures, suppressing a sleepy yawn.
“Hey, you,” a voice whispered a little too closely into my ear from behind.
I froze up. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. There was only one person in the group of people that circled Aiden’s life that made my creeper-radar go off.
And this will hopefully be one of the last few times you see him, I told myself when I had the urge to flinch.
There was also the fact my gut said that making my dislike of him known would just make this situation worse, and it wasn’t like I would tell Aiden his teammate gave me the heebie-jeebies. If I hadn’t told Zac who was my friend that Christian made me feel uncomfortable, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell the person who wasn’t. But it was the truth. I minded my own business when I showed up to anything Three Hundreds related and tried to be nice or at least polite to the people who were kind to me. Trevor had drilled it into my head when he’d interviewed me that I wasn’t to be seen or heard. The attention always had to be on the big guy and not some crazy-ass assistant, and I was totally fine with that.
Plastering a tight, forced smile on my mouth, even though I wasn’t facing him, I kept the camera where it was, ready for action. “Hi, Christian. How are you?” I asked in a friendly voice that I really had to dig in there for, easily ignoring the good-looking features that disguised a man who had gotten suspended a few games last season for getting into a fight at a club. I thought that said a lot about him to begin with, because who did something that stupid anyway? He made millions a year. Only a total idiot would jeopardize a good thing.
“Great now that you’re here,” Creeper Christian said.
I almost groaned. It wasn’t like I’d known he was training at the same place Aiden was. I doubted Aiden even knew or cared.
“Taking pictures of Graves?” he asked, taking a seat on the floor next to me.
I brought the viewfinder eyepiece to my eye, hoping he’d realize I was too busy to talk. “Yep.” Who else would I be taking pictures of? I snapped a couple other shots as Aiden managed to flip the tire again and resuming that wide-legged, squatted position after each time.
“How you been? How long has it been since I’ve seen you?”
“Good.” Was it bitchy to be so vague? Yes, but I couldn’t find it in me to be more than cordial to him after what he’d done. Plus, he knew damn well how long Aiden had been out of the season. He was the team’s star player. Someone from the team had been constantly in contact with him since his injury. There was no way Christian wouldn’t have kept up with Aiden’s progress. It seemed like every time I flipped through The Sports Channel, some anchor or another was making a prediction about Aiden’s future.
The heat of his side seared into my shoulder. “Graves sure got back on his feet real quick.”
Through the lens though, I found Aiden glowering over in my direction, his trainer a few feet away jotting down something on the clipboard he’d been holding.
I was torn between waving and getting up, but Aiden beat me to decision making by saying loudly, “You can leave now.”
You can—?
Lowering the camera to my lap, I stared over at him, pressing my glasses a little closer to my face with my index finger. I’d heard wrong, hadn’t I? “What did you say?” I called out the question slowly so he could hear me.
He didn’t even blink as he repeated himself. “You can leave now.”
You can leave now.
I gawked. My heart gave a vicious thump. My inhale was sharp.
“Kill them with kindness,” Diana’s mom would say when I’d tell her about my sisters picking on me. I hadn’t necessarily taken her words into account when dealing with my family, but they had made sense to me once I was old enough to have to put up with other