Cliché with a player

Chapter 42 - Him

I hear a disturbed yell from the living room where Max is watching basketball.

"Already?" I hurry back with a bowl of popcorn in my hands. The game has just started.

"Well, unfairness doesn't pick a time. Incompetence neither."

Laughing, I set the bowl down on the coffee table in front of us.

I'm watching this game for Max's sake.

Matt is playing.

Over the years I've started avoiding watching games in which he played, even if I got over him. It's...weird. Every time I knew the game was on, I would conveniently find something else to do somewhere else. Max hasn't noticed so far that I'm only dogging certain games, since I still went with him to watch it live. I never told him Matt is my ex, I know how much he loves him and I don't want to interfere with that image he's built about him.

Because Matt Taylor is probably his favourite player. The irony, I know.

The camera zooms in on Matt's sweaty face, a headband holding his hair in place. He is focused only on the game, I see it in his gleaming green eyes in the way he scans the court.

He won't allow defeat today.

A corner of my mouth tugs up, because I still know him well enough to notice something like this — people don't really change.

I'm not surprised when his team wins two hours later.

An interviewer almost immediately pulls him to the side for a few questions, and it doesn't escape me how she's evidently flirting with him.

She is his type.

Matt politely answers all the questions and wants to run off to change, but the woman interviewing him quickly asks one more question.

"Matt, tell us, the viewers want to know — especially the women," she laughs, "is there someone special in your life?"

Max's brows furrow. "That's unprofessional, don't you think."

"It is," I agree. My eyes are glued to the screen.

"Yes and no," Matt's low rumble sounds from the screen. "She's someone I foolishly let go years ago, but I promised to come back for her." His eyes look directly at the camera like he knows I'm watching.

My breath catches in my lungs.

He promised me that he'd come back. We broke up my second year of college, when the tight schedule he had didn't allow us to see each other as much as we'd wanted and we'd both grown nervous when together. We were terrified of the time we would have to separate again, not knowing when we would see one another anew.

I loved him so fiercely even the time could not withstand it. So we ran out of it.

It was a mutual break up and we agreed we would give it another try when he got more settled in his role as the new star and I would finish college. And if we wanted to try again, of course.

That happened five years ago.

I decided I couldn't and wouldn't wait for him forever, as shouldn't he, so I moved on and started dating again.

But the time in between our agreement and Max...It was probably one of the hardest times of my life, even with all that had happened in high school. I lost my rock, my best friend, my soulmate, I was a mess and Tina had to basically take care of me for a month before I got back on my feet, though I still didn't see other people for more than a year.

And now, Matt is stating in front of a million people that he...that he...

"And I intend to do just that."

I don't hear what the interviewer says, I can't.

Matt will come back. Matt wants to come back. He wants me, still. I can't believe it.

"Laken, are you okay?" Max's touch pulls me out of my head, back to reality.

I turn my head to see the concerned look on his face and wave my hand. "Don't worry, I zoned out."

~~~

There is a knock on the door later that evening. Probably Tina with her decorations and lights she plans on hanging all over the apartment, since we are celebrating Christmas at our place this year.

"Can you go get it please, I'm busy with the dinner!" Max yells from another room.

I get up to open the door...And that is not Tina standing in the doorway.

It's a 6'5 feet tall basketball player, with the greenest, most comforting eyes I have ever came across, and that damn beauty spot under his eye.

"Hey, Darling. Missed me?"