Raging Fires by Candace Camp

Chapter Forty-One

Kelli was sitting in her office, pretending to work and trying to decide if she was going to go to the game this weekend, when she heard a familiar but unexpected voice in the main room. “Kelli?”

What in the world was Stephanie Moran doing here? Kelli pushed out from her desk and went into the hallway just as Stephanie appeared at the other end. Stephanie gave her a little wave. She looked uncomfortable. Oh, God, was she going to tell her something bad about Jake?

Kelli hurried toward her. “Hi. Is everything okay? Did something happen to Jake?”

“No, not that I know of,” Stephanie replied. “I came to ask you about something else.”

“Oh. Sure.” Kelli’s brow cleared. “You want something to drink?”

“Water would be great.”

Kelli went to the bar to pull out a couple of bottles, and Stephanie followed her and sat on one of the barstools. Kelli handed her a bottle and came around to sit down on one of the other stools, swiveling to face her friend. “So what’s up?”

“My friend Claire—you remember Claire?”

“She’s hard to forget.” Kelli nodded, refraining from saying the crazy blonde at my wedding.

“True.” Stephanie laughed. “Well, she’s engaged.”

“To Pete Cherneski?” Kelli asked. “That’s great. He’s a nice guy—if a little strange.”

“Yeah. They seem to suit each other. Anyway, Claire put me in charge of the engagement party.” Stephanie frowned. “And I don’t have a clue what to do. She wants to have it here.”

“At the Blue?”

“Yeah. Claire really liked the ‘aura’ here. I didn’t know if you ever closed for private parties—I mean except for your wedding.”

Kelli shrugged. “I don’t know that we ever have, but I don’t see why not.” She grinned. “Maybe we’ll become a bridal hotspot.”

“I’ve never done this,” Stephanie went on. “I mean, I guess we’ll need decorations and… whatever. I’m strange, aren’t I?”

“I’ve never done it either,” Kelli told her. “But Naomi, my assistant manager, has about three hundred relatives and friends, and it seems like one of them gets married every month or so. She’ll know all about what we need to get.”

“Whew.” Stephanie smiled, and they began to talk about dates and times. Once the business matters were taken care of, they settled in for a friendly chat, talking about Stephanie’s book and how the bar was doing. Then Stephanie asked, “You going to the game Saturday evening?”

Kelli breathed an inner sigh of relief. She had been trying to angle around to discussing the football team. “I’m not sure.” That wasn’t entirely true. She knew she was going to the game no matter how much she danced around it. The question was whether she’d buy a ticket or sit with the players’ wives.

“Why don’t we go together?” Stephanie asked. “I could pick you up on my way to the stadium, and then you can catch a ride home with Jake.”

“Sure. Sounds like fun.” Except for the part where Kelli wasn’t sure if Jake would let her in his car. But at least this settled the question of where she would sit. She’d have to sit with the other wives or it would look strange. “I’m not sure if Jake, um, remembered to give them my name.”

“No problem. If he forgot, you can be my guest.”

“Okay. Thanks.”  Kelli hesitated. Well, there was no smooth way of getting into this. But she had to know. “Has… um… did Neil say anything about Jake? How he’s doing?”

God, this was so humiliating—begging for scraps of info from one of his teammates’ wives.

Stephanie quickly covered her look of surprise by watching her fingers as she fiddled with the straw in her drink, and she said carefully, “Neil mentioned that Jake was doing well at practice.”

“What does that mean? He’s doing something bad in his free time? Is he drinking? Getting into fights?”

Stephanie’s eyebrows went up a little. “No, Neil didn’t say anything about that. He mentioned that Jake was looking pretty grim. Kind of overdoing the running and working out. Which is saying a lot, since Neil’s obsessive about it. I think he’s hanging out with the steady guys—Justin and Jalyn and that bunch. Asa. Pete.” She paused. “It’s kind of scary to think that Pete Cherneski is considered one of the steady guys.”

Kelli smiled faintly at her comment, relaxing a little. “Jake looked good in the exhibition game last week.”

“He did.”

Kelli wanted to ask her a million other things about Jake—was he eating enough, sleeping enough, was he hanging out with any women—but she couldn’t bring herself to get that high school romance-y in front of Stephanie, who was always so calm and collected. So was Neil. Kelli wondered what it was like living in their house. It certainly wouldn’t be like anything she had ever experienced.

It was bound to be more pleasant. And boring. Okay, so maybe she was a little bit of an excitement junkie.

There was a moment of silence as Kelli scrambled to think of some way to get more out of Stephanie about Jake without seeming desperate and needy. Then Stephanie said gently, “You could call him, you know.”

“No.” Kelli shook her head. “He’d probably hang up. And it’d be stupid, just prolonging all the...” Her eyes stung. Not again. She couldn’t cry in front of Stephanie.

“What is going on with you two?” The question burst out of Stephanie. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being rude and nosy, but I can’t help it. Curiosity is my job.”

“Jake hasn’t said anything to Neil?” Kelli asked.

“Not that he’s told me. But then Neil wouldn’t break the bro-code if Jake told him in confidence. It’s really annoying.”

“We broke up,” Kelli told her. “Again. Except I guess this time Jake broke up with me instead of the other way around.”

“Why? You two seemed so happy.”

“We were. We always are until reality catches up with us. Jake’s undisciplined and unreliable and reckless.”

“Really?” Stephanie sounded surprised.

“Yes. And apparently I’m an uptight, controlling bitch. So all we do is keep falling in love and breaking each other’s hearts.” Oh, God, and now here she was, choking up and getting actual tears in her eyes. Kelli swallowed, tracing a gouge in the bar. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t dump this on you.”

“Of course you should. That’s what friends are for, right? At least, it’s what Claire and I have always done.”

Kelli smiled faintly. “I guess so.”

“But I don’t understand. Neither one of those descriptions sound like the two of you. I mean, Jake’s always on time to practice—maybe not as on time as Neil, but Neil’s not normal.”

“Jake’s been working on it, especially on team stuff. And he tries. I try too, and then something happens and we’re back to the same old thing. This time, my mother came to visit.”

“She and Jake don’t get along?” Stephanie guessed.

“No. Actually… I don’t know; they’ve never been around each other that much. My mother and I don’t get along.” The entire story came pouring out—her mother, their past, their divorce, the visit, Jake not showing up, until finally Kelli wound down. She sniffed and wiped a stupid tear from her cheek. “Sorry. You’re too good a listener. I told you far more than you wanted to hear, I’m sure.”

“No, don’t apologize. I am a pretty good listener, and it’s because I’m interested in people. I care about you and Jake. You don’t think you could work through this?”

“How? I know it may not seem like much. He was late one time, big deal. But it was incredibly important to me. And he knew it; he just didn’t care enough to make it a priority. He wanted to go see someone, so he did. I guess the time got away from him or there was something he wanted to do. I don’t know; he didn’t even have an excuse. He said he couldn’t tell me—I mean, seriously… he took a blood oath or what? He said I should just trust him. But that’s exactly the problem: how am I supposed to trust him when he breaks his promises to me?”

“It’s hard to have a relationship with someone who lies to you,” Stephanie agreed.

“Oh, he doesn’t lie. He doesn’t try to hurt me or let me down. He just does. It’s like it always was with my mother. She didn’t mean to not pick me up at the mall; she didn’t intend to pass out and not come to my graduation; she didn’t set out to get drunk at our wedding. It was always just a mistake and ‘I’m sorry, baby girl, I’ll make it up to you.’ Or ‘I’m going to change, you’ll see.’ And sometimes she did, but it never lasted.

“Jake didn’t mean to shut me out after we got married. It was just that the game or a publicity shot or hitting the nightclub was more important. It was just that he was having fun and forgot that he was supposed to take me out to dinner.”

“I’m sorry. I thought he wasn’t doing that kind of thing anymore.”

“No, he’s not partying now,” Kelli said hastily. “I didn’t mean that. Those were Miami examples. He’s worked really hard at being reliable for the Pumas. He’s followed all the team rules and practiced and studied the playbook.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Stephanie smiled and held up a hand. “I’m not the Puma behavior police. You don’t have to convince me.”

“I know. I just didn’t want you to think that he was backsliding. Because he hasn’t been, and I don’t want you think anything bad about him. And it hasn’t been only his career. He’s been better about…oh, about everything, I guess.” Kelli continued, “He hasn’t been dropping his clothes on the floor or leaving the toilet seat up.”

“There you go—that’s real progress.” Stephanie grinned at her.

“That’s why I thought I could believe him.” Kelli sighed. “Until he broke his promise. And I can’t live like that again. I don’t want to get into that pattern—arguing and excuses and disappointments. It’s painful and chaotic.”

“No, of course you don’t want to live like that. It is a big deal because it meant a lot to you. You have to stand up for yourself, and Jake has to correct his mistakes, understand his priorities or whatever.  But all couples argue sometimes. Neil gets mad or I get mad, and off we go.”

“Really?” Kelli sounded so astonished that Stephanie laughed.

“Yes, really. Trust me, Neil Moran is not perfect. No matter what his mom claims. We don’t fight all the time, but you can’t put two people together without some disagreements flaring up. I even broke up with him once.”

“Really? Sorry, I sound like a parrot. It’s just, you all are so happy, it seems kind of crazy.”

“Well, we did. But we figured it out in the end.”

Kelli tried to calm the little leap of hope that had formed in her chest. “But even if I wanted him back, I don't think Jake would do it. He was so mad at me. I said something to him that I didn’t mean, but you can’t take something like that back. I told him I wanted him to be different. And I didn’t. I don’t. I mean, not a different person. He was so bitter and cold after that, and… he told me we could never work out.”

“Have you talked to him? Are you sure that’s what he feels?” Stephanie asked. “I don’t know about Jake, but Neil is good at hiding things—they do that so much, you know, pretending that they’re not hurt to the coaches, pumping up the other guys even when they feel defeated, being calm and analytical when they talk to reporters about a game they lost even though inside they’d like to rip that microphone out of their hands and stomp on it.”

“Yeah.” Kelli shrugged. “But Jake’s not real reticent about telling you what he thinks.”

“Well, there’s no way of knowing unless you try.” Stephanie paused. “I don’t know whether you and Jake should be together. But, listening to you, there are a couple of things that stood out to me: One is how much you didn’t want me to think anything bad about Jake. Like you still love him.”

“I do still love him,” Kelli agreed miserably. “That’s why it’s so awful. I want to be with him. But I know it’s co-dependent enabling behavior to excuse him or say something’s my fault when it isn’t. And I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think you’re doing that. You were pretty clear about what he did and how you felt about it.  But a lot of what you just told me was about not trusting your mother and the things she did rather than issues about Jake. Are you sure you aren’t equating Jake’s actions with your mother’s a little too closely? Has Jake really let you down time after time after time like your mother?”

“Actually, before we moved to Miami…no. That was why I let myself count on him back then.”

“Do you really not count on him now? I mean, when you had car trouble before your wedding and you needed help, who did you call?”

Kelli stared at her for a moment, then whispered, “Jake. It’s always Jake.”