Lainey’s List Chapter 10

Nick

Lainey doesn’t let me hold her for long. All too soon she’s pushing against my chest and messing with her clothes, covering up her hot body and pulling away emotionally.

“Cassidy will be getting up soon,” she offers as an excuse. Her eyes won’t meet mine as she pulls, tugs, and buttons herself up.

I lie there on the sofa with my boner sticking up in the air. Lainey ignores it and eventually, after she disappears into the bathroom, it deflates. I reach down to adjust myself and get to my feet.

I check on Cassidy but she’s still sleeping, her little head sticking out of the blanket. I like it when Cassidy and Lainey are here. It’s nice to come home from a hard day at camp or practice and have Cassidy run toward me with her little starfish hands waving excitedly in the air.

I once made the mistake of saying that Cassidy needed a daddy. Lainey and Charlie tore into me like I’d said I wanted to fuck Mother Theresa. I realized later that I’d insulted Lainey’s parenting and suggested that Lainey wasn’t enough for Cassidy. It wasn’t that. Lainey’s a great mom but Cassidy enjoys me.

Charlie let me have it again when we got back to our condo, telling me that playing Cassidy’s daddy was easy for me because I only had to watch Cassidy for an hour or two every week. I wasn’t the one sitting up with her at night when she was sick or running around making sure she was at daycare or setting up play dates.

I had all the benefits of a family and none of the hassle. Charlie isn’t wrong. Frank Harrington, the second string center, just had a baby and he arrives at camp looking like he spent all night screwing hookers at a whorehouse in Reno while drinking moonshine straight from the tap. He also smells like a weird mixture of puke and baby powder.

Yeah, I’m not sorry I’m missed out on that…am I?

Lainey comes back from the bathroom and starts buzzing around, picking up Cassidy’s stuff.

“What’s new in training camp?”

I breathe an inward sigh of relief. I can talk all day and night about the team. “Stinger hasn’t lost his weight. He came in thirty pounds heavier and claimed it was all muscle but he’s softer than Charmin.”

“It’s hard to stay hungry.”

I grunt my disagreement. One championship? We have the potential to run the table at least another year, if not more. In this day and age of free agency and the league-mandated parity, repeat championships are more rare than a four-leaf clover. Not to want it again seems inconceivable.

“Kid’s going to have to step it up at some point. He’s only got two more years on his contract.”

“The kid is two years older than you,” she reminds me. “I thought Stinger had a new girlfriend. Maybe she’s a super good cook, and Stinger is eating all her food, trying to make her happy.”

“Can’t they just fuck like normal couples?”

Lainey’s glare could sear a steak to well done.

“What?” Although, I know what she wants me to say. She thinks the quarterback should be the team daddy, making sure everyone is in their happy place mentally.

My opinion is we’re all professionals, so we should get out there and do our fucking job. And right now our job is to come into training camp fit and ready to rock it. That we won the championship last year should not matter one iota to the team.

“You need more compassion, Nick.”

“You do realize we’re paid an obscene amount of money to play one game a week, right?”

“And you work hard six days out of the week to prepare for that one day,” she reminds me. “And during the off season, you have to stay healthy and strong for the next year to come. That isn’t easy.”

“But it’s not rocket science.”  We’re never going to agree on this so I change the subject to a sure fire topic. “I’m worried about Charlie.”

“What about?” Lainey stops picking up stuff immediately and I feel a pang of guilt at making something up just to get Lainey’s mind off something I don’t want to argue about anymore.

But, truthfully, I am kind of worried about Charlotte. She seems more down these days than before.

“I think she’s still hung up on my brother. You should take her out. Play wing woman for her.”

“So get her drunk and laid?” Lainey contemplates this for a minute, staring into space.

“Pretty much.” I wonder what she’s thinking about. Even after all these years, Lainey’s still a mystery — full of womanly secrets.

“You going to watch Cassidy?”

Of course, she’s thinking about Cass. Her mind always goes there first. Which is how it should be, I tell myself. I’m just a friend…if that. The fact is, if I want to move out of this pseudo friendship we have, this part-time father position she allows me, I’m going to have to take a different angle.

“Nah, I think I’ll come along and take a look at the available field myself.” I pretend to fiddle with my buckle but really I’m gauging Lainey’s response. Maybe jealousy will get her moving better than anything else.

She pauses; a brief, almost imperceptible stoppage of motion, which I would have easily missed if I weren’t watching so closely. “That sounds like a good idea.”

Suddenly, I’m infuriated. I can still taste her in my mouth. I just came in hers and all she has to say when I bring up another woman is, “That sounds like a good idea?” What kind of bullshit is that? If she’d said the same, I’d be going ballistic. “Does it? Does it really? Do you really want me sticking my dick in someone else’s pussy? You want me going down on some club stranger?”

Lainey scowls at me. “Will you keep your voice down? Cassidy could wake up any minute.”

“You know what? I am going to go fuck someone else. Maybe she’ll appreciate me a little more.” I don’t know why I keep saying this shit. With every word, Lainey’s face grows harder, enforcing the barrier that always exists between the two of us, but I can’t stop. “There’s no shortage of hot women who are willing to go a round with me. Some of them are even excited about it. Tell their friends and shit like that. And they’ll take me on, one or two at a time. Doesn’t matter what I want, they are down to fuck.”

Lainey shoulders Cassidy’s bag of toys and playthings and brushes by me without even one comment. She heads into the guest room where Cassidy is sleeping and hauls the kid into her arms. Cass murmurs sleepily and then tucks her little face into the crook of her mom’s neck.

“You do what you want, Nick. I’m not your keeper.”

Lainey’s even voice, her lack of any kind of emotion, is like gas on the flame. If there was a point of retreat, I missed it by a mile and then some. “And you don’t care, do you?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did.”

 

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