Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(59)
Which is absurd. It’s my years of abstinence to blame, confusing longing and love, desperation and deep intimacy. I was no more prepared for a one-time hookup last night than I was to walk onto the field today and kick a soccer ball. And I refuse to make an irrevocable mistake, on either of those fronts.
So I tell Oliver, with as little feeling and as much indifference as I can muster, “Bergman, I don’t care about your explanation. It’s over. Done. We agreed we’d move on.”
His hands clutch the steering wheel so tight his knuckles whiten. “We also agreed to honesty and respect,” he says.
“Ah,” I tell him as he pulls up one car closer to the ordering window, “but only as it pertained to co-captaining and the team. This topic most certainly has nothing to do with that. Because we would never let anything personal jeopardize our professional lives—our captaincies or the team.”
Oliver glances over at me, his expression hidden behind his sunglasses. I never realized how much he says with his eyes until I couldn’t see them. I’m sorely tempted to rip off those aggravating polarized lenses right now and demand the truth.
Which would be the height of hypocrisy, of course.
“No,” he says evenly, his voice calm and serious as he stares at me. “No, we wouldn’t.”
The car behind us honks, ending our stare-off. Oliver drives forward, relentlessly polite and cheerful as ever while he places our order, then pulls up to the payment window. It’s a different person from last time who’s so busy making drinks in between making change they don’t have time to bullshit with Oliver, thank God.
Oliver puts on Hamilton while we wait, seemingly incapable of existing in quiet—granted, extremely tense quiet—and I don’t even have the willpower to tell him to turn it off. He’s chosen “Wait for It,” and that song has had me in all three minutes and thirteen seconds of its clutches since I first heard it.
“You know,” Oliver begins, sounding dangerously philosophical. “This song’s themes and subtext raise serious questions of—”
I groan. “Must you pontificate? Can’t we just let Leslie Odom Jr. sing the shit out of this song and sound like sex in a voice box?”
His mouth quirks, but he quickly schools his expression into something frustratingly neutral. Is this what Oliver feels when looking at me, when everything I’m feeling and thinking is hidden behind the cool, inscrutable expression I’ve perfected—frustrated, shut out, infuriated?
If he does, then I have no idea how he hasn’t burst a blood vessel. I’m about to rupture something when this is the first time I’ve ever been on the receiving end and it’s been all of five seconds.
Oliver thanks the person at the window as they hand him our drinks. A small cup is set in my hand, again with GG written on top. I frown down at the lid, then up at the menu I just noticed inside the window, where I see The Double G is a custom drink advertised.
“What the hell.” I point past him, toward the menu.
Oliver wrinkles his nose and leans closer. “Well, would you look at that.”
“I’m looking. I noticed it, you menace. What is this about?”
I remember what he said when I asked him last time what GG stood for and he said it was between him, God, and Deja Brew’s owner, Bhavna. There’s some significance to this, and I’m frankly too pissed about too many things to be rational about it. “Goddammit, Bergman, stop being cryptic and tell me. If this has anything to do with me, I deserve to know.”
Taking a long sip of what looks to be an iced matcha green tea latte, Oliver pulls out of Deja Brew and says, “Apparently, the drink I specially ordered for you was a big hit when Bhavna did a tasting of new specialty drinks. Now it’s on the menu.”
“What,” I say between gritted teeth, “does ‘The Double G’ stand for?”
“Bhavna follows the team,” he says, focused on merging into traffic, ignoring me. “The first time I made a whole-team coffee run, I asked her to make you a little something special.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “I was hoping she’d pick up on my sinister vibes toward you and throw in something rough like pickle juice or Worcestershire sauce, but alas, she did not. Not that you acted like what was in that drink made a lick of difference anyway.”
I remember his wide smile, the drink thrust in my face as he passed around coffees. How raw and empty I felt those first few weeks. Back in a country that I’d literally run away from, home only to sad or, at best, bittersweet memories. Here simply because my body was not capable of the caliber of play required in England, because here I could still be somebody, lead a team, keep playing the game.
“It was good,” I admit. “Just not good enough to wash down the very bitter pill I was still trying to swallow.”
The pill of leaving a world-class club that had been home to the height of my career. Leaving behind a town that had become familiar, an adoring—well, in times gone by, adoring—fan base, supposed friends, a lover, a whole life.
Oliver glances my way, then back to the road. “Was that just a genuine—albeit highly metaphorical—sentiment out of your mouth, Mr. Hayes? Did you just communicate your…feelings?”
I point with my breve cup at the speakers and tell him, “It’s Leslie Odom Jr.’s fault,” before taking a sip of my drink. “Show me someone who can listen to Aaron Burr reflecting on indiscriminate suffering, the inevitability of death, the point of existence, and not even inadvertently say something genuine.”