Looking Back.... JT.14
It’s 3 a.m. Our suite's on an upper floor in the hotel and I’ve got a good view of the city, all the lights still on at this time of morning. I can see the hospital, and I stare at it, wonder if Ennis is asleep. I want to text him but I don’t because if he’s sleeping I want to let him have that peace.
Sometimes when I wake up, for just a few seconds, sometimes as long as a minute, I won't remember what’s going on in our lives. I’ll just wake up and be me and my first thought is always of him, and I wonder if he’s up already, if I’ve missed my chance for a blow job ‘cause he’s already down at the barn with the horses or out in his garden trying to make a tomato. I wonder about our plans for the day - if we’re gonna go out for lunch or if I’ve got some business commitment - and right about then is when reality starts to set in and I remember that we don’t have any plans except to keep him alive for one more day and maybe pray for a miracle, although God must be real busy with other stuff because he sure isn’t listening to me.
My stomach growls and I’m finally hungry but I know this place doesn’t have 24 hour room service. I can see the glowing sign of a twenty-four hour diner off in the distance and I decide getting out of this room is a really good idea. I find my jeans from earlier and a Patriots sweatshirt, stick a cap on my head, grab my laptop and head out.
*****
He disappeared. He walked out of the hotel room and slammed the door, and that was it. It was like he stepped on a spaceship and went straight to the moon or Mars or wherever it is people go when they vanish off the face of the earth.
Dude left about five seconds after Ennis and that was the last I ever spoke to him, which was fine since he wasn’t interested in coming out and neither was I. Plus, as I’d just been reminded, I was supposedly in a serious, monogamous relationship. As bad as things had gotten between us, I knew I didn’t want to give it up without a fight, but it took two to fight and Ennis wasn’t there. He’d checked out and left no trace of where he’d gone.
I finished up the golf tournament, fueled by anger and frustration, and went home expecting to have it out with him, but - like I said - he wasn’t there. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing to have to call your secretary and ask her if she knows where your boyfriend is and get told no, and it’s even worse to show up at his parents’ house two weeks later, ready to kick ass, only to find them looking worried and angry and just as clueless as you.
He’d sent them a letter telling them he was taking some time off to figure some things out, that he was fine but would be out of touch. If they needed anything, Anna would handle it. Anna had received a letter that said pretty much the same, along with a couple of passwords and account numbers in case the whole world went to hell and she needed access to a few million overnight. I didn’t even have all that information - or if I did, I’d forgotten it.
I didn’t get a letter.
For the first month, I fumed and stomped around, mad at the world, and the only time I smiled was when I was getting paid to, and even then it was a pain in everybody’s ass that was involved. I only did the projects I couldn’t get out of and otherwise, I stayed home. I threw out all the booze in the house, since that’s what I’d chosen to put the blame on for my problems. I cleaned out the basement and the garage and had a Goodwill truck come by for a whole store’s worth of stuff. I ran - miles and miles around our town and the mountain roads surrounding it. I worked out. I read a script for a bad b-grade movie, then burned it in the back yard, along with boxes of fan mail telling me what an awesome guy I was and how much everybody loved me. I was pretty sure everyone who really knew me would disagree with them right about then.
The whole time I was fuming, I was also waiting for Ennis to quit pouting and come home so we could figure out what to do. I wasn’t sure if we could fix it or not - we’d gotten so far off course that I knew we were in bad way, possibly even fubar’d. I didn’t want to break up, but I also didn’t want to go on like we had been and I wasn’t sure how to find good middle ground. I couldn’t make anything happen by myself though, and the waiting ate at me more and more as the days went by, till I decided it was time to stop waiting and take action. I searched the mail each day for a clue to where he might be, called the numbers on the backs of the credit cards in my wallet to see if he’d made any charges on them, and even talked to a private detective, using a fake name of course, to see if he had any tips for me. His advice was to hire him, which I wasn’t quite ready to do yet, so we didn’t get very far.
Ennis had quit his job and they wouldn’t give me the time of day, much less a lead about where he might be. I found a bunch of files in his desk at home, and discovered that we owned several properties in addition to the house outside of Atlanta. We owned a big piece of land in Montana, three different commercial buildings in Florida that all had businesses in them and a cabin in east Tennessee. Plus my mom’s farm, which I knew he’d bought from her when the old man finally officially went batshit crazy a few years back. He’d leased the Atlanta house out to a couple who were running it as a bed and breakfast, with a barn if people wanted to bring their own horses. I looked at some pictures of it on-line and fucking cried, because we’d been happy there and I realized then that all I really wanted was that life back, that simple, ordinary life of playing football and then going home to be with him and do whatever we used to do when we had time. All the other stuff that had taken over my life was bullshit that I didn’t need or care about and I wanted it gone.
Without any other ideas of places to look, I decided to check out our properties. I was fairly sure he wasn’t living in an office building in Florida, so I ruled those places out as possible hideouts, and he’d be pretty conspicuous hanging out at the B&B. Montana seemed like a good place to hide, so I went there first, even though I wasn’t sure if there was a house on the land or not. It took me three days to even find the place, it was slap in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, then once I did find it, I didn’t want to leave. It was the prettiest place I’d ever seen. There was a cabin, nothing fancy, but it had running water and electricity and enough furniture to make it livable. The key was right where Ennis always left keys, the top of the window to the left of the door, and I stayed there for a week, thinking about him buying this place, wondering how much time he’d spent there, if he’d wanted to bring me there or if he’d already given up by then. For about a half a minute, I let myself wonder if he’d ever brought anyone else there, but that idea couldn’t hold water in my head very long because I knew it wasn’t true. Ennis wasn’t blameless in what went wrong with us, but he wasn’t a cheater either.
I stayed for a week, all by myself with nothing for company but the mountains lording over me in the distance and the babble of the stream that ran beside the house. I found some trails and hiked them all. I ate sandwiches on the back porch, soaking in the view - everything pure and God-made - and I missed him so much I could hardly stand it, but he was gone and there was nothing I could do but keep looking and hope if I ever did find him, that it wouldn’t be too late.
*****
It was July before I found him, just a couple of weeks before training camp started up. He was right where I hadn’t expected him to be, at the bed and breakfast in Atlanta, helping out in the barn and doing some repair work on the property, mending fences and clearing out culverts and ditches and whatever else there was to do. When I got there and saw his truck parked out by the barn, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss the ground or stick fire to the place. Probably a little bit of both.
He was bathing a horse when I walked in - had it tied up in the middle of the barn and was hosing it down with a water hose. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and some old boots I hadn’t seen in years. There was a somebody off to the side that I couldn’t quite see, but Ennis was laughing in that direction and then I heard the other person laugh, and it was a guy too. He stepped out and saw me first and said, “Hi. Can I help you?”
Ennis looked around then, water glistening on his forearms and a smudge of dirt on his cheek, still smiling, but as soon as he saw me standing there the smile disappeared and about a million different expressions flashed across his face, none of them good. If I’d been hoping for a “thank God you’re here” smile, I was shit outta luck.
I looked back at the mystery guy who was still smiling but starting to look a little confused, because it didn’t take the most sensitive person in the world to sense the mood shift that happened as soon as me and Ennis set eyes on each other. “Best thing you could do for me’d be give us some privacy.” When his eyebrows arched up at that, like I was outta line, I added, “I’m Jack, Ennis’s business partner.” Ennis had gone back to spraying the horse, didn’t let on if he cared whether dude went or stayed, but I was wearing a very determined look on my face and Ennis not saying no to my claim made it hard for him to argue.
He did step up closer to Ennis and say something I couldn’t quite hear but that Ennis nodded to, and after that he gave me a wide go around and left us to it. As soon as he got outta earshot, Ennis said, “Don’t yell. You’ll spook the horse.”
“Then put it up,” was my answer to that, and we didn’t say anything else till he got the last of the soap rinsed off, gave her a real quick scrape so she wasn’t soaking wet, and put her in a stall.
I was bursting with things to say, like I’m sorry, and What the fuck do you mean, disappearing like that?, and How can we get back to where we were when it was good?, but then he blindsided me right outta the gate.
“I started the process of getting everything outta my name but this place. I want it. You can keep everything else.”
I just gawked at him with my mouth hanging open, fuck the flies that were buzzin around looking to get ate. Finally I said “Huh?” just to get him talking again. It wasn’t a very smart answer, but I’d spent the last almost three months going insane, so I didn’t have a lot of brain cells left.
“You heard me,” he said, leaning against the wall of the stall with his arms crossed over his chest, looking perfectly at peace with his decision. “I’m out, Jack. Done. We were over a long time ago, anyway. You know that. That guy was just the spark that lit the fuse.”
I stepped closer, tilted my head trying to get a good look into his eyes. They were dark and shadowed in the barn, telling me nothing. “We’ve been together for almost fifteen years, and you’re just willing to walk away - no big deal, bye, see ya, what the fuck ever? It’s really that easy for you?” I couldn’t wrap my head around how calm he was about it, like it was just another thing. Yeah, I’d fucked up, and I’d spent a lot of time being busy with things other than him, but that didn’t mean nothing that we’d had together mattered anymore.
“It’s not about being easy, Jack,” he said, coming off the wall and closing in on me. “It’s about getting something good outta my life again. I’m sick to fucking death of being the guy that does all your shit for you while you go play football and get your picture took and fuck around with other people. I’m not doing that anymore, Jack. I quit! I’m done! If I’m gonna be by myself, I’ll fucking do it by myself. I don’t need you for that!”
I knew that he thought this was mostly my fault, and even though I didn’t agree one hundred percent, I was too freaked to remember any of the reasons that he was at fault too. All I could think to say was, “Don’t put all that shit down at my door. You work too, Ennis! You leave early and you stay late and you take every trip they send you on, but you can’t ever go anyfuckinwhere with me!” I stabbed him hard in the chest with my finger as I pretty much yelled right in his face. “I never even see you anymore, Ennis! You’re not the only one by your fucking self these days!”
“Yeah, well exactly what am I supposed to do, Jack? Quit my job and hang out in the locker room so I can hold your jock while you take a fuckin shower?” He stabbed me back, advancing on me till the toes of his boots were poking my toes through my sneakers. “Or maybe I oughta take a cosmetology class so I can do your hair and make-up for all those goddamn photo-shoots!”
“Fuck you, Ennis! That’s part of my job! And you sure had no problem signing me up for that shit back when you were running my show!”
“’Cause you wanted to do it, Jack! You wanted it all, every bit of it, everything they offered, you said yeah. So I really don’t see where you’ve got any right to bitch now. You’re doing just what you set out to do. You’ve conquered the world, man. You oughta be happy.”
“Yeah, well I’m not.”
He glared at me like I was a worm he’d caught crawling out of a horse’s ass. “Not. My. Problem.”
“So you’re just ready to pack it up? Just like that.”
“Jack! I walked in on you fucking another guy! I told you last time that was it. No more chances. What the fuck? Am I supposed to just pretend that didn’t happen?”
“I wasn’t fucking him, Ennis.” I was splitting really tiny hairs on that issue, and no surprise, he called me on it.
“He was laying on top of you with his dick out. That’s close enough!”
“Yeah, I know, and it looked bad, but I wasn’t gonna fuck him, swear to God, Ennis.” Like I said, that night, if Ennis hadn’t walked in, I might’ve fucked him, but after three months of thinking about shit, I knew that if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t even speak to the guy. That had to count for something.
“Jack. This ain’t high school and I ain’t your mom and she wouldn’ta fell for that shit anyway. Pick a new lie.”
“Ok, fine, I might woulda fucked him, I don’t know. We were all fucked to hell then and I know most of it’s my fault. But I didn’t fuck him and I don’t wanna fuck anybody else, I just wanna fuck you! And I wanna be with you, Ennis, for more than five minutes a few times a week. I want you to come to my games and go to some of my events with me and I want us to take some vacations. I want to go to that place you got us in Montana and just be with you, not even tell anybody where we are - just go.”
Tears were leaking out of the corners of my eyes and God, that sucked, but at least there was a little less disgust on his face. I was all out of words except for one last thing I had left to say.
“I fuckin love you, Ennis. Please let’s at least try to fix it ‘fore we flush it all away.”
His eyes got big and he looked away and kinda laughed, like he couldn’t even believe what was happening. “Really. After all this time and all this shit, you’re really gonna say that to me now?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.” I squared my shoulders and stared into his eyes, wetness filling my own and making him blurry. “Sorry. I know it’s bad timing, but I thought you ought to know.”
His hand shot out and I wasn’t sure if I was about to get punched again or not, but he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shook me for a few seconds before dragging me in. “You fucking suck so bad, Jack. I can’t even tell you how pissed off I am at you right now. Jesus fucking Christ I wanna kick your ass so bad I can hardly stand it.”
“Then do. Fuck, Ennis, if you wanna hit me, go ahead and hit me!”
He shoved me away then and backed off quick. “No. No way.” He wrapped his fingers around the back of his head, little tufts of brown sticking through the gaps. “We’re done, Jack. I just can’t do this anymore. I got nothing left to put into it. I’m sorry.”
I ducked my head so he couldn’t see the fresh tears his words sent streamin down my cheeks. “Just gimme two weeks, Ennis. Training camp starts at the end of the month. Go with me to Montana. If we can’t figure something out there, if we’re really dead in the water, then I’ll let you go.”
“Montana… How do you even know about that place? I never even told you about it.”
“I was lookin through some papers in your desk, saw the deed for it and I thought you might be there.”
“You went there looking for me?”
“Yeah. I spent a week at the cabin, just tryin to get my shit together.” I wiped my face, rubbed the tears into my jeans. “I liked it out there. It was peaceful.”
“Jack.” He stared at me for a minute, then jammed his hands in his pockets and dropped his gaze to the floor and the dusty toes of his boots, eager to look at anything but me. “It’s never gonna be any different, man. You can’t have me and be you, don’t you get that?”
“No Ennis, I don’t get that. Maybe we let shit get outta hand, maybe we both gotta make some changes to get it back where it needs to be, but I’m willing to do the work if you are. If I have to cut back on my appearances or sponsors or whatever, I’ll do it. I did what you asked me before. At least let’s talk about it.”
Mentioning before wasn’t a smooth move, because before was when he’d asked me to quit fucking girls. It reminded him of dude in the hotel room, and suddenly his jaw was bulged out and his hands were in my shirt again and I found myself slammed against the barn wall hard. “How many times have you cheated on me, you motherfucker? And don’t lie!”
“None,” I answered slowly, keeping my voice pitched low and soft. “That was the only time I ever even thought about it. Swear to God.”
“That right? Pretty bad timing then, if you asked me.” I wasn’t sure if he believed me or not, but when he leaned into me, I could feel that his body wanted to.
I shrugged, angled my hips to push back. “I dunno. Maybe if it makes us fix what’s broke between us, it’ll be worth it.”
“We’d hafta change everything, Jack. You willing to do that?”
“You gonna make me quit football?” I asked, not letting my eyes waver off his for even a second. I didn’t wanna quit football, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t ask me too, but I wanted him to know how far as I was willing to go.
We stared at each other for a minute, searching each other’s eyes for hope and truth and chances. Finally he gave me one last bump into the wall and said, “You get a hotel tonight. Buy us tickets to Missoula if you can get ‘em, Great Falls’ll be ok otherwise. I’ll meet you at the airport tomorrow.”
He didn’t sound happy about it but I couldn’t help but grin, because I was getting what I’d been dyin for for weeks: another chance. He glowered at me like he wanted to string me up. “This ain’t fixed, not by a fucking long shot. If we can’t figure something out, I’m done, Jack, swear to God. So don’t go looking like you just won another Super Bowl ‘cause you ain’t won nothing yet!”
I flexed my hips again - he was practically laying on me and both our bodies were feeling good about that. “Yeah I know. But it’s a helluva lot better’d what I had coming in, so I’m counting it as a win.” I slicked my tongue over my bottom lip. “Wish you’d come with me.”
His cheeks flushed pink and his lips parted and I knew he wanted to, but he finally remembered he was mad - seriously mad - and pushed off me. “No thanks. Call me and let me know what time the flight is.”
“You get a new cell phone?” He’d disconnected his old one right after he left me.
“Just call out here, leave a message. Sandy’ll make sure I get it.”
That told me two things: he had a new one, and he didn’t want to give me the number. My smile faded out quick enough then, and I left feeling unsettled, like the victory I’d won was just a small one and that my chances of getting what I really wanted were still only dicey at best.
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