Just Rules (4 page)

“A toast,” he said, grabbing his glass while he stood up. “To the Giants, the fucking bastards who stole our Super Bowl.”

Tim looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and Mac shrugged his shoulders and looked at Kelly out of the corner of his eye.

“To the Giants, a bunch of fucking assholes,” echoed Tim. And suddenly the rest of the people at the table and in the dining area followed. Kelly did as well, leaving her no choice but to move her hand from Mac’s inner thigh.

He breathed a sigh of relief, although it didn’t last long because he noticed that Steel Pants was killing him with her look. Why? And why the hell couldn’t he breathe suddenly? Damn it. Susan and everyone else could fuck off. Literally.

Mac stood up and went to the bathroom to cool off a bit. That night really was testing his patience, and if Molly, sorry, Kelly, followed him, he wasn’t going to be responsible for what he might say to her.

He went inside the men’s bathroom and thanked God for the few seconds of alone time. He splashed water on his face and on the back of his neck. He turned the faucet off and leaned on the sink, looking at himself in the mirror. He had terrible bags under his eyes, and the wound on his eyebrow was a horrible color that looked like it was getting infected. He should have let them sew it up on the field. He touched it softly with two fingertips and winced in pain. Yep, it was infected. Great. He clenched his jaw and realized that it was shaking a bit. He was really messed up. He had lost the Super Bowl, the last one of his career. He didn’t know if they were going to renew his contract. Worse yet, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep playing. A striking blonde had left him completely indifferent, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that his best friend’s fiance had a freckle.

He turned the faucet on again and splashed some more water on his face. He let the drops of water run down his skin that suddenly burned and waited for the sound of the water escaping down the drain to relax him. It didn’t work at all, and sooner or later someone would come looking for him. He shook his head and turned off the faucet. Then he stood up straight and dried his hands on a towel.

He had to leave.

He tossed the towel in the basket and backed away from the sink. Refusing to look at his reflection, he walked toward the door.

He took a couple breaths, opened the door, and ran into the last person he would have ever imagined.

Why?

Susan was standing against the wall in the hallway, not hiding the fact that she was waiting for him.

“Are you OK, MacMurray?”

No, and don’t ask me why. Stay here close to me so that I can breathe.

What was he thinking!

“Wow, I must look worse than I thought if even Steel Pants is worried about me,” he answered sarcastically.

Susan clenched her jaw but didn’t allow herself be intimidated.

“You barely ate anything, and you’re drinking as if there was no tomorrow,” she said. “You haven’t even tried the chocolate cake.”

“I’m not hungry,” he responded, putting his hands in his pockets. “Shouldn’t you be looking after Tinman?”

“Tim is fine. You don’t seem to be. You should go home and sleep a little.” She moved closer to him and put a hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up.”

Mac’s lungs suddenly stopped working and his throat closed up on him. Fever? Judging by his body’s reaction, he was about to have a heart attack. He could feel Susan’s hand burning his forehead, her necklace rubbing against his shirt. How was it possible? He backed away furiously.

“You’re so desperate to marry Tim that you’re even willing to pretend we are friends?”

Susan closed her hand and slightly turned her face. Mac thought he saw her chin tremble and her eyes were sparkling, but when she turned to look at him again they were completely clear.

“I’m not desperate to marry Tim, but I assure you that we are getting married. I lament having worried about you, it will not happen again,” she said, as if she was a woman from the 18
^th
century. “I hope you have a good night, MacMurray.”

“I will, Susan. I’m sure Kelly won’t mind playing doctor with me.”

“I’m sure she won’t,” she replied over her shoulder.

Susan walked away and Mac went back into the bathroom to see if splashing some more water on himself would calm him down, but he ended up vomiting uncontrollably in one of the stalls. When he finished, he freshened up and tried to compose himself the best he could, and in his head deemed this the worst night of his life.

Minutes later, he returned to the dining area and discovered that Tim and Susan had already left, and he assumed that little Miss Stuck up couldn’t wait to tell her fiance that his best friend had been picking on her. Shit, Tim would probably call him to ask for an explanation, and he would have to apologize to Steel Pants. He walked up to Quin and said goodbye to him and to the rest of this teammates, and then he went home. Alone.

At least now he knew that he had caught the stomach flu, it explained the strange reaction he thought Susan caused in him that night.

Susan and Tim were in the limo headed to his family mansion. Neither of them said a word. She kept waiting for him to speak, and he kept thinking, holding his phone in his hands.

When Susan had walked back from the hall, furious with herself for having given into the temptation to go and see if MacMurray was OK, she saw that Tim was staring at his phone.

“What’s up?” she asked, when she returned to his side.

“I have to leave.”

That was the only thing that came out of Tim’s mouth, despite the fact that she kept asking if his parents were OK or if something had happened to someone in his family. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her and repeated that he had to leave, so Susan asked to have their coats brought to them and notified the chauffeur. She said goodbye to everyone and Tim followed her out of the restaurant like a robot.

Susan had no idea what it was that Tim had read in that message, but it had to be something quite serious. He had her very worried. As soon as they got inside the limo, she told the driver to take them to Tim’s apartment, but her fiance corrected her and told the driver to head to the family mansion.

“Did something happen to your parents?”

“No, not to them,” answered Tim, and he returned to his blank stare. With one hand he held his phone as if his life depended on it, while he opened and closed the other hand, trying to hold back the tension that was brewing inside him. Just like he did on the football field.

Susan sat there in silence for a few minutes. Tim’s parents lived an hour outside of Boston in a mansion that had been in the family for generations. She had been there several times and always felt like she was visiting a museum. Tim’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Delany were a very old-fashioned couple, a little cold and distant, but they had always been very kind to her.

“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked Tim. “I want to go with you,” she added, noticing he didn’t answer. “But if you’d rather, I can stay home. We’re getting close,” she pointed out, looking at the street the driver had just turned on. She and Tim had decided to wait until after the wedding to move in together, although they usually spent every other night at each other’s place. Both of them like to maintain a certain degree of independence. Or at least that’s what Susan told herself every time she watched a romantic film and noticed the differences between those love stories and her own. She and Tim were different; they were both intelligent people that had decided to share their lives. They were compatible in bed. The sex was pleasant, and she had no doubt that he was faithful to her. It hadn’t crossed her mind to sleep with anyone else either.

Why was she thinking about that right now?

It was obvious that Tim was worried, and there she was thinking about trivial things.

“Tim, what’s going on?” she insisted. And something changed inside Tim.

“Stop the car, please,” he ordered suddenly.

The driver looked for a place to pull over, and as soon as he found one he stopped the vehicle.

“What’s going on, Tim? You’re scaring me.”

Tim looked away from the window, but during a few seconds his eyes still weren’t looking at Susan.

“Tim?”

Susan’s voice made him snap back into reality, and he remembered where he was and who he was with and shook his head slowly with his eyes closed. When he opened them, he stared at Susan, and took a breath before speaking.

“We have to call off the wedding,” he declared firmly, taking Susan’s hand, touching her for the first time since he had received that message on his phone. “I can’t marry you.”

“What,” she stammered. “Why?” She locked hands with him and noticed that he was ice cold.

“I can’t marry you,” he repeated, letting out a slow breath before continuing. “I can’t marry you because I’m already married.”

Third rule of American football:

No player can be at the line of scrimmage when a play begins.

SUSAN

“I can’t marry you because I’m already married.”

It is not that difficult of a phrase. It is quite a simple one in fact, and very complicated at the same time.

“What did you just say?”

Tim slides his thumb across the knuckles of the hand that is holding mine, and I break away suddenly.

My brain still hasn’t really processed what he just told me, but my body knows that he can’t keep touching me.

I close my fist and stare into his eyes.

“I’m already married, Susan. I’m sorry.”

I should slap him in the face. I know that’s what I should do. That’s what he deserves. But I don’t want to, and when I realize that he just told me that he’s married to another woman, and it doesn’t bother me enough to slap him, my heart breaks.

I was going to marry him.

A tear falls down my cheek and I see Tim raise a hand to wipe it away, but he stops before touching me and backs off.

“I’m sorry, Susan,” he repeats.

“When? Why?” I ask. I know there must be an explanation.

“Many years ago. Because I was in love with her.”

That last phrase knocks the wind out of me. Tim has never told me that he is in love with me. He just says that he loves me. Maybe it is a matter of semantics, but in this car stopped on the streets of Boston in the middle of the night, it makes all the sense in the world.

“You asked me to marry you,” I remind him suddenly and furiously. OK, he hasn’t broken my heart, but I feel stupid, like an idiot, like his second choice. Like second best.

On top of that he’s lied to me. He’s deceived me. Not only has he hide the fact that he is married, but he has also hide the fact that he’s capable of being in love, that he’s not the practical guy who just wants to live a peaceful life by my side.

“Yes.” He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. And that gesture alone is packed with more emotion than the majority of his kisses. Pathetic. “I didn’t know that Amanda and I were still married.”

Amanda. Her name is Amanda. The woman capable of getting Tim all worked up is named Amanda.

“How did you find out?”

Tim looks at me and I realize that he can’t stop shaking his knee.

“When requesting the paperwork to get married to you,” he answers sincerely. “I thought we were divorced.”

“And you’re not,” I add, through clenched teeth.

“No we’re not.”

I look at him, and he’s still attractive to me, but for the first time I realize that it infuriates me that he doesn’t get all worked up over me, that the lust he feels for me isn’t enough to make him nervously shake his knee.

“And you think that that means something,” I guess. He never says that he wants to get divorced from this Amanda, or that we should hold off on the wedding until then. “And you want to go look for her” I say, more than anything for myself.

“Yes.”

A while later, the car that had started going again slows down, and I assume that we are getting close to our destination. I look out the window and I recognize the shape of my building. It comforts me. I just discovered that I was going to get married to a man I don’t love and who doesn’t love me…and I feel like being alone.

“I’ll have to leave the country for a few days —he says to me suddenly— I’ll see to it that the press is informed.”

I can’t be in this vehicle, not with him, not even a second longer. I can’t breathe.

“Do whatever you want.”

I notice the empty feeling growing inside me, eating me away. What the hell is happening to me? How is it possible that I have been with such a wonderful man for more than a year, and at the same time all of this matters so little to me? Could it be that I’m devoid of feelings, that I’m incapable of falling in love? And what about him? Why was he just going to settle for me? The pressure weighing down on my chest expands when I realize something even worse. Why hadn’t Tim fallen in love with me? Why hadn’t I fallen in love with him?

I fumble around with the door handle and start to open the door, but Tim grabs my forearm.

“Susan?”

I slowly turn around, but say nothing. I don’t want to cry in front of him. I’m sure he’d try to make me feel better and it would be much more humiliating.

“I’m sorry —he caresses my arm slowly— I would have tried to make you happy.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I answer furiously, and I notice that he looks at me surprised.

“You haven’t asked me to come with you, nor have you suggested that we postpone the wedding.” I let out a sarcastic laugh. “And you know what? I would have, because I’m stupid like that.”

“You’re not stupid, Susan.”

“Call it whatever you want, Tim, but when you saw that message it took you half an hour to break up with me and call off the wedding.” I hold on to the door handle strongly. “So don’t be so sure that you would have tried to make me happy, because I’m not happy.”

“You deserve someone who will try.”

Oh no, I’m not going to put up with his pity.

I slap him. I feel better.

I don’t wait for him to say anything else. I open the door and take off running.