The Comeback Route Read online

  The bus rolled on, through the rest of the long day and into the next. Stop after stop, city after city, mile after mile.

  “College? Yes, I went.” I paused. “I didn’t exactly graduate, but I did attend,” I explained to my new seatmate Rae, as we motored somewhere around the Tennessee/Alabama border. “I mean, I went to classes for a lot of years at two different colleges, but I didn’t quite get it done.” I yawned. Everything was off after a night on the bus. Brain: sluggish, body: grungy, hair: birds’ nest.

  “My son finished his degree in only three years at Auburn,” Rae told me smugly. “He’s an engineer, just bought a house in Vestavia.”

  “Isn’t that nice.”

  “Such a good boy.” She took out her phone, which worked, and showed me a picture of a grinning man with his arm around her. She then considered me as she put it back in the big bag that was taking up my legroom, too. “You didn’t graduate, hm. I guess it must have been hard for you to navigate the American educational system, though. It’s probably very different from what you have in Quebec. And you have the language issue, although your English is excellent,” she allowed.

  “My English is perfect,” I said severely. Sure, I was 24 and hadn’t yet graduated from college, but I had a few years before that situation got dire, right? You were allowed at least 10 years to get your undergrad degree. Wasn’t that the saying? Twenty-four hours for the Earth to rotate, nine months for a baby, ten years to graduate. Everyone was always saying that.

  Rae told me more about her engineer son. I had the idea that when she’d first seen me, she’d considered me as a possibility for him, especially with my sophisticated background as a une québécoise. But I had explained that I was taken, and then the more she heard about me—no job, no degree, no prospects—the less she wanted to pursue me as a potential daughter-in-law.

  I reached for my phone for the thousandth time to see how much longer the trip would take, but it still didn’t work. Really, that part sucked. Couldn’t he have at least let me stay on the data plan? I huffed a little angrily, then wondered how I would get myself a new phone or plan or whatever I would need. How did someone do that? And when I thought of all that, I remembered that I was probably going to need some money coming in soon to pay for it, since I had tried my credit cards at every stop and checked my bank balance and, nope, nothing had changed in those quarters.

  But it was a beautiful morning in Alabama, and I was seeing a new part of our country, and I was on my way to get back together with Nico. Also, Rae was getting off at the next stop in Birmingham, and that was a real positive. I tried to push aside any qualms I had about this trip because, holy shit, I had been on one bus or another for about 24 hours and there was no going back. I felt my hair. With the state it was in, I wasn’t sure it would ever return to normal, so this trip was going to have to mean something.

  I wondered if anyone from my old life was thinking about me. My friend Daisy would worry for sure if I was out of touch for too long, so I had to let her know that I was ok as soon as I could work out my phone issue. She was on her honeymoon, but just in case she was waiting for an answer from me about something, I wanted to check in. I couldn’t do anything to mess up her first real trip with her first real husband. After telling me all through the fall that she and her boyfriend were going to take things slowly, she flipped the script. Right before Christmas she had asked me to help her find a dress because they had decided they weren’t going to wait after all, and after the professional football season ended and her new fiancé had time off, they were getting married.

  Daisy had some issues with shopping because stores freaked her out, and I had to be honest, the clothes she usually picked for herself were pretty bad. So I had taken the lead, taken her fiancé’s credit card, and done some damage on my own. I had found her a beautiful dress, shoes, and a pair of crotchless panties both of them were sure to enjoy. And her family and a few friends and I had watched the county clerk marry them, while Daisy cried buckets, and even her giant fiancé—husband, now—got a little misty, too.

  My head bumped against the cold glass of the window. Somehow I had expected it to be warmer in Alabama, but I was still bundled up in the jeans, sweater, and coat that I’d had on when I had stormed out of my house in Michigan. The clothes felt like they may have permanently fused to my body after all these hours on the bus. I lowered my nose and sniffed slightly…oh. Yeah, that was going to need some work. I continued to watch the landscape and listened to Rae talk about her perfect son and the miles slid past.

  “Miss? Matilda?” Someone shook my shoulder.

  I picked up my head, groaning a little at the pain in my stiff neck. A pillow would have been nice on this trip. “Huh? What?” My eyes felt like they were full of sand but I forced them open to see my seatmate, Marcell. He had gotten on in Gainesville around midnight. Sunlight now poured through the bus windows, and the air inside was suddenly warm and a lot fresher.

  “We’re here. The bus is stopped, in Miami,” Marcell said.

  “Oh.” I yawned, then was mortified at the repellant odor that had probably come out of my mouth. “Thanks for getting me up,” I told him, holding my hand in front of my lips to block the air and spare him from the horror. The bus was almost empty now and I followed him down the center aisle, moving a lot like Frankenstein as I tried to shake out the cramps from being asleep in the same position since Ocala. We joined the crowd waiting for the luggage to come out of the bottom of the bus and the full effect of the Miami morning washed over me. Yep, down puffy coat no longer required, and my leather boots were not necessary either. Or my wool sweater, undershirt, or the gloves and hat I had in my purse.

  “Is it different from Tasmania?” Marcell asked me.

  “What?” Oh, right. “Crikey, yes.” I picked up my big bag as he said goodbye and something else, but a plane took off over our heads as he spoke. I couldn’t hear him, so I just nodded and smiled back and he walked off down the sidewalk, one of the only people I knew in Miami. Now what? I tied my coat around my waist and tried to straighten my hair with my fingers, but I was going nowhere with that. “Taxi!”

  I struggled to get my bag into the trunk of the car that pulled up and the driver got out to help me. “That’s a big bag for such a little girl,” he mentioned. “Are you traveling alone?”

  “I’m twenty-four,” I said briefly. The heels on my boots were high, but I had still gotten that question throughout my trip down here because short equaled young for a lot of people. And I had washed off most of the make-up from my face in the bathroom of the Nashville bus station, so I did look a little tween-ish.

  “You’re my sister’s age, then. Where to?”

  I gave him the address of Nico’s building, the one I had memorized weeks ago after he had gotten traded away. I had managed to learn quite a few details about his new life in Miami. Not in a creepy way, just out of curiosity, and maybe for future use. He put most of it out there himself, because he was huge on social media and he wasn’t very careful about what he posted. Which had led to some of his current problems with his new team, the Cottonmouths.

  “Where are you coming from?” the driver asked.

  “Oregon. Not Portland, the other part, like, the country. I live out in the woods in a cabin.” I warmed to the topic. “We don’t even have running water.”

  I saw him glance at me in the rearview mirror and nod, as if the lack of running water would have explained a lot about my appearance. “Are you here on vacation?” he asked.

  “I’m here to see my boyfriend,” I said. Just as I tried to apply a little mascara, we went over a pothole and my forehead ended up with a black streak across it. “My ex-boyfriend, I should say. Or call him my boyfriend, sure.” He would be soon, anyway. “He moved down here.”

  “He lives at the address you gave me, and he couldn’t have helped you out with a plane ticket? That’s a long bus ride from Oregon.”

  “He lives in a nice building?” I checked my face
. I didn’t need any blush; the heat and my inappropriate clothing were making me nice and red-faced without it.

  “He lives in a very nice building.” We whipped around a corner.

  “Well, he plays for the Cottonmouths, so I guess it would be.”

  “Are you serious, your boyfriend is a professional football player and I got you at the bus depot? Who is this cheap-ass?” the driver demanded.

  “Nico Williams.”

  “Williams? We all read about his new contract. He’s one of the highest-paid players in the Confederation! Nico Williams is the cheap-ass of the century not to buy you a plane ticket. Or maybe he was too distracted to worry about how you were getting here, with everything else he had going on last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The thing at the club. I was just listening to more reports about it.” He whistled.

  “What thing at the club?” I demanded, and the driver filled me in. Basically, a lot of drinking, a fight, police, arrests, all of it recorded on cellphones. Nico himself didn’t get thrown in the clink, but a few of his entourage did.

  “It’s all over sports radio,” the driver said. He turned up the volume for me, but it was in Spanish. “This is, what, the fourth or fifth time he’s made himself a headline since he got to Miami?”

  Fifth. The worst had been a huge party he’d had at his new apartment. A few underage kids had snuck in, there had been an overdose, and two of the guests had brought guns. The police were involved in that for sure and it was not good. And besides getting in trouble with his partying, Nico had also been posting a lot of dumb stuff, like angry messages about the Woodsmen trading him, veiled insults about other players, even hints that the Cottonmouths’ coach was going to have to go if they wanted Nico to show up to training camp. The rest of his social media was full of pictures of drinking and going out, not preparing for football. Yep, it was bad. Thank goodness I was here now to take charge of this situation.

  I asked a lot of questions to the driver, Salvador, and we chatted all the way to the Brickell neighborhood where Nico lived. It was very nice, as Salvador had told me. He pulled up to the curb at a sleek high-rise and I counted out the fare from the pile of cash I had inside my bag. I had withdrawn every cent from the bank account in case it was going to disappear, too. “Thanks for the advice, Salvador. I’m definitely going to call your aunt to talk to her about a job.”

  “You’re a long way from rural Oregon,” he told me. “You be careful here in the big city.”

  “I will,” I promised, and recklessly added to his tip. The money pile had diminished a lot during the bus trip at the vending machines I had visited.

  “Call my Aunt Lucy!” he repeated sternly, and put my bag on the curb for me.

  There were reporters roaming around in front of the building, including a news team standing right at the door, a guy with a camera and a woman in a blue power suit. I bounced my bag purposefully up the stairs and the doorman came down to help me with the last few steps.

  “Which apartment, miss?” he asked.

  “The penthouse,” I said loudly.

  The power suit reporter perked up right away and barreled over to me. “Are you going up to Nico Williams’ apartment? Do you have any comment on last night’s incident at Club Gilipollas?” she asked, and the light on the camera went on, but I had learned my lesson about that from my boob flashing of the previous summer.

  “I won’t talk on camera,” I said, holding my hand over the lens. She nodded and the camera guy lowered it.

  “Who are you? What’s your relationship to Nico?”

  “I’m his girlfriend, and I think everyone should know that he’s a great person. He’s being unfairly treated by the press. He can’t help that he gets attention when he goes out, being so handsome and talented, and people take advantage of that.” I was speaking pretty loudly still, and it woke up the other reporters.

  “But what about the suggestions that he’s involved with a gang?” she persisted. More microphones appeared in my face.

  “Totally false,” I said crisply. “I’m not sure why no one is talking about all the good things that Nico has done. Like donating a new spire to his church in his hometown in Georgia! Or how he supports his family, his brothers and sisters in college,” I continued, warming up. There was shoving in the crowd of cameras around me, and I got jostled a little.

  “Miss,” the doorman broke in. “Let’s get you inside.” He pulled my bag through the lobby to an elevator separate from the others. “I was afraid they were going to hurt you. You’re a tiny little thing. How old are you?” Now he sounded suspicious, and I remembered the reports of teenagers at the party at Nico’s apartment.

  “I’m forty-eight years old,” I told him.

  “What?”

  But the elevator doors slid closed and whooshed me straight up to the penthouse, where they opened again directly into the apartment. It was a giant, light-filled, open space, with people absolutely everywhere. They sprawled across the modern furniture, spread-eagled on the rug, draped across the island in the black and steel kitchen, curled in balls on the marble floor. It smelled in here, like old booze, stale sweat, and puke. I caught it even over the odor coming off myself as I looked around. Well, there was a lot to be done.

  “Ready for round two?” a voice asked me, and I turned.

  “Good morning, Nico,” I greeted him.

  His mouth fell open; his eyes bugged; he lost all the color in his face. “What the fuck? Tatum Smith?”

  I nodded. I was here.

  Chapter 2

  Start today as you mean to finish it, with a positive, can-do attitude: you CAN-do, and you DO-do. Here’s hoping your day is filled with do-do!

  Yours saying no to negativity, Mysti

  “How—why—” Nico stopped talking for a moment, and I gave him the space to gather his thoughts. “You know, I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said finally. “Somehow I knew that you would turn up in my life again.”

  “You’re right, I’m persistent and tenacious,” I agreed. “And I’m here, in Miami. Where should I put my bag?” Along the route in Tennessee I had decided that we were bunking together. No need for me to look for somewhere else to stay.

  “What?”

  “You know, why don’t you make some coffee or something? We have a lot to discuss. I’ll find the bedroom myself,” I told him graciously. I wheeled my suitcase around a snoring, drooling guy on the floor and walked down a hall.

  Nico jogged right behind me. “Tatum, what the hell? You can’t stay—” His phone rang, and he answered it. “Ethan, yeah. Yeah, I know what they’re saying…no, it wasn’t that bad!” He turned away from me to talk so I headed to the double doors at the end of the hall.

  This had to be the master bedroom, and I was pleased to see that currently, the bed was empty. The woman who Nico had thought I was when he’d asked me about “round two” was gone, but we would definitely be changing the sheets. I went straight to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  “Tatum?” Nico knocked on the door a moment later. “Tatum, come out here.” Now he pounded.

  “I’m getting in the shower.” I stripped off my rancid clothes and stood under the multiple jets. They were clearly positioned for Nico’s height, because one hit me right in the face, but it still felt wonderful. “You can come in if you want,” I called over the running water.

  There was no answer, but he didn’t come in. I took my time in the shower because there was a lot to clean up, then I took another chunk of time getting ready, staring at myself in the mirrors that covered every wall of the bathroom. Well, that was a lot better! Now, with my face and hair done, I looked sophisticated, pretty, and not very much like I’d spent the last two nights sleeping on a bus. I looked like I was ready to have a serious, adult discussion…hold on. I stood on my tiptoes and admired the extra few inches it gave me. Now I looked ready to have a serious, adult discussion.

  The bedroom was empty when I came
out of the wonderfully steamy bathroom so I wandered back down the hall into the giant living space. It still stunk, but the people who had been sleeping everywhere were gone. I wondered how Nico had gotten that done so fast—when I’d had parties, I’d usually had to call the police and claim everyone was trespassing to get them out.

  He was sitting on one of the grey couches in the living room area, and I placed myself on the other. God, it was uncomfortable. Super cool looking, but really like a slab of stone under my ass. The people who had been sleeping on them when I came in might as well have picked the marble floor, but Nico didn’t seem to notice that his couches sucked. His eyes were closed, his head laid back on the scratchy cushion, and he looked tired—exhausted, and a little thinner, too. Like he wasn’t taking care of himself, and his body was a major asset for his career. Well, it was another thing for us to work on. And gross, was that a puddle of vomit on the floor? So many issues.

  I amused myself by checking him out for a while, because even if he had lost some weight, he was still plenty easy on the eyes. It felt like such a long time since I had seen him. His hair was a little longer, but it still stood up from his forehead in the same way. He still had the little tilt to his lips that always made it seem like he was in on some kind of joke, except that now the beard he was growing kind of hid it. He still had the miles of muscles…enough waiting. I loudly cleared my throat and Nico opened his eyes. “I thought maybe I had hallucinated that you were here,” he commented. “I drank too much last night.”

  “It does seem like a dream,” I agreed. “Isn’t it amazing?”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I meant. How did you know where I lived? Why did the doorman let you up here? Why are you even in the goddamn state?” His phone rang again. “Damn.” He sighed. “Yeah, Ethan,” he answered. “What?” He sat up straight and stared at me. “No, I didn’t know about a woman who pretended to be my girlfriend and gave an interview defending me in front of my building. Hold on.” The loud voice on the other end of the line continued talking but Nico put the phone down on the rock of a cushion and stared at me.