“I can’t imagine the Brutes not wanting a sweet, charismatic woman like you as their head of PR. What happened there?” she asks, and the way she asks is truly from a place of curiosity and care, not a single exploitive bone in her body. The way she talks to me makes me want to share more than I ever have.
Uncapping the dijon, I drop a butter knife in as I say, “well, I started a relationship with the team manager, and… it didn’t go well.”
Her brow furrows. “Breakups happen all the time. You shouldn’t have lost your job because of that,” she says, and I don’t disagree, but then again, there are a lot of things she doesn’t know. But you know what? I’ve kept those details shrouded by pain and guilt, thinking they’re a dirty secret to be ashamed of. And maybe they are. But after only a day and a half of knowing Edith Winters, I know my story is safe with her. I can feel it.
My eyes sting as I begin, my pulse racing from the surprise that… I’m telling her what happened. I only told Beck recently, and I don’t think she’s shared with Beau. No one else knows. Well, the Brutes, I’m sure, but they’d fucking die before they admitted they knew what happened. Fucking assholes.
“I should never have gotten involved with Reynold in the first place. The signs that he was less than honorable were all there, but… I don’t know. Baseball pants do something to your hormones, and I got caught up in things. Before I knew it, a stolen kiss in the office turned into… well,more,” I wince a little admitting to Edith some of the less-than-classy things Reynold and I did in those early days.
She pats my hand, sensing that I’m edging into uncomfortable territory. “I may be in my sixties, but no matter the age or year, there are some things that are completely and utterly universal.” She winks, and I can’t help but grin.
“It started as physical attraction, but I thought it was more. We signed those HR forms, you know? To have the franchise recognize us. At the time, I thought it was because Reynold believed in us and wanted everyone to know we were an item. Now, of course, I know he did it to protect himself and the teamfromme.”
“Why would they need to be protectedfromyou?” she asks, pure confusion in her voice.
“Not me as much as my truth.” I turn my eyes to the dijon I’m spreading across each split-open hoagie. “My story.”
We’re quiet for a minute as we both stop our sandwich-making to sip our infused coffee. “You know, sweetheart, your story is safe with me if you want to unload it.” She takes another long pull and makes me smile when she adds another splash of Brandy to our drinks. “Sometimes, we have no idea how heavy our past is until we unload it.”
Another sip of liquid confidence, and I focus on the sandwiches again as I start, my heart racing. Not for lack of comfort but because telling a stranger this ugly story makes me nervous. Makes me afraid to be looked at with disappointment.
But I forge ahead because coming out with it to someone other than Beck feels metaphorical; like maybe I can move forward, and maybe it can be now. I’ve wallowed for months.
“We were together for months. Actually, when we broke up, we were just a week away from our first anniversary.” I layer cheese onto the bread as she pries open a container of sliced honey turkey breast and adds it over the cheese.
“There was a night in his office. The team just had this huge loss, and he was really feeling it. They’d lost the prior game, and I think there was some pressure on him from the owners. I don’t know because, in truth, we didn’t talk about the team much. He got really jealous and angry if I ever mentioned the players or having seen a game.” I shrug, feeling silly admitting it like this now. “Red flag, I know.”
“Colors are hard to see when you’re blinded by passion,” Edie says softly, urging me to continue by going quiet after dropping her token of truth and wisdom.
“Well, the Brutes had lost, and Reynold was just like, beside himself. So angry. Storming around the office, cursing, yelling. He punched a hole in the wall. And I just wanted to calm him down. I was afraid someone would come up to the offices and see how he was behaving…” I trail off, trying desperately to avoid the memory of his voice piercing my ears as he fist collided with the office wall.
“I was trying to protect him,” I admit, still believing in my choices back then. Because how could I ever have known things would go that way? “I poured us a drink, and I convinced him to sit and just… take a breath, you know? The loss had already happened; there are no time machines; what good would destroying his office do, you know?”
She nods and adds slices of tomatoes to the sandwich as I open the Tupperware of cooked bacon. No wonder Atticus made me an orgasmic sandwich; he got it from his mama.
“Absolutely,” she agrees. “Sometimes tempers get the best of us, but if we can be taken out of that heat, we see it’s not worth it.”
“Exactly,” I agree, “and that’s what I thought sitting for a drink would do.” I swallow, remembering that night all over again. I try so hard never to think about it. It finds me in my dreams when I go days and days avoiding it. “He drank the first drink and poured four more. Four,” I repeat, because holy shit. I never considered how much alcohol he drank, and that doesn’t change anything. Grown men know the effects of alcohol.
“Wow,” Edie adds.
“After the drinks started to set in, he got handsy. His anger morphed into this raw, aggressive energy. He kept pulling at my blouse and lifting my skirt. And I didn’t want to have sex with him when he was so…off, you know?” I feel my cheeks blushing at how open I’m being with a sixty-something woman I just met. “I’m sorry–is this like, way too much information?”
Edie shakes her head and sips her drink, giving a nod toward my mug for me to do the same. “No TMI here, sweetheart. Like I said, I’m sixty; I’m not a nun.”
I almost choke on my drink at her comforting, humorous words. “Thank you for saying that. Thank you for letting me unload this. I think you’re right. I think I need to.”
We finish adding the fixings to the sandwiches as I continue, feeling a bit nervous about getting to… this part.
“I told him I was going to use the bathroom down the hall. I told him to cool off while I was using the restroom and that when I got back, we’d talk.” I wipe my fingers on a paper napkin on the table, then meet Edie’s eyes. “Only, when I got back, he had this unstoppable energy, and as soon as I was in his office, I felt it in my gut. The fear of… not being able to get away. Only, it was my first time with that kind of panic and so I thought I was overreacting.”
I swallow and speak around the knot of uncomfortable, shameful heat in my throat. “I know now that it was my gut telling me to go. That you can never outsmart someone if they’re just… physically stronger than you.”
“Oh, Goldie,” Edie hums as she weaves her fingers with mine on the tabletop.
“He told me it was fine, that it would be fast, that he’d be fast, that he needed it to calm down.” The tears amazingly stay at bay as I continue. “I said no. I said no, Edie, I said it a thousand times if I said it once. But my skirt was around my waist, and he was… I couldn’t stop him.”
Her grip tightens, and my heart squeezes at the gesture.