Push Me (To The Edge series, #1) (10 page)

I wasn’t getting
on that plane without the calming assistance of a little alcohol.

.  .  .  .  .

Sam and I had made no firm plans for Phoenix, other than letting each other know when we arrived. I knew my plane would land hours before his, but I texted him on the way from the airport to the store to let him know I had made it without incident.

He wrote back:
First game is tomorrow night. What time will you be done today?

I texted:
6 at the latest.

Sam
:
You have a date tonight.

Me:
No.

Sam
:
That wasn’t a question.

Me:
Oh…oops.

Sam
:
I’ll call you in a few hours.

Me:
What are we doing?

Sam
:
It’s a surprise.

Me:
What should I wear?

Sam
:
Something comfortable. Gotta run.

A date.
My first one in a long time. Or was the other night with Sam a date? I still wasn’t sure if that counted. I just hoped I could put on a happy face, not think about Ian, and try to forget what I’d watched on TV earlier.

Rachel
called. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. God, what a morning.”

“Shit, I know. I looked it up on the Internet. He’s seriously screwed.”

“You know,” I said, “all those charges with the word ‘fraud’ in them, and that’s exactly what he is at his core.” I
let out a heavy, frustrated sigh. “I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“Are you seeing Sam tonight?”

“Yeah, he said he has a surprise for me.”

She said, “
Ooohhh, excellent.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s this ‘maybe’?” she said.

I didn’t
reply.

“
Dawn, you’re not backing out of this.”

“I know. I don’t plan to.”

“Forget Ian. Don’t let him ruin your night. Or your life.”

.  .  .  .  .

My phone rang in the early afternoon, and I picked it up, thinking it was probably Sam, but instead found myself looking at the Caller ID on the screen telling me it was my parents.

“W
e just heard the news about that man.” That’s what my mother called him—that man. “We’re so worried about you,” she said.

“I know
, Mom, but you don’t have to worry. I haven’t even spoken to him in four months.” I paused and let that sink in. “It’s been over for a while.”

I had gone into the office to take the call with the door closed. My parents, who I hadn’t spoken to in almost
seven months due to my relationship with Ian, were calling because they had seen him on the news and were concerned that I was involved somehow. It was an understandable fear, and I was trying to put their minds at ease.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” my mother asked.

My father was on the line, too, but other than saying “hello” to me, he remained silent, letting my mother conduct the inquisition.

“Because I’m twenty-six,” I snapped. “I wasn’t going to come running to you because I broke up with my boyfriend.”

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, Dawn, we’re still your parents and if you need us—”

“I don’t,” I interrupted,
then realized how harsh that sounded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“It’s okay. So you left him? Not the other way around?” my mother asked.

I didn’t want to tell her that it was technically Ian who ended things by telling me I needed to go. But I’d had every intention of leaving him. He had just gotten there first.

I
didn’t feel like going into the details, so I just said, “Yeah, I ended it. Why? Does that surprise you?”

“
Oh, Dawn,” she said, sounding disappointed in me. “Why are you so argumentative?”

Before I could answer, my father said, “We
just want to help.”

Ugh.
There it was again. Someone offering me help. Aside from Rachel letting me stay at her place for those first few months, and Beth recommending me for the promotion—two things that I absolutely needed help with—I didn’t want anyone rushing to my side to assist me. Ian’s smothering “help” was one of the things that made me want to get out of the relationship.

“Help with what?” I asked my father.

“Getting you back on your feet,” my mother answered. “I mean, as much as we can.”

“I have my own place,” I said. I left it at that. I didn’t need to tell them that I’d been saving up while living with
Ian, and that I had stayed with Rachel for a while to save up even more.

“Well, that’s…that’s good.” My mother’s tone didn’t match the words.
They knew how much I made at my job, and that living in Manhattan was extremely expensive, just within reach for me, but she didn’t go into all that like she’d done in the past.

“I’m fine,” I
insisted, wanting to reassure them so I could get off the phone. Our relationship had been more than strained over most of the last year, and this phone conversation had already been more than I wanted to deal with.

My father said, “You know I can call Bob
Rantham if you need me to.”

Bob
Rantham was a lifelong friend of my father’s, and a lawyer.

“For what?” I said.

“Just in case.”

“I’m not in any trouble. I haven’t done anything.”

My mother changed the subject. “You know we don’t have a lot, but if you run into money troubles we can try to help. Or you can always—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted. “We’ve been over this a million times.”

“I know,” she said, sounding disappointed.

What she was going to suggest was that I move back home for a while. This had been an ongoing matter of debate for a couple of years before I met
Ian. They had always argued that I could live in New Jersey and commute into the city when I needed to, either to go to the office or to the airport. I always argued that I was an adult and I didn’t need to be living at home. They would eventually back off after I said that, but it wouldn’t be much longer than a month or so before they raised the subject again.

I thought about telling them I was up for a promotion, but I just wanted to get off the phone.
Instead I said I was tired and really needed to get going. My mother asked me to please keep in touch and I agreed, albeit grudgingly.

.  .  .  .  .

I left the store a little early so I could go back to my hotel and get ready for the evening. Sam had said to wear something comfortable, but that was pretty vague. I always brought along some casual clothing, though, so I showered and got dressed in jeans and a lightweight red shirt, and Sam called just before six o’clock.

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“I forgot to ask where you’re staying.”

I told him, and he said he was staying at a hotel just down the block. He said he’d pick me up in the lobby.

When he got there, he was wearing a black
t-shirt, jeans and leather boots. His hair was still a little damp, and just long enough to make little curls around the tops of his ears. He also had a five-o’clock shadow, a look that some guys can pull off as sexy, while others just look like they were lazy that day. Sam’s definitely fell under the “sexy” category.

I was struck by his casualness, and it immediately made me think of
Ian, who would never go out dressed like that or unshaved. I mentally shook myself. I knew I had to stop thinking about Ian and comparing Sam to him. Maybe that would come in time. But it was certainly more difficult now that Ian would be on the news for the foreseeable future.

Sam
came up to me with an admiring smile. “You look great.”

“Thanks, so do you.” I tried not to let my eyes wander up and down his
body too long.

“
Let’s grab a quick bite to eat and then the fun starts.” He started walking.

“So you’re saying dinner won’t be fun?”

He chuckled. “I’ll do what I can but I doubt it will top the rest of the night.” He stopped as we got to the hotel door. A revolving door. “Careful, these things can be tricky.”

“Uh, yeah, I think I remember.”

“After you.”

I felt his hand on the small of my back and
I slightly shivered. I hadn’t expected him to touch me.

We went to a place that served mostly bar food. Again,
Sam wasn’t trying to impress me with a fancy restaurant.

“Ever tried buffalo?” he asked when we sat down.

“Not that I know of. Though with all the stories in the news recently about the odd things being found in food…who knows?”

“
I think that’s mostly horsemeat, and I assure you there’s none in the buffalo. It’s great stuff. I had it the last time I was here.”

We traded stories about the places we’d traveled
. Sam had been to a lot more cities than I had.

As we ate our buffalo burgers
—which I enjoyed—and drank beer, I got up the nerve to ask him about his marriage.

“That’s a tough subject,” he said.

“You’re a tough guy.”

One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile as he caught my taunting tone.

The restaurant was loud, so he didn’t have to whisper, but he did lower his voice as he told me the story of how his marriage ended.

“It started after the injury,” he began…
.

Sandra, his wife, was wonderful after the surgery. She nursed him back to health, at least to the point where he was getting around the house on his own,
though with the help of crutches.

But she couldn’t stay put very long, he told me. She started encouraging him to
get out of the house They had friends who she wanted to do things with, and she became increasingly frustrated that he didn’t.

“It took a long time for me to admit that I was depressed. My career, everything I’d worked hard for and dreamed
about since I was six years old was gone in a matter of seconds.”

She urged him to get help, go talk to someone, anyone, just get help. She organized an intervention—what
Sam called an “ambush”—of team members, coaches, all kinds of people in the Yankees organization.

“Maybe if Steinbrenner
had been alive to drop by the house, things would have been different,” he joked.

I didn’t know much of anything about baseball, but I think almost everyone knows the famed, longtime owner of the Yankees, if not from watching their games, at least from watching
Seinfeld
.

He paused and sipped his beer.

I said, “And you didn’t want to admit that you needed help.”

He cut his eyes at me. “Not at that time,” he said.
“There were fights. Not physical fights. Arguing, yelling, that kind of thing, late into the night. Late into almost every night, actually.” He let out a little puff of laughter that was heavy with disgust or regret or something like it. “We even started arguing about stupid little things. What kind of laundry detergent we should have. What time the mail usually came. Stupid crap like that. Proxy fights, is what they were. I only know to call them that now because I did eventually see someone, after I had a panic attack and didn’t know what it was.”

I looked at him, confident and strong, and it was almost impossible to imagine him in the state he was describing.
“It’s good that you saw someone.”

“But,” he said, “it wasn’t soon enough for her. I had to do it on my time, when I was ready, and she…well, she had a different idea.”

There was no pain in his eyes, despite it being one of the most selfish stories I’d ever heard.

“
Eventually, she filed for divorce and I didn’t fight it.”

“Was she working?” I didn’t want to ask directly, but I figured she probably got a good bit of his money
when she left, too.

He shook his head. “She was a kindergarten teacher when we met, but quit after we got married. She’s remarried now, but I don’t think she’s working. And, in case you were wondering, she married a guy who plays for the Red Sox.”

My lack of baseball knowledge left me looking blankly at him.

“Boston,” he
clarified. “Boston Red Sox? The Yankees’ biggest rival.”

“Oh, okay…”

Sam gave me a look of disbelief. “How can you live in New York City as long as you have and not know
anything
about the Yankees?”