Playing Dirty Page 5

  “Noemi, listen to me.” She grabs my arm. “What you just offered means the world to me. It really does. But I refuse to let you ruin your career for me.”

  I drop the phone back into my bag. “And I refuse to look the other way while that scumbag ruins your life.”

  She lets go of my arm and begins to chew her nails.

  “It’s simple,” I say. “Do you need this job or not?”

  “Of course, I do!”

  “I’ll make sure you keep it.”

  We finish our sandwiches and take the elevator back to our floor.

  As soon as Bertrand returns from lunch, I invite myself into his office and show him the video.

  “Melissa and I have copies tucked away safely,” I say.

  He gives me a black look. “What do you want?”

  “Justice.”

  Bertrand smirks. “As a lawyer, you should know that justice is a myth.”

  “Can I use that in my signature? I’ll attribute the quote, of course.”

  His eyes become slits. “Little bitch.”

  Coming from him, the insult feels like a compliment. An acknowledgment that he’s dealing with a worthy adversary who is a force to be reckoned with.

  I’m OK with being that sort of bitch.

  “What do you want?” Bertrand asks again.

  “You stop harassing Melissa immediately and irrevocably.”

  “Is that all?” His gaze bores into my eyes. “How do I know you won’t come back next week asking for a promotion?”

  “I won’t. But you’re right, you can’t know that.”

  Blackmailing Bertrand for a promotion hadn’t even occurred to me. What did occur, many times, is to take on more cases as a public defender and apply for a job in a legal aid center. My salary would nose-dive, but I think I’d be happier.

  In time, I might even start my own nonprofit. It would be called “Bitches for Social Justice.”

  “OK,” Bertrand says. “I’ll leave Melissa in peace. But you’d better uphold your end of the deal.”

  I nod and march out. As I pass Melissa, she looks like she’s about to faint with anxiety, so I grin and give her the V sign.

  She slides down in her chair with relief.

  When Bertrand leaves—and something tells me he won’t linger tonight—I know she’ll rush to my cubicle for details. There won’t be much to tell, but I’ll take pleasure in describing every sweet second of Bertrand’s inglorious retreat and capitulation.

  I’ll squeeze the scene for more joy when I reenact it for Julien next week. He’ll be proud of me, and I’m sure he won’t mind that I used the same nanny cam from my birthday party eight years ago. He’s completely over that silly episode. I have it from the horse’s mouth.

  What a bummer recounting my heroics to Julien will have to wait until he’s back from Belgrade!

  He left this morning straight from my place—our place until we buy something together—and he won’t be back until next Tuesday.

  As I ride the crowded métro home, I wonder what Julien will think of my short-term plan to find a new job and my long-term plan to start a nonprofit. Will he laugh at the fanciful name I’ve come up with?

  And then there’s the motto: “Only a reformed bitch will fight for your rights tooth and nail!”

  I’m grinning at my own cleverness as I step inside my apartment. But my smile fades even before my brain has fully registered all the little things that are wrong with it.

  They all boil down to one big thing.

  All of Julien’s stuff is gone.

  His shoes and jackets no longer rub elbows with mine on the rack in the entryway. The laptop that he rarely uses has disappeared from the dining table that had become his desk. So have his books and papers. I dash into the bedroom and open the closet. No single suit, shirt, or underclothes of his is in sight. The bathroom has been cleared of his toiletries.

  The only thing he’s left is the spare set of keys to my apartment. The one I gave him on our fifth date, with a tiny yellow water polo ball attached to the key ring. It sits on the entryway table atop a white envelope with my name on it.

  With clammy hands, I open the envelope.

  Noemi,

  By the time you find this letter, you’ll know I’ve left you. But you won’t know why.

  Remember the “joke” you played on me years back? I lied when I told you I’d gotten over it. Call me petty and vengeful, but after all this time, I still haven’t forgotten the pain of your betrayal and your gratuitous cruelty.

  So yes, the dating and proposing was a sham. My end game had been to jilt you at the altar. But the loser that I still am couldn’t go through with it.

  So, I’m breaking up with you now.

  You won’t see it that way, but I’m doing you a kindness. By dumping you now, I’m sparing you public humiliation, which was the whole point of my revenge.

  Please, feel free to sell the ring I gave you. Unlike my proposal, it’s real.

  Julien

  I reread the note four more times, hoping the letters and words in it will rearrange themselves into a different message because the current one is too hard to wrap my mind around.

  Too brutal. Utterly incomprehensible.

  Julien never loved me.

  He sought revenge. He had carefully plotted his retaliation and served it to me nice and cold on a pretty platter. He had charmed me, seduced me, moved in with me.

  He’d proposed, for Christ’s sake!

  But the aim of his proposal was to make sure I would suffer maximum damage and pain once he dumped me. Like those assholes who build dirty bombs and blow them up in crowded places.

  There are no words to describe how deeply he’d hurt me.

  And over what?

  A prank I played on him when we were eighteen.

  Part II

  “Feelings that come back are feelings that never left.”

  Anonymous

  9

  Julien

  I regretted the self-righteous tone of my letter on the flight to Belgrade.

  The letter itself didn’t strike me as an immature and ill-considered act until I got back to Paris five days later. Three weeks after I’d penned the unfortunate missive, I had trouble seeing why it had been so necessary that I dump Noemi. Since I’d given up on the end game, anyway, I could’ve come clean instead and suggested we cancel the engagement.

  But not the nightly sex.

  Or our weekends and vacation together.

  Or the living under the same roof.

  Fact is I miss her.

  I miss Noemi in my arms, against my chest, impaled on my cock, kissing me, moaning, and digging her fingers into my back. Sex aside, I also miss her conversation, the smell of her, the shape of her…

  To be honest, there isn’t a thing about Noemi that I don’t miss. To be even more honest, this past month without her has been shit.

  I park the car and run the few blocks to the pool in a rainstorm that soaks my clothes. We’ve had this weather for a couple of weeks now, which is unusual for early November. Being drenched doesn’t matter right now, since I’m headed for the pool, but getting into damp clothes after the workout isn’t something I look forward to.

  Not that I’ve looked forward to anything of late.

  The realization hits me, and I halt in the middle of the lobby, bumping into and apologizing to a group of teenagers heading out after their session.

  A month is thirty days.

  Thirty. Fucking. Days.

  Nonstop games and travel notwithstanding, I didn’t need thirty days to own the monumental failure of the whole revenge operation. Nor did I need thirty days to admit what I’ve known in my gut since my first date with Noemi back in June.

  Life without her sucks.

  So what if I haven’t completely forgiven her for her so-called “joke”? I may never get over it, resentful bastard that I am. So what if she isn’t the flawless, perfect human being I’d imagined her to be? She may never c
ome anywhere near perfection, no matter how hard she fights her natural meanness.

  But what matters is that she is fighting it.

  And what matters, even more, is that no other woman has ever fascinated or aroused me like she does.

  I want her back.

  Clasping my hands around the nape of my neck, I squeeze my head between my elbows and take a long, deep breath.

  Permission to surrender.

  I’m going to suck up my pride and ask Noemi to take me back. Beg her, if necessary. Hell, I’ll grovel at her feet if that’s what it takes.

  The weight that falls off my shoulders is so big I gasp. Ooh, the relief! Now I know why Lucas has been sending me to extra massage sessions lately. I’m surprised I could play at all with that load on my back.

  “You’re smiling,” Zach says as I enter the locker room. “It’s good to see you smile again.”

  My teammates obviously know about the “breakup,” but they don’t know who dumped whom. I didn’t offer any detail or explanation when I announced it was over between Noemi and me. They didn’t ask. There’s something to be said for male discretion about matters of the heart.

  In the pool, we start the warm-up routine, while waiting for Lucas to arrive. He’s been busier than ever this season. He coaches the club’s men’s team, and the national men’s team, and now he also manages the women’s team for the club.

  Because, as of September of this year, Nageurs de Paris has a professional women’s team.

  The girls are a vivacious and highly motivated bunch, all of whom he handpicked and began to train last year. Now they have their own coach, Leanne, a fifty-year-old veteran who won several European championships with an Italian club in her day. Lucas stole Leanne from Nice, offering her better pay and a “virgin” team to mold and shape as she pleases.

  We also have a new publicist now, Isabelle, who may or may not be Lucas’s girlfriend.

  He fired our previous—and first ever—PR guy, Martin, at the end of last season over a misdemeanor that’s never been explained to us. Naturally, everyone is curious. At some point, Jean-Michel circulated one or two outrageous rumors, but Zach shut him up.

  Nobody really regrets Martin’s exit, because he was sleazy, and because he made us pose for a calendar in our birthday suits with only a water polo ball to cover the privates. That calendar sold like hotcakes, fetching the club some welcome cash. Triumphant, Martin began to talk about doing the same with the women’s team, until they impressed on Lucas how profoundly they abhorred the idea.

  Lucas heard them, and Martin never made a calendar with the girls.

  As we lift weights, Jean-Michel gives me a funny look. I must admit he’s my least favorite person on the team. Even Martin had more redeeming qualities than this guy. They’re both skirt-chasers, but Martin was less of a jerk than Jean-Michel. He never tried to hit on another man’s girlfriend or wife.

  Jean-Michel hit on Noemi several times while she and I dated.

  I forget my unpleasant recollections as soon as Lucas arrives and orders us into the pool. We train like there’s no tomorrow. The stakes are high for everyone this season whether they’re on the national team or not. In December, the team will go after the elusive gold in the first division French league games, the Pro A Championnat de France. We came in second two years straight, so now we really want it.

  And in January Zach, Noah, Jean-Michel, and I will go to the world championships with the national team.

  When the workout and scrimmages are over, I don my damp clothes and head out for the traditional beer with the rest of the team. Noemi is rarely home from work before eight, so I have time for a beer and a bit of mental conditioning before I show up on her doorstep.

  When we enter the brasserie, a painfully familiar figure stands up from the stool at the bar and moves toward us.

  Holy cow! It’s Noemi.

  Did she read my mind? Or has she simply realized she’s too miserable without me and she wants me back? With a bit of luck, I might not need to grovel.

  I beam. “Hi there.”

  “Hi, you,” she says, smiling.

  Only her words and her smile aren’t addressed to me.

  Her eyes are on Jean-Michel as he goes up to her and plants a long, unambiguous kiss on her lips.

  When they’re done exchanging saliva, he turns toward the guys. “You remember Noemi, don’t you? She recently put her qualms aside and made the right choice.” He winks and points both his index fingers at himself. “So I suggest you get used to seeing her around again.”

  My hands ball into fists.

  Jean-Michel stares me in the eye before adding, “I repeat for those who need it spelled out: Get. Used to. Seeing her. With me.”

  10

  Noemi

  “Your first time in Montpellier?” Zach’s wife Uma asks me.

  She and her stepson are on my right in the premium seating area of the town’s aquatics center. They are wearing blue jerseys, caps, and Nageurs de Paris team jackets. To top it off, Uma is armed with pompoms, and the little boy, a foam hand and a bag of confetti.

  What adorable fans they make!

  “Yep, first time,” I say before turning to the boy. “Your name’s Sam, right?”

  He holds out his little hand. “Samuel Monin.”

  “We’ve met before,” I say, shaking it. “I’m Noemi.”

  He shrugs as if to say he doesn’t remember me. That’s a relief. It means I won’t have to explain to this six-year-old that I’m no longer Julien’s fiancée, but Jean-Michel’s date.

  I picture myself saying to him, Aww, don’t look so flummoxed, young man. Grown-ups do worse things to each other. All. The. Time.

  Shooting Uma a sidelong glance, I wonder if she knows about my recent “transfer.”

  “Julien is extra combative today, huh?” she says, pointing her chin to the pool.

  So, she doesn’t know.

  “If by ‘combative’ you mean brutal and aggressive,” I say, “then yes, he is.”

  Uma’s eyebrows rise ever so slightly, before she collects herself. For a few minutes, we watch the game without saying anything. It’s a rough one, the players of both teams pushing, grabbing, tugging, and shoving each other above the water. I don’t even dare to imagine what goes on under the surface where the referees can’t see.

  Towering above Montpellier’s hole-set—who is by no means a small guy—Julien does more grabbing and shoving than any other player in the tank. More than I’ve ever seen him do even in a match that Paris was losing.

  He thrashes and wrestles with the hole-set, and wraps his arm around the guy’s neck, before both disappear under water. I panic for a moment when they don’t resurface. But they do. The hole-set coughs up water and flails his limbs while Julien looks in control. Just as ferocious as before the mutual sinking. And just as magnificent.

  Stop right there! Rewind. Delete the last part.

  “Predatory” is a much better qualifier than “magnificent” for who my ex-fiancé has become. The former dork morphed into a mean son of a bitch who spent years plotting revenge over a teenage prank. He’s become a dirty-playing asshole who didn’t turn his nose up at proposing marriage to the object of his obsession—because let’s face it, he is obsessed with me—even as he planned to jilt me at the altar. A man who got a woman to fall for him even though he had no intention of catching her.

  And that’s why he deserves to watch me hook up with Jean-Michel, the team’s resident jerk, a man he despises.

  I exhale a ragged breath. OK, back to the dilemma at hand.

  Should I inform Uma without warning or preamble like I did last week in Paris when I ran into the goalie’s wife, and she asked about Julien?

  “We’re not together anymore,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’m with Jean-Michel now.”

  To her credit, she didn’t blink. Even if she thought I was a slut, she didn’t show it. Not that I care what Julien and Jean-Michel’s teammates or their wives think. I do
n’t envision a future with either man.

  “Paris has had five straight wins and appears hungrier than ever for the Pro A league gold,” the commentator says.

  I refocus on the game.

  Instinctively, my eyes find Julien. In the middle of yet another nasty-looking tussle, he dominates the other team’s hole-set in every way. Part of it is thanks to his speed of reaction and movement. But the main reason is his disregard for injuries and pain, be it the opponent’s or his own.

  With Julien neutralizing Montpellier’s scorer so completely, the rest of the Paris team play with a level of precision and efficiency I’ve never seen before. Noah guards the cage like a lioness protecting her cub. The driver and perimeter players sprint up and down the tank, passing the ball to their own hole-set, Zach.

  Uma’s hubby, helped by another player, manages to fight off the other team’s defenders and shoot every two or three minutes, widening the gap between the two teams.

  “Nageurs’ hole-set Zach Monin is amazing this season,” the commentator says. “He keeps rewarding us with the kind of play we’ve come to expect from the country’s top scorer.”

  I glance at Uma and Sam, both of whom look like they just learned they’d won 10 million euros.

  “But it’s Paris’s stalwart hole-D Julien Boitel,” the commentator goes on, “who sets the pace of today’s semifinal. The defender is on fire, smothering hole-set Serge Luciano’s every single attempt to shoot. Actually, Boitel’s coverage is so aggressive one wonders why he isn’t getting called for more fouls.”

  One does, eh?

  If you ask me, it’s because the bastard is skilled enough to do it in a way that looks like he isn’t breaking the rules. From the refs’ vantage point, he’s just cutting off passes and wrestling a bit. But if you watch him more closely, you’ll notice he also shoves, jostles, and even headbutts Montpellier’s scorer. In fact, he’s so rough with that Luciano guy, I wouldn’t be surprised if punches have been dealt.

  It is safe to assume the commentator wouldn’t be surprised, either.