Dolce (Love at Center Court #2) (33 page)

Once we got back to her dorm, I spilled it all. What I had been up to and why, my plans to write a tell-all, and how Sarina had taken me under her wing to help me.

Shelby held true to her promise and made cocoa, rubbing my back while I took sips and defended my position. Once I was done, she shook her head.

“To me,” she said, “it sounds like you gave up your personal happiness to prove these women’s plight.”

I cocked my head and stared her down.
Really?
She was going to go there?

“I don’t know. Sounds pretty selfless, babe, a sign of a true feminist. Putting other women’s rights and needs first,” Shelby said, finishing her thought.

“Yeah?” I asked through tears. I seemed to have an endless supply of them.

“Yeah.” She gave me a small smile as she swiped a thumb over my cheek, and then ran her finger over my shoulder where she knew my tattoo rested. “Why are you shutting out Steele?”

I shrugged, looking away. “He doesn’t need this, and you saw his face. He’s disgusted with me.”

“It looked more like disappointment from where I was standing. Maybe he genuinely cares?”

Shelby lay back on the bed and pulled me into her arms, running a soothing hand over my back as if I were a small child. If one good thing came out of this whole debacle, it was that I’d developed a sisterhood.

“He’s going to play professional basketball,” I mumbled. “He doesn’t need to have his reputation tarnished by a girlfriend who made a few pornos. I know I had to do it. It makes my stance stronger, but still. He needs to move on, and really . . . what were we? Friends who messed around a few times?”

“Is that all you were?”

I sighed. “We made each other laugh, and he was so sweet despite that rep he has. I don’t know, we’d become very good friends, I guess.”

She smoothed my hair behind my ear. “That’s it?”

“There was a definite attraction.” My throat tightened. “But that was all before he knew. Why would he want to touch me now?”

“Maybe we should call him and hear him out. It’s private here.”

I shook my head. “No, one day when the tears stop, I’ll look back on this year and say, ‘That was the year I loved a basketball player.’ But now it’s over, and I need to do what I set out to do.”

This made me think of Sarina. I pulled my phone from my pocket and found a text waiting from her. It said
Call me
, and so I did.

“Ri,” I said when she picked up the phone.

“Oh, honey . . .”

“Tell me what’s happening.” I spoke into the receiver with my head resting on Shelby’s chest.

Apparently, rumors about my story had broken on the evening news.

“The news said it was an anonymous source, and they were pretty vague about your identity. They only said,
Hafton student believed to be moonlighting as porn star Ariel Stone.
”

She explained that Frank had shut the studio down for the night as a precaution. “Lots of people fishing around for details but not finding much.”

I sighed. There were no words.

“Frank saw it first and called me. I looked it up on the web, and he saw it correctly. There was no mention of your real name, but Brittany is crazed right now. She’s ready to start a whole movement. She wants justice for all the women who pay their bills doing this,” Sarina went on. “She’s not going to let this go.”

“Well, I’m going to finish the project and self-pub the exposé, but first I have to go back to my place and try to make my transfer happen.”

“Aw, babe, I don’t want you to leave.”

“The sooner I get the hell out of here, the better. I can’t show my face around Hafton now that I’m outed, and after I publish my research, the program will never let me back in. This small town may as well be dead to me. I gotta go now, but I’ll call you in the morning,” I told her.

I disconnected the call and then rolled over to kiss Shelby on the cheek, telling her I had to go.

It was dark as I slipped out the back door into the night. I took an unmarked service road to the edge of College Avenue and walked all the way home with my beret pulled low and my coat collar pulled high. Inside my apartment, I undressed and slipped on big sweats and a Hafton T-shirt, and then turned on my laptop with the intention of googling Ariel Stone to see just how bad it was.

But first, I looked up the score of the Hafton game. We were down ten at the half.

I glared up at the ceiling of my empty apartment. This was all on me.

“Fuck,” I screamed at the walls, fisting my hand and punching the mattress.

Their loss, Blane’s pain, Sarina’s inability to work tonight . . . all on me.

After reading speculation in articles and blog posts with titles like “Who really is Ariel Stone?” and “Why would a college student do this?” and “It’s Cute Catie,” I curled up into a ball and cried myself to sleep, tangled up in sheets that smelled like Blane.

The revelation of my identity came from Johnny, Sonny’s intern who followed me. Apparently, he had an informant at the station as well as an ax to grind with both Sonny and me. When he found out Sonny uncovered something salacious, he went to work to steal his thunder.

It didn’t matter now. It was all out there, and I was ruined.

Over the next few days, I kept a low profile.
Very low
. The school told me to take a few days off from my classes, so they could deal with the media storm raining down on campus. My Italian professor called to see if I was okay, and asked if she could bring me a cappuccino or scone. She seemed almost empathetic to my plight, but I turned her down.

I’d involved enough people who didn’t deserve this. She definitely did not.

On Saturday, Sarina sneaked in via the fire escape of my building wearing one of Chantae’s scarves and carrying food from the diner. I could barely swallow the soup; the diner’s label on the lid was a painful reminder of Blane.

I shouldn’t complain. I’d had a few months of fun, a few moments of extreme bliss, and certainly enough memories to die happy. Not everyone lived out every second of his or her lives smothered in happiness. Why should I believe I would?

On Monday, Mo called me; apparently he’d stolen my digits from Blane’s phone.

“Seriously, you got to talk to my boy,” he pleaded with me.

“You’re winning, and he doesn’t need me,” I said.

“See? You still care.”

“Mo, thanks for calling. I have to go.”

After I hung up, I changed my phone number for the second time this trimester, which meant I didn’t receive Blane’s texts anymore. He’d been sending them consistently. Mostly they said, “Can we talk?” or “The ball is in your court, you have the power here. But come on, Cate.” Another one said, “Please? Let’s talk. I miss you.”

Now his name didn’t flash across my screen anymore, and all that was left was the memory of his touch, the burn of his name tattooed on my skin, and the scent of him that I believed lingered in my apartment.

I cried over the missing texts, at the thought of not ever knowing if Mo’s girlfriend had had his baby yet. I wouldn’t know if he had a girl or boy, or what they named the baby.

Tears came and went hourly.

Sarina came back and held me daily.

Brittany became a fixture at my place, ranting and raving, listening to rough draft after rough draft of my book without complaint, and making turkey sandwiches.

One night after she’d done a shift with Frank, she popped over to my place with pillow and homework in hand. We lay side by side in my bed while Britt stroked my hair, curling it behind my ear as we talked about our dreams.

“Frank says he got every last frame of you off the Internet. Cost him a mint, but worth it, ’cause he knows what you’re doing for us.”

“It’s just a book,” I said. “One book.”

“Babe, you’re leaving this school and this state with a scarlet letter on you because of us. I know what you’re going to do at the next stop—more of this do-gooder shit for the porn stars. You got that dreamy look in your eyes. I can see it; you’re not done.”

When I said her name, it came out on a choke and a sob.

Brittany let out a little huff. “Don’t get all pansy on me. I’m gonna do my movies and graduate with honors. Go to law school, and take on civil liberties and crap. Your girl Shelby has me all kinds of wound up now. We may go to law school together. And then you and me are going to do some big project together. You’ll interview me on TV.”

I kissed her cheek and snuggled against her chest. We fell asleep like I’d dreamed about sleeping with my blood sisters for years.

Catie

O
ver the next few weeks, the only times I ventured in or out of my building, I had to force my way through a barrage of media people camped outside. “No comment,” were about the only words I muttered as I gathered the rest of the research I needed, and the media’s reaction was now a crucial part of the package.

After the phone change, I’d had zero contact with Blane or anyone on the team. Begrudgingly, I gave my mom and sisters my new number, but they only used it to berate me or rub my nose in shit.

“Told you, you’d make a mess,” Clara had said, her tone condescending and indignant.

And if my mom could spit through the phone, she would have.

My dad—my rock—had taken a gentle approach. He told me to call when I was ready or needed him.

The school allowed me to finish up the credits I’d paid for, but I did appear before a judicial board, who decided this would be my last trimester at Hafton. Apparently my conduct had broken some type of ethics clause, but not because it was pornography. I’d argued freedom of speech and expression, and they had conceded on that issue.

No, I was being tossed out on my butt because they believed I’d done pornos with “malicious intent” and to “deceive the women’s studies program.” The judicial board didn’t take too kindly to my “personal crusade to go against Professor Stanwick.”

Fuck ’em.

Coach Conley made a statement to the school paper.
“Yes, Ms. Presto is a fan of the team and was friends with several members, but we had no prior knowledge of her illicit activities.”

Professor Stanwick commented in an article in
USA TODAY
. “She was a student in our program, but not of the caliber we’ve come to expect at Hafton. She was released when she went on this rogue and illicit mission.”

Shelby was quoted in the local paper as a character witness. “I was with Caterina when the news broke. She’s a good woman who wants to defend the rights and actions of other women.”

As the season rolled on, Hafton continued to win. But Blane was questioned at almost every press conference about the nature of our relationship. The questions always went something like this:

“Mr. Steele, what do you think of the illicit actions of Caterina Presto, a.k.a. Ariel Stone? You were seen with her several times before it broke. Did you know? Were you a part of that world?”

There was one word synonymous with my name these days.
Illicit
. My actions and I were illicit, dubious, dirty, and disgusting.

I didn’t dare show my face inside the field house, even sneaking around. My phone pinged with an alarm every time the guys stormed the court, and I caught every game on the Internet. I was lucky Hafton streamed the games for students who weren’t lucky enough to get seats in the student section.

Toward the end of February, I sat alone in my studio apartment and watched the team clinch the conference title on national TV. They’d been favored, going into the game with a twenty-five and three record. It was the best record in Hafton history, even better than when Tiberius Jones and Jamel Lincoln were on the team.

I knew because I’d looked those guys up during one of my sad-sack pity fests.

Blane was at the top of his game after that one dreadful loss, constantly moving the ball down the court toward the basket, his sweatband atop his head and his steps sure, like a lion chasing its prey. The other two losses came after Mo and Demetri found themselves in foul trouble and were seated on the bench.

But nothing stopped them tonight as they conquered the conference, not even my tarnished reputation. As I watched Blane sink a three and run back on defense, high-fiving his teammate, I knew—just knew—I’d done the right thing.