Biker's Virgin

"What's up?" I asked. She had been checking on me almost every day since I had moved.

"I was just checking in. How are you?" I was older than her, but someone needed to let her know that.

"Same as yesterday. My house is finally done."

"I'm so glad you got a professional to handle that this time."

"I am, too," I laughed.

"Have you talked to Dad?"

"Not since a couple days ago."

"You need to call him. You know how he is about texts," she lectured.

"Okay, mom. I'll call him. How is everything over there?"

"Already missing us?"

"Yeah. I look off my balcony every day at the ocean and feel like, shit, I wish I was still in Aberdeen," I teased. She laughed.

"See if we'll take you back when you're retired in two years."

"I'm trying for at least five," I mused. I knew how short the average guy got to play for the league. I wasn't planning on being the average guy. "How is everything over there?"

"Fine," she said lightly.

"How's Ron?" I asked carefully.

"Veronica?"

I rolled my eyes. Tiff, acting fake surprised at what I was asking her. I knew what she was doing. "Yeah. Veronica. How is she?"

"You've been gone for a week. Why are you interested now?" she asked. I sighed, looking down. How much of this did I tell her? I didn't want to get into it, but at the same time, I couldn't talk to Ron myself to see how she was. I knew that the two of them were still talking and if she had come up when I talked about her, then I had when she did.

"I care about her. I never got to tell her goodbye before leaving."

"I know. I told her you would have liked for her to be there."

"And, what did she say?" I asked. She paused.

"She told me everything."

"What?"

"Did she tell you why she wanted to end things?"

"Yeah. Some stuff about her old life, the one she had made for herself while I was gone. She wanted that back. I know she didn't wait for me that year I was gone, but after weeks of reconnecting, she suddenly changed her mind. It came out of nowhere."

"We were talking... I think it was the day before she broke up with you. I let it slip that you were talking to a team. I didn't know that you hadn't told her already. She decided she didn't want to be the reason that you stayed. She broke up with you, instead of letting you choose."

"I wanted to choose her. I did choose her. Why wouldn't she want that?"

"Because she loves you," she said like it was the most obvious answer in the world. "She knows that you've always wanted to play. She's seen the hard work you've put in for years and years and she understood that in your case, maybe this shot with this team would be the only one of its kind to come around."

"I didn't want it if it meant giving her up."

"She was willing to let you go if it meant you got what you've always wanted."