The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

Up until he’d gotten wasted.

“Hey, hold on to the wall a second so I can get the door unlocked,” I ordered, poking him in the side at the same time I tried to angle him so he could grab ahold.

“Sure, Vanny,” Zac muttered, smiling at me dreamily, lips pressed tight, and his eyes closed.

I snickered, made sure he had one hand firmly planted on the wall, and then slipped under his arm. It didn’t take me long to unlock the door and turn off the alarm. With Zac’s arm over my shoulder again, I shuffled him three feet inside before he started tilting sideways, one clumsy foot in front of the other until he crashed into the side table next to the couch. The lamp on top teetered as Zac tried to right himself, but it lost the battle with gravity and clattered to the floor, the shade flying off, the bulb cracking into a thousand pieces.

Damn it.

I sighed. One, two, three. “All right. You’re done for the night, buddy.” Grabbing Zac’s arm, I led him onto the couch like he was a little kid. Opening them just as his butt hit the cushion, his eyes were glassy, wide, and so completely guileless I couldn’t even be irritated with him longer than a second. “Sit here.” He did. “Let me go get you some water, but don’t move, okay?”

He forced himself to blink up at me, totally dazed, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me even though he was obviously trying. He smacked his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ma’am? It took everything inside of me not to crack up. “I’ll be right back,” I croaked, pinching my nose and taking a couple steps back to avoid the broken pieces of light bulb before heading toward the kitchen. I flicked on the lights, filled up a plastic cup with water, because I wasn’t about to trust him with glass, and grabbed the broom and dustpan from the pantry closet.

Zac sat on the couch where I’d left him, his boots kicked off in the middle of the room, and his butt scooted up to the edge. His eyes were closed.

But it was the big smile on his face that killed me.

This surge of affection filled my heart as I squatted down to poke him in the shoulder. The second he lazily cracked those blue eyes open, I held the cup of water toward him. “Drink up, buddy.”

He took the cup without argument, and I went over to the mess on the floor. I swept up what I could, poured the shards in a small cardboard box I’d found in the recyclable bin, and tossed it all into the trash. Taking the vacuum from the pantry, I pulled it after me and into the living room, where I moved the suction all over the floor just to be on the safe side.

I’d barely unplugged the vacuum and turned around to put everything back when I sucked in a breath and let out the girliest, most pathetic squeak in the universe. It wasn’t “ahh” or “eep. It just sounded, well, I’m not sure what it sounded like, but I would never take credit for it.

Aiden stood there, not even two feet away, literally cloaked in the darkness of the hallway like a damn serial killer.

“You scared the hell out of me!” My heart… I was going to have a heart attack. I had to slap my hand over my chest like that would help it stay in place. “Oh my God.”

“What are you doing?” His voice was raspy and low.

Hand still over my chest, I panted. “Somebody broke a light bulb.” I gestured toward the drunk Texan on the couch oblivious to everything and everyone around him at that point.

I eyed Aiden, his sleepy face, the wrinkled white T-shirt he had on, the thin lounge pants I know he’d thrown on to come down the stairs, because in the two years I’d been responsible for doing his laundry, I’d only washed them a handful of times, and I immediately felt guilty. The big guy usually went to bed at the earliest possible time he could to ensure he got a minimum of eight hours of sleep, and here I’d been vacuuming, waking him up.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered, even though I was sure I could have walked around the living room banging pots and pans and Zac wouldn’t have woken up.

He shrugged one of those big shoulders, his eyes going from me to his now ex-teammate. I didn’t need to look at Zac to know he was more than likely passed out on the couch by that point, especially not when Aiden’s stray gaze stayed on the spot behind me. “How much did he have to drink?” he asked, yawning.

A pang of guilt hit my belly. “Too much.” As if to explain, I added, “I just wanted to get him out of his room for a little while. I thought it would be good for him.” Maybe too good for him, but it was too late to take the evening back by the time I figured getting shit-faced wasn’t the best thing for him to do.

To be fair, it had been a lot of fun.

A loud, rough snore ripped through the air and the sharp, sudden rumble of Zac snoring had me glancing over my shoulder. “I need to go grab something. I’m sorry if I woke you. “

Before he could say anything else—or not say anything else—I hauled ass upstairs and into Zac’s room, internally cringing at the mess he’d made since he began locking himself in, and the smell, it was bad. Real bad.

Grabbing the corner of the wrinkled comforter on the bed and his pillow, I ran down the stairs and found Aiden standing next to the couch talking to Zac in a low voice and…

Was he patting the armrest?

“Here.” I handed over the pillow.

Aiden took it, his attention still on Zac, and set it alongside the armrest I’m pretty sure he’d been petting a second ago. “Lay down,” he ordered the drunk one in a quiet, no-nonsense voice that obviously left no room for argument to even someone who was mostly out of it.