Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(303)
She beams at him then me, the look almost grandmotherly; “Ah, love?” She smiles at Bryce; “Love yes?”
I blush and she grins wider. Bryce looks at me and slowly nods.
“Oh good! Very good, Bry-see!” She wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him tightly.
Bryce suddenly looks around, frowning; “Where’s Arkados?”
Fairuza’s smile fades to sadness, and I watch as Bryce’s shoulders droop suddenly; “Oh, shit.”
The gravestone is set back a ways from the house, up a small grassy slope of field under a tree. I hold Bryce’s hand, his other arm around Fairuza’s shoulder as he looks solemnly at the stone; “I’m so sorry; başınız sağolsun,” He says quietly to the woman next to him.
She nods, patting the hand draped over her shoulders; “He was…” She nods, finding her words; “There was no pain,” She says, turning to smile at Bryce; “He talk about you, all the time.”
Bryce grins as he nods; “He was a good man.”
“Yes. Very, very good man,” She says with a sad smile.
Later on, Fairuza brings us tea and we sit outside with her at a little table next to her small garden.
“The shop?” Bryce gestures towards the garage next to the house.
Fairuza smiles; “My cousin, he runs it now.”
“And you’re taken care of?”
Her face lights up; “Oh, Bry-see! I need tell you! I win!” Bryce grins a small smile; “Yes! I win the prize, the…the…I don’t know how to say.”
“Lottery?”
“Yes! I win the lottery; three years ago!”
Bryce just nods, smiling at her; “That’s wonderful, Fairuza.”
I turn to stare at him, suddenly realizing what’s going on here. I see the proud twinkle in his eye and the easy way he just takes in news like this, and I know suddenly exactly where that money came from.
“Yes, everything is paid for now, money is no problem.”
He grins, and looks back at the shop; “May I-?”
“Oh, please!” Fairuza gestures to the shop with her tea-cup, and Bryce takes my hand as he leads me over.
“This place- “ He shakes his head as we step into the shop; “I worked here.”
“Here?”
He nods; “Yeah, in Arkados’s garage. I mean, we had shit, Peyton, when we came through here. No money, no passports, no identities. I was strung out and desperate, and the cops busted me trying to boost a bike on the outskirts of Istanbul. I mean they were all over me, and ready to throw me into a cell or beat the shit out of me right there, but right then, Arkados happened to walk by. He told them I was his helper, that we were fixing the bike, not trying to lift it.”
Bryce shakes his head, his eyes drifting over the chrome pipes and the oiled engine parts around the garage, looking like he’s right at home; “They let it be, and after that, he took me here. Fed me, helped me out, and so I worked for him.”
“Is that a tank out back?”
He laughs; “Yeah, Arkados had a thing for World War Two junk. Fixing that thing up was our little side-project until the police got tired of us tearing up the fields outside of town with it. Never did get the gun working, but, eh,” He laughs and shrugs, his whole body loosening up and warming at the memory; “Who needs it; man that thing could really move though.”
He turns to me; “He was a good man, Arkados; probably the best I’ve ever known outside of William Archer. We were only in Turkey for two months, until we could smuggle ourselves into Egypt, but it felt like I was here for a lifetime. He knew what I was doing, knew I was running from something, and knew I was addicted at that point.” Bryce shakes his head sadly and smiles; “He didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t lecture either. He just told me to keep going; ‘it gets better’, he said.”
Later, we say our goodbyes to Fairuza; the grandmother Bryce never had. The woman that lost so much, but had even more, from the sounds of it.
“No trouble for him, OK?” She says as she leans in and hugs me tightly to her small frame before she kisses me on the cheek; “He’s a good boy.”
“He’s the best.”
She smiles at me before she turns and hugs Bryce one last time; “Come again, yes? And be good.”
“Goodbye, büyükanne.”
“Goodbye, Bry-see.”
24
Peyton
“I don't like this.”
The plaza on the outskirts of the Başakşehir district back in Istanbul where we’ve arranged to meet Sasha should be quiet, but not this quiet. Bryce nods slowly in reply to my words, his eyes darting around at the windows and ledges of the buildings around us. There’s no one here; no washerwoman hanging laundry from apartment balconies, and no kids in the background. You can barely hear the sound of traffic down the road, but besides that, the place is like a ghost town.