“Women,” he said, as if that was some sort of explanation for our exchange. If only I had turned on the recording app to catch that. HR could look the other way if they didn’t have any proof of Tim’s shitty, sexist behavior. They’d have a lot harder time doing it if I caught and recorded it. And to my annoyance, the stranger just nodded as if he completely understood Tim’s frustration.
But I wasn’t going to let either of them overrule my own professionalism. I leaned over the table, reaching out my hand.
“Sophie Hall,” I introduced myself.
But Tim’s new friend just stared at my hand as if I had offered him a live snake. He looked like someone who had not had a lot of experience with women. Pale and slightly oily, he gave the impression that he hadn’t eaten a meal with all four food groups in a very long time. There was a definite gut visible beneath his dirty black T-shirt and his fedora looked as though it had been left in a puddle of grease recently. Everything about this guy set my warning flags off. But it was clear that Tim thought he was fantastic from the excited way he was leaning towards him, obviously eager to get the story started.
I withdrew my un-shaken hand and pressed start on the recording app.
“So, Rob,” Tim began eagerly. “You went to high school with Nathan Ryder, is that correct?”
My stomach clenched. Fuck. Did this guy have some dirt on Nathan?
“That is correct, Tim,” Rob said in a voice that was affected and vaguely robotic. No matter what it was definitely creepy. “I was a year behind Nathan Ryder, the baseball player.”
“You don’t need to say his full name each time,” Tim said. “Just tell me the story like you told it over the phone.”
There came that uneasy feeling again. So Tim already knew the information that Rob claimed to have and wanted to get it on the record with me as a witness. Obviously he thought it was good. I clenched my fingers into a fist and prayed that I was wrong.
Rob cleared his throat and began again. “Nathan Ryder—I’m sorry, Nathan, was the boyfriend of a girl named Becca.” A look of reverence came over Rob’s eyes. Clearly he had been in love with this girl. “She was the most beautiful girl at our school. What she ever saw in Nathan, I’ll never know.”
This guy was clearly a moron that much I could tell. Anyone who looked at Nathan and wondered what women saw in him obviously had no idea what women wanted. But I had a feeling that was exactly Rob’s problem.
“Becca was the kind of girl who was nice to everyone, which is probably why she ended up dating Nathan. She had trouble saying no to people.” Once again I tried not to roll my eyes. “We were lab partners. We spent time together after school.” Rob smiled. It was creepy. So very creepy. “I could tell she liked me. She told me she was thinking of breaking up with him.”
Liar, I thought. You are a filthy, stinking liar. And my gut backed me up.
“I’m a really nice guy, you know.” Rob paused and when I looked up, I realized he had directed that creepy smile at me. “Not like those jerk jocks that just use girls and throw them away. Like Nathan did to Becca.”
“Tell us what happened after prom,” Tim urged, and I clenched my fists tighter, feeling my nails cutting into my skin.
“Well, Becca went with him, of course, because she was too nice to say no. Even though she told me that they were going to break up afterwards.” Rob’s eyes got squinty and intense. Instinctively, I leaned back in my chair, wanting to put as much distance as I could between us. This guy gave me the major creeps.
“So they went to prom,” Tim prompted.
“Yeah. They went to the prom and of course, Nathan was drinking. He’s like, a huge alcoholic.”
I wanted to shake my head. Nothing about Nathan said that he had any problem drinking. In fact, all the times we had spent together around alcohol, he had been the more responsible one.
“So Nathan was drinking.” Tim leaned closer to my phone on the table. “Underage drinking,” he said in a loud voice.
“That’s right,” Rob said. “He was drinking and instead of taking Becca home at the end of the evening, he drove both of them into a tree. Becca lost her leg.”
My heart stopped.
No.
That was a lie. Everything this little slime bag had said was a lie. Nathan being a jerk—lie. Nathan being a drunk—lie. Nathan injuring his girlfriend in car accident after prom—lie. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to ignore the fact that they were shaking.
Tim cast a sidelong look at me, an unpleasant smile appearing on his already unpleasant face. “And you said you have proof,” he said to Rob, who nodded.
I leaned further back in my chair, as if I could disappear into it. I didn’t want to look but when Rob pulled out a three-rim notebook from his backpack, I couldn’t help it. In it were laminated sheets of photo collages, mostly comprised of pictures of a pretty brunette in a cheerleading uniform. There were some that seemed to be cut out of yearbooks or newspapers but there were a few blurry shots that appeared to be taken at a distance.
“Were you stalking her?” I asked, taking a closer look.
But Rob pulled the notebook away from me, moving it towards Tim.
“That’s not the issue here,” he said. “The issue is that Nathan Ryder is responsible for his ex-girlfriend’s tragic accident. Because he was big dumb drunk jock. See?” He pointed to a page from his notebook towards the end, where it had the headline: Two injured in drunk driving accident.
I peered closer at the newsprint. Nowhere did it mention any of the victims by name, but there was a picture of a car smashed into a tree. I winced at the sight of it, all that metal and smoke.
“It doesn’t say anything about Nathan,” I pointed out.
“Well, yeah,” Rob sneered. “His family paid to have it covered up. Because he was underage, he did community service and the records were sealed. Neither Nathan nor Becca ever spoke about it. Becca didn’t even stay in town to recover. No one knows where she went,” he said ominously.
Having met the Ryders, I had a hard time imagining them bribing people to keep this hidden. Something about this didn’t seem right. How could Tim have talked to all those people from Nathan’s high school and have no one mention this? It wasn’t that long ago—how could no one know about it? Everything about this smelled off.
“Thank you so much for your time, Rob,” Tim said, standing.
Rob got to his feet, clutching the notebook. “And you’ll tell me if you find her, right?”
“Of course,” Tim answered with a disingenuous smile.
Satisfied with that response, Rob gathered his things, and without a second glance in my direction, scurried out of the lobby like the cockroach he was.
Tim spun back to me, his face bright. “Did you hear that?” he crowed. “That’s the kind of story I’ve been looking for. Star athlete’s dark past. How he ruined lives getting to where he is today.”
I felt sick. But I wasn’t going to let Tim act like this proved anything. As far as I was concerned, Rob was big fucking liar who had been obsessed with Becca and still harbored some weird feelings for her and a deep-seated hatred for Nathan.
“There’s no evidence,” I insisted. “The article doesn’t name Nathan, or Becca, and we just have this random guy’s word against Nathan’s.”
“Who cares?” Tim said, snatching his bag and heading across the lobby. I scrambled to catch up with him, grabbing my phone from the table. “Let Nathan go on the offense. We just need to plant the seed of doubt in the public’s eye. Get people to second-guess the latest golden boy of baseball. If we time it right, we could get the Majors to back off on drafting him.”
Tim truly was a disgusting excuse for a human being. I dashed in front of him, cutting him off before he could reach the elevators.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “It’s unethical. You don’t have any proof.”