Tolerating The Player

I turned to look at Zach but he was frozen rather in a bad way. I saw his fists clenching and wondered why he was mad at seeing his father. Perhaps they had a tough situation going on.

“Zach” I patted his shoulders but he walked away instead. I could see the evident pain on his father’s face and wished I could do something because the situation became awkward.

“Hi, I’m Isabella Brown” I greeted with a smile and my white small purse in my hand.

“Nice to meet you Isabella, I’m Gregory O’Connell” he returned my smile and walked away. I stared at his bank as he walked sadly away with his expensive well tailored suit.

I scanned the big hall room for Zach and spotted him collecting a glass of wine from a waiter. I walked towards him and he noticed my presence.

“Why didn’t you want to talk to your father?”C0ntent © 2024 (N/ô)velDrama.Org.

“None of your business Bella” He took a big gulp of the wine and collected another one.

I suddenly heard a click of glass, it was Gregory calling the attention of everyone.

“First of all I would like to make a toast to my beautiful wife here for making today possible with the safe delivery” he said and kissed her on her forehead before kissing the baby’s head too.

The whole crowd clapped and cheered but Zach, he was bittered and his eyes were red. I wondered why he came to the event.

He clicked the glass with a spoon again but this time twice, “I know we’ve all been having fun but the party has to end now, my newest child, my daughter Zoya has to rest now” he chuckled and so did the crowd.

In a short while the hall started to turn empty, everyone was returning to their various houses or rather mansions and I wondered if we would also leave or wait behind. I wanted to talk to Zach and ask questions but I knew he wasn’t going to respond especially in his current state.

There were some few people left after the party had ended and I suspected them to be relatives perhaps from his wife’s side. The woman looked really young possibly in her mid twenties and nothing like the picture I saw on Zach’s fridge.

The hall was immediately cleared in a jiffy and Zach and I sat at an end of the hall, he was still with a glass cup and I hoped he wouldn’t be drunk already because I had lost count of the drinks he took.

I watched how the maids set up the really big dining table with different food and desserts. I felt awkward seating at the end of the hall with different eyes on us.

A maid suddenly walked towards us, “Sir, Master has requested you at the table” . The maid delivered her message and left to carry Zoya upstairs and away from the table.

“We should probably go,” I said to him and squeezed his hands a little. I thought he would remove his hands or probably yell at me but he didn’t remove his hands from my touch but rather intertwined his fingers with mine and stood up to go to the table.

The table suddenly became silent on our arrival, no one said anything or perhaps they didn’t know what to say. Zach settled on a chair and brought me to sit still with his hand holding mine firmly, he didn’t let go.

“It’s nice to see you again Zach” Zoey’s mother said and I felt his muscles tensed. I gave him another soft squeeze on hand and made him calm down which surprisingly worked.

When she noticed how Zach reacted to her talking she felt uneasy and blinked rapidly before stuffing her mouth with some grapes.

Everyone at the table soon started to eat and it felt really awkward that I wished I wasn’t here at the moment.

“So how’s your football career going?” Gregory asked, Zach chewed on the salad then drank the wine on the table gulping everything at once.

“Fine” he responded and I saw a little tiny bit of happiness on Gregory’s face. He was glad Zach responded even though it was just a word.

Zach poured himself another wine and no one could stop him not to drink even though he was still underaged. They probably feared he might act up.

“I heard you’ve been amazingly kicking the ball into the goal posts” Gregory added to lessen the tension in the room.

“How about I kick a fucking ball In your shitty mouth right now!” Zach yelled and my eyes widened in awe, I wasn’t the only shocked one on the table as different eyes fell on him.

“Zach, respect your father!” Gregory’s bride raised her voice, a part of me felt like she had made a bad choice.

“Don’t forget he’s almost twice your age but you threw your slutty body at him for money you whore” Zach spilled and aggressively stood up from the table. Both Gregory and his wife were shocked and pained but there was a lot more pain on Gregory’s face that I spotted some tears building up in his eyes.

“Excuse me” I said and left the table to meet Zach.

“Zach!!” I yelled as I rushed towards him but he kept on walking really fast with a bottle of wine in his hand.

He stopped and sat beside the huge fountain in the middle of the mansion drinking the wine. I caught up with him and sat beside him without saying a word.

Some drops of water from the fountain slightly splashed on our body but he didn’t seem to mind and I didn’t want to leave him like this.

“He’s a fucking bastard” he yelled and my heart skipped a bit, I thought he was going to smash the drink on the floor but he didn’t Instead he started to cry. Fuck it! I’ve never seen him like this.

“Please don’t cry” I begged and wiped off the tears with my thumb and caressed his face with my hands. I felt bad and sad seeing him cry when though we did not get along I still felt something for him.

He bit his bottom lip trying to hold back the tears as he looked away from me, his eyes were bloodshot but he was still drinking from the bottle.

“Go away, I don’t want your fucking pity and your meddling mouth in my business” he yelled but I knew he didn’t mean what he said even though I was a little bit freaked out.

“I’m staying here with you and there’s nothing you’ll say that’ll make me leave!” I raised my voice back at him. He looked at me in the eye but looked away and took a gulp of wine down.

“I wish I could kill him,” he said. I didn’t say any word in response, I hadn’t expected him to talk but now that he had said something I was scared I would make him leave if I said something.

“He used to be a fucking proud beast and womanizer, he would cheat on my mum continuously and treat her badly, he would abuse her in different ways in my presence. I fucking saw it all”

“My mum divorced him for her peace and that house I stayed in became hers after the divorce. I was fucking ten years old”

“He didn’t seem to care about me or my mother, he wouldn’t call or care to talk to me for years, my mother walked her ass out till she was financially stable on her own”

“Then one morning we decided to go out after some time in her garden, we were happy and laughed together. There was finally some happy moment in our lives then she got a fucking call, my dad was fucking getting remarried” his voice cracked a little and he took another gulp out of his wine.

“My dad was fucking getting remarried and she was shocked, she hadn’t gotten over the monster yet and the shock lead to a ghastly accident” he let out a deep breath, the time you exhale when you’re holding back a tear.

“I was injured but was conscious while my mum wasn’t, I let my guard down and dialed my father’s number but he yelled at me through the phone saying he was busy getting married” he scoffed.

“A stranger helped us to the hospital, her heart was still beating but she was unconscious. We got to the hospital and after an emergency care I was told she didn’t make it.”

“The shock before the accident was the main cause of her death. I watched how her beautiful body laid lifelessly on the white hospital bed. I thought it was all a joke, I screamed at her to quit joking around but she couldn’t talk back, you know why?” He asked and I carefully placed my hand on his back stroking it carefully.

“She couldn’t talk because she was fucking dead! He killed her Bella! He fucking killed her!”

“And you know what is funny about these?” He scoffed, “He didn’t end up with her but married another” he painfully laughed.

“I’m so sorry Zach” I softly said. I hated the way I used to see him, he was only this way because of what had happened to him in the past. It was similar to mine but heck his father was the cause of his mother’s death.

Saying sorry to him seemed to have affected him as tears dripped freely down his eyes. “Fuck it!” He silently cried, he was a totally different person right now and wasn’t that tough and arrogant boy but rather a soft hearted and broken boy.

“Zach?” I called and he turned to look at me. I had no idea why I called him but I felt I needed to do something. My eyes were fixed on his face before they slowly drifted to his lips and back to his eyes. I saw a different emotion in his eyes as he brought my head closer to his, our faces were just an inch apart and I could perceive the conc. smell of alcohol in his breath. It felt intoxicating.

I couldn’t bear the delay any longer that I connected my lips to his, he quickly gave access to the kiss sucking on my bottom lip. The warmth and softness of his lips on mine supersedes the cold that was hitting on my skin. I wanted more of it, more of him and I felt I wasn’t getting enough as I pressed my lips harder on his and he returned the same energy. I have never been a fan of alcohol but the taste of it on his lips made me an addict.

His hands moved through my body caressing and giving a slight squeeze on any part he touched, I let out a loud satisfying moan and he took the opportunity to meet my tongue with his. We had kissed earlier at the lake but this felt better, I wasn’t feeling just some thousands of butterflies but a million of them. I suddenly felt some wetness in between my thighs and some funny feeling I couldn’t explain.

I pulled away from the kiss to catch my breath, the bright lights from the fountain shone on his face making him look adorable even in his messy state.

“Let’s go inside” I said and he stood up without arguing, he brought my hands to him and we both walked into the house. No one was on the table but Gregory who had his head on the table.