Текст книги "Quarterback Bait "

Автор книги: Celia Loren

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Chapter Five

Landon

June 2^nd

 

“Yes!” she cried, caramel skin and curves twisting up my sheets. The previous requests to keep it down had been useless. At this rate, Yvette was sure to wake Coach Wells, but all that mattered to me in the moment was that this evening's lady love ride the wave until it crashed on the beach. I slammed against her shapely thighs harder, watching my cock plunge in and out of the beautiful girl. Yvette grinned at me coquettishly, over one perfectly freckled shoulder. She winked, and I squeezed my eyes tight.

We were bunked up two to a cabin at training camp, and across the room, Denny snored through our fucking, unfazed. I tried to concentrate again on the task at hand. Beautiful Yvette. She was the waitress at Dee's, the diner that had quickly become a team favorite after five days of training camp. Dee served burgers as big as my hand, and wouldn't judge a football player for requesting a PBR before noon on a break day. With the schedule Coach had us on, all of us were eating thousands of calories for bulk anyways—so we were bound to spend a lot of time at the trough. Two guys had already passed out, doing wind-sprints during the morning work-out.

Denny had drawn my attention to Yvette, after not-so-patiently indulging yet another one of my Zora spiels. The girl had been blowing up my phone since we landed, demanding second and third opinions on fabric and song selection despite the fact that I very clearly didn't give a rat's ass about a sixteen year old girl's deb ball. Zora's sister Betsy had mousy brown hair, and she reminded me of the girls in my high school who liked to kick around with the stage crew kids. The planning of her big day was about as unsexy a subject as I could think of. But the whole text assault had made me wonder, secretly, who Doll hung out with at her high school. What kind of girl was she? Who were her friends? This was filed away under: questions I wasn't supposed to be asking.

With a practiced swoop of her left leg (for Yvette had informed the whole team that she hoped to be a dancer someday, if she could ever get the fuck out of Dodge), my conquest rolled over on her back again, affording me vantage of her neat, round tits as they shook on her thick frame. She was a pretty girl. A kind girl. Denny had basically ruined her with his eyes after our first lunch at the diner, before leaning across the table to halt my rant and say, “Dude. Forget Zora. Somebody needs to tear that up, and I'm already hunting the Southwest flight attendant.”

Did it bother me that my best friend had a way of talking about women like they were actual pieces of meat, swinging in a butcher shop window? Sure it did. But I realized this opinion made me the minority in a sea of testosterone-charged linebackers on a sanctioned spring break. We got released from training around 4pm each afternoon, and if one could rally after a nap, there was plenty of fun to be found in Galveston. It hadn't taken three days before most of the team had imprinted themselves on a “scene.” The whole matter reminded me of a New York tradition called “Fleet Week” that Zora had told me about, during one of our many, unfortunate Sex and the City marathons. Fleet Week's apparently when all the Navy sailors on shore leave hit the town to get their D's wet. Walking around in our practice jerseys and basketball shorts, I felt of this kind of mass. Better put: women in Galveston seemed especially interested in “getting to know” the UT football team.

But Yvette wasn't quite like the others, which was why I dug her so much. She had a big curly coiled mess of hair, and after hooking me up with a milkshake one slow night, she took off her apron and kept me company till the end of her shift. She was a runaway, I'd been informed then. Didn't like to say why. But she seemed awful proud of the life she'd begun to carve out for herself, speaking confidently about the money she'd managed to squirrel away, and the five year plan that would lead her to Birmingham. “They've got a great ballet in Birmingham,” she'd said sweetly, drawing me in with a passionate flicker in her greenish eyes. “People don't know, but they do.” Can you sue a quarterback for wanting to see what a dancer could teach him?

This was our second fuck. The first had been fast and desperate, in the bed of her pick-up truck behind Dee's. “Don't go falling in love now,” she'd said, while scrolling the condom across my tip with her tongue. “That's not at all part of this cowgirl's five year plan.”

We were on the same page there.

“Look at me when you come!” Yvette was saying now, sweat collecting in the hollows of her lovely dancer bones. I gripped her shoulders. I rammed into her supple cave, reveling in the smile that kept unfurling across her face with each thrust, like a flag rippling in the wind. I leaned back and put a discreet thumb on the mound of her clit, enjoying the view of her lovely naked body. Her big green eyes widened, and she reached up to grab my shoulders. Pulling me towards her and straining upward simultaneously, her mouth rounded, and her breath came harder. I rubbed her in circles, faster and faster. She let out a soft cry and her muscular legs tensed around me, creating a pulse around my cock. Her eyelids fluttered, and she collapsed sweetly against the pillows.

“You, my friend...” she began, but didn't bother to finish the sentence. She just let out a callow kind of laugh. I took the opportunity to ease out.

“Come back here, Larkin,” she said through a yawn. I smiled, but didn't bother to correct the name fumble. “I never leave a man with blue balls. I'm a polite ambassador of my city.”

“Get some sleep. I don't believe in blue balls. I was brought up well enough to know that the lady comes first.” She opened her pretty eyes and cocked her head, extending a finger to nestle in the hollow of my chin. Girls say they're crazy for what they call my “superhero chin,” but it's always made me a little self-conscious, truth be told. I'm convinced that the little dimple looks like a butt. Just an extra butt, hanging out on my face.

“They sure don't make 'em like you anymore,” Yvette smiled. Her teeth were white and rounded—slightly babyish. I bent low to kiss her on the forehead, then wrapped her up in the threadbare quilt I'd brought from home. She laughed her hard laugh again, and in a manner of seconds seemed to be as asleep as Denny in the next bunk.

I eased myself slowly out of the bed, and took pains to prevent my feet from creaking along the ancient wooden slats of our cabin. It wasn't strictly true about the blue balls. While I'd never experienced the physical pain that some men seemed to encounter when deprived of a happy ending, whenever I fucked and didn't come I'd get this weird wave of sadness. It entered every pore and clung to me until I fell asleep, usually. I took ecstasy one time (with Zora, at a rave), and the next day's come-down was like an amplified version of my blue balls. It's like it's hard to remember what's good in the world, for a few crucial seconds. I know that sounds poncy, but it's the truth.

I took a heavy seat on the porch, drawing the string tight around my loose sweat pants. Galveston was humid as hell. From the fog of the surrounding cabins, through a haze of buzzing mosquitoes and fluorescent lanterns, I thought I could hear a few other couples going at it. That, or some of my teammates were trying to pack in extra reps before dawn's practice. It struck me that this whole tiny corner of America must smell like dude. Even Zora's uppity perfume that cost two hundred dollars a bottle was better than this air.

I was limp in my pants by then, bound up in reflection—when she came ambling through my mind. With her ratty Amy Winehouse hair, and her even stare. Seventeen. I'd been afraid of girls altogether when I was seventeen, and I'd been Homecoming King and Class President. I'd been mean to the kids you were supposed to be mean to, which I thought about now with a shameful heart. If I'd met Doll when I was in high school, there was no doubt about it—I wouldn't have been able to handle that much woman.

In my recurring dream, she wears a dress. It’s pinkish red, and it suits her curves. She laughs at me, throws her head back to giggle. I hunt for her behind trees. When I find her, she laughs some more. I hold her up and spin her around, and our mouths collide in the air, and then a rain of ice cubes start to fall out of the sky, slipping down her dress and my shirt. We get all cold and shivery. We cling to one another. Sometimes she'd grin and suddenly transform into Zora or Yvette, naked and splayed and lovely—but wrong, somehow. She'd beg me to look at her when I came.

When I looked down, the hard-on was back. With a vengeance.

“Landon Sterling!” hollered the special teams coach, his voice bellowing across the green. “Landon Sterling, we've got a call for you, son!”

No sooner had I heard the words than Denny's blonde crew cut bobbed across my field of vision, and I tumbled over my pal and onto the ground. Lord knew what new drill this was supposed to be—I sure hadn't been paying attention to the play call. I'd been ruthlessly distracted all week, and wasn't exactly setting a shining example for a championship Longhorn season.

Coach Yeardley moved his hands back and forth above his head from the sidelines, like he was signaling at an airplane. As a result, Coach Wells blew his whistle, then came up behind his assistant and clocked him on the back of the head with a clipboard.

“Better go. It's probs your fiancée,” Denny grunted in my ear, extending a hand so I could peel myself off the green.

“Fuck you, asshole.”

“You're taking her last name, right? Like someone who's really pussy-whipped?” Clay Hoskins—massive fullback, exemplary bio student—jogged up to our little time-out, as the coaches conferred on the sidelines. His dreadlocks looked especially heavy in this muggy Texas air.

“Leave Landy alone, Dee. Jay-Z took Beyonce's name.”

“That's the kind of thing only a pussy-whipped brother knows.”

Denny ducked, expecting a slug to the face, but Clay just rolled his eyes and thumped me on the back. It was common knowledge that Clay had long been engaged to one of the hottest girls at UT—Victoria Jenkins, formerly known as Miss Texas 2013. We could make fun of that dude all we wanted, but the fact was that he'd always have the supreme upper hand in the lady department. Didn't hurt that he was a decent guy. Wouldn't hurt a fly, off the football field.

I saluted Clay, then trudged off in the direction of the sidelines. Wells gave me the stink-eye (rightly so, given the day's performance), while Yeardley turned to guide me toward the locker room. When we reached the door to his office, he gestured at a dangling pay phone in the corridor.

“Hope it's not an emergency, kid.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

“I'm serious. Emergency would be one more reason for you to keep your head up your ass, as 'posed to on the ball.”

I smiled tensely, then pulled my practice padding over my head. I watched the phone swing back and forth on its ancient cord for a second, mind racing with possibilities. There was only one person I could think of who wouldn't know to contact me on my cell phone.

“Landon? That you?” croaked a voice. Pop's question immediately replaced itself with a coughing fit. I held the phone away from my ear.

“Pop, is everything okay?”

“Oh, sure, son. Everything's peachy.”

I pushed my hair back from my face, irritated by its falling into my eyes. I never knew how Clay could play the game with all that hair weighing him down—didn't it make it harder to run? From the doorway to his office, Yeardley was indiscreetly peering at me over the lip of a playbook. His eyes were narrowed with curiosity. He no doubt suspected a rat.

“Well, I'm in the middle of drills, Pop. Can I call you back maybe?”

“It's actually a mite urgent, son. Everything's peachy, but it's a mite urgent.” I could practically hear the geyser kicking back in his recliner, angling to keep a TV dinner on his lap. A wall clock revealed that it was one p.m. on a Thursday. There wouldn't be any services today, so Pastor Sterling would be spending his day at home.

“I do believe I've finally found someone to care for me, into my old age.”

“...like a nurse?”

He croaked out a laugh, which turned into a cough again. I sighed, away from the receiver. Across the hall, Yeardley ruffled his papers like a fussy bird fixing up its nest.

“A man of God will take what's his, Landon! No, no...I've found you a pretty little stepmother.”

From nowhere, I felt bile beginning to rise in my throat. Perhaps it was the pancakes from Dee's—Denny and I had kinda overdone it on the carbo-loading that morning, plus Yvette had sent over a plate of bacon the size of the state.

“Son? What do you make of all this, now?” Even through the phone, I could sense his voice hardening. It was like when I was a kid and he'd walk into the house twirling a switch between his fingers. The choice is yours, Landon, he'd always start. You do stuff to getcha hit, it's my 'sponsibility to hitcha.

“Well, I want you to be happy. Sir.”

“That's nice to hear.”

“And you've always said we were meant to go two by two in this life.”

“You're mistaking me for Jehovah again, son. But I do 'preciate the quote.”

Maybe he did sound happy. I tried to picture the old man, years from now—and all I could see was that same frayed blue robe, and the cigarillo, and the constant mutterings of the TV. I'd never gone in for his congregation—which was perhaps the biggest point of contention in our ever-strained relationship—but who was I to begrudge an old man some creature comforts? In my heart of hearts, a part of me looked forward to graduation day, when I'd no longer be beholden to Pastor Bill Sterling. If I lived in Colorado, I wouldn't even have to come home for all the holidays, and spend time in that silent, smelly house with its constant perfume of terrible memories. And if Pop had a lady to make him casseroles and ensure he took his medicine—well, that had to be a good thing. Didn't it?

“Sir, I'm glad you called me. That's truly wonderful news. When are you planning to—when's the ceremony?”

“I figure I've been a patient man all my life, and when a good thing comes I've got to seize it. Don't you think you've got to seize a good thing, son?”

Yeardley slammed his play book shut at last, giving up the ruse. I let the words 'good' and 'thing' bounce around in my head for a beat too long, where they collided with my memory of chasing Doll around the gas station. Her ass, snug in those jeans. Good. Thing. Her hair. I slammed a palm into the concrete wall, suddenly livid at myself. Why couldn't I stop thinking about her? Why?

“Seize away, sir!” I said, a little too loudly. I heard Pop's recliner shift in the background. He'd be preparing for an afternoon nap right about now, if I knew the bastard. And up until this phone call, I could have sworn I did.

“Mmm-hmm. She's a god-fearing congregant. Has the spirit and the vessel. She drew a short straw in this life, but we've found one another. I'm fixing to make my intentions known this evening, and I'd like you to be beside me on the day, everything being equal.” I swallowed. It was remarkably rare for Bill Sterling to demonstrate pride in his famous quarterback son. I had to grab that shit where it came.

“I'm honored, Pop. Truly.” I angled the phone away from Yeardley, so he wouldn't see the moisture dangling off my eyelashes. “Hey. What's her name? The lady?”

The old man cleared his throat. I thought I could actually hear him smile, through time and space and wire.

“Anya Bennett,” he said, lovingly.

Chapter Six

Ash

June 2^nd

 

I kicked my locker for a fifth time, enjoying the vibration of metal on metal as my steel-toed boot attempted to injure the yellow tin. The late bell had just finished sounding, and yet again my locker was jammed.

And literally jammed—as in, cemented shut with a gooey concoction of jelly, gum, and what appeared to be rubber cement. It's something I still don't get about high schoolers. Like, who has the time to haze the new kid so elaborately? And what disgusting bully spent his afternoon mashing up shit into a paste, and then some of his precious morning targeting me with it? Surely there were better ways to spend that time.

It was just about the end of my tenure at Lee High, and since about day two I'd been playing the victim to everyone. The jam thing was an unpleasant new twist, but I was no stranger to asshole classmates. It would go down like so: the first week in a new city, everyone would try to pin me down. They'd wonder why I was so dark and brooding, and why I wore all black, and why I didn't speak up in class. Then they'd see me get As. Guys would elect to notice the boobs that had been failing at discretion, my whole teenage life. And somewhere in there, some Queen Bee would make an executive decision that Ashleigh Bennett was an uppity slut freak, who thought she was better than everyone else. Rumors would begin to circle. Shit like, “At her last school, she gang-banged her whole lacrosse team.” (Thank you, Des Moines High.) And in the really bad cases, someone's mother would meet mine, and then some of the rumors would begin to contain a grain of truth. Anya, claiming she didn't like to keep secrets, was always unnecessarily candid about her addict past. It was like I moved to places in an attempt to make a fresh start, while she was in the business of testing towns for their “groovy” factor. If they couldn't hack her as she was, it was time to move. Either that, or if one of her boyfriends stole our TV.

“What seems to be the problem, Miss Bennett?” questioned a voice. The slightly sleazy voice of my so-far favorite teacher—Mr. Dempsey. Dempsey had wire rimmed glasses and wore band shirts with jeans, and though I'd never seen him at the front of a classroom, people called him 'Mister' and he was apparently permitted to wander the hallways with a beat-up acoustic guitar in his grip. On my first day at Lee, he'd informed me that he was an AV tech—even though most of the school's audiovisual stuff had gone digital. I liked him immediately.

“Nothing to see here, Demps,” I said, swiveling neatly. It wasn't like I needed the Bio textbook for the lab I'd done four times already, at as many schools across the Bible Belt. In Denver, I'd actually led the lesson plan for our entire class. Sometimes, depending on a school's curriculum, it was like you were repeating grades when you transferred mid-year. Which was why I'd made the decision semesters before to start supplementing high school with GRE Prep and college-level APs at whichever agreeable, nearby college I could find—that was how I'd gotten hooked up with the pre-college classes at UT, and my party girl Melanie. Pending my latest test results, I planned to start as a freshman at UT in the fall. And as I wasn't half bad at taking a test, God-willing it'd be sayonara, high-school suckers! in t-minus two months.

“Don't worry too much,” Mr. Dempsey said, reaching across me to pick at some of the jam oozing from my locker's spine. “Remember: every single one of those fuckers is going to marry too young, take a job they can't stand, and start to look forward to the day they die on their thirtieth birthday.”

“Gosh, Dempsey! That's a bit bleak, don't you think?” But as if on cue, a guy in a basketball jersey—spying me but not the teacher from the end of the hall—threw a lewd gesture my way. I rolled my eyes in the direction of his lolling tongue, but the jock just giggled before scampering off.

“The point is: try not to let it get to you. For the very best people, high school is often the worst part of life.”

We began to lope down the hallway, Dempsey and I—in no particular hurry. I'd already made an enemy of my bio teacher, who seemed somehow miffed with my advanced skill set. Or perhaps I was imagining things. Whatever. I'd learned a while back that it was easier to think of all new people as prospective enemies. This way, one didn't get hurt when they turned on you.

“Did you like high school, Dempsey?” I asked, halting us a few lockers down from the lab door. I could hear Mrs. Letourneau taking attendance inside. Mr. Dempsey regarded me from behind his Rivers Cuomo glasses, then scratched the back of his tight fro. (Jew-fro, he'd called it, during our first hallway run-in, as he helped me gather my books post-clean-out. I'd also never heard the term 'clean-out' before, but had found it instantly endearing that he'd introduced me to two new words in one sentence.)

“You know, I had a pretty good crew in the pits. It wasn't so bad.” The AV teach nodded towards my classroom door, and then he winked. “But you see where I am now.”

“That's grim.”

“Just keep your head down, Ash. College will be great for you.” Then he moseyed away, leaving me to my latecomer's fate.

After enduring Mrs. Letourneau's speech about punctuality and the assorted snickers of my tormentors in the first few rows, I took a seat at the back of the lab. I thought about Mr. Dempsey, who seemed so cool and together but spoke to me like I was an equal. In an inspirational flash, I saw him with my sister. If Carson would ever get over that rodeo clown Tex (and yes—my sister had dated an actual rodeo clown), it seemed to me that those two could make a good pair.

“What's so funny back there, Ms. Bennett?” When I looked up, ten pairs of mawkish eyes were fixed on me. I'd apparently retreated too far into my imagination and had started laughing out loud to myself. You know, like the cool kids do.

“Nothing, Mrs. Letourneau.”

“You won't be able to locate your pig's heart valves if you don't pay attention, Ashleigh.” My teacher looked at me in a way that seemed to demand a response, but I bit my tongue—even though in the diagram she'd drawn on the board, she'd mislabeled both the parietal pericardium, and the visceral.

I thought about the conversation in the hallway. My cool companion. Keep your head down, Ash, Mr. Dempsey repeated in my mind's eye.

Bored by the repetitive lesson, I allowed my thoughts to drift toward Anya. My mother had gotten a new job (no small thanks to Carson's legwork), managing the tiny office of a Montessori school. It was part-time, easy work, but that alone wasn't enough to soothe my fears. I was worried about what Mom would do when I left next year. For as much as I wanted to get away from all the heartache, I couldn't picture her functioning on her own.

“...the ventral side is towards you,” Mrs. Letourneau plowed on. Pencils scratched all around me. One brazen soul had taken his phone out, and placed it on the desk behind a scalpel. Giddy with inspiration, I dug into my shorts pocket and located my own phone, figuring I could at least play a game of Solitaire while I pretended to participate in an assignment I'd already aced twice.

To my surprise, my phone had seven texts—though I only had three numbers in my contacts. One was Mom, one was Carson, and one was Melanie—who I hadn't spoken to in weeks, anyway. I'd made a few allies in different cities, but I never kept those numbers in my phone. They only served to remind me of the trajectory of high school relationships. A buddy would call, we'd text for a while, and then eventually, inevitably...radio silence would descend. Even Melanie, who I'd been so close with at the beginning of the year, had drifted back into the ether of her pre-college coursework. It was just too hard to stay connected to folks.

All the new messages were from my mom, and they were smattered with emojis. My heart began to race. She only got super excited when she was in the middle of some kind of...episode. Unsure what could have been the trigger, I began to scroll:

Baby, have some amAZing news. Call me bk when ur outta skool

I don't think I can wate. It's too godo

*good!!!!!

OK—I'm in love!

With a PREACHER MAN!!!

He's asked me to MARRY him, Ash!

Lots to talk abt! PLZ CALL ME BACKKKKKK

I slammed the phone down on the desk, drawing Mrs. Letourneau's stink-eye again. But this time, I didn't pander to her with an apologetic smile. I let her see that I was mad.

Of all the things, Anya. This? This was too much.

At least, I figured, I'd be out of that house by August. Test scores and a diploma, that was all that stood between me and a college dorm. I could leave my crazy mother to sleep in the bed she'd made, soon enough.