by Zoey Shores
I square my shoulders and lift my head up with incredulity written on my face. “Questions? From whom?” I can’t deny the defensive edge in my voice.
Greg, my mind answers my own question for me.
Dr. Gasten shakes his head – like any journalist, he’s unlikely to reveal his sources. “No one’s accusing you of anything. But --”
“We’re just friends,” I cut him off. “What’s wrong with that?”
“That’s good,” Dr. Gasten replies, relief written on his face. “There’s certainly nothing wrong with being friendly with the people you’re covering. In fact, I encourage it. It’s often how you get the best scoops. But,” he pauses, measuring his words. “There still needs to be a line. Romantic involvement with the people you’re covering on an assignment, no, that can’t be allowed.”
I squirm in my chair. I don’t have anything to be ashamed of, or anything to hide. It’s true that Luke and I are just friends. But, I shouldn’t even have to defend myself.
“Nothing like that is going on,” I answer, truthfully.
“Good,” Dr. Gasten says. “I just needed to make sure. Let’s just make sure it stays that way, alright?”
I nod in agreement. My mind replays that kiss with Luke from four weeks ago. It’s a good thing I was in my right mind and stopped it at that. This is why. I can’t risk being taken off this assignment, and I know there are more than a couple people in the student paper who would love to take it from me. And they’ll keep looking for any excuse to get me kicked off of it.
I can’t give them one. There’s too much on the line.
The following Friday, the Wolves continue their win streak, securing a comfortable victory over Cornell. I’ve been working through interviewing every player on the team one by one, to pad out my articles with in-depth profiles of all the players, or at least all of the starting players.
All in all, everything’s going smoothly. My explanation to Dr. Gasten that Luke and I are just friends must have satisfied him, because he hasn’t brought it up again, nor has he made any intimations that he has any reason to doubt his trust in me or my professionalism.
Now, it’s one week after that: The Wolves’ bye-week. No game to cover, and no article for Monday to stress myself out over. Just like the team, Dr. Gasten is giving me the week off and featuring a different story on the front page.
Luke and his roommates invited me out to Club Frenetique, a hip dance club downtown, to celebrate the bye-week. Since Friday night is always the night before the Saturday game, the bye-week Friday is basically the only Friday night of the entire Fall semester that they players are able to cut loose and have a good time like regular college students.
Rory is less than enthused about coming out with us tonight. She’s still consumed with that play. It seems like it’s just drama after drama for her – fitting, in the drama department, I guess.
Her week is so packed with stress between managing all the moving parts for the Macbeth production coming up early next semester and her regular course load, and on the weekends, she likes to just veg out at home, and pass out early on the coach on Friday night with Netflix playing in the background.
Tonight, though, thanks to some assistance from April who is also joining us, peer pressure prevailed and we’re dragging her out.
“Even if you’re still swearing off guys this semester, you could at least benefit from getting wasted,” April says in a cheerful, pragmatic voice as we walk down the block to Frenetique.
“I guess,” Rory drones in a noncommittal voice.
“Are you getting another feature for your article out of this night out, Heidi? A sneak peek into the drunken debauchery of the Wolves on their bye-weekend?”
“Not tonight,” I answer April. “We’re just hanging out.”
April grins. “I swear, Heidi, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you and Luke have something going on.”
“Good thing you know better.”
She flashes me one more devilish, teasing grin before opening the door to Club Frenetique. “I’m not sure I do, really.”
The door to the club opens into a narrow stairway that leads up to the second floor, housing the club. Half-dressed women are already scaling up and down the staircase around us. The music pumps louder and the neon strobe lights get brighter as we climb each step. Once we make it to the top, the guys aren’t hard to spot.
For one, they tower at least a full head over everyone else in the room. Secondly, the booth they’ve staked out at the side of the dancefloor is swamped with … er, let’s say, adoring fans.
More accurately, and less euphemistically, I could say it’s swamped with quarter-naked (forget half-naked this time) jersey chasers, all of whom are dreaming of a night with one of the players who are shaking up the college football world.
I can see Chase, Archer and Lincoln happily obliging a couple themselves, making goo-goo eyes at them with their arms slung loosely and casually around their waists or necks, a drink in their other hands.
Luke, however, is sitting in the booth, a half-full glass of beer in front of him, with an unbothered look on his face. The sharp blades of his cheekbones are prominent, and the dim lighting casts a shadow on his brow. It lends him a mysterious, romantic look that causes me to involuntarily run my tongue across the back of my lips.
Even when sitting down, his huge upper body announces his height and size. He’s wearing a tight grey shirt, against which his bulging physique strains, revealing peaks and ridges of his tight, corded muscles that it shouldn’t even be possible for a shirt to reveal.
Fuck, he’s gorgeous. It’s not fair how gorgeous he is. It shouldn’t even be possible. What really shouldn’t even be possible is the fact that he doesn’t have at least half a dozen women hanging off of him right now. The fact that, with as much time as we’ve spent together the last month and half, I’ve never even seen him around other women like that still confronts me with its unbelievability.
Is he just good at hiding it? Do guys not like to flaunt their hookups in front of their girl friends – their girl just friends? Is he just so into football this season that he’s directing all his energy there?
The look on his face changes to one of excitement when he casts his glance my way and sees that we’ve arrived.
“Heidi! Over here!”
We skootch our way through the crowded dance floor – reminiscent of the New Orleans club, where I had an experience with Luke that still replays itself in my dreams – and make our way to their booth. When Archer notices Rory, it looks like a quick shock runs through his body. Immediately he starts giving the cold shoulder to the girl he was previously wooing.
“Hey, Rory,” he greets her, a sly smile spreading over his face.
“Hi, Archer,” Rory replies, almost deadpan.
Honestly, I feel like Archer and Rory would have great chemistry, but right now just isn’t the time for Rory.
We take our seats at the table and order a round of drinks. After two drinks, I’m feeling relaxed. Honestly, it’s the first time I’ve felt relaxed in a while. Certainly the first time I’ve felt relaxed on a Friday night in a while, when all semester long Friday nights have been full of me prepping to cover Saturday’s game.
It feels good to be out with friends. And it feels really, really good that Luke is one of those friends. When he left, he left a hole. It was always there, even when I had learned to live with it. But now, everything feels right again.
All of us are talking with each other, when the subject somehow turns to reminiscing about past relationships. Not exactly a topic I’m too keen to share my experience with. Paul is out of my life, and I want him out of my thoughts as well. This semester, thanks to how busy I’ve been with the paper, and thanks to gaining a new friend in Luke, keeping him out has been a lot easier than I expected.
“I’ve got a story for you,” Lincoln announces. “Back at Penn State, before Coach Riker brought me to Winthrop, I had a girlfriend all freshman year. Met her at
my first college party and fell head over heels for her.”
“Awww,” April coos.
“Don’t get too sappy just yet. Sometimes love at first sight needs to do a double take. As our relationship went on, she got more and more controlling. Possessive. Jealous. Honestly, getting picked up by Winthrop was a Godsend, because living on campus with her as an ex,” Lincoln shudders.
“That’s the story?” Archer asks, unimpressed.
“No, the story is what happened when I told her I was leaving Penn State, and that a long-distance relationship was absolutely not on the table. She freaked out, and the next day told me I had to stay, because she was pregnant.”
“Oh shit,” Chase reacts. “A fake pregnancy? Did you buy it?”
“She sent me a text of a positive pregnancy test. For about five minutes, I was freaking out. Then I noticed a watermark in the bottom right of the picture, with a web address. She just downloaded a picture of a pregnancy test off the internet and sent it to me.”
All of us laugh at the story. I goad Rory into telling the story of how she kicked Mark in the balls over summer break. That draws hoots of laughter from Archer especially. “He had it coming,” Archer adds.
The night draws on. Rory ends up going home early. April spots a guy she had a class with last semester who she had a crush on, and they end up going home together. Archer sort of deflates after Rory leaves, and heads home himself not too much later. Lincoln and Chase end up finding their way wrapped up in other girls, two of the many who approached them throughout the night.
Luke and I are left at the table by ourselves, talking about new times and old times. I’ve lost track of how much I’ve drank. More than I have in a long time, that’s for sure.
I can feel the effect of the alcohol beginning to loosen my lips. “So, you were pretty quiet during that conversation we were having.”
Luke’s eyebrows perk up. “Hm?”
“About exes. All those stories the other guys told. You don’t have one of your own.”
“I think you already know I do have one major, unbelievable ex-girlfriend story …"
I smile and roll my eyes. “That’s now what I mean. I mean … other than me.”
Luke settles back in his seat and heaves a sigh. “I haven’t dated anyone since you. I mean, really dated.”
“But you’ve …” I trail off. I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up. Luke’s past with women – and I know there were a lot of them – has been weighing on my mind. Basically, since we started talking again. “You’ve been with other girls,” I finish.
Luke leans forward, propping his square jaw against his hand, leaning his elbow on the table. My God, his forearm is almost as thick as a normal man’s biceps …
“Yeah, that’s true. But that’s in the past now.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“It’s not what I want anymore.” His eyes narrow. Beads of emerald light pierce through his eyelids, his stare cutting into my soul.
“What do you want?”
“Something more.”
In spite of myself, I place my hand open on the surface of the table. I inch it forward, over to Luke’s side.
“What about you?” Luke asks.
I frown. “I was dating a guy last year.”
The sides of Luke’s mouth pull down and a nostrils flare in a twitch. “What happened?” his voice sounds like he almost doesn’t want to hear more – but at the same time, that he feels he has to.
“We broke up over the summer.”
Luke nods. “Why?”
My face screws up. “He was fooling around with other girls.”
Luke’s brow descends and a dark aspect overcomes his face. The cut of his jaw grows sharper as he clenches his teeth.
“What a fucking idiot,” he says, a tone of disdain in his voice.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say, shaking my head. I’m better off now that it’s over, no matter how it had to end.
“I didn’t want to leave you, you know? Back when I got kicked out. And I never would have done something stupid like that to ruin us.”
Us.
I feel Luke’s hand descend over mine on the table. The warmth from his palm envelopes the back on my hand. I feel an electric tingle all up my arm, emanating from his contact.
This feeling … I’ve felt this feeling before. That night Luke cooked dinner. When we were sitting outside. The same thing that came over me then is coming over me now. Once it started, I was able to pull myself away last time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull myself away a second time.
And if I don’t, if I give in – I risk everything.
Summoning up all my resolve and self-control, I retract my hand from underneath Luke’s. I rub my hands together underneath the table. “It’s getting late. I should get home. Rory might worry if I stay out much later.”
Luke clears this through and cracks his neck. He blinks heavily a couple times, trying to shake off the spell that I know he was just under, too. “Right. I’m tired myself. We should be getting home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: LUKE
Two weeks ago, we ate our first loss.
It was an away game at Ohio. A highly anticipated face-off against one of the few other undefeated teams in the NCAA. It was a cold mid-November, late Saturday afternoon. The harsh midwestern winds were whipping us up and down the feel. My fingers were so numb I could hardly feel the ball in my hand.
It was a tough game. Low scoring, but brutal. They pulled away from us in the fourth quarter, got a touchdown ahead, and then their world-class defense was able to hold us off until time expired with them victorious.
Coach said that of all the losses he’s ever experienced as a Coach, this one was the one he could stomach most easily. We were against arguably the best team in the game, and we put up a hell of a fight. His pep talk didn’t make the loss sting any less, though. It stung more than the harsh, frosty wind that blew against my sweaty brow on the field.
The week after, we made up for it with a blow-out victory at home. At this point, we’re shoe-ins for the playoffs. Something no one would ever have suspected before the season started. Shit, something no one would have ever dreamed at the beginning of last year, when Coach Riker arrived and brought us all in with him.
But here we are. We made it happen.
Off the field, there’s an adversary kicking my ass whose tenacity I didn’t expect: English 203.
I have the most tough-ass professor that ever lived. Mrs. Fernands. An old, scholarly woman with standards so exacting you’d think she were the villain in a teen private school drama. I swear, she must invent new rules of grammar to find ways to keep marking down my papers.
I thought this class would be a walk in the park, especially compared to my science and engineering courses, but it’s more like a walk across broken glass.
And I can’t afford to fail this class. I can’t afford to fail any class. Since I was a transfer student, I have no wiggle room when it comes to graduation. I need to pass every single class I take between now and the end of senior year to have the credits I need to graduate.
Luckily, I know a girl whose writing abilities are literally known campus wide.
Heidi’s been tutoring me for the last couple weeks, and thanks to her, I’m within striking distance of a C-. Fuck, I’ll take it at this point. I’m almost at the point where I’d be happy with a D, just to get the credit and put Mrs. Fernands persnickety uber-perfectionism behind me.
After what happened at the bar the Friday of our bye-week – really, what almost happened, but almost was close enough – our friendship hasn’t really been affected, but we have made an effort, even if unspoken, to hang out together in groups, or in public places. And by public places, I don’t mean in the corners of dimly lit bars after a couple rounds of drinks.
“Alright, just change these three times you used the passive voice, and everything should be perfect,” s
he says, handing me back a copy of my final essay.
We’re in the library, and we’ve been reviewing and reviewing and reviewing my essay for hours now. When I showed it to her the first time, her eyebrows almost fell off. Listing all the grammatical and stylistic mistakes she mentioned me having made sounded like she was writing a term paper herself.
I lean back in my chair and let out a sigh of relief loud enough to elicit a harsh shushing from a passing librarian. “After seven fucking arounds of revision, thank God.”
“Think on the bright side. After this class, you’ll never find another English class hard again. They’ll all be a walk in the park compared to Mrs. Fernands.”
I balk at even the idea of taking another English class after this experience. “Forget another English class, I’m just about ready to be through with the English language. What do you say we only communicate in a different language from now on?”
“Le Francais? Ca va bien?” Heidi says with a grin.
“Uh … bueno?”
Heidi giggles, trying to keep her voice down so as not to draw to herself the ire of the same librarian. “Sorry, Luke, but I think you’re still stuck with English for now.”
Heidi digs into some of her books as I try to reconstruct those last couple sentences to use the active voice, which Mrs. Fernands can’t stop harping on about. When I’m done, I scoot my laptop over the table to Heidi for her to read it over one last time.
Once she gets to the end of the document, she nods in approval. “I don’t think Mrs. Fernands will be able to find anything objectionable in this essay.”
“They say no one has ever turned in an essay that she hasn’t been able to find at least one grammatical mistake in. I heard one story about how she used some obscure grammatical rule from Middle English to knock one student from a C+ to a D.”
“Don’t worry. This is airtight. There’s no way she’ll be able to justify less than a C for this paper.”
I lean over onto the surface of the table in exhaustion and relief. “Fuck, I can’t thank you enough Heidi. Without you I would have been totally, royally screwed. As unlikely as it is, if you ever take a math class, I’m at your disposal.”