Something about him drew me in and as we grew up, when he needed somewhere safe he always came to me. Being that for him made me feel strong, like I may not be able to save the world, but I could at least save him.
“He’s a teenage boy. He started thinking with his dick and his dick doesn’t want you,” Staley tells me with a shrug. Ouch. “Two words. Friend. Zone.”
“That’s one word,” I snap at her.
“Focus!” Lou snaps her fingers to get our attention back on her. “Back to Faith. They’re not dating in technical terms I guess. She basically sucks him off in his car when he calls her.” Mary Lou shrugs.
“Healthy,” I deadpan.
“She’s getting her protein at least,” Staley quips and we all bust out laughing breaking the tension that crept in when we were talking about Jessup.
“Come on, we’re gonna be late,” I say as I try to quell my laughter. “This is going to be a fucking nightmare. I swear to God I will never date a football player.”
“Famous last words, bitch,” Mary Lou winks at me. Ever since second grade, Mary Lou has been convinced that Jessup and I would get married one day. We’ve never even dated, and that’s because once he became the hotness he is today, I became invisible while any skirt who showed interest in him took priority.
“Whatever. We’re not all as lucky as you are with Kai.”
“Damn straight! The kicker is the most reliable and sexiest guy on the team,” Mary Lou brags.
“And never gets hit… or hit on,” Staley jokes.
“Does he have to pad his football pants so they don’t fall off his boney ass or does the coach have them specially made?” I say between spurts of laughter.
“You guys are assholes and won’t be laughing when he is fucking running Silicon Valley.”
“Nerd Alert! Nerd Alert!”
“Wee-Oh! Wee-Oh” Staley mocks an alarm bell.
“Fuck off,” Mary Lou snaps as she grabs her stuff and stomps out of the locker room.
“Too far, Stay,” I giggle. Mary Lou loves Kai and he is a really good boyfriend, but we have the best time teasing her about his lack of manhood. His “no-shave November” adds about six whiskers to his baby face. The dude can’t grow facial to save his life.
“Oops,” she laughs. “Let’s go get her.”
We finish unpacking our bags and leave the purple and white walls of our locker room, busting through the double doors of the gym. As we’re running down the sidewalk toward the main high school building we run past Clayton, Jessup and his brother, Rollie.
“Damn he’s hot,” Staley huffs as we keep running toward the school.
“Jessup or Rollie? Rollie graduated. Why’s he here?” I ask as we pick up our pace while trying not to spill our coffees.
“Well, both are insanely hot. Must be driving baby brother to school on his first day.”
“Aww,” I make a sweet face.
We run through the double doors to the high school and weave in and out of student body traffic as we half-jog to catch up to a pissed off Mary Lou. The students gathering in the hallways all stare as we jog past. Most move out of the way if they see us coming in time.
“Lou, wait up!” I call and she finally stops.
“We’re sorry,” Staley offers. “Kai is fucking awesome and a really good boyfriend.”
“Yeah, he’s a really solid guy and we like him. You know that. We were just busting your non-existent balls.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. He is a fucking nerd, but he’s my nerd,” Mary Lou smiles at us and I hand her the iced latte that she left in the locker room.
“We know. We’re really sorry.”
“Thanks,” she says and takes a sip of her drink.
All is forgiven and right again in our little CHS bubble.
Kai isn’t traditionally handsome, very short and skinny. He is shorter than Staley, about my height actually. But he treats Mary Lou like a princess and we should all be so lucky to have a guy who isn’t afraid to show us how he really feels about us, consequences be damned.
“I gotta stop at my locker quick and grab my bio book,” I tell Mary Lou and Staley. “I’ll catch you guys later.”
“Cool. I’ll see you English. I’ve gotta head to calc,” Staley replies.
“Love you, bitches. I’ll see you at lunch.”
Chapter 4: Rhodes
“Jess! Rols!” I hear our names being shouted as I climb out of our old Chevy truck. It’s a piece of shit really. It was our oldest brother’s truck and it was passed down and down and down… this damn truck is probably twenty years old, but it runs.
You’d think with a father who spends tens of thousands on suits and sells cars for a living, we’d have something better. But nope. Rowen is a selfish prick, giving us just enough to get by. It’s how he keeps us trapped in his world.
“What’s up, Clay?” I reply as our QB1 jogs across the parking lot to greet us.
“Sup, Clay,” Rollie gives him the nod as I grab my backpack from the truck bed.
“Bro, I didn’t expect to see you here!” Clayton exclaims and gives Rollie a bear hug.
Rollie is my Irish twin. He is only eight months older than I am, but a grade above me. Because of close proximity in age Rollie, Clayton and I have been friends since little league and pee-wee football. We’ve been through the grind together our whole lives, but this season Rollie won’t be by my side.
He graduated from Cathedral last year and is a freshman at Georgia where he plays wide receiver for the Bulldogs. He was home visiting for the weekend because his coach gave the team Monday off, and since he was home, without any benefit to himself, offered to drive me to school.
Yeah, right. Rollie was a god at this school last year and he is only here to watch the girls squirm and the boys bow down.
“You ready for coach to kick our asses today? I was just in the locker room and he was screaming at someone on the phone,” Clay asks me.
“That’s nothing new for Coach Greene. I’m surprised he hasn’t had a heart attack yet. I thought he was going to drop dead the year Rence’s team shit the bed,” Rollie shrugs.
Our older brothers all played for the man, the myth, the legend that is Coach Harold Greene. He is a staple at Cathedral. When our second oldest brother, Clarence, was here they were touted at the best team in the state. Rence was an all-state quarterback and was leading them to a perfect a season until they played Afton Academy, one of Cathedral’s biggest rivals and affectionately known to CHS athletes as Asshole Academy, in the state quarterfinal. A defensive end from AA hit Rence in the second quarter so hard he was knocked unconscious and taken out of the game permanently. With that hit, Rence lost his chance for a state title. He is the only Rhodes to never win one.
“Rence didn’t shit the bed. You’ve got to stop saying that. He was knocked out. He couldn’t play and they lost,” I snap at Rollie.
“What’s up, baby,” he nods toward an attractive girl walking by. Rollie is devilishly handsome. Like me, he has caramel colored skin and black hair, but his eyes are the color of honey where mine are dark brown.
Rollie turns his attention back to me from the blushing brunette who is walking the other way down the sidewalk. “He wasn’t unconscious very long. He should have come back in the game. He lost everything because he was a pussy.”
“Now you sound like dad.” I glare at Rollie. Our dad, Rowen, is hard enough on us. We don’t need to be dicks to each other.
“Okay, you too. That’s enough,” Clay interjects. He’s been breaking up spats between Rollie and me since we were young. “I was looking forward to a year without you two arguing every five minutes. And for real, I’m fucking scared for today. Coach is livid.”
This is the year Cathedral could win back to back state titles and Coach Greene knows it. It would be the first time in his lengthy career so the pressure is on. Clayton is one of the best quarterbacks in the state, I’m the state’s best running back and our defense returned all of its start
ers from last season. We didn’t graduate a ton of talent apart from Rollie.
The Rhodes family is football royalty in this state. Our dad won a state championship for Atlanta North Metro back in the 70’s and was highly recruited out of high school. Our other brothers, Franklin and Warrick, each won a title on their respective teams, and we won one last year. I could be the first in the Rhodes family to win two though.
I’m being heavily recruited, more so than Rollie or any of my brothers. Since our dad played for University of Georgia, homegrown boy and local legend, it’s expected of us to follow in his footsteps and become Georgia Bulldogs once we graduate.
“Best time of his fucking life,” he always reminds us. My three oldest brothers, Frankie, Rence and Ricky went to Georgia but had less than stellar careers. Rollie, the bastard, committed to Georgia last year without a second thought.
Guess who’s having second thoughts? Me. I’m already our father’s least favorite of the Rhodes boys and this won’t help my cause. As much as my dad adores Rollie he despises me equally and I’ve never understood why.
I’m one of the only seniors nationwide with offers on the table who hasn’t committed and the pressure is on. My name is constantly brought up on websites and by media outlets every time they talk about college football.
Official campus visits were completed last year and into the summer. I have full scholarship offers from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Penn State, Purdue, Texas, Oklahoma, UCLA, USC, and Cambria. Every “expert” predicts I’ll sign with Georgia like the rest of my family, but they have no clue.
I really want to go to Cambria. Coach Hayes is a guy I think I could play for and he works his ass off recruiting. He is building something special and I want to be part of it. I haven’t committed out of fear. Fear of telling my father I’m not going to Georgia.
He can’t beat the shit out of me anymore because I’m bigger than he is, but it won’t stop him from disowning me. He’s always controlled our household through fear and finances. He controls the money and therefore he controls us. I just need to finish my senior year and then I can commit and get the fuck out of here. I won’t need his money anymore.
“Does USC know they’re gaining another slit on campus?” Rollie says, snapping me back to present, as he looks down to where Clay’s dick should be.
“Hey, those SoCal hotties were all over my Georgia dick. They just loved my sweet southern accent. No complaints there.”
“You don’t have a sweet southern accent. You sound like you have a dick shoved in your mouth,” Rollie says and laughs at himself.
As Clay tries to defend himself, the Sutton sisters run past us. A few minutes before Mary Lou Albright stormed past us. I’m guessing they’re chasing her.
“They must have pissed Mary Lou off again.” Rollie laughs again and shakes his head. Being as we’re so close in age, Rollie has hung out with the Sutton twins, Mary Lou, Clay and me pretty much his whole life.
“It’s the first day of school, so the fact that they pissed her off before it even started is impressive,” Clay replies.
Mary Lou is what we gentlemen like to call sensitive. She is hot, but emotionally unstable. On the hot/crazy scale, she’s a ten in both directions. Luckily for us Kai Wainsworth bit the bullet and has been dating her for a solid year now.
He’s the skinny little kicker on our team and in exchange for not being hazed his entire high school career agreed to date Mary Lou so she would lay off the rest of us. She’s southern royalty, but a pain in the ass.
It was quite the task to convince Mary Lou that Kai was deserving of her attention. She is shallow as fuck, so once we convinced her that Kai is the next Bill Gates, *cough* he gets D’s and won’t get into junior college let alone an Ivy League school *cough*, it was “true love.”
“Fuck me, if those Sutton twins aren’t something though.” Rollie whistles through his teeth and we all turn to watch them run away.
“Watch your fucking mouth, Rols,” I snap.
“Whatever happened to you and Stanz? You two were inseparable back in the day.”
I nod. From the first day of school when she forced me play house with her, we were together almost every day. I’d walk from my parents’ house to hers and we’d spend every day together in the summers and after school when we didn’t have practice. I tolerated Mary Lou and Staley just to be with her.
My favorite days were when she’d play football with me at the park, letting me work on my jukes while she pretended to be a defensive lineman. It was comical, but she wanted to help me get better and was always my biggest cheerleader at games.
And, when my dad drank too much, I’d spend the nights with her too. She’d comfort me until I calmed down. Lying in her bed, she’d give me Pucker the Pig and would rub my back and my shoulders until the tears stopped. Eventually, I stopped shedding tears over my father’s abuse, but I would still sneak into Stanzy’s room to be with her. It was my favorite place to be.
But we never crossed the line, the snuggling remained platonic, and she never indicated she ever wanted anything more.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
But I know, somewhere along the way I fell in love with my best friend. She’s intelligent, but has a smart mouth, big heart, and amazing sense of humor. Plus, she’s a sports fanatic. I spent many Sundays at her house watching the Falcons games with her and her dad. They always welcomed me in.
But then the summer between sophomore and junior year Stanzy blossomed into an absolute smokeshow. The summer started just like any other. We hung out at Mary Lou’s pool, partied a little bit, and just chilled before football practices began. And just like every other summer, the Sutton family took their usual two week trip to their vacation house in the Outer Banks. Stanzy left as my best friend and returned as a fucking wet dream.
The night I realized she wasn’t the girl I cuddled with anymore was the same night I hit Rowen back for the first time. Rowen was drunk off his ass and Stanzy had just returned from vacation.
He got pissed that I didn’t take the garbage out before the truck came that day. Slight overreaction to full garbage cans sitting in the back of our house for another week, but that’s Rowen. You never know what will set him off. He stormed into the house where I was sitting on the couch watching TV after practice. He yanked me off the couch by t-shirt, ripping it in the process.
When he had me face to face he pulled back and clocked me, hard, across the face with a closed fist. At that point I saw red. I shoved him off of me and before I knew what happened I punched him in the face, breaking his nose.
I ran from the house without looking back and straight to Stanzy’s because that’s where I went when I needed to feel safe. By the time I ran there it was almost dark, so I climbed onto the roof and knocked on her window. The same thing I’d done every time Rowen lost his mind.
But this time when she opened the window and I crawled inside, I saw her. Hazel eyes with flecks of green and gold swirling together and a dark brown ring around the iris. They, like her, are multi-dimensional. Her face was angelic with blonde hair lying softly around her shoulders. Standing there in front of me in her pajamas, a white tank top and bright pink sleep shorts… I froze. The tank top was so tight I could see her unexpectedly supple tits with perfectly round nipples poking through. The shorts? Fuck. They were practically spandex and so, so short. Tanned and toned legs stretching long and when she turned around her ass just about killed me. It’s was a perfect apple bottom ass and for the first time my dick reacted to my best friend.
I don’t know if I just didn’t notice it before, if puberty can just hit that quickly, or if our two weeks apart just made me see her differently, but I ran from her house that night in fear that I couldn’t control my dick when she was near me. I avoided her for an entire year because the sight, sound or smell of her set him off and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
With senior year starting, every straight male at this school wo
uld give their left nut, and probably their right, to get tangled up with either of them.
I’ve always loved Stanzy, but falling in love with Stanzy. That was a whole new level of crazy I wasn’t prepared for. An attraction that I couldn’t control and it was agonizing as I watched other guys hit on her constantly.
She isn’t one of those girls who jumps into bed with random guys. Shit, she barely dated, but it was still fucking horrendous to watch, to feel. I felt like an asshole for ignoring her, and I wanted to burn shit to the ground whenever she went on a date, but it was self-preservation at that point. I couldn’t physically be around her.
“They are fine as hell,” Clay says with an appreciative nod as he watches their toned asses bounce away. “Volleyball does something to an ass. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Which one would you pick?” Clay asks and rubs the scruff on his jaw. “I’m all in on Stanzy. Those tits. Damn.”
I smack him upside the head although he has a point. “Bro, what the fuck? Since when do you talk like that?”
“Since college, asshole,” he replies and rubs the spot I hit him.
“You’re not in college.” I retort. “Have some fucking respect.”
“I’d do Staley,” Rollie unexpectedly chimes in. “Those legs could probably wrap around me twice.”
“You two need some manners.”
“Whatever, Baby Bro,” Rollie chuckles. “I know you’ve had a thing for Stanzy since forever. Time to man up and invite her to sit on your face.”
“I just can’t with you two,” I grumble. “I’m going to class.” The thought of Stanzy naked, let alone sitting on my face, is making my dick twitch and grow hard in my shorts. Fucking hell. I try to casually readjust while I’m walking to class, but it’s not working, so I take my backpack off my back and carry in front of me.
“Does this mean you’re not going to Mary Lou’s party?” Clay calls after me. Mary Lou always hosts a back to school pool party, complete with drinks and a DJ, and invites our entire class. Last year, I had to leave when Stanzy showed up in a teeny tiny white bikini. Her abs, perfect tits, a sliver ass cheek on display. My dick couldn’t take it, so I left early and went home to jack off.
Completion (Cambria University Series Book 3) Page 4