by Claire Adams
The guys in the frat went back to cheering and jumping around, some of them taking a moment to send text messages to the brothers who were in classes. Someone proposed throwing a little “mini-party” to celebrate Devon’s return to the team and to the school, and everyone—Devon and me included—was on board. A couple of the guys went on a beer run, and someone ordered in about a dozen pizzas of different kinds, and as the frat house filled up with the rest of the brothers—those who had been away—along with the members of the team who weren’t in the frat, the atmosphere was a lot like a regular Phi Kappa party.
Devon and I were both only too happy to indulge, hanging out and eating pizza and drinking beer. Every time someone congratulated Devon, he directed their praise at me, telling whoever would listen that he would never have been able to pull it off without me. I didn’t know if that was strictly true; he was an incredibly smart guy. But I knew that we had both worked hard to get him ready for the test, so I was pleased to take the small amount of credit I was entitled to in helping him, and pleased beyond measure that the major source of stress in my life was over and done with. Devon had proved himself; he would be re-enrolled in his classes without losing any of his standings, and he could move on with his life.
We stayed up late, laughing and talking, and by the time we went up to Devon’s room at the end of the night I felt uncomfortably full from all the pizza and beer. My cheeks ached from smiling so much, and I was completely and utterly exhausted. It had been such a good night that in spite of how tired I was and in spite of how bloated I felt, I was more than happy to extend it in Devon’s arms, fooling around and making love until neither of us could possibly move anymore. “You are so amazing, Jenny,” Devon murmured in my ear as we cuddled together, too exhausted to get up and turn off the light but not yet able to fall asleep.
“You, too,” I told him, my cheek pressed against his chest, my arms and legs draped over him. I was so comfortable in Devon’s bed and in his arms; it was strange to think that I had ever doubted him, that I had ever even thought that he was anything other than perfect for me. Devon was exactly what I wanted in a boyfriend, and I was so glad that I had listened to my heart, that I had let what Kelly had called my naivety guide me to give Devon a chance. I hadn’t thought about Kelly in days; soon I would need to start working on moving out of the dorm room we shared. That was an issue for another day, I decided firmly, shifting closer to Devon in the bed. As long as I had him in my life, anything seemed to be possible. I couldn’t even imagine a life without him anymore, and we’d only been together a few weeks. It was so perfect I almost didn’t want to breathe. As I fell asleep in Devon’s arms, the only thing that I could hope for was for Devon to live up to the hype and win the next game—the championship.
Chapter Nine
With the test behind him, Devon’s focus turned once more to basketball. While he didn’t neglect his classes altogether—which made me glad—he definitely needed to work hard in order to be ready for the championship game. In spite of the fact that Devon was the best player on the team, and he had been doing what he could to keep himself in peak physical shape—apart from the binge on pizza to celebrate passing the ACT—he hadn’t been able to practice with the team, and the team’s play had shifted in his absence.
So whenever I wasn’t in class, it seemed, I was going to one of Devon’s practices, watching him get back into the rhythm and flow of playing with the other members of his team. Everyone was excited that Devon would be back on the team in time for the ultimate game of the season; the team was more than happy to have him back, and everyone who followed the school’s basketball program was relieved. Even if we had won the game that he’d had to sit out, it had been a close thing—and the championship would be an even bigger challenge than the previous game had been.
Devon and I still studied together every night in his bedroom, because he told me that he wasn’t about to throw away the good habits he had already acquired from me; but we weren’t grinding down to get him to pass one single test—we were busy catching him up on what he had missed. The class that we were in together was the easiest; I had been giving him the assignments the whole time that he was away. But the other classes he had to hurry to catch up, in order to be ready for the finals in a few weeks.
In addition to his practices with the team, and his study sessions to catch up with his classes, Devon and I spent hours—almost any time we were between classes—on the basketball court together. Devon ran drills and taught me everything he knew about playing. Even though I was a very big basketball fan, I had never tried to play the game myself. Devon used the excuse of teaching me how to throw a foolproof three-point shot to improve his own techniques, and we chased each other back and forth across the court, keeping the basketball away from each other. Devon was just as good as he had ever been, and I was so happy that he was teaching me; I couldn’t imagine learning how to play from anyone else.
The team joked that the next year, I’d be on the girl’s team, Devon was doing such a good job teaching me. “I’ll leave the sports stuff to him,” I told them, grinning at Devon. “I mean, if I’m not careful he’ll steal my superiority in academics; we should probably just stick with what we’re already good at.”
“You are in no danger of ever not being smarter than me,” Devon told me in front of his friends, kissing me quickly on the lips. “But if you do get into sports, I’m doomed.”
I was surprised and not surprised to realize that even though we spent most of our time together, Devon and I became closer and closer every day. I had been afraid—in spite of the fact that we’d done so well while we were cramming for Devon’s ACT retake—that once the drama was out of our lives, there would be very little keeping us together. There was still the drama of Devon needing to get ready for the game, of course, but other than that everything had relaxed so much I almost couldn’t believe it. There was nothing hanging over Devon’s head that he’d never dealt with before, and although my friends occasionally whined and bitched about how little time I spent with them, I had separated from Kelly for good—and I didn’t even miss her.
I started to make deeper friendships with Devon’s frat brothers, learning their stories, getting to know their girlfriends—at least the girlfriends of those brothers that had them. I had become completely and totally one of the accepted additions to the household at the Phi Kappa frat; and while I was not someone who liked to party all the time, the day-to-day life was not as wild as I would have thought weeks before. I even managed to make friends with some of the girlfriends of Devon’s teammates—something I would have given long odds against if I had thought about it.
Envy raged as it became more and more obvious that Devon and I was a settled, serious couple. I heard that Kelly was enraged at the fact that Devon hadn’t just dropped me after he’d passed the ACT; I hadn’t been there to see her meltdown, but it was apparently epic even by campus standards. It seemed like people’s opinion of Devon was slowly shifting. Girls who had considered him absolutely the scum of the Earth had now started to say that if only he wasn’t in a relationship already, he’d be a great catch. And of course with that, I had to deal with basketball bunnies throwing themselves at Devon more than ever. But I didn’t care; I knew that no matter what a girl did to try and draw his eye, Devon was interested in me and serious about his feelings for me. He wasn’t going to wander off and abandon me just because some cute girl flirted with him.
I put in my paperwork to change roommates, explaining to the Resident Advisor that things just weren’t working out between Kelly and me. I didn’t want to get into specifics, but she told me she had heard everything about what was going on between us; it was an open secret on campus that Devon had been the cause of my falling out with Kelly. When the semester ended, I would be able to move my things into a new dorm, with someone I barely knew. I didn’t mind it too much; I knew that I would barely ever be in my dorm anyway.
The more Devon and I spent time together,
the closer I felt to him, and the more secure I became in our relationship. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me,” Devon told me one night as we laid around in bed together, binge-watching the series Breaking Bad on his computer.
“I’m not a thing,” I countered playfully. Devon laughed, rolling his eyes.
“You know what I mean,” Devon said, pulling me close. “Meeting you—and convincing you to hook up with me—was the best thing that ever could have happened to me.”
“I’m pretty pleased with the results, myself.” I kissed him lightly, for the moment not even remotely interested in the drama of Walter White’s life. “Though I’m human enough to wish that Kelly hadn’t turned out to be so crazy about things.”
“She was crazy long before you came on the scene,” Devon told me soothingly. “She had already been trying to manipulate me and control my life from afar when we met.”
“Yeah,” I had to admit that everything pointed to that; it amazed me still that somehow, Kelly had been able to hide her craziness from me for so long. Until I had hooked up with Devon, she had never even really mentioned him to me. I hadn’t even been aware of the fact that she knew him, much less that they had been involved. “I don’t miss her, exactly…but I guess I miss having someone I’m that close to, you know?”
“If you ever feel like I’m taking you away from your friends, you’re allowed to tell me to back off, you know,” Devon said, looking at me with concern.
“You aren’t. I’m just not that close to anyone else. I guess after a while I’ll have a friend like that again.” Devon kissed me lightly on the lips, his hands beginning to wander over my body.
“Until then, I will be your best friend.” I chuckled as he started to slip his hands under my skirt, his warm skin gliding against my inner thighs temptingly.
“Oh no—you are not going to be my best friend. I am not fucking my best friend; it’s against my policies.” But in spite of my words, Devon really was—in a way, at least—like a best friend. I could and did talk to him about everything, and I didn’t want to spend time with anyone else as much as I wanted to spend time with him. I thought with more than a little trepidation that eventually, from spending so much time together, we would end up squabbling; we did have a few arguments, but Devon was so easygoing at the most basic level that he never really got heated.
The majority of our free time was devoted to getting Devon ready for the championship game. He made a vow—and his frat brothers held him to it—that he would party no more until the game was won. He and I went to bed early together, and he woke up even before I did a few times, leaving quietly to let me sleep in until my alarm while he went down to the gym, or to the courts, to get in another practice. From the day of the test, Devon had only a few weeks to get ready for the big game. He wanted to be not only at his peak—but to set a new standard for himself. I respected the fact that Devon wanted to be even better than before, that he wanted the championship game to be a total lockout; he wanted to score more points, he wanted to play harder.
I loved the focus he brought to everything he did anymore. He was just as determined to do well in his classes as he was to do well in the final game of the season—and all this he credited to me. “You make me a better guy,” Devon told me while we were taking a break on the courts, sitting and drinking water.
“You make you a better guy,” I told him firmly. “I’m just here to lend a helping hand. If you didn’t want to be a better guy in the first place, no woman would have been enough to persuade you.”
Just as Devon was improving his own life, I was improving mine. Studying with Devon was even better than studying on my own, and I realized that we were exactly suited to each other. Devon had a knack for science that helped me get better at Chemistry in spite of my ineffective professor, and even when we studied other subjects together, I was better—sharper—for having talked to him, for having discussed things and taught Devon about them. We were so perfect for each other that I could never imagine being with anyone else; my relationship with Devon eclipsed every other relationship I had ever been in before him. I knew without even having to discuss it with Devon and without even having to hear it from him that we were at the beginning of a very lasting, deep partnership. I had never been more comfortable with anyone else in my life as I was with Devon—and I didn’t think that I would ever be as comfortable with anyone as I had been with him, even though we’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks. We had been through the most stressful beginning of a relationship that I could imagine, and we had come through it stronger, both of us more and more certain that we had made the right decision every day.
Chapter Ten
It was finally the day of the Championship game; I shouldn’t have been able to get a ticket—they were sold out, and the tickets for the special reserved section were full of alumni and family members of the team—but somehow Devon had managed to convince the school that I absolutely deserved to be in those very prime seats, cheering him on. Even if I hadn’t been dating Devon, I would have absolutely been thrilled to be able to go to the game, since it promised to be an intense one. I had taken the opportunity to look at the other team’s stats while Devon was getting ready to leave for the arena, and they had a star player in the same position Devon played; in fact, of all the teams that our school had gone up against, the one we were playing for the championship title was the most like ours.
But Devon, I knew, was the better player, just as I knew that our team was overall stronger—although, I realized as I made my way into the arena, my heart already beating faster, that they could have been spending the weeks preparing just as aggressively as our team had. It was definitely going to be a high-scoring game, and I was anxious to watch it. Part of me was worried for Devon; I knew that if we didn’t score a decisive victory, he would blame himself for not having enough time to prepare, having to take time away from the team due to his previous bad behavior. But I also knew that he was going to play his heart out and that the team was very strong. If they somehow didn’t eke out a win, then it would not be anyone’s fault—it would just be that the other team had some advantage, some form of luck, that we didn’t have.
If I had thought that the arena was loud the other times that I’d been inside of it to watch one of the main season’s games, as I came out of the tunnel and into the stands, it was absolutely deafening. The other school’s team had brought busloads of their students to the game, and across the court from them I could see that there were just as many alumni. We were hosting the championship—giving us the home-court advantage—so I thought that the other school must have put a lot of money into getting everyone here from across the state. My body tingled all over, my heart pounded in my chest, as I made my way to my seat, looking out over the enormous crowd of people, still growing larger and larger by the moment. I wanted to jump up and down, I wanted to scream and cheer with the rest of the people in the crowd, but I knew that it would be a long game—and an intense one. The two teams were not even on the court yet; over the screams and shouts, I could barely make out the sound of the two marching bands playing their competing tunes.
I sat down in my seat, smiling to myself as the excitement of the crowd started to stir something up inside of me. Around me, alumni and family members of the various team members started to take their own seats; I recognized some of the people that Devon had introduced me to, and they recognized me as well. “You’re Devon’s girlfriend, right? His tutor?” One of the men grinned as he spoke to me. I nodded, laughing and giddy. “You must be some tutor! I heard he got a near-perfect score.”
“Same score that I got when I took the test,” I shouted back, in order to be heard over the roar of the crowd.
“He got quite a catch with you, then!” The guy said, grinning at me again. I blushed, but I couldn’t help but feel proud. Before I had left for the game, I had carefully dressed myself in school colors; although I didn’t want to look gaudy or cheesy, I knew that at s
uch a big game, the section I was in was likely to make it on the TV, and I wanted to not only look my best but also look supportive. I had drawn Devon’s number onto one of my cheeks with face paint, but I didn’t go overboard; some of the fans in the stands above me had painted their entire faces, or even their bodies, with school colors and with the name of the school, or particular players’ numbers. The girls in the stands were a riot of color, holding up signs, already jumping and screaming.
Finally, the two teams took to the court at the same time to warm up. As Devon came out onto the floor, I started cheering, unable to help myself. On his way to the side of the court where he would warm up with his teammates, he glanced into the crowd and found me in my spot. The grin he gave me—full of his usual charm and enthusiasm, the grin that I knew was for me and me alone—was enough to send a little jolt through me, to make me cheer even louder.
I watched the two teams, trying to divide my attention without neglecting Devon, who glanced at me occasionally as he warmed up. The team we were playing against was strong; I could see from the tightness of their drills that they had been putting the time between their last game and the championship to good use. But their star isn’t as good as Devon, I reminded myself proudly. I fidgeted and shifted, moving to my feet and watching as the two teams got ready for the game of their lives. I could see cameras flashing, and just in front of me, there were sports news crews and journalists capturing the event. It was going to be a hell of a game, and everyone knew it.
It seemed like hours passed as the two teams warmed up, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one who was relieved when they both headed back to their benches, the coaches sending out only those players who were going to be the starters. As Devon made his way to center court, he looked up at me in the stands, catching my eye and giving me a quick wink, as if to tell me—as he had at the first game I had gone to as his girlfriend—that it was all for me. The crowd went dead silent as the ref came to the center, and the two teams arranged themselves for the tip-off. I held my breath unconsciously; my hands gripped into tight fists in the few seconds between the ref’s arrival and when the ball went up into the air.