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by Anne Leigh

  Every night for the past two weeks I listened to them, letting my heart soak in his presence, even for just a few minutes.

  Because while I wasn’t a martyr, I was a masochist.

  I let the pain tear through my being, knowing it was the only way I could feel alive.

  I could still see his facial features twist in anger when I’d told him I didn’t love him.

  He’d caught me off guard.

  I knew his schedule; I’d gone to my dorm when I thought he was at practice. Scott had an away game so I chose to hide in the safety of my room so I could cry in private.

  Bishop was waiting for me on the steps of Franklin Hall and I knew I couldn’t avoid him anymore.

  He looked at me with those beautiful brown eyes, his jaw clenched with undeniable tension and it took all of my control to not launch at him and kiss the darkness and sadness in his eyes away.

  He’d looked like he’d come straight from practice since he was still wearing his jersey and his hair was wet from his shower.

  God, he looked so handsome.

  The words he’d launched at me tore at my skin, but the damage was deeper than any visible cut.

  “You love him, Kara?” He spat in the air as he said them.

  I nodded because I couldn’t say the words, and I looked away before he recognized the lie I was telling him.

  “Funny.” He chuckled without humor. “It’s ridiculous how you can go back to Texas and spend three days there, and find out that you still love your ex-boyfriend.”

  I maintained my silence and kept my hands clenched to the sides of the sleeveless dress shirt I’d grabbed first thing this morning.

  Even dressing up was a chore.

  Getting up was the hardest thing to do when your heart wasn’t in it.

  “Tell me, Kara.” His words were heavier than lead and I saw the rage masked in his facial features. I knew that once I broke his heart, there would be no getting it back. Bishop was a man whose trust didn’t come easily. And neither did he love carelessly. “Look me in the eye when you tell me that you don’t love me anymore. I need to hear you say it so that I can move on with my life while you live the happily-fucking-ever-after with Scott.”

  My heart ached for him.

  Even my dreams reached for his touch.

  But I had no choice.

  I wanted to be with Bishop so much.

  In an alternate reality, I’d be with him.

  But I wasn’t living that reality and when I’d made the deal with the President of Texas U, also known as Scott’s dad, I didn’t know how it was going to affect me.

  Until now.

  I took a shallow breath, it was all I could manage these days, and faced him, my best friend Hanna’s future serving as my lifeline, “I’m sorry, Bishop…I love Scott.”

  He closed his eyes and then he’d said the words that made me lose air in my lungs, “I see. Have a good life.”

  So here we were, in Quantum Class, my body hyperaware of his presence, my mind taken up by his voice, and my heart occupied by his absence.

  You’d think that after I had broken up with him, Bishop would move seats and sit far away from me. Nope, he sat in the same chair he’d always sat in. Two seats behind me.

  My brother knew something was wrong when he’d seen my puffy eyes during breakfast the day after I broke up with Bishop on the phone.

  I’d simply said that I was going to be with Scott again and begged him not to ask questions.

  Rikko didn’t appear convinced, but he nodded and said that my love life was worse than the Japanese soap operas than one of his frat brothers watched.

  He’d also offered his shoulders for support, but I’d been leaning heavily on Anissa’s shoulders knowing that she was there for me just simply because she cared.

  I’d cried to Hanna and she’d threatened to tell Bishop everything, but I pulled my best friend card and made her promise not to. She was also caught in the crosshairs because she was the one I was protecting and she couldn’t do anything about my deal with Scott’s dad.

  “Is there anything you’d like to add to the discussion, Miss Chamberlane?” Professor Milliken queried. He was one of the very few professors who liked to call on the students who didn’t raise their hands.

  I’d raised my hands so many times in his class that even he must have sensed that something was wrong with me since I hadn’t had the initiative to put my right hand up in the air for two class sessions.

  “No. Not really,” I answered flatly.

  “Not even a little bit?” Professor Milliken hedged. “So, Mister Jackson’s answer is correct then?”

  He was pointing to the white board filled with problems and solutions.

  Somewhere in my brain, the V’s and the x’s and all the p’s signified the potential of mass (m) and the potential energy levels and their eigen functions, but my mind was too clouded with grieving the man breathing a short distance behind me that I couldn’t actively engage in the discussion.

  For the first time in my life, I didn’t have the urge to solve theoretical functions when much of my reality was skewed and screwed up.

  “Yes, Mister Cordello?” Professor Milliken’s said, and in an instant my synapses were on high alert.

  “Can I solve the problem?” Bishop’s solid voice, so calm and so sexy at the same time, filled the quiet room.

  “Are you saying the answer on the board is wrong?” The professor’s brows rose in inquiry. It wasn’t easy to get A’s in Professor Milliken’s class for this reason. Even when you thought you had the right answer, he made you question it.

  Only three more classes and we’d be in finals week.

  I felt like crying in the middle of class, the class where I’d met the man I loved so dearly for the first time, the man who showed me how love and passion weren’t interchangeable.

  The man who attested how dreams can be made into reality.

  The man who was currently standing in front of the class, showing all of us, with flawless effort, that the solution to the complicated problem on the board was by breaking down the problem into four parts where the potential is a semi-harmonic oscillator, therefore for x > 0, the potential is similar to the simple harmonic oscillator.

  When he was done writing the solution, Bishop had come up with the Hermite polys and the energy levels were (n + 1/2)¯hω,n = 1,3,5,...

  He’d always been this brilliant.

  And when he gave a small grin to Professor Milliken who gave him a short nod, I saw the way his simple green shirt bunched up on his muscled shoulders.

  He’d always been this hot.

  He avoided my gaze, but as he walked back to his seat, I smelled the familiar masculine scent that he emanated and I couldn’t help but lower my eyes to the floor.

  Oh God, how was I going to survive being without him?

  Bishop

  They say in order to get over someone, you have to get under someone.

  In my case, it’s true.

  Only I didn’t think that this was what people were referring to when they said that.

  Indiana State’s Number Thirteen was a corn-fed, beef-bred giant that being under his weight was enough to make my whole body ache for about a week.

  I didn’t see him coming. It was a skill that would be impressive.

  If it wasn’t against my team, and I wasn’t the one face planted on the grass right now.

  “You okay, buddy?” Ian’s voice was filled with concern as he helped me up.

  It was never fun to be tackled and ran over with a freight train, but it was the name of the game.

  I’d probably be put on concussion protocol after this game, but we still had five minutes to play and as I regained my balance, I knew that I had it in me.

  But I didn’t have enough fuel to get through another two minutes before feeling like my ribs would give out if I took another breath.

  Mackoy, the medical personnel during the game, talked to me on the sideline as a medical timeo
ut was called. “Does it hurt when you take a breath?”

  I nodded. I wanted to say no, but lying didn’t do anyone good.

  Coach needed us to be in tiptop shape and if I couldn’t do my best, I knew I needed to sit on the sidelines.

  Mackoy listened to my lungs and talked to Coach Masterson as I tried to sit up, but my chest hurt.

  Coach Masterson squatted in front of me and said, “Glee will drive you to the ER and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  I agreed because there was nothing else I could do.

  I’d had injuries before. From broken bones and fractures to rib injuries.

  Hopefully, this was only a rib stress fracture and nothing worse.

  We had three minutes left in the game and we were up by four.

  Coach talked to my teammates and I raised a hand at them while Glee, one of the assistant coaches, walked towards me so we could go to the ER.

  Glee, short for Glemers, was a hard ass in practice but he was also like a father figure to all of us.

  He talked about his wife and kids on our way to the ER, an obvious tactic to take my mind off the game that I wasn’t a part of anymore.

  By the time we stepped foot in the closest emergency room, our team had won, as I received a notification on my phone.

  There was still pain from the right side of my ribs, but I felt more relief knowing that our scores had held up against ISU.

  “How you doing?” It was a text from Rikko.

  I answered with a, “Stress fracture, it will be okay. Need a week’s rest.”

  He must have seen the game on the web.

  The advantages of rugby becoming a popular sport was that most of our games were either streamed live or televised by major networks now.

  Which meant that before I could text Rikko that I couldn’t really do squat around the house for a week, he already knew it.

  As senior officers, we could get away with not doing chores, but I liked to set a good example for my housemates, so I still took out the garbage and cleaned the fridge once in a while.

  Garbage duty was out for a week since I had to rest, meaning no heavy lifting. And the garbage that we accumulated in a day was equivalent to a week in a normal two-person household.

  “Okay, I’ll be your bitch if you need one.” He was offering, but I knew that either Ian or Jose would have me covered.

  He was really a good person.

  He hadn’t said much about his sister breaking up with me. He just said that he was staying out of it.

  In a way, I couldn’t ask for more. He’d been there for me when Kara and I were together and as much as I wanted his support, I knew that he was also there for Scott.

  It grated my nerves to no end that she was back with him.

  It took all of my willpower to not straight out punch him for doing whatever he did to get her back.

  I wanted to shake Kara and put a hole through Scott’s door, but in the end, anger would get me nowhere.

  I loved her, and even when she looked me in the eye to tell me that she loved him and wanted to be with him instead of me, my love for her didn’t just fade away.

  Every time she was around, I willed myself to walk away.

  But I couldn’t.

  Instead I stood there, or sat there, like a motherfucking bitch.

  I wanted to reach out to her and hold her and tell her to choose me.

  I wanted her to explain why she was going back to him.

  I wanted her to tell me that this wasn’t real.

  That what we had was real.

  But I couldn’t.

  And I didn’t.

  Because I knew that even when she was denying me, I felt the looks that she gave me in class.

  When I sat behind her, I felt her pull and I also felt the waves of sadness that claimed her.

  And the two times Scott had walked her to class, I’d happened to watch the way she stood next to him, as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him. As if she’d rather be anywhere else than in his arms.

  And those were the silver linings that I grabbed onto.

  I’d never forget the day she told me that she didn’t love me.

  That day would be forever stamped in my skull.

  I was livid and I’d stomped away from her and crushed a punching bag in the gym thirty minutes after that.

  But when the fog of rage cleared in my head and gave way to objective thinking, I thought about the way she kept her hands clutched onto her dress.

  I remember the way her lips trembled when she’d said the words that buried us.

  And I knew.

  Then.

  That she was hiding something from me.

  And it was only a matter of time until I found out.

  And because of that, I didn’t give up on her and I.

  Sure, I could have any other girl underneath me and maybe that would help me get over her.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t.

  I’d seen the way guys used women, a lot of them, and sleep with them to forget about the woman they loved.

  I found it to be worthless, time-consuming, and so much work.

  Every person was different.

  Every woman was unique.

  So how can you expect to find comfort and the excuse of sex to look for something that you already knew that only one woman can provide?

  I told Kara I’d fight for her.

  And I would.

  But she didn’t have to know how.

  I’d never been the one to accept defeat and I wasn’t going to start learning now.

  My life on the outside looked easy.

  People might think I was privileged to be the son of NHL’s most profitable player and NYC’s top-billed socialite.

  But what the public didn’t know was that I was good at defeating the adversities that I’d faced.

  When my father’s grueling hockey training had made my young knees bruised and battered, I made myself stand up again and again to prove that no matter how much he put me down, I wouldn’t bow down to him.

  When my parents had isolated my sister from the world because they were embarrassed of how different she was, instead of making me cower in their shadows, I prayed that I would be stronger everyday so that one day, I could get her into the school that she deserved so her talents could be showcased instead of hidden.

  I’d learned from a young age, “Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.”

  I was versed in Confucius and I filled myself with the theories of Einstein and Hawking.

  But even I couldn’t deny the plausible wise words of the martial artist who took the world by storm and to this date, had been one of the resounding voices in my head.

  The one whose words taught me to never accept defeat.

  And that only I could accept defeat.

  Bruce Lee.

  And as my polyglot sister would say, Xie Xie.

  Kara

  An infinite amount of mango sherbet wasn’t going to cure my broken heart.

  Neither did a copious supply of Sephora deliveries.

  I tried.

  Oh I tried.

  But the dent that Bishop’s absence placed in my heart wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  I knew that I had to try for the sake of trying.

  Scott had been more than accommodating.

  He was trying so hard to make me fall back in love with him, but I knew that it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

  He never asked why I wanted to get back with him the morning after my parents’ big party.

  He just hugged me, breathed out in relief and never questioned it.

  It was like he didn’t want to question it.

  It had been a month of me mourning in silence, but in public, I was Scott’s doting girlfriend. Social media had noticed that I was in a relationship with two of college sports’ hottest athletes so I’d been hash tagged as the Taylor Swift of NCAA. My Instagram had been floo
ded with comments on how a lot of girls wanted to be me, just because they wanted Scott or Bishop and many, both.

  I deleted the hundreds of notifications and disabled the alerts.

  If they only knew…I only wanted to be with one man.

  I attended Scott’s home games and cheered for him, but whenever I could, I checked how Bishop was playing. When he got hit hard at their game against Indiana State, I was seconds away from texting him before my brother messaged me that Bishop was okay.

  Rikko might not vocalize his thoughts on my love life, but my brother had somehow felt my pain so every now and then, he’d tell me how Bishop was doing. I tried not to look over-interested but it was futile. From what Rikko’s been telling me, it sounded like he was moving on with his life. Classes, practice, rugby games, and out with his friends was what he’d been up to.

  And tonight, he was also in attendance at the American Express Cup, where the best student athletes were handed out awards for their superior performance in college sports.

  I’d never been to this event even if my brother had been nominated twice and won once.

  I’d wanted to attend for Rikko, but midterms had derailed my plans.

  “Do you want anything to drink?” Scott asked. He looked great in his black suit with a light green pinstriped tie. But then again Scott always looked good; it was why I had the biggest crush on him in high school.

  “I’m good right now,” I replied, trying to sound upbeat. I’d called Hanna earlier and asked her what to do and she’d said the same thing again – break up with Scott and tell Bishop the truth. My best friend wanted me to be happy, but I didn’t want the fallout to be on Hanna either.

  Hanna’s tears fell from her eyes and she said that she’d rather take the fall than have me suffer. The thing was, before I loved Scott and Bishop, Hanna had been there for me. Men may come and go, but my BFF would always be there. So I would do the same for her.

  “Hi.” A soft voice rose from my left. “Is this seat taken?”

  “No, it’s not,” I responded and saw her sit down. She was wearing a black sheath dress that complimented her fair skin and her face held a natural glow that makeup companies wanted to replicate. Her brown eyes were assessing and a gasp came out her mouth, “Oh my. Are you Kara?”