by Claire Adams
When I stepped inside the gym, I was surprised to hear the sound of a volleyball pinging against the practice wall. I walked in slowly and then stopped in my tracks as I saw Eryn practicing her serves over and over again. I couldn't believe it; I'd put them through one hell of a grueling practice, yet here she was, training after hours.
I walked up to the stands, where I saw the glint of metal shining out from under a bench, and there, sure enough, were my car keys. I put them in my pocket and walked over to Eryn.
“Hey, Eryn,” I said as I reached the edge of the court. “You're really pushing yourself, huh?”
“Hi, Coach,” she replied, her tone cool and distant. “Yeah, I am. To get to the top, you have to work harder than anyone else, and that's what I'm doing. Now, if you don't mind, I still have a hundred serves to go.”
She turned away from me and served the ball, and then dashed across the court to grab another ball to serve. I really wanted to stay and talk to her, but it seemed pretty obvious that she didn't want to be disturbed.
“That's a good attitude, Eryn,” I said, my tone one of genuine admiration, “and I think you're going to get to the top. I really do. Keep up the hard work, and I'll see you on Monday.”
“See you then,” she replied quickly as she continued racing across the court.
I turned and walked off slowly, feeling strangely conflicted. A hot, twenty-one-year-old blonde had practically thrown herself at me, almost begging for sex, and I'd easily been able to turn her down. Yet now, with this girl who obviously wanted nothing to do with me beyond a cold, professional relationship, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. I wondered what was going on in my head.
I turned and took one last look at her, marveling at how gracefully she moved and how sexy she looked, even as I was trying to force such thoughts from my mind. Then I headed out, doing my best to keep her from wandering back into my head, uninvited.
*****
I walked into the bar and quickly found John perched on a stool with a grin on his face. One thing hadn’t changed: when John was happy, everyone around him was happy, too. He had one of those infectiously cheery personalities.
“Hey, buddy!” I said as I pulled up a stool next to him at the bar. “How's the week been?”
“Great man, just great!” he replied. “I just finished a major project, one that I've been working on for like seven weeks, and the client is super happy with it. I'm celebrating tonight! Celebrating! Let's get some shots.”
“Whoa, now hold up there, cowboy. We're not twenty-one anymore; we gotta pace ourselves.”
John rolled his eyes. “Come on, bro, don't be an old man. Let's cut loose! It's your first weekend back, and I'm celebrating the completion of this gigantic project. A few shots ain't gonna kill us.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “Let's do this.”
John ordered us two shots of tequila each, which we slammed in quick succession. It didn’t take long for me to feel it. It had been quite a while since I'd had shots and already, it was bringing back bad memories from my West Coast life. I forced the thoughts out of my head and concentrated on the present. I was here now, this was my fresh start, my new life – and I wasn't going to let the past mar that.
“Okay, okay, we've done shots, you happy now?” I asked with a grin.
“For now, but I can't promise that there won't be more shots later!” John laughed loudly and boisterously, and I couldn't help joining in.
“Now for beers,” he said. “Come on, let's hit 'em!”
He ordered us some beers, and we moved off to a table to drink.
“I think, Mr. Vinson, that another order of the night is to get you laid,” he announced. “Seriously, bro, it's your first weekend back. You need to sample some of the local talent.”
“Whoa, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “I just want a few drinks and a nice, quiet night. No craziness.”
“Come on, man, look at you! You could pick up any girl in this bar if you wanted to. Women have always fallen at your feet, Wade – and you might as well take advantage of that while you're still young. Sheesh, man, don't throw a gift like that away! A guy who looks like me would kill to look like you, just for one night!”
I shook my head and smiled. “It's not all it's cracked up to be, pal. And I appreciate you, uh, looking out for my needs, but it's just not what I'm after at the moment. I'm keeping my life as simple and complication-free as possible.”
“And, what's simpler than picking up a chick from the bar here? Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. You have some fun tonight, she's gone in the morning, and that's that!”
“Ah, man, it's never as simple as that.”
The truth was, I couldn't get thoughts of Eryn out of my head. It felt so wrong…like I was crossing a boundary just by being attracted to her. But I couldn't help it – I just couldn’t get her out of my mind.
“Well, we'll see what happens, old buddy,” I said with a smile, fully knowing that nothing at all would happen. “We'll see what happens. Come on now, drink up!”
CHAPTER 5
Eryn
A little bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I wanted to wipe it away. It itched, but I was not going to let myself get distracted, not by anything.
I was positioned opposite Tammy on the court, and man, she had it out for me. I mean, she’d always disliked me, and I never knew why. Leena had said she thought it was because she was jealous, which I’d thought was ridiculous. Tammy looked like some sort of, I didn’t know, model or actress or something – the type of girl that every college guy fantasizes about. Me? People always said I was pretty but I thought they were just being nice.
No, I thought it had more to do with the fact that I was simply better than her at volleyball, despite her making the starting line-up every season and me…well, not.
Today, she was really going out of her way to get me, though. She had actually thrown the ball at me, hitting me in the back of the head when I was turned around and talking to Leena after we'd just won a point. Then she'd smiled her super bitchy smile and told me that it was an “accident” and she was “just trying to pass the ball nicely to me.”
Yeah, whatever. The back of my head was still stinging from how hard that moron had hit me with it.
She had also spiked the ball directly at me not once, not twice, but three times this game – going right for my face. Thanks to my quick reflexes, I'd been able to block it all three times, but only just barely.
I wasn't going to let her push my buttons or get away with it. I'd had enough because it wasn't like this was the first time. There were always the bitchy comments, the jokes in which I was the object of her so called humor, and that time someone replaced the towel in my locker with one that had been soaked in witch hazel because I was allergic to it. It took my skin a week to recover.
I'd never been able to prove that Tammy was behind it, but I was absolutely certain that she had done it. After all, who else would have had any reason to? I got along great with everyone else on the team. Everyone except for Tammy and her equally bitchy friend, Kelly.
And now? Now I was at the point where I'd simply had enough, and I was just waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It soon presented itself.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tammy moving closer to the net, preparing for a counterattack set up as their team sent the ball over the net. Leena popped the ball up to me, expecting me to spike it into the open spot at the back of the court, which would have been an easy point.
Except, I wasn't after an easy point.
I was after something else. I was after a little payback.
I spiked the ball with as much force as I could muster – right into Tammy's face. She was just across the net from me. She had no time to react.
The ball popped her right in the nose, and she fell down with a shriek of pain.
“Oh my God, I'm so sorry, Tammy,” I said.
She glared up at me with absolute wrath burning in
her eyes, and I couldn't help but feel a little shiver of satisfaction rush through me as I saw a little trickle of blood running out of her left nostril. The other players on her side of the net gathered around her, offering words of sympathy, but the girls on my team remained tight-lipped. I even saw a few smiles of satisfaction cracking on their faces; they knew she deserved it.
Still, despite the sudden rush of satisfaction I'd experienced, I felt a twinge of regret starting to seep in. As bitchy as she was, and as many times as she'd tried to hurt me, I felt pretty bad for having done that to her. For one, I felt as if I'd degraded myself by stooping to her level, and for another, it just felt bad to hurt another person, even if she was horrible.
Just then, however, Coach Vinson stormed onto the court, and everyone could see that he was pissed.
“Tammy, Eryn, off the court. You two are out for the rest of the game, and we'll be having a word about this after practice.”
“But, Wade,” whined Tammy.
“For the last time – it’s Coach. And no buts!” he snapped. “Off the court, now!”
He turned to me, and his tone softened immediately; it seemed almost like he was feeling guilty about taking me off the court. Nonetheless, he did it.
“You, too, Eryn,” he muttered.
Tammy and I slunk toward the bleachers and sat at opposite ends of the bench next to the court. Now I felt dreadful. I couldn't believe that I'd let myself get drawn into her childishness. She and I didn't say anything to each other, and I didn't even look in her direction, but I could feel her anger burning brightly next to me.
Eventually, the game was over and with it, practice. Coach Vinson sent all the other players off to the showers and then he came over to talk to us. Once again, as he stood in front of the both of us, I couldn't help but notice he had such intense, beautiful eyes – eyes that one could get lost in for days…if they were into that kind of thing.
But I'd been played by a guy exactly like him before. Great looking, charming, cool, athletic – and he'd been a total narcissist and a manipulative, game-playing liar. And Wade Vinson, from what I'd read in gossip mags, wasn't exactly a model citizen. No. It would just not do to look at him that way.
But those eyes, that dark, thick hair, swept so stylishly back, those hard muscles that showed so clearly through his golf shirt…
Stop!
He looked at me first, and then Tammy. “Would you girls like to tell me just what in the hell is going on?” he asked. “Seriously. What was that about on the court there?”
“She started it!” snapped Tammy immediately.
I was about to object, but Wade stepped in before I could.
“Do you think I'm blind, Tammy? Or maybe just that I'm stupid? I saw you throwing the ball at Eryn or trying to spike it at her face multiple times before she did it to you. Don't try to say that she was the one who started it.”
He then turned to me. “And don't think it means you're off the hook, Eryn. She may have provoked you, but that didn't give you the right to do what you did. When you're out on that court, I expect you to act like professionals, and professionals do not fight on the court. Ever.”
I slumped my shoulders and bowed my head. “I'm sorry, Coach Vinson,” I murmured.
“And, what about you, Tammy?” he asked her. “What do you have to say?”
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, the words crawled out of her mouth like creeping cockroaches.
“Now, whatever the hell is going on between you two sort it out like adults, do you understand? This isn't high school. Don't ever bring these petty squabbles onto my court again. Ever. Do you both understand me?”
“Yes, Coach Vinson,” I replied.
“Understood,” Tammy uttered.
“Good. Now get out of here, and you both better come back to the next practice with a much better attitude than the one you've got now.”
We stood and walked off, keeping a good distance from each other. I looked across at Tammy briefly, and she caught my gaze, responding with a venomous glare. She mouthed the word “bitch” at me. I just shook my head and sighed. I didn't want to descend to her level again.
After I'd showered and cleaned myself up, Leena and I walked to our cars together, chatting along the way. “That was kinda crazy what happened on the court today, huh?” she asked.
“It was,” I replied, “and I'm ashamed that I stooped to Tammy's level and did what I did.”
“She had it coming, though. She was antagonizing you the whole time, and she tried to do the exact same thing to you three times before you finally gave it back to her.”
“Still, it wasn't the right thing to do.”
“I think it was. You have to stand up for yourself, Eryn. You can't let people bully you. I think a lot of us got a great deal of vicarious satisfaction from seeing you give her a bloody nose. She's been a bitch to plenty of the rest of us.”
I sighed. “I just wonder what she has against me. I've never done anything to her.”
“Eryn, you're prettier than she is and you're a better volleyball player. That right there is enough for that petty bitch to hate your guts.”
“Seriously, Lee? I'm not prettier than her. She looks like she could be on the cover of Playboy or something. I don't.”
“She just looks like a slutty bimbo. You, on the other hand? You've got that classic beauty thing going for you. She has to cake on makeup every day to look good, but you don't even have to try!”
I blushed, but still didn't feel like Leena was telling the truth.
“Come on, I don't need empty flattery to make me feel better.”
“It's not, Eryn. It's the truth.”
“Well thanks, Lee; you're a hottie yourself, you know.”
She giggled. “I do know, actually!”
We both laughed as we reached our cars. “Call me while you’re on the road to your parent’s house, if you get bored,” I called out to Leena.
“I would, but my phone died and I forgot my charger. But, I’ll text you when I get there.” We said our goodbyes, climbing into our separate vehicles.
My car was an old Ford Taurus that I'd bought with waitressing money. It had run okay for a long time, but the past few weeks, it had been getting rougher. I knew I needed to get it to a mechanic, but getting the money together for that was yet another thing I wasn't sure I was able to do, not with things the way they were at the moment anyway.
I turned the key in the ignition and gave it some gas. It struggled and wheezed, and after about a minute of trying, the motor finally exploded to life. As I pulled out of the parking lot, though, something about it started to feel real strange. It seemed as if it was gradually losing power.
This wasn't good – this really wasn't good. My apartment was five miles away, and it was almost dark. I really didn't want to walk home in the dark…alone. There had been a few incidents around the university area recently with students often being targeted by muggers.
I gave it as much gas as I could, revving the motor hard, but it just wouldn't go. After a minute, I could feel that it was on the verge of dying, so I pulled over to the side of the road.
This was just great. I had the scholarship matter hanging over my head, my mom to worry about, the thing with Tammy, and now this. Part of me wanted to scream, part of me wanted to cry.
I looked up and down the street. There were a few shady-looking dudes staring intently at me from a few hundred feet away. I didn't like the look of them – or how they were looking at me.
What am I gonna do? I didn't want to get out and walk, not with those guys staring at me. But neither could I just sit in the car and wait for them to go away; they might be there all night.
A car horn sounded behind me, startling me. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a new, flashy SUV parked behind me.
When the driver's door opened, Wade Vinson got out. It was all I could do to stop myself from jumping out of the car and leaping into his arms.
His strong, manly arms�
�
No! No more of those thoughts! I shook my head to clear it.
He walked up to my window and bent down to look inside, and I saw his eyes widen with surprise as he saw that it was me.
“Eryn! It's you! Are you all right? I was just driving a few car lengths behind you and saw your car struggling. I figured something was wrong.”
“Oh my God, I'm so glad you stopped,” I blurted out, unable to control myself. “Yeah, Coach, my car has just broken down.”
“I can see that. You wanna pop the hood for me?”
“You can fix it?”
“I worked on cars a lot as a teenager. My old man was big into fixing up and restoring classics, so I know a lot about older motors. This is an early nineties model, right?”
“Yeah, '94.”
“Well, go on, pop the hood, and I'll check it out.”
I popped the hood for him while he went and retrieved something from the back of his SUV. He came back around to the front of my car, rolled up his sleeves, turned on a flashlight, and began examining the engine. I just watched him, marveling at how quickly and efficiently he worked; he really seemed to know what he was doing. I figured he used these skills as ammo for getting women to fall for him.
After a few minutes, he popped his head up.
“All right, I've got it. Your air filter as totally clogged. You have to get a new one. Almost no air is getting through, so your car isn't gonna be going anywhere.”
“Oh no. Where can I get one now?”
“You likely can't. I think all the auto parts stores are closed. But I can give you a ride to your place.”
“I don't really want to leave my car here, though.”
He scratched his chin as he thought about this. “You're right, this isn't the best area. Okay, how far is your place?”
“It's about three miles from here.”
“You can drive it without the air filter just for that short distance.”
“It'll work?”
“It will, it's just not good for the motor. But it's only three miles, just take it slow. I'll follow behind you and make sure you get back safely.”