Back on the sideline, the rest of the team greeted us with smacks and grunted praise. Thom stopped Matt, grinning.
“Look at you, Lampert. You made that seem easy out there.”
Matt didn’t answer for a minute, and I was afraid of what he might say. But finally he only nodded. “Thanks, man. Appreciate it.” He started to move away, then added, “They’re pretty worn out. Their defense, I mean. That’s probably why it came so fast and easy.”
Matt and I got back out onto the field once more before the final whistle was blown. We didn’t score again, but we did get a couple of first downs and held our own. And it didn’t matter, because we’d rolled over Arkansas.
The locker room was loud and raucous. Everyone was flying high; we were sitting at 5-1, a winning record, and people were starting to sit up and take notice. Since I’d been playing pretty regularly, my name had become more recognized around the school. The campus media had done a piece on me that had been picked up by the local newspaper, and now strangers greeted me like old friends. It was wild, on a much larger scale than it had been in high school.
“Hitting Moonie’s tonight, bro?” Matt stripped off his pads and jersey. “Time to celebrate.”
“Nope.” I was already naked and reaching for my towel, as though I could hear the ticking of a clock in my head. “I’m getting a shower, putting on my clothes and heading to the airport. Gonna surprise Quinn tonight.”
He frowned. “Since when? Was this an idea that came to you while we were on the field tonight? You take a hit I didn’t see out there?”
I slammed my locker. “No. I’ve been planning this for three weeks.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“Matt.” I sighed, running one hand through my hair. “Listen. I didn’t tell you on purpose, because you’ve had your head so far up your ass, I didn’t know what you’d do. And if you forgot and told Gia, and she told Quinn and ruined the surprise, I’d be really pissed at you. So look at this as me protecting you from my mad, okay?”
“Dude, you are so pathetic.” Matt’s face darkened. “I’m not the one running off to his girlfriend instead of partying with his friends. And teammates. You want to be in this game long term, Taylor, you need to show up, and not just on the field. You got to play the capital G Game. The whole shebang. Don’t bitch to me about my head being up my ass. You got no idea. No idea.”
“Matt.” I didn’t want to engage him. For the last couple of months, he’d been like a bomb, just waiting for the right detonation. I glanced around the locker room; a few teammates were obviously listening to us, curiosity on their faces. Lowering my voice, I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down. You know what I’m talking about. You’re partying too much. The booze, the—the drugs, man. You’re taking stupid risks, and one of these days, you’re going get burned. You’re going to get caught in a drug test or worse. Not to mention what you’re doing with Gia.”
A shadow passed over his eyes. “Gia and I are just . . . casual. You know. She understands the score. She’s a free agent, and so am I.”
I snorted. “You’re an idiot, Matt. She’s gone for you, man, and you’re too blind to see it. Or maybe you don’t want to see it. Whatever.”
“I can’t do relationship shit. You know that. I mean, look at you. All last year, you were torn up over being away from Quinn. Then you got your panties in a bunch and stayed down here moping all summer. Why the hell would I want something like that? No way, man. I like my freedom. I don’t want a chick making me feel bad for doing what I need to do.”
I wrapped my towel around my waist. “I never claimed Quinn and I are perfect. I’m not even saying you need a girlfriend. I’m just telling you that what you think you have with Gia isn’t what she thinks you have. She might say she’s fine with how you treat her, but she isn’t. It’s eating her alive.”
“Bullshit.” Matt closed his locker and pounded it with his fist.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have time to argue with you about this anymore. I’ll see you Tuesday.” I turned and headed for the showers.
“Tuesday? You’re missing class and practice?”
I tossed words over my shoulder as I walked away. “Coach and my professors approved it. I’m ahead in my classes, and I’ll do extra workouts when I get back. I need to see my girl.”
My flight to Philadelphia landed a little early, which I took to be a good sign. I slung my duffel over my back, hailed a cab and headed over the bridge to South Jersey. I’d considered asking one of my brothers to pick me up from the airport, but in the end, I’d only told two people outside of Coach and three professors what I was doing. If my mom found out I was coming home without actually visiting home, she’d have had a fit. But I wanted this trip to be all about Quinn, all about us.
The taxi dropped me off at a tall brick building on the Birch campus. I paid the driver and stepped out, glancing around through the dusky evening and trying to be inconspicuous. Leaning against the low wall that surrounded the front courtyard, I pulled out my phone and tapped in a message.
The eagle has landed. Just outside her dorm. Update?
Within a few minutes, my phone vibrated with a text from Nate:
Q is here with me and Gia. Safe for you to go up. I’ll send her back in about fifteen minutes.
I smiled. Perfection. When the next group of girls exited the dorm, I held the door for them, smiling as they passed before I ducked inside and jogged up the steps to the fourth floor. I found the right suite number and knocked on the door.
Since she’d met her, on their first day of freshman year, Quinn had described her new roommate to me as breathtakingly gorgeous. So when the beautiful blonde answered my knock, I wasn’t surprised by her appearance.
Zelda regarded me with interest, leaning on the door jamb as an enigmatic smile played over her lips.
“So. You’re the boyfriend.” Her eyes wandered down my body, unabashedly checking me out, lingering over the zipper of my jeans. “Good to meet you. Finally.”
I swallowed a sigh. I knew what this was all about; the fact that I hadn’t come up to see my girlfriend at her school until now—midway through the fall of our sophomore year—must’ve looked bad to her friends.
“I’m happy to meet you at last, too, Zelda.” I held out a hand. “Nate said he told you my plan. Thanks for helping.”
She lifted one shoulder. “All I had to do was stay home tonight until you got here, and then find another place to sleep. Believe me, finding a warm and welcoming bed is never a problem for me.”
“I’m sure.” I nodded, gesturing over her shoulder. “Okay if I come in?”
She hesitated a moment before she stepped back. “Sure. Quinn’s room is the second door on the right. Bathroom’s on the end.” She turned and picked up a small backpack from the sofa in the tiny living area. “Make yourself comfortable, I guess. Nate said she should be back here by nine.”
“Got it. And don’t worry. I’ll just hang out in her room. I won’t touch anything else.”
“My door’s locked, so I’m not worried. And if you get the sudden urge to poke around in Gia’s room, more power to you. She’s a slob. There’s probably some hazardous waste in there, not to mention a lot of shit to trip over.”
I laughed. “Yeah, Quinn’s mentioned that Gia is a little cleaning-impaired.”
“That sounds like how Quinn would put it.” Zelda paused again, as though she was debating something, and then in a move too smooth to be accidental, she dropped her keys. “Oops. Guess I need these.” Bending at the waist, she leaned to scoop them up, and as she did, the tank she wore gaped at the neck, giving me an eyeful of her rack.
I wasn’t a saint, by any means. And like any other red-blooded male, I liked a nice pair of tits. This chick had boobs for days, and the way she was standing, I could see that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Staring wouldn’t have made me a perv, not when Zelda was so clearly putting herself on display.
But it would’ve made me a dick,
because as nice as her tits were, they weren’t my girl’s, and that meant I wasn’t interested in them. I kept my eyes on Zelda’s face, never straying south.
“It was really great to meet you, Zelda. I’m sure I’ll see you again while I’m here.”
If I’d expected her to be offended by my lack of reaction, I’d have been disappointed. Instead, she only smiled a little and nodded.
“I’m sure I will.” She put one hand on the doorknob and stopped again, this time not looking at me as she spoke. “You know, Quinn’s about the best person I’ve ever met. She’s kind, and understanding, and she doesn’t judge. I think you make her happy most of the time. But I also know you have the power to crush her. If you do that, I will cut off your dick, grind it up and feed it to dogs.”
If Zelda had said those words with even the least bit of a threatening tone, it might’ve sounded comical. As it was, her voice was matter of fact and even, and that fact made what she said downright chilling.
I swallowed hard. “I believe you.”
“Good.” She left without another backward glance, and I let out a long breath of relief before I headed for Quinn’s room.
I’d known Quinn since she’d slept in a toddler bed. I remembered her canopy bed with the pink ruffled bedspread, and I remembered when her walls had been covered with posters of boy bands. But at first glimpse, her college room struck me as the most quintessentially Quinn room yet.
Her bed was made up with some kind of fluffy white comforter covered with a patchwork quilt I recognized from her bedroom at home. On the wall over the bed was a large framed poster of the sun coming up over the ocean, a shot I was pretty sure she’d taken herself. Several pictures sat on the top of her dresser, including one of her father, one of me from the summer before college, and one of the three of us: Nate, Quinn and me. Off to the side sat a small wooden box, a little worn-looking where some of the varnish had rubbed off.
I knew deep down I should respect her privacy and leave it alone, but still, I flipped open the lid and examined the contents. I couldn’t explain why, exactly, but over the last few months, I’d been feeling slightly removed from Quinn. We still talked every day, and she’d been down to see me at Carolina once already this semester. The sex was still smoking, but then again, that had never been an issue with the two of us. I got the sense, though, that whether or not she realized it, Quinn had cut me off from some part of her. There were thoughts she didn’t share as easily as she had a year ago. She went quiet more often, as though she were grappling with stuff she wasn’t willing to talk about yet.
I missed her, the open, spontaneous Quinn I’d known all of my life. I craved that connection, the one I hadn’t even realized we’d had until it went away. And I had the uncomfortable sense that maybe its loss was mostly my fault. I was the one who was consumed with football; I was the one who’d gone away, even though I’d had a perfectly good reason to do it. I knew that sometimes when we talked, I was distracted, my mind on the playbook, on my class assignments and on everything else going on down in Carolina.
There were only a few small items in the wooden box: a tiny dried rosebud, a smooth white rock, almost perfectly round, and a piece of notebook paper, folded so many times that it was about the size of the pad of my thumb. I held it on the palm of my hand for a moment before I carefully unfolded it.
On the light blue lines, I recognized my own scrawl, but at first, I didn’t remember writing the words.
And then the memory came back. It was during our junior year, during that brief, sweet interlude when we’d been together. My mom had been undergoing treatment for leukemia, and spring practice was just starting. I’d stayed late that night, but Quinn and I had only talked; I hadn’t snuck upstairs with her as we sometimes did. She’d lay in my arms, touching my face as I poured out my worries about my mother, my frustrations about some of the guys on the team . . . and when I was finished venting, Quinn had kissed me gently and told me everything was going to be all right.
For some reason, just hearing those simple words come out of her mouth had reassured me, and we’d sat on the couch in her parents’ den, just touching and murmuring the occasional word, until she’d dropped off to sleep. I’d carried her upstairs to her bed, torn a piece out of the notebook she kept on her nightstand, and scribbled the note.
Quinn had kept it, over these two and a half years, through the year when we hadn’t communicated at all. I wondered what those few careless words had meant to her.
My phone buzzed, and I jumped, guilty, dropping the re-folded note back into the box. I shut the lid and pushed it back into place before I checked the phone’s screen.
Congrats on the win! Just saw a clip of your TD online. Proud of you, babe.
I smiled, even as guilt panged in my chest. Quinn was so good about remembering everything going on with me, making sure to text or call me after every game when she couldn’t be there. I tried to do the same, asking her how tests had gone or if one of her articles had been picked up for the school paper, but I knew that all too often I forgot.
Thanks. It was pretty much a rout. But a W is a W, right? What are you up to?
I had a pretty good idea of what she was doing, but I wanted the total surprise, so I played dumb.
I’m on my way back to my room. Tonight kind of sucked. I was over at Nate’s with Gia, but she was in a rotten mood for some reason. She ended up going out with some of her party friends. Then Nate’s mom called b/c his cousin is in town and she wanted him to come over for dinner. So I got ditched.
I grinned a little wider. Nate had apparently played his part perfectly. I didn’t know why Gia was in a rotten mood, but I could guess it had something to do with Matt. Quinn had told me that Gia had started hanging out with a new group she’d met through a girl in her International Relations class. Since they went out to bars and parties on Greek Row more often than Quinn and Nate ever did, they’d dubbed the crowd Gia’s party friends.
I’m sorry, Mia. Wish I could be there to keep you company.
It was true. Just because I was going to make that wish reality didn’t make it a lie.
I know. It’s okay. I’ll just binge watch some Buffy and eat chips. What’re you doing? Out with the guys celebrating?
I heard a noise at the main door of the suite, the jingle of keys and footsteps as the door opened and then closed. I typed back fast.
Nah, just hanging out. Decided to celebrate a little different tonight.
She was in the kitchenette; there was the sound of a cabinet opening and closing. Looking for the chips, I decided, and crossed my fingers that something would bring her to the bedroom, because I didn’t want to have to sneak out and scare her.
Not that finding me in here wouldn’t startle her, but still. I figured being in the bedroom was a more auspicious start to our mini-vacation, anyway. My phone vibrated again in my hand.
Oh, yeah? How’s that?
Yes! She was coming down the short hall, and before I could take another breath, the door swung open and she was there, her eyes on her phone as she waited for my text response. I sat perfectly still on the edge of her bed, waiting for her to—
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!!” Her scream echoed off the walls of her room as her hand flew to her throat and she backed up against the door jamb. “Oh, my God, Leo! You scared the shit out of me? What the hell are you doing here?”
I stood up, hands on my hips. “Well, I told you I was going to celebrate a little different tonight. I thought maybe I’d do it with you.” I drank her in, from the oversized hoodie that hung below her hips to the worn jeans encasing her legs. My girl was so fucking beautiful, it made my heart skip a beat.
For a nerve-wracking minute, I wasn’t sure if Quinn was annoyed that I’d taken her by surprise or overcome with joy. And then she launched herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and hugging me tight.
“I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I pulled back enough to kiss her,
my lips smothering the last few thank-yous. She moaned a little, opening her mouth to welcome my tongue with strokes of her own.
“How did you do this? And how long can you be here?”
I sank back onto the bed, pulling her onto my lap and holding her close. “Nate helped me. He maneuvered you over to his room and then back here at the right time. He told Zelda about it at the last minute, so she’d give us the suite to ourselves tonight. And I think he also had to tell Gia, which may be why she was so pissy with you earlier. Oh, and Tate drove me to the airport on that end.”
“No one else knew?” She skimmed her fingers over my face, her eyes devouring me as though she couldn’t believe I was really there.
“I told Matt about ten minutes before I left. And Coach knew, because I had to clear missing practice Monday and Tuesday—”
“Monday and Tuesday?” Quinn was breathless, and her smile grew to light up her whole face. “You’re staying here that long?”
“I have to leave Tuesday afternoon, so I can be back for a team meeting that night and practice Wednesday. I sweet-talked my professors into letting me miss a few classes, too.”
“Did you happen to have the same conversation with my professors?”
I laughed softly. “Sorry, babe. But I’ll be here three nights with you, sleeping in your bed—and not sleeping, I hope—and I’ll keep everything warm while you’re off being a good student. I know it’s not perfect, but—”
“Shut up. It is absolutely perfect.” She pressed her lips to my jaw. “It’s perfect because you’re here with me. You did this without me asking you to come up. You thought of it all on your own. And you came to me, to see where I’m living and going to school, and—oh! You can finally meet Zelda.”
Hanging by a Moment (Keeping Score #2) Page 14