Forever Love

  It’s not easy because I know damn well what’s keeping her alive, those drugs she insists on taking, is killing me in more ways than she will ever know.

  An hour later, our team is on the field and split by position, each of us working on specific plays and strategies. By the end of the week we’re in scrimmage games and heavy hitting though I’m usually off limits for hitting. Surprisingly, I love the roughness of football. Hard hits don’t bother me one bit.

  I trust these guys on my team and we’ve played well together the last three years. Who I don’t trust is Colton, our tackle. He’s sloppy at times. Like today. When he leaves me open for a sack and I’m picking grass out of my face guard.

  College football is so much more intense than high school ball. Nothing is the same. Every hit is harder and with every play more is on the line. I don’t like to be sacked. Ever.

  Colton laughs throwing out his hand. “You good, bro?”

  I hate that word “bro.” It’s fucking cliché.

  “Fuck you.” I answer casually picking myself up off the ground. I brush past him and get back into huddle as we call the next play. I feel Landon’s eyes on me but I don’t look at him, especially not after the word “bro” is said to me by Colton. When I look at Landon, it hurts too damn much.

  But I do glance his direction and I’m immediately reminded of our last real conversation after I found out he made out with Madison.

  “We good, bro?”

  “We will never be bros again.” I turn my back on him and he knows that’s all I’m going to say to him.

  We break apart from scrimmage and run plays. Sometimes the same one over and over again until we get it right. Landon struggles. He can’t seem to get to the ball or he overruns it. Just like every other practice. It pisses me off when I watch him. He’s by far our best wide receiver, even better than Taylor Quinn, the senior he beats out for the starting position each week.

  But he never gives one hundred percent and it irritates me. It’s like saying the team that’s supposed to be tight and trust one another yet he can’t even give us the gratification of knowing he gave his best. A total slap in our faces. The other players see it too. He’s holding back for a reason and I’m sure that reason started a few years ago when he was hanging out of that sunroof. He feels responsible, plain and simple. But who am I to talk, hell, we all feel responsible in our own way. I could have forced them both to get down or made Steven pull over until they got back in the fucking car. That old saying about hindsight being twenty-twenty is spot on because all I can think when I look at Landon is “coulda, shoulda, woulda.”

  It’s late when I get back to my dorm room, probably around nine or ten. I’m not feeling like much of anything, nor do I want to study. I have to though.

  During the week, we don’t usually party. At all. We’re too busy with practice and school. Although tonight, as I’m studying, Saylor has some kind of open house going on. Our dorm room is open, as is the door leading into the bathroom that connects our room with Holden and Sean’s, two sophomore running backs who play with us. For over an hour it’s an endless flow of girls moving in and out. Some make their way to my side of the dorm where I’m studying, others don’t and stay beside Saylor or even Jet.

  Sometimes I want my own room but we room together because of the unity. It’s important in football.

  I’m reading the same passage over and over again only the giggling is louder. When I turn my head, Saylor has a girl on his lap, his chocolate skin standing out against the fair hair skinned red head straddling him.

  I look away.

  Like I said, Saylor gets pussy. There have been a few who show up when he’s not here and try to test their luck with me. I’m not really into the whole hook up with whoever thing. It’s not that I wouldn’t mind the occasional one night stand but it’s not my thing. My one nights start with an early morning text.

  I came here to play college football and that’s what I’m doing. I’m not here to fuck around but, yeah, I see temptation to do that. I can if I want. It’s all around me. It’s easy. I don’t even have to try. I can go to a party and before I know it, three or four who will meet me at the door. Ready and willing.

  I mess around but I never take it any further. I try. Goddamn do I try but deep down, I don’t want to. I want one girl.

  It hurts that she doesn’t want me in the same way.

  It hurts like a son of a bitch.

  It just… fucking hurts.

  Amber makes her way over to me. She’s a cheerleader and tries every day to get my dick between her legs. She’s almost succeeded a time or two.

  Her hand’s on my chest over my heart. “Hey, I can distract you, if you’d like.”

  I look down at her hand until she removes it. “I’m studying.”

  Good thing about these girls is they don’t like to be denied any more than they want to be humiliated. They’ll try again, another night, but they give up easily and move to the next willing guy. I’ve heard girls say how desperate some guys are but I think that’s a fucked up phrase. I’ve seen more desperate girls than I’ve seen guys. Maybe because they’re thrown our way or they simply hang around like leeches waiting on their next meal.

  Maybe.

  When the girls leave, Saylor notices I never gave any the time of day. “What are you doing?”

  Saylor knows about Madison. Aside from Landon, he’s probably the only one. “I’m not interested.”

  “But you’re fucking around with Madison still?”

  “I love her.” I admit knowing he’s not going to judge me.

  “Are you sure?” His lips purse as he runs his dark skinned hand over his face. “Cause she gets around from what I hear.”

  Nodding, I bite the inside of my cheek and shake my head pushing my book away from me. “You don’t know her.”

  I’m lying to myself. Turning in my chair, I face him.

  I know he’s about to say something I’m not going to like. “She’s a druggie, man.”

  “No, she’s not.” I lie again. “She’s lost.”

  The truth is, Madison is in more trouble than most realize. More than even she leads on. I see it in the tears she hides and the dark circles under her eyes she tries so hard to cover up. Sometimes I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to know how bad it is.

  Sometimes I don’t know why I call her. Why do I bother?

  I guess I bother because I can’t not. I have to know. I have to believe I didn’t lose her too.

  Sometimes I wonder why she does this to me. I hate that I can’t get away from her. There are when times I look at her and I wonder what she’s thinking. She used to love me. She used to look at me like she loved me. Now I just wonder.

  It’s fucking frustrating.

  It’s torture.

  For a while, we thought we could make it work. It wasn’t easy after what happened at prom. I told her we were done.

  “Cash… please just try to understand.”

  I shook my head, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I can’t. I’m done trying to understand you.”

  I said I was done three years ago but I wasn’t. Come college and football camp, she started slipping and I couldn’t not be with her. She’d disappear for a week at a time, started failing classes and I wanted to believe that those texts helped her. Let her see there was still something good in her life.

  When those texts started coming, most of the time before practice, we started in with the early morning fucking in her dorm. It was an arrangement that worked. It wasn’t that I wanted to hide my relationship with her, it was just the time that worked for us. She didn’t want a public relationship. In fact, it was far from that. She wanted the seclusion we had.

  I was really good at being indifferent. It wasn’t easy but eventually, sometime my sophomore year, I got good at it. I learned things like keeping my eyes relaxed and controlling the hurt.

  Love makes people do stupid shit. Makes them look past lies and see a truth they bel
ieve is there.

  Only it’s not.

  I did that.

  I saw what I wanted time and time again with the hope that she might change. That our situation might change. That someday, somehow she’d open her eyes and see I was still there, waiting. She controls me. She takes my fucking breath and she suffocates me with just one look and she’s mine.

  I don’t know why I do it.

  I can’t tell you.

  It’s like I say I’m not going to call. And then I do.

  Football players have play books. We’re expected to memorize them and know when and where to play them. Quarterbacks call the plays based on the offensive coordinators call, and then sometimes we look at the defense and we change it when we see how they are positioned.

  We call an audible. We change the play on the line of scrimmage.

  She’s my audible.

  I change the play at the line of scrimmage.

  I fall asleep at my desk that night, drooling all over my research paper. Sitting back in the chair I turn off my lamp and then run my hands over my face.

  I sit there and stare at my phone for probably thirty minutes, trying not to pick up the phone.

  Reaching for my phone, I look at the time. It’s that time. I try. I fucking try not to call. I’m not supposed to care anymore. I’m not. But I do and fuck me for it because I can’t help myself.

  I lose that battle every morning. I text her when I can’t take it.

  You up?

  And she replies within minutes, like she’s waiting. It’s early and I can’t sleep so I shower and head over to her dorm. I knock lightly, twice, and she opens the door. No questions asked. She grabs my hand, warm fingers wrapping around mine leading me to her bed.

  She’s high, I can tell that right away, her face is blank. Still, there’s some emotion there. And her heart’s beating against my chest.

  I reach below her night shirt and feel that she’s bare and ready. “No panties?”

  She laughs bringing my mouth to hers, her expression cracking with a small smile. “Seemed like a waste of time.”

  I laugh quietly, trying not to wake her roommate and kiss her neck. “Mmhmm…”

  She fucks so good. I can’t get enough. I’m gripping sheets and whispering dirty words to her.

  I roll on my back bringing her on top of me. It’s not easy on a twin bed but I’m too far gone. This is the third time this week I’ve come to her room at three in the morning. Undefined, we keep up what we know works with each other.

  I try so fucking hard to act indifferent when I see her at school. That’s how this works with us but it’s certainly not how I feel. I feel everything when I’m around her.

  Truth is, I’d do anything to bring the light back to those eyes. I stare down at her, our bodies pressed together there’s no space between us. My hands around her neck, but she’s never telling me to stop.

  She says nothing.

  Nothing.

  She wants to see my reaction to nothing too. She wants to know there’s a place in my heart for her. There is and there always will be.

  Sometimes when I’m with her and she’ll look at me. In that moment I think she forgets what happened and all she sees is that I’m that boy who’s never left her side. In some ways, I have. In others I come back and she sees that.

  She needs it.

  She knows what she’s putting me through.

  Hell.

  She knows that I would do anything to make her better. And for a fraction of a second, there’s this look.

  It’s what I breathe for.

  It’s a light I can never bring myself to shut off. It’s why we have these blue lit mornings. They’re not dark. They’re not light. They’re the best of both of us.

  I think she knows I’m looking for something, an indication that she feels something more.

  “Don’t love me…” It’s a whisper that falls from her lips and maybe I’m not meant to hear it, but I do. Her words are like a punch to the chest, a sack that leaves me gasping for air. My body trembles as I come, shaking below her.

  We finish and the release gives me nothing but release. It leaves me unstable and at her mercy. I don’t like either.

  My mind is on the after. The goodbye that never happens. It just hangs there. My chest feels heavy, like she stabbed me with the way she’s looking at me and slowly, just like her, I’m bleeding life. My heart may beat but it’s beating for her. These moments.

  In the moonlight, her eyes catch mine and I see the tears streaming down her face. Without saying anything, I kiss her forehead and leave. She doesn’t want me to stay. She never does. If I stay the tears are worse.

  When I breathe, darkness suffocates me.

  Some people can’t help being sad. Then there’s some who want to be happy, like Madison, but something inside them forces them not to be. Shoves them to the edge of darkness that lurks in the corners waiting to destroy their light.

  That’s what happened to Madison. She was pushed.

  Being sad doesn’t just happen either.

  Neither does depression.

  You can’t ignore it. It won’t let you. It’s in your words, your will and your unwavering control. It stays there, infecting you until it takes over and consumes you.

  I know because I know the girl who’s being destroyed by it.

  September 28, 2013

  “Ready?” Saylor’s watching me, waiting for an answer. We’re half way through the fourth quarter and he knows I am, he’s just checking. I nod and we move into line.

  As I wait for the snap, my heart pounds rapidly in anticipation, my mind working to strategize and see the play before it happens. I clap my hands, the ball snaps and I spot Landon mid-field but he’s tied up with a defender. I fake to the left and then spin around to the right and throw across field to Jet. He doesn’t gain any ground and is tackled at the ten yard line.

  I have two options at this point. I can run the play myself or throw the ball.

  I run the ball myself, stiff arm a guy and then lay myself out for the goal. Coach hates it when I do that, afraid I’ll get hurt, but when I see an opening, I take it.

  We win the game against the Bears 55-16. I surprised myself with big numbers there too when I threw for over 290 yards and rushing 32 times for 178 yards despite the wind and rain. It was relentless and the ball kept slipping out of my hands. The field was a swamp after the game.

  That was a big win for us. Part of me wasn’t feeling it. Since it’s a home game, we’re looking to get rowdy and party. We find one at a nearby frat house that serves us just fine with an endless supply of beer. A few of the other guys went up to catch a concert in town. They tried to talk me into going, more than likely to get tickets and back stage. I have made a name for myself since that cover on Sports Illustrated and these boys like to use that sometimes. I decided to stay around town. I was in the mood to party, sure, but not like they were.

  Long car ride with a bunch of drunks?

  No, thank you.

  Saylor stands from his place beside me and then leaves. A minute later he comes back with four beers and a bong. I get up and leave. I’ve smoked before but not during the season. It’s not worth it to me to get caught. The NCAA takes that shit seriously. I don’t understand the guys who smoke during the season, or even before a game. They all know we have a bowl game coming up and they’ll random test us but it doesn’t seem to bother them.

  I’m sitting in the family room now, away from the guys smoking and I’m about ready to leave.

  “Hey, man, isn’t that your girl, Madison, with Landon?” Declan asks, sitting beside me with a beer in his hand. He’s our tackle and though we’ve played together for two years, I don’t talk personal shit with him.

  I suppose there are some who don’t know Macy and Madison are twins.

  There’s a difference between the two and I can tell immediately. Not a big difference but it’s there. It’s mostly in the eyes. Macy’s have a gray tint to them while Madis
on’s are more of a brighter blue. Only they’re not anymore. What was once bright are now just dull. Madison’s hair is darker too—naturally it seemed—but their bodies were almost identical. Lately, Madison seems like bones, muscle definition almost non-existent.

  “Madison is not my girl.” I tell him standing up. “And that was Macy, her twin sister.”

  I move through the house and see Macy standing with her roommate, Heather. I take another pull from my beer, the only one I’m having tonight and set the empty can in the garbage as I walk by.

  As I turn the corner, there are couples everywhere, making out, laughing, you name it. That’s when I see Madison come in. It’s not unheard of for her to be at a party where I am. It happens.

  I watch her for just a moment, no smile, no awareness of anything around her.

  Why can’t she just be normal? Why can’t she see me right here, waiting?

  As she moves from the kitchen, down the hall, I see who’s behind her. That fucking drug dealer Jay she’s been seen with.

  He disappears for a moment and despite my gut telling me to leave, to not do a goddamn thing, I go to her.

  I grab her by the waist when she walks by and drag her towards me moving my hips against hers. She willingly lets me. She feels it when a heavy bass thumps throughout the house shaking the windows and my chest. Madison can dance like no one else. She dances like she fucks.

  I watch.

  I move with her.

  My breath hits her neck and I feel her curve around me, melt against my skin, her heat becomes one with my heat.

  I can’t draw my eyes from her hips when she brings them forward and back again to the beat of the bass. Her black hood remains over her head, her arms swung over my shoulders.