Elite

by Carrie Aarons

  Coach sits in his office, the season never over for him. Once we all leave the court, and the gym is locked up for the foreseeable months, he gets down to scouting work. I watch as he shuffles papers around on his desk, his eyes tired from what I’m sure is still a full day of work for him.

  Knocking, my heart seizes up. Here goes nothing. “Hey, Coach.”

  A smile pulls at his lips, probably happy to have some human interaction. “Reiter, didn’t expect to see you back here.”

  I shrug, pain coating every cell in my body. “I wish I didn’t have to be here.”

  His face turns to stone. Coach has been doing this a long time, he knows when a scandal has landed on his doorstep. “Aw shit, what did you do?”

  I sit down, needing to conserve my strength for this. “Before I get to all that, let me explain something, something that I’ve never told anyone on this team. Growing up, I didn’t have the perfect home life. Hell, that’s an understatement … my childhood was hell. When I was about ten, my mother began to … change. Her behavior became erratic; she’d show up to work for a week, cook dinner, pick me up from school. But then the next week … I’d come home to the stove burners on, with no pans on it. Just fire, who knew how long it had been that way. I started to find empty alcohol bottles in every nook and cranny. As a twelve-year-old, I’d wake up to my mother walking in the door at three a.m., not knowing where she’d been or how long I had been left in the house alone.”

  Coach’s face contorts to one of sadness, and it’s the exact look I’ve been running from for years. The reason I’d kept this secret for so long.

  “I know that you know, I got into Jade Mountain on a full athletic scholarship. But as a college player, one of things we always talk about is how much money we bring in to the school, and they make off of us. But we see none of it. And for me, that was so hard. I left home, don’t have time to hold down a job, can’t profit off of my fame. So … I had to turn to other avenues.”

  Coach sighs, burying his head in his hands. “Colton, I know how hard it can be. But don’t tell me you—”

  “I cheated, Coach. I stole merchandise and sold it, I shaved points, I even threw a game. You have to know all of this, because it’s finally time I come clean.”

  He pauses, looking at me somberly. And then he slaps a hand on his desk. “Goddammit! Why didn’t you think you could come to me about this earlier? I could have tried to help, do something.”

  I shake my head, emotion clogging my throat. “I know as much as you do that you couldn’t do anything to help my family. There are no official routes I could have taken to care for her, so I had to do what I had to do.”

  He’s silent for a minute, the stink of the truth filling the office. “I hate it, you know. The rule that says you men can’t bank on your success. I think you have every right to. This is your career, you make a name for the school, they gain thousands in applicants each year because of you, and even more money. I agree, it’s not fair. But … rules are rules. And you’ve broken them. You know I have to report you now?”

  I nod, seeing how hard it is going to be for him to do so. “You have to do what you have to do, I would never ask you not to.”

  Coach looks at me, sympathy all over his face. “You should try to get ahead of this, set up an interview. Talk to your agent. This is going to be bad, Colton, I’m not going to lie to you.”

  I stand, completely exhausted and feeling the need to be done with this for now. “Thanks, Coach. And again, I’m so sorry for putting this on you.”

  The first thing I see when I walk out of the athletic complex is her.

  “How did you know I’d be here?” I wipe a tired hand over my face.

  Eloise walks to me, wrapping her arms around my waist. I’m in disbelief at how comforting just that little gesture is. She rights my world even when it’s spinning a thousand miles an hour off its axis.

  “I know you, Colton, better than you think I do. What did Coach say?”

  I sigh, leaning her against the car as I bury my face in her neck. “That I’m essentially done playing basketball for the school, and probably anywhere else. He is going to have to report me to the division athletic board, although he understands why I had to do it. He recommended doing an interview with one of the top sports networks, to explain my side and possibly try to save my draft chances, although it is a slim chance that any team will want to pick me up now.”

  Tears clog her voice. “I’m so sorry, baby. If it wasn’t for me, you would never have to go through any of this.”

  I move back, grabbing her face in my hands. “Don’t do that, don’t act like this was anyone’s fault but my own. I am the reason I’m in this mess, I decided to go through with it. You saved me once, from Mac, it was a miracle that even worked for a little while. This was always going to come back to haunt me, I should have known it. It fucking hurts so bad that it is now, but I have to come to terms that I did something wrong, and I’m paying for it.”

  She nods, threading her fingers through my hair. “I love you, Colton. Even more now than I did when I realized I’d fallen for you. You’re the kind of man that was worth waiting all this time for.”

  Is it insane that hearing those words are all it takes it make me feel better? To make me somewhat forget that I just blew up my entire life.

  “I’m never going to play professional basketball.” I almost burst into tears as I say it, burying my head in her hair.

  “I know you measure yourself as nothing but a basketball player, but you are so much more. You’re intelligent, loyal, caring … you never would have made those deals if you hadn’t been trying to care for your mum. That is the sign of a true man, one who stops at nothing to take care of the people he loves. That’s how I see you. Not as an athlete, or a future all-star, but as the best man I’ve ever known.”

  Her words humble and slaughter me. And I may not have gotten what I wanted today, but I received what I needed.

  I was gifted with the love and support of the sassiest British girl I know, and I was learning that it was going to be enough for me.

  Three days later, I sit down in front of a camera crew in a studio, the tie that my agent picked all but strangling me.

  The shark of a journalist that the top sports network has sent looks at me as the crew mics me up, her eyes voracious as if she’s about to swallow me whole. I want to wipe the sweat on the back of my neck, but I know she’ll take it as a sign of weakness.

  My agent set this interview up, a tell all exclusive about my downfall and why I did what I did. The news hasn’t broken to the media yet, though I know that Coach has reported my actions to the appropriate school and national boards. They haven’t come down with their punishment, and I know eventually I’ll have to go in front of some kind of committee, or police, to tell them exactly what I did.

  But for now, I’m trying to save any hopes I have at a career. I lie awake at night, with Eloise in my arms, listening to her breathing and worrying about my future. Will I be able to go to the draft? Will a team even want me after they figure out what a cheat and liar I am? How will I be punished? What will be the justice for my crime of necessity?

  I plan to tell the whole truth as soon as they tell me we are live in a few seconds. I can’t protect my mother anymore. Hell, she never did anything to protect me. That old bitterness comes roaring back, the one that thinks she could have done more to prevent her symptoms; gone to therapy, taken her medications, seen the proper doctors. She never did any of it, choosing to treat with booze and partying rather than try to be stable for her child.

  I tamp it down, knowing she is sick and that the illness rules her brain more than reason. I can’t be angry for this interview, not when I need to appeal to the masses. I know it’s a sob-story that will save any chance at my future, and that’s the one I’m choosing to give them. I’m not above it, not when everything I’ve ever wanted is on the line.

  Looking at the camera, the producer counts us down, and I watch
the interviewer straighten and lick her lips.

  And then we’re a go. I have an hour to save myself, or a lifetime of what ifs to face.

  Thirty-Seven

  Eloise

  In the end, the interview doesn’t accomplish what Colton hoped it would.

  The draft comes and goes, and he isn’t even touched. He doesn’t go, because he’s embarrassed about sitting in a room full of other successful players after being dropped by his agent, after the phone calls for potential signings stopped coming.

  After his coach regrettably had to inform the College Basketball Association of Colton’s mistakes, they suspended him as well, for a year, ensuring that he couldn’t even play college basketball as a senior even if he wanted to. He was distraught, hurt, sorry and a thousand other emotions.

  Thankfully, by some grace of God, his friends and teammates weren’t all that upset with him. Sure, it took them a few days to get over the initial shock of it, but once they saw the interview, saw the skeletons that their brother was hiding so carefully in his closet, they understood. He’d had a lot of talks with a lot of people in the last few days, and while they were painful, I saw the relief in his eyes from no longer having to keep any secrets locked away in his chest.

  The pain I felt in my heart watching him sulk around his fraternity house, unsure of his next move … it was almost paralyzing. I was doing anything I could to keep him occupied; movie nights, marathon sex, his favorite takeout, renting a lodge in the mountains to get away. Not much was working, but deep down I knew he appreciated me trying.

  Watching Colton come clean in every way possible, such a brave and emotional act, made it clear I had to do the same. The Charter girls had nothing on me anymore, not that any of them reached out to their “brother” after he exposed his lies. Not even Abby, who I thought might come crawling back with an apology. Apparently, it was still possible for me to completely misjudge someone, and here I’d thought I had the best intuition of anyone I knew.

  I’d taken the NDA, scanned it in using my handy-dandy printer, and sent it to every important email I could find listed on the Jade Mountain website. Counselors, deans, administrators, the doctors in the health center … anyone who looked like they could remotely help uncover the truth and get some justice for that girl.

  And because I didn’t trust that those people wouldn’t hush up due to the money coming into the school from the social clubs, I cc’d two local reporters on the email. Just in case the school decided to cover the heinous act up once again, someone should know the truth outside these hallowed halls.

  Thus far, I hadn’t been contacted by anyone at Charter, so perhaps they hadn’t been notified that their bridges were about to be burned down. Take that, love the lady from London.

  I stood in my dorm room, looking around the empty space. Jane had already left for her flight earlier this morning, and she’d actually hugged me goodbye. I was both shocked and happy by her warmness, and I’d promised to email and keep in touch.

  “You didn’t think you were going to leave without having one more drink with me, did you?” Blair stands in the doorway, holding up a bottle of white wine and two solo cups.

  I’d become accustomed to drinking out of the red plastic staples in my time at Jade Mountain, and I happily motioned for her to sit down at Jane’s abandoned desk and pour.

  “Of course not, I was saving you for last.” Sadness crept in.

  I was going to miss Thistle, and the small circle of friends I’d formed while here. It was a place unlike any other, and of course I’d had experiences unlike any other. Some were terrible, but I couldn’t deny that a lot of my time here was spent in exhilarating situations. It was a beautiful, and somewhat mysterious town even still, nestled between the mountains and lake. The courses had been educational, and also fun, something I’d been craving when I took a semester off from the Sorbonne.

  “I think you were saving someone else for last, but I’ll choose to believe that. How is your boy toy, anyway? Sorry to hear about the whole thing.” She gives me a look of sympathy and pours our cups.

  Taking mine, I sip a mouthful before talking. “Thanks, it’s nice to hear you say that. He is okay, getting marginally better each day. Nasty business, the whole thing, but we do what we have to for the one’s we love.”

  Blair nods. “Have you seen him yet? Said your tearful goodbyes?”

  I chuckle quietly. “No, actually, we’re not saying goodbye just yet. I have a week before I have to get back for my summer apprenticeship at a restaurant, so I’m actually going home with Colton.”

  Her eyebrows go halfway up her forehead. “Wow, that’s a big step, especially with what he has going on.”

  I nod, still unsure of the trip myself. “It is, but he insists. And if me by his side is what he needs when he goes to visit his mother, then I am not going to say no. We’re serious about making it work, so I’m in for whatever he needs.

  “You surprised me, Mason.” Blair points her finger at me.

  “Why do people keep saying that?” I laugh.

  “I think it’s because you give off kind of an ice queen demeanor, but deep down, you’re really a giant softie. Whoever said that the British are more reserved in their feelings clearly never met you.”

  I tilt my head to the side. “Just because of that, I’m not going to let you come stay with me. And I won’t even hug you while I’m kicking you out of my dorm room.”

  “Yeah right, you wouldn’t dare.”

  We sit in my dorm room until it’s time for Blair to pack up her car and leave, chatting about her impending trip to Paris and all of the eats we’ll have when she is there.

  And then it’s just me, alone in my room until Colton is ready to get in the car and drive us to West Virginia.

  The feeling I always get, that niggling one in my chest, when periods of my life are about to be over swoops in and consumes me. It’s not one of sadness, really, or happiness. It’s just a settling, a finalization over my soul.

  I sit with it, in it, and let myself remember exactly how I am in this moment before everything changes again.

  Thirty-Eight

  Colton

  West Virginia looks exactly as it always has.

  In the three years since I started at Jade Mountain, I have rarely come back here. For one, basketball season has kept me so busy through the holidays that I haven’t even come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. And two, my mother wouldn’t really recognize the significance of me coming home even if I had. So, I’ve chosen to stay away.

  It’s not “almost heaven,” like the song says, and I don’t belong here. Nope, for me this state, this town, has always been some dusty country road and nothing more.

  I round my car onto Main Street, hitting one of the only three stoplights in town.

  Eloise is quiet in the passenger seat next to me, her eyes fixated out the window.

  “Isn’t much, huh?” I squeeze her hand where it lays on my thigh.

  Slowly, her blue eyes turn to me. “Seeing this place, the place that built you … I’m getting a much clearer picture of how you’ve become who you are today. Don’t discount that, Colton.”

  How did she always have a way of putting things so perfectly?

  “I got out of this town as soon as I could. But I guess you can drag the boy away from the river, but you can’t drag the river out of the boy.”

  My thoughts are as cloudy and dark as the muddy river that runs beside the road, the disgusting piece of water that cuts this town in half and marks just how dirt poor its residents are. For so long I’d wanted out, to run as fast as I could toward something brighter than the dull existence this place left marked on your soul. And I’d been so close, come just far enough to almost touch the sun. But the mark of second class was ingrained in me, and so I’d acted on it. And ruined everything.

  “You will play basketball again. It might not be in the context you’d like it, but you were born to be a star, anyone can see it.” Eloise til
ts her head to the side, resting it on the seat while she gazes at me.

  Leaving Jade Mountain for the last time seemed surreal. I’d walked around campus in the early hours of the morning, after almost all of the students had gone home for summer break or it was too early for the last remaining stragglers to drag themselves from their hangovers. The campus had been my kingdom for three years; I was their king and I’d been worshipped like one. Yet, in the matter of twenty-four hours, everyone had turned against me.

  No, not turned against me. Forgotten about me, and that was immeasurably worse.

  I’d catalogued every sense; the feel of the early morning chill, the look of the lake, the mountain mirrored in it. The scent of fresh dew and the mountain fog, settling over the ground like a blanket. The chirp of the birds and honks of geese, coming back for the summer. I ran my hands over the railings, the bricks … this was the place that built me into a man. A huge sadness had settled over me then, knowing that this chapter of my life was definitively over.

  And now I had to return home, to do one of the hardest things I would ever have to do in my life. Even harder than coming clean, even harder than giving the interview that exposed every vulnerability of my life.

  “Try not to expect anything. Either way, you’re going to see her, so don’t give too much thought until we are there.” Eloise seemingly reads my thoughts.

  “It’s been a long time since I actually saw her. Will she even know who I am?” I grip the steering wheel harder as I turn onto the street where my mother’s house is located.

  “Joelle said she does, says she asks about you and watches your games sometimes. It’s going to be hard for everyone, Colton, just take a deep breath.”