I finish for him. “Because he thought I didn’t love him.”
He nods.
Then why now? Why would he show it to me now?
As if answering my own question, I catch the TV screen from the corner of my eye. He’s stumbling to throw his tank back on, and his torn jersey above that. Fumbling nervously to get them both back on!
He made a mistake, I realize.
He’d been caught by the adrenaline. He’d forgotten he was on national television! He’s looking around anxiously, almost hoping no one saw him.
But they did.
The whole world did.
And I did.
BLAZE.
And, on my waist: DECLAN.
Oh, fuck.
FIVE
FLASH!
~ DECEMBER 15, YEAR FOUR (PRESENT YEAR) ~
-1-
Declan Cox
The locker room is mayhem. Over fifty players maelstrom in various haphazard combinations of nearly-off sweaty clothes, gleaming muscles, and dangling shoes. Most of them jump on Trev and me because we’re the heroes today. My man Trevor Perkins, best damned player to have ever played for The Giants or even the NFL. Penn State was out of its mind for having trashed his scholarship. The scouts were on him faster than flies to The Shit after they’d heard about his eligibility. Penn State would love to be able to say that Trevor Perkins got his degree at our honorable institution, only it gave him the boot when his temper would “portray badly on the school’s ethos.”
Pah. Whatever. Trev, being Trev, did graduate. He did it online with a different college, with the money he’d made from his newfound career as starting quarterback for the best damned team to have ever lived—The New York Freakin Giants. Trev got his degree out of respect for his mother, he told me. “Because I promised her,” he’d said. “Because it broke her heart when I never finished what I started, and because I always finish what I start.” Trev’s always been the more honorable of the two of us. Me? What did I do when I found out my entire reason for living, my heart, my soul, my reason for smiling, was taken from me?
I ran.
I ran to the hills and beyond and chased the peyote sunset until Trev came and found me behind a metaphorical dumpster and dragged my ass out to the Combine and made me try out for the damn Giants. He negotiated the opportunity with The Giants’s scouts, played me up and told me that if I let him down, if I didn’t play my damn ass off at the Combine where Trevor Perkins himself had stood up for me and vouched for me, he’d kick my ass personally.
I’ve fought a lot of men in my time, broken a lot of noses, cracked a fair number of ribs. But Trev Perkins would kill me in a fight. Just like he damn-near killed Dino Moretti on the night Dino tried to take my life away from me in front of my girl, my Blaze and Fire.
So I went to the freaking Combine. I held the booze in check and stopped dropping pills. Trev helped me do it, because I did want to drop. I wanted to drop every time Blaze’s pristine face shone itself magnificently and cruelly in my mind each night I tried to sleep without dreams. I wanted to drop when her green eyes found their way into my nightmares, just like Gina’s gaunt and hungry eyes had once done. Blaze’s nightmare eyes gnawed away at all the hopes I ever had of being happy, of settling down, of chilling out at Brooklyn Bridge Park and looking out onto the East River, food grilling on the barbeque, beers in hand, nothing on the mind but the beauty in your arm and your two best friends lying down on the grass.
Blaze ripped my heart apart. She shredded it and left it hanging, dangling, sitting in the claustrophobic sun to fester and rot and waste its life away, alone. With no one.
Blaze destroyed me.
Only problem is, she was right to do it. Because I lied to her. And because I lied to her, I never fought hard enough to take her back. An honest man will go to the ends of the earth for something he believes he righteously deserves. A dishonest man will cower in the filthy muck of his own cesspooled shit, in his own grimy bed. Maybe he’ll take a small stab at hunting for what he feels once belonged to him. But he gives up quick.
I was—am—that dishonest man. Blaze never found out about it, but she knew. She knew I was lying. Even if she doesn’t realize it, she knew.
I don’t deserve her. I’ll never deserve her. I hardly believe I even deserve the magnanimous good fortune I’ve had in my life since she left me: A five year contract with the NFL, a luxurious property in Brooklyn Heights and another on the West Coast. I have fancy cars, even a goddamned housekeeper three days a week! And yet I have nothing, nothing but a cavern in my heart that I fill with booze when Coach isn’t looking, and an aching burn of shame and self-hatred that is never quashed, never silenced, no matter how many bottles I drink or how many women I sleep with. And I drink and sleep with many of both.
My life has no meaning. I wake up and train my body and build my muscles because Trev makes me do it. I run on the field because Trev throws the ball to me. I owe Trev my life. He got me on my feet after I crashed a year after Blaze left me.
Trev saved me. And for Trev, I’ll do anything. Like an iguana trapped in chains, I’m silent, I go my way, but I’m never tamed. I lash out when it’s too much, I break free when I can’t hold back anymore. I’ll do that tonight. I’ll settle into a nice fat bottle of Jack and start chugging it down until some blond or brunette or some other heavily-conkered slag of a woman saunters over to me, eases her dangerous fingers over my neck, rests her naked thigh over mine, then sits on me. And rides me. Her form will be but a blur as I sit in the bar or in some hotel room and see the aforementioned silicon conkers jangling and bumping up and down while she howls “Oh, GAHDDAYAMM!” and makes the syllables of that heavenly curse sound like multiple gunshot wounds spattering against a black New York night. My cock will twist, will turn, will fire into her and I’ll pull her down against me as I ask for more. More, more, more!
Like a drug.
We’ll pull out the booze, slosh it down our throats and laugh while I turn her, booze dripping over her skin which I’ll then lick off and I’ll thrust myself into her several times, just needing another short-lived moment of highness where all is forgotten, where that beautiful, angelic girl’s green eyes and her innocent O shaped mouth disappears—Blaze’s eyes. All I need is a moment—a single goddamned moment is that too much to ask for!?—where Blaze’s memory doesn’t burn me, scathe me, taunt me and abrade my skin violently. One moment! It’s what I wanted when Trev found me, high and dry, in my apartment, puke on the floor and empty booze bottles making the place look like a fire hazard. It’s what I wanted when I dropped E after E after sickening E until the Tuesday Blues hit me so hard, so violently that only the thought of Trev’s potential sadness at losing his best friend kept me from pulling that non-metaphorical blade and putting it to my non-metaphorical wrist. And ending, most definitely non-proverbially, my shit-for-brains life once and for all.
BLAZE.
As the name says, emblazoned forever on my back, scorching and hot, the girl who tore my heart and left it burning in an arid desert. But also the girl I betrayed, the girl a threw away, like a man finding gold but tossing it away like Fool’s Gold. A diamond thrown in the trash, dismissed off as glass.
An Angel mistaken as a Tramp.
When Blondie or Brunette or Conker-Queen (or maybe all three of them) and I do each other wildly tonight in some non-cheap hotel room paid for by yours truly, I’ll keep my shirt on, just like I’ve kept it on whenever a camera has appeared in the locker rooms, the training field, everywhere. It’s hard for an NFL player to never be seen without a shirt. I managed it for over two years. Tonight I fumbled. It was the rush of the game, the high, being twenty-five points with only ten minutes to go and then scoring once, then Brown scoring, then the rapid-fire dwindle on the clock while sweat had formed on my brow and we waited anxiously for Trev to call the play.
And then that final, ecstatic, mind-blowing touchdown. Rushed over eighty yards by yours truly. A miracle. A goddamned miracle. And my jer
sey ripping. I was in cloud-nine, in heaven, blind and deaf to the calls of my inner ghosts but definitely not blind, not deaf to the tumultuous roar of sixty-thousand screaming fans, rocking the stadium on its feet and making it feel like it was about to collapse, a staggering one second left on the clock to play.
We’d won. We’d made it to the playoffs, almost guaranteed. Trev and I had taken us there—my man Trev! His dream, my dream. I was inebriated, drunk on the whiff of helmeted air and football leather. I didn’t know what I was doing, and once I started doing it, I didn’t care.
Just like a drug.
Just like the booze.
Just like the women.
But afterwards, now, in this singing and joyous locker room, men jumping, thumping, slapping chests, cameras lingering, weaving through massive bodies to find me—to find my back again! Like some sideshow freak!—I am aware of it, and I do know what I’m doing. The high is gone, the play is over.
Trev’s sitting on a bench undoing his cleats, looking at me sideways. And my shirt is back on.
He knows. He’s the only one in this uproarious room who knows what it means.
The other teammates know about the tat, of course they do. It doesn’t mean shit to them. “BLAZE.” Just a word. A word meaning fire. That’s it.
But I’m afraid that Blaze will see it. Does she watch football? Does she even like it? I don’t know. But somehow news about me always makes it onto front page covers of Star or Us Weekly or even the freaking National Enquirer. And I can just see it now: My back, my idiotic back, on tomorrow’s glossies.
The camera finds me now. It’s aimed straight at me like looking down a cannon. Next to it is a frizzy-haired woman with thick glasses and a microphone. She looks old enough to be my mother.
My mother, my cancer-stricken mother who died almost a decade ago. And my father. Pops. Murdered in front of my own—
This woman is brave to be here. Foolish. She thinks that, because of my state of joy and the party going on in the locker room, that I’m suddenly no longer Dangerous Deck or Calamitous Cox as the press likes to call me. She thinks I’m no longer the Bad Tempered Running Back I’ve gained a reputation for being, the Spoiled Kid who never gives an interview and never smiles for the camera. She thinks all that has changed.
Oh, lady, none of it has changed. And I’m about to show you just how.
I start rising off the bench. I catch Trev’s glint of fear about twenty feet away as he watches me do it. I clench my fist. The reporter says, “Mr. Cox, how does it feel—”
And she doesn’t finish. The end of her statement is a crash of metal and glass as their million dollar camera (who knows what it costs) goes smashing and spinning and flying up against the back wall, its erstwhile operator standing there looking aimlessly at it like a man who’s just seen his favorite toy broken in front of him. At first, the cameraman’s look is shock. But then it’s disgust, and then it becomes wide-open rage. He turns from the camera and points at me. “You fucking no-good—”
He doesn’t finish. He sees my fist getting ready but before I can rip his head off his shoulders Trev flies on top of me! We crash and catapult over wooden benches and there’s a sound of metal on concrete and the shrieked panic of Mrs. Reporter.
Coach flips. “Declan Cox again! How—” He’s also cut short as half the team jumps in to separate Trev and me. Lockers get hit with a crack. Male voices boom! Helmets fall. Trev’s not swinging at me, he was trying to protect the little lady. But it wasn’t the reporter lady that had pissed me off, and she was never in danger from my rage. It was that camera, that damned camera! Everywhere, everywhere I go now, there they are! They find their way into the bars I visit, the girls I fuck, the housekeepers I hire. All over the news, the tabloids, all over TMZ!
Declan’s “Cox” Out Of Control Again.
Deck Hits the Deck after Police Raid.
Cox and Pussycats Caught DUI.
I’m sick of it, sick of all of it. Sick of the money, sick of the fame, sick of playing hero to a bunch of fans who’d rape me for pennies if it meant they could get my autograph on their pigskins.
I’m sick of living the lie. What I wouldn’t give to go back, back to that first week when Blaze and I had first met, when she’d been struggling for rent and I’d been struggling to build my business.
Last I heard, she’s doing pretty well for herself.
The ruckus in the locker room eventually settles. Coach is pissed and he rips me a new one, tells me he’s sick of my shit and sick up to here of my name soiling the name of The Giants and if I don’t shape up he’s gonna find a running back who’s half as good as me but who knows how to act like a man! Trev stands behind me, saying nothing. Coach has been threatening to bench me for a long time, but he’s needed me. It’s been a tough season. He doesn’t need me again until the playoffs. We’ve made it. We can lose the next two games and we’ll still make it unless another miracle happens over in Washington. And then he says it, in a fit of rage, but he does say it: “You’re out, Deck! Next two games. Benched! Suspended! And I’m fining your ass!”
It’s not the first time.
But it’s embarrassing. And I notice the reporter’s making frantic notes.
Coach might be talking in the heat of the moment, but he never goes back on what he says. It’s a question of honor. What he doesn’t know about me is that the games keep me sane, keep me breathing, keep me living. The games give me something to look forward to. It’s gonna be a rough two weeks...
There’s a new dude the team is looking to contract—Eduardo Mendez. Most Promising Running Back Since Declan Cox Himself, the papers have touted. Something tells me Coach might not need me anymore if Mendez turns out to be what everyone dreams of.
The worst part of it, is I don’t care. I don’t give a flying fuck about it. And that’s a problem. Because circumstances have changed, but the attitude hasn’t. The attitude of not caring, of telling the world to go screw itself. The attitude of flying toward death and not being able to get there fast enough.
The attitude I’ve had since I lost Blaze.
Trev grabs me by the elbow, maneuvers me to the showers where no one else has entered yet, too busy celebrating outside.
Trev says nothing, only looks at me with disappointed eyes.
“I know, I know,” I say.
“You don’t know! You don’t know!” He looks out the door, making sure the reporter is gone.
I ready myself for the lecture, but it doesn’t come.
“You’re not going down to your local honky-tonk or pickin up some fuckin waitress in Atlantic City tonight, Deck. You’re showering, you’re coming home with me, and you’re gonna have dinner with my Ma.”
I start rolling my eyes.
Trev puts his index finger to my eyes. “Test me, motherfucker. Just test me, and I swear to God, what you saw me do to Dino I will do twice as hard to you, and you know Coach will turn a blind eye to it because no one cares for your shit anymore in this team!”
Trev’s hazelnut eyes burn black with rage. His dark skin gleams as fury covers him. A shower goes on and steam starts to billow in between us. More men appear behind him, nude and scowling. No one’s impressed at my antics tonight.
“Try me!” Trev says again.
“I heard you the first time.”
I think of the smell of beer at whatever dive I’d go to to pick up a broad tonight; I think of the headache I’d be splitting tomorrow morning. Most of all, I think of the shame, the same shame that hits me the morning after, every time I do this. And then I think of roast beef, Trev’s mom preparing it from her new place over at Prospect Heights which Trev purchased for her, not too far off from Tom’s. I think of maybe even spending the night, throwing the ball with some kids over at Prospect Park.
Again, I’m grateful to Trev for pulling me out the shit.
Again, I’m too damn proud to say anything about it.
Again, after we’ve showered and dressed, and he wraps his arm aro
und my shoulder, I know I don’t need to. Because he already knows.
The nightmares still slam me. But Trev’s the light at the end of my tunnel, the light in a dark basement, and the reason I keep going.
He’s the last thing I have left keeping me breathing.
-2-
Trev convinces me to go say hi to the fans at Tom’s.
And when we arrive, I start thinking about Fate.
As I walk in, as I’m thumped by a wall of body-heat and stale air when we open the glass doors to the restaurant, as the roars of the crowd swirl around me and people cheer and thrust beer mugs in the air and raise their glasses of whiskey and wine and rant out: “TREVOR! DECLAN! TREVOR! DECLAN! BROOKLYN BROOKLYN BROOKLYN BROOKLYN!” As all these things happen, something else happens, something drives its merciless fist into my gut with such searing pain that for a second I’m left winded, unable to breathe as I see the spear to my heart and the hangman behind my noose. I’m left speechless, dumbstruck, open-mouthed and shocked.
She’s here... And she’s looking at me, with eyes so green, so liquid, so shiningly bright and redolent of regret and love, that my legs go weak. And my heart bursts into fire.
The chants: “DECLAN! TREVOR! DECLAN! TREVOR! BROOKLYN-BROOKLYN-BROOKLYN!”
She’s at a booth, sitting all alone on one side. Vikki and Skate sit on the other seat, their backs to us but now turning. Skate has regretful eyes as he looks into mine. I’m sorry, they say, but I need to tell him he shouldn’t be. Somehow this is exactly what should have happened tonight. This is the Universe, isn’t it? This is the reason my jersey ripped, the reason I lost myself and tore my pads and tank off and flexed my back on national TV like a baboon. The reason I trashed that camera (damages: thirteen-thousand dollars, off my paycheck, FYI. And that’s not including the coach’s own fine.) This is the reason Trev invited me to dinner at his place and said we should stop by at Tom’s to say hi to the fans.
Reasons. Endless reasons why the Universe—that sick prankster that’s done nothing but take take take from me—is now twisting and turning its axis so that the stars bring me and Blaze, here, now, staring at each other. Once again.
Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three) Page 8