by Dean, Ali
He sits up with hazy lust clouding his face. “Huh?” Poor guy.
“I know it’s not cool but my head is screwed up right now. I thought this was what I wanted. But I guess, um, now’s a bad time.”
He shakes his head, trying to keep up. “Right, yeah. Bad time. Okay.” He doesn’t hide his frustration with me, and I don’t blame him.
I walk to the door, once again feeling embarrassed for my actions. “You have my number if you change your mind,” Chris says, and I stiffen at his words.
Oh, the irony.
* * *
It’s a struggle getting through the next couple weeks of practice. Half the time I want to skip, go find a party and try to lose myself. The other half I want to call Jack, and find out more about his minivan and his baby sister. And kiss his dimples. And take my time touching him. Or just sit in my bed eating popcorn and watching YouTube videos of Kings of Sound performing.
But I show up, doing the workouts, even if my heart’s not in it. It keeps me from going crazy, or should I say, crazier. It gives me a purpose. I’m good, the best breaststroker on the team, one of the best in our conference, and on the edges of the national scene. I like being good, I like the rush of winning a race, killing it in a workout at practice, or breaking a record. But I’m afraid to really throw down. I’m scared to set goals only to fail to meet them. Terrified of trying to be as focused and determined as Shay, when I know I’ll fall short. So I just show up, go through the motions, let swimming be what it is – a source of consistency in my life. Something I’m good at, that gives me a sense of belonging. But nothing more.
It feels like there’s a weight on my body dragging me down in the days leading up to our first meet of the season. I’m sluggish in the pool, my head replaying my moments with Jack, my body seeking a high I fear I won’t find in casual hook-ups anymore. It’s like Jack ruined it for me. This careful balance I’d found over the years that was working just fine for me. I got what I wanted, what I needed, and it wasn’t messy.
There’s another concert at the Happy Hollow the night before our first meet. The band’s okay, not good enough that I would normally bother going to a show, but the bass player is hot. I wasn’t planning on going. Partying the night before a meet is a big no-no, even for me. But somehow, after Beatrice has gone to bed and Shay has gone over to Jett’s for the night, I find myself heading over to the show, hoping to find something to release me from this horrible ugly thing festering inside me and growing each day. The thing in my gut that started out as emptiness after Jack left that night, it’s transformed, taken over. It won’t let me ignore it any longer, but maybe I can destroy it by replacing it with something different. A guy, someone I can make fall for me and make myself fall for, just for a night.
When I get to the Happy Hollow, it’s a bluegrass band playing but it’s Kings of Sound that fills my head. Jack’s voice that I hear. I go straight for the bar, ordering two shots of tequila and downing them quickly. I start to make my way into the crowd, but Jack is everywhere, suffocating me, so I turn around and march back to the bar, ordering two more shots. The bartender gives me a wary look, but it’s a dude so I just smile and he hands over the shots without question. To guys who think with their dick, I raise a silent toast, before slamming the shots back.
The night is a blur of drinking, dancing, music, and trying to find something out of reach. When the band wraps up the final song of the night, I’m barely holding myself upright. I should just go home, crash, and struggle through a hangover that’s sure to hit at the meet tomorrow. Instead, I do the same thing I did two weeks ago. Only this time, as I walk outside and turn toward the alley, I’m not feeling so steady, and I’m not even sure which guy in the band I’m going for, if any. The bass player was all right, cute enough, a guest they had come up on piano was a little cuter, but too skinny. And not Jack. Nope. Jack’s the one I really want. Should I call him? Maybe he’s around.
Pulling my cell out of my purse I start to scroll through, looking for his number, before remembering it’s not in my phone. It’s on a piece of paper in my sock drawer. I’m rolling my eyes at myself, muttering something, when I walk right into someone. Ah, the piano player.
He smiles. Yeah, pretty cute.
“Whoa there,” he says with a laugh, holding me steady. “Where you goin’, sweetheart? Lookin’ for someone?” He has a southern accent. No wait, Australian. Not that they’re anything alike, but whatever it is, I like it. Accents always ratchet the hotness of a guy up a notch.
I point at him. “You play piano. Are you from Australia?”
“I am,” he says with another smile. “Want a smoke?”
He holds out a packet of cigarettes and I look around. No one else is outside. “No, I don’t smoke.”
When he lights one with a shrug, I decide that smoking isn’t entirely unsexy. Sometimes, on a piano player with an Australian accent, it’s not a deal-breaker.
We talk, about music mostly, though I think I just ramble and he lets me. Others join, and the next thing I know, I’m not going home to crash after all, but headed off to a bar, a club, someone’s house, I’m not really sure. I just know that going off with strangers, when I’m this drunk and feeling off, is a bad idea. I should go home, but even thinking about it makes me feel lonely. I’m craving that rush of power and excitement, even as I know I’m likely too far gone to get it.
Chapter Six
Kick
My alarm clock wakes me the next morning and I groan with the effort of opening my eyes, and then wince at the light. It feels like someone is stabbing my temples with a knife, and my mouth is filled with cat hairballs. When I sit up, the room spins, and I’m so dizzy, I fall back on my pillow.
A moment later, I hear Beatrice muttering something, but I can’t focus. She hands me a cup of water and ibuprofen, and this time, I sit up as slowly as possible in order to toss back the pills and swallow the drink.
She helps me into standing. “Your alarm was going off for ten minutes. I came in here to shut it off,” she explains, her eyes sweeping over me. “Kick, I don’t think you can go to the meet like this. We have to leave for the pool in ten minutes.” She glances at her watch.
I just shake my head and go to the bathroom. I don’t trust my throat to work to form words. Even with a sip of water, it feels like a rusty pipe. As I sit on the toilet to pee, I notice how sensitive my vagina is, like I had sex, rough sex. Vague memories from last night come back to assault me and I finish peeing just in time to get off, turn around, and throw up in the bowl. I have a stomach of rocks when it comes to drinking. This is from something else entirely. Disgust.
Oh, God.
Bea asks if I’m okay from the other side of the door, and when I don’t answer right away, she peeks her head in. I wave her away. “I’m coming,” I croak out. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
She watches me warily, probably wondering whether to try talk me out of it. I can’t be alone right now. I need the pool. I need to be near my teammates, my sister. I need distraction. She must find her answer from my look of desperation because she nods and turns away.
After brushing my teeth and doing a few rounds of mouthwash, I go through the motions of pulling on team sweatpants, a tee shirt, a hoodie. All my stuff for the meet is in my locker at the pool, so I don’t need to think too hard. I do realize I forgot a bra as I walk downstairs, but whatever.
Bea doesn’t say anything as we walk to her car. We usually walk to the pool, but I’m thankful she makes the unilateral decision not to exert the extra energy.
“Kick, you okay?” she asks when I immediately shut off the radio that blares with her turning of the ignition.
“Nope,” I answer simply. I mean, it’s obvious, right?
“I heard you come back. It was only a few hours ago.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“That’s not why I brought it up. Although it did sound like you were crashing around. You fell going up the stair
s. I got you into bed.” She speaks quietly, and I’m thankful for her even tone. There’s no condemnation there, just an explanation. My mind hasn’t played reels from that portion of the night, and by then I might have been blacked out.
All I can do is whisper, “Thank you.”
The rest of the morning is easily one of the worst of my life. I’m thankful to be in the water, at the pool, but I can barely get through the laps, let alone actually race or try to go hard. Just diving off the blocks and doing flip turns makes my head spin.
I deserve it, of course. I don’t deserve to be here, at the meet, swimming on the A relay of one of the best teams in the nation. There’s no way everyone doesn’t know I’m fucked up right now. I feel like I’m practically zig-zagging down the lanes. I wonder vaguely if I’ll get kicked off the team for showing up to a meet like this. I’ve been in less than ideal shape for many Saturday morning practices over the years, but this brings my lack of discipline to a new level. Maybe I should just do everyone a favor and quit already.
But sometimes it feels like all I really have holding me together is swimming. It’s the one thing that doesn’t make me a complete loser. A failure. A run of the mill party girl with nothing more to offer than a pretty face. I’d really be nothing if I quit.
Shay knows something is up, of course. After the meet, she wants to talk to me. But I can’t. I don’t know how to explain any of this. I’m not even entirely sure what happened. Well, maybe I am, but if I say it aloud it will be real, and if it’s real… I can’t handle it. My own stupidity got me here. Shay won’t tell me “I told you so,” but she should. Everyone should. I deserve this.
Chapter Seven
Jack
I should have known better. I did know better. But I did it anyway, because I couldn’t stop it. I mean, I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. I knew right away that Kick wasn’t the kind of girl that you can fuck out of your system. She might have thought she was that type of girl, and I might have treated her like she was, but she wasn’t.
And so here I was, scrolling through her social media accounts while I sat in the back of the tour bus, wanting her so fucking bad it hurt. How was that even possible? We spent, what, less than two hours together total?
Worse, I was actually a little worried about the woman. She hadn’t posted anything since that night, and it had been two weeks. Kick had over twenty thousand Instagram followers, almost as many as I did, and I was the one who was supposed to be a “public figure” as a musician. Looking at her account history, it seemed she posted at least once a day, if not more, up until the night of our show at the Happy Hollow. And then, nothing.
She was a train wreck. A beautiful one, but on a fast track to crash all the same. A few brief encounters over twenty-four hours, intimate ones, but brief, and I thought I knew the girl. Not only that, I had feelings. Actual feelings for her, and I couldn’t even pretend to deny it. It was the contrast of boldness and vulnerability that pulled me to her, I guess. I didn’t know. But I hadn’t gone much longer than an hour without thinking about her.
I didn’t know if I expected her to call or what, but I knew I had to see her again. Couldn’t leave it like I had. I was angry as hell when I left that night. I wanted more with her, and that was all she would give me. And I had to take it. I tried to keep my feelings out of it, but I couldn’t. I wanted to hold her, worship her, lick her entire body from head to toe, and stay up all night figuring her out, but she wanted one quick fuck. That was it. And hell was it quick. Once I made her come with my mouth, I didn’t hold back. I found the me that only wanted the physical connection from sex, the rush, and nothing more. I held onto that as I took her, until I couldn’t anymore, and had to get the hell out of there, away from her.
Kick didn’t know it, but she was what I’d been looking for. I guess I used to be like her, and I could understand the appeal of short, fun, no-strings sex. But it got old, and I’d started engaging in it less and less over the past few years, looking instead for a woman who could be relationship material. Turned out that was a lot harder than I imagined it could be. I lost interest quickly, I suppose. Maybe it was because I already had two women in my life, my mom and my sister, and aside from music and the band, they were my world. I was starting to give up on the whole relationship thing until I met Kick, and she sucked me into her orbit, intrigued the hell out of me.
And now what was I supposed to do about it? On tour, rarely back in town, and she didn’t even want me. Probably wanted me even less after how I left that night. I guess I’d have to hold out and wait until an opportunity presented itself. It was one hell of a long shot, but it was all I had. She was a junior, at least I knew where to find her until she graduated, and it was right near home base. Until then, I’d get off on images of her in a Speedo from my phone like a complete perv while women pounded on the bus door, trying to get in. Yeah, one month after signing a record deal and we already had groupies. Imagine that.
Chapter Eight
8 months later
Shay sits on the locker room bench, waiting for me. She’s always ready before me after practice. I like to linger in the shower stalls, chatting it up with the girls and standing under the hot water. Shay’s in and out, efficient.
“Okay, someone already has the username Shay Spark. What should mine be?” She’s on her phone, setting up an Instagram account. It took years, but now she’s committed to becoming a pro swimmer after graduation next year, I finally managed to convince her she needs to tap into social media, build a presence.
“How about FierceShaySpark?”
She rolls her eyes. “That makes me sound full of myself.”
“I think it’s badass. You need something catchy. It’s perfect, just do it.”
She sighs and types in her phone, grumbling. “I guess if you have 70,000 followers you know what you’re talking about.”
“Eighty K as of yesterday,” I correct her. I just post random shit, enjoy showing off photos of the food I cooked, commenting on bands that I think are on to something, and sharing my taste in music with the universe. I post swimming photos too, of course, but I don’t have a real agenda. I’m not even consciously trying to build followers. Linking my posts to bands, food bloggers, swimmers, it got a momentum rolling that hasn’t stopped. Somehow, I started trending, and now I have random people contacting me, asking me to try their products, listen to their music, taste their food. I don’t know what to do with all of it, especially now they’ve started offering me money.
“This is so weird,” Shay comments, clearly overwhelmed as she scrolls through Instagram. “Whoa, Jett has more followers than you do! He told me he posts sometimes, but sheesh, I didn’t realize there’s this whole alternate universe out there.”
I follow Shay’s boyfriend, Jett Decker, too, of course. As an Olympic medalist, his account is hot, with followers in the six figures. He probably posts something once a month, and still has a huge following. He just signed a contract with Nike though, so that will change, since they require him to post on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook a certain number of times per week. I think Shay realized the importance of all of it once she was privy to Jett’s contract negotiations. It’s not just about your successes in the sport, it’s about brand and image too.
“How about I give you a little tutorial about Instagram tonight?”
“Sounds like a wild Saturday night,” Shay says, eyeing me skeptically. I’m less interested in partying, that’s for sure. I’ve been trying to focus on swimming, on really going for it as I enter my last year of competing. I’m not in the same league as Shay, a Division I National Collegiate champion. I can’t turn pro when I graduate, but I want to try, just once, to give it my all, and see what happens. It’s easier said than done. People expect me to party. I get stir crazy if I don’t get out and go a little wild once in a while. But I’m finding the rush from good live music, maybe some drinking, instead of in guys. Yeah, I still get drunk and act a little reckless, but I stopped look
ing for the escape from hook-ups.
It isn’t just because of that night with nameless piano guy. If that was the case, I think I might have reacted the opposite, gone around hooking up with guys like crazy to take back the control and power I lost. Because I know that’s what I got from it. I know it even more now that I don’t get it. I miss it.
No, I think something changed for me after meeting Jack Kingston. Those two nights with him, it turned my outlook on its head, and I haven’t been able to turn it back around. I haven’t dug any deeper than that, I just know that the hook-up thing, making a guy fall for me just for the fun of it, doesn’t hold the appeal it used to. Maybe I get some of that sense of empowerment I crave from the thousands of random people who follow my social media account, who seem to care what I’m up to, or at least are interested enough to look at pictures of my life. Maybe I’m finding it in swimming, now that I’m finally admitting to myself that I’m going for it, really going for it, exposing myself to the chance of failure.
“I’m trying to keep up with you, Shay. Can’t do that if I party every night,” I tell her with a little hip check to her shoulder.
“I’m proud of you, Kick. But, what about next weekend? We’re still on for StageFest, right?”
“Duh. And I said I was only trying to keep up with you, so if you’re coming, that means we both take a couple days off from the pool together, right?” I tell her with a wink. Shay only takes a couple days off from the pool three times a year: Christmas (and sometimes only one day then since it’s mid-season), right after the last championship meet of the school season and right after the last championship meet of the summer season. This early summer break will be an exception for her, but Coach Mandy actually encouraged it. The woman’s coached Olympic gold medalists, which is the only reason Shay will listen to her telling her she should take a step back this summer, let her body rejuvenate after such an epic season last year. We want our senior year at Cal U to be the best yet. Coach Mandy wants that too, and knows that means backing off this summer.