“Yeah?” Hassan said when Freight finally looked at him.
“I’m going to come out and say this. You… need to start seeing other people. Ones who aren’t your teammates,” Freight said.
Lawrence promptly started his treadmill and stuck earbuds in his ears.
“Shut up, Freight,” Hassan said. Though only warming up with a walk on the machine, he could already feel his heart rate gaining momentum.
“Best way to get over that heart break is to get back on the horse,” Freight said.
Hassan said nothing.
“Get a friend or two. Nothing serious, you know? And just enjoy her.”
Hassan glanced at him, but still said nothing.
“Hell, pageant queen, you were at the same party as us. She’s doing the same thing right now. She’s already back on the horse and riding it by the look of things,” Freight said.
Hassan punched the stop button on his treadmill, climbed down, and crossed over to his teammate.
“Shut. The fuck. Up,” he said, then went for the machine furthest from Freight. This time, he could hear Cash as he fussed at Freight, demanding to know why he always had to say the worst shit.
Hassan wondered the same thing.
He didn’t care if Freight had a point. When Hassan wasn’t in class, he was studying, on a football field, in the weight room, at the Player’s Lounge, or locked in his room.
He found quiet times the hardest. On the rare occasion that his roommates were nowhere to be found, Hassan cranked up something loud and angry on the stereo and studied his playbook and whatever changes the coach had erected that week. When he grew tired of that, he studied the school’s catalog and wondered for the umpteenth time whether he should pick up a Communications degree in addition to the Business degree he pursued, a Sports Administration one, or leave well enough alone. When the loneliness bore down on him, he’d look in the halls and catch a stray teammate. He’d dragged them into his room so they could go over the playbook together or strategize on how to strengthen the team for that week’s opponent. Sometimes they’d review the highlight reels specially dubbed for him on request by the team’s Audio/Visual Department. Occasionally, they’d watch ESPN, shoot the shit, and get to know each other better. It surprised even him how much he talked about Nathan. And Edy. Still.
Freight had been raised by an ailing Creole grandmother and was good-natured about all things—even his then-teenaged father abandoning his mother out of an apparent fear of responsibility. Freight still saw his mother here and there; he always got a card at Christmas and a tie in the mail at Easter, though drugs still claimed most of her money and time. “Don’t worry,” he’d told Hassan as he took in his teammate’s troubled expression. “She’ll clean up when the time is right. Some people struggle with discipline, you know.” He kept a picture of his mother as a bright-eyed sixteen-year-old by his bed.
Then there was Cash. He came from a two-parent home filled with love. Both his parents worked hard, his mother as a maid, his father as a factory worker. He was the oldest of seven children, four of whom were boys. All of them were the best at everything, to hear Cash tell the tale.
Both X and Tennessee were chip-on-the-shoulder inner city kids who’d never seen a football camp, elite training session, or gym membership in their lives. Tennessee lived five miles from the Titans’ stadium and had never seen a game. Nonetheless, they were two of the toughest, most bad ass players Hassan had ever seen. They made him think and question. Though he had glimpsed poverty in Boston and India, he had never shook its hand and called it friend.
There were other stories, enough to fill a roster, and increasingly, Hassan came to believe he would know them all. They passed the time.
Despite being the one to dump Edy, Hassan still found himself staring off into space, taking out a picture of her or them, and a time or two having to brush away loathsome tears.
He’d been sitting on the edge of his bed the last time it happened. He’d bent over to pull off his favorite pair of Adidas and the engraved, silver dog tags, a sixteenth birthday gift from Edy, hit him in the face. He taken them off, read the lie, touched it, and stared at it endlessly. He was her favorite guy, in this life and the next. Not Wyatt. Not some other guy.
His vision blurred. Hassan snatched the dog tags from his throat and hurled them at the trashcan. Then he went after them to stomp them into oblivion, trampling again and again. It was Lawrence who pulled him away from the jewelry, making him stumble on the quick backtrack to his bed. And like that, it was over.
“It’s okay,” Lawrence said. “You’re okay. I promise, you are.”
Thursday night the football team stayed quarantined in their respective rooms and on Friday, they boarded a charter flight to Oxford, Mississippi. The flight was subdued, mostly on account of changes to the changes in the playbook. Those had the players up half the night studying. Never mind whatever school work they had to get done.
Had Hassan really thought he could handle a double major? With Edy, he’d felt some kind of superhero: anything had been within the realm of possibilities. But now, all alone, he mostly felt downtrodden, beaten, exhausted. His mind never stopped working. The anger never stopped coming. It mingled with a potent sort of nausea, as he contemplated yet another game without Edy’s cool, steady voice, and warm, steadying touch.
When they arrived in Oxford, a bus shuttled them from the airport to a Marriott less than a mile from Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. They’d settle into their rooms, take lunch, and have a free evening before tomorrow’s game.
On check-in, Hassan and Lawrence were assigned to room 419, where, to their surprise, they found a pretty pink corsage waiting on each of the two double beds. Four roses clustered together with a spray of ivy and a dusty rose ribbon. Curious, Hassan ventured over to the next room where Jacob Miller, a second string cornerback, and Gavin Cook, the free safety, were rooming. Jacob held up the same beautiful corsage with a frown on his face. Up and down the halls, players stepped out, each with an identical pink corsage and a look of confusion on their face.
Coach didn’t parse words on the day of the game. He reminded them of the talent on their team and what it took to win. Then he told them to go and take what was theirs.
From the place in the tunnel, Hassan heard the fans, already at each other’s throats with chants of “Go to Hell, LSU!” and “Go to Hell, Ole Miss!”
“Let’s go!” shouted a voice from the front as the team trotted out. Boos rained down like hail from an enormous sea of red. In the stands were signs, mocking LSU tradition with “Geaux to Hell.” He saw the “Geaux to Hell, Pradhan” signs and grinned. And then he noticed the flowers, dotting the breast of every man, woman, and child in Rebel Red. Pink corsages. Corsages like the ones that had been waiting for them at the hotel. In the crowds, on the home team sideline, on the overlay of every Pride of the South band member, and on the chest of every burly Ole Miss player. Each had the same pink corsage.
Their prom dates had arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Silas and Edy crowded together, with the crown of their heads touching, as they looked down at his oversized phone.
“I’m not doing that one. Suggest another,” he said.
“You suggest another!” Edy cried. “You’ve got too many stipulations. You think everything makes you look silly or dumb or not cool enough. You’re so full of yourself that nothing’ll do.”
“Hush, rabbit. I’ve made some good suggestions that you shot down,” he said.
“We can’t improvise something historical,” Edy said. “The whole point is that it’s from the past and not contemporary.”
“And you think she knows every dance that’s ever been done before?” Silas was laughing at her now, his eyes told her that. “She doesn’t, you know. We could tell her anything.”
Edy’s gaze narrowed. “You’re doing this because you know I spazz over grades.”
“I am,” Silas agreed. He hit the power button on his
phone, killing the dance suggestions they’d been Googling. “This really isn’t a hard assignment, you know. You’re the one who’s making it hard by trying to go prehistorical.”
“Yeah, and you want to pop and lock, as if that would give us a decent grade!”
They were in their usual standoff which Edy suspected would gain the usual outcome. Then Silas surprised her.
“Look, you move okay. If you think you could handle a lindy hop or a cha cha with me…”
“Handle?” Edy balked. The boy made a business of insulting her, she swore.
“Yes, handle. If you think you can handle it, then we’ll do one of those. Assuming a fifty to sixty-year-old dance is old enough for Professor Martin.”
It was the closest they’d come to a solution since getting the assignment. There was no way Edy would turn that down.
“We’ll cha cha,” Edy said. “That’s the harder of the two.”
Silas shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve noticed a challenge with either.”
What an ass.
After scrambling to find an open, adequate place to practice that met both their scheduling needs, they gave up and agreed to work at his place. He had an evening job bartending on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Saturdays were game day for her and she still had dance practice in the afternoons and just after dinner. So, they agreed on Mondays and Wednesdays, with an occasional Sunday if needed. Silas would pick her up on his bike and they’d venture off campus to work on choreography in his living room.
He hadn’t told her that he had a little brother, an adorable boy with expressive gray eyes and a smile that warmed her. He looked over at Silas and whispered in a too loud voice, “Silas, she’s beautiful,” only to have Silas elbow him so hard he stumbled.
Edy had a sudden urge to hug the little one. Not just because he’d called her beautiful and she couldn’t remember the last time someone had. Not just because she knew he was a boy with no mother and father either. It was the eyes, she supposed, identical to Silas’ yet warm instead of hard and forbidding. She had one wild moment where she imagined Silas looking at her in that way and she wanted it, she wanted that.
Edy shoved away the thought.
“I’ve got to make dinner first,” Silas said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He looked her over. “You could probably use it, actually.”
Edy scowled. Dinner hadn’t been anything thrilling, just a weird pork sausage patty that she’d picked at, coupled with lima beans and roasted kale. But she wasn’t going to validate Silas’ sidelong insult about her being too thin or whatever he was implying.
“I’m fine,” she said and marched over to the couch with her backpack.
She’d known that he would have a few things to do when he got home; he’d said as much. So, she’d come with the textbooks for her other classes and meant to catch up.
After a few minutes of fumbling with books and deciding to handle the history reading she’d yet to tackle, she heard Silas banging around with the pots and pans.
“Heard from Hassan?” he said.
Edy refused to look up. “Of course not. Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” Silas said. “But you seem to.”
Now, she couldn’t help but look up.
“Who’s Hassan?” his little brother said.
“Mind your business. Go do some homework,” Silas snapped, harder than Edy would’ve expected.
“I did it already!”
Silas snorted. “I doubt it.” He gave the kid one withering look and he scampered away, slamming the door with a bang. Silas pulled out a chopping board and an assortment of produce from the refrigerator.
Edy returned to her reading.
“So, what happened with you two?” he said.
Edy sighed. “We broke up, that’s what.”
“I figured as much. Who did the breaking off?”
Edy shot him a cautious glance. There was no way she was venturing into such sensitive terrain with the crass, bullish, and arrogant Silas Swain.
He stopped chopping to stare at her. “He broke up with you,” he said finally.
She looked away. Even when she didn’t speak, the truth rose plain on her face.
“It wasn’t meant to be, that’s all. He didn’t trust me.” For some reason, she couldn’t stop gnawing on her lip. “And he had someone else,” she said quietly.
“Sounds like an idiot,” Silas said. He went to the fridge and peered inside. “You allergic to anything?”
Edy frowned. Hadn’t she told him she wouldn’t eat? “No,” was what she said instead.
“We’re having spaghetti. I go heavy on garlic so you’ll have to forgive me.”
“Just don’t try to kiss me,” Edy said. It was meant to be a joke, but somehow the laugh got lost. He only looked at her. She looked back.
“I’ll try to remember that,” he said.
A little more than an hour later, Edy sat sprawled on Silas’ dumpling-like couch, where it was lumpy in all the right places according to him. She was on her second Pina colada and feeling spoiled. He’d made it with extra pineapple once she told him how much she liked them. In the time it took him to cook, they’d discussed her family, which seemed to fascinate him, and his brother, which was all the family he had. Levi was twelve and into robotics. He played football but understood that it wasn’t his future. Silas planned for him to study engineering or some sort of science. Maybe even go to medical school.
Levi had questions at dinner, one after another, until Silas forbid him from speaking again. Where was she from? Why was her accent so funny? How did she meet his brother? Did she like his brother? “
That was where Silas ended the interview.
“Keep that up,” he warned, “and you’re heading for the room.”
But that didn’t have the effect he was hoping for as Levi looked from one to the other, let his eyebrows dance, and smirked at Silas knowingly.
Suddenly, Edy was aware of the time. And aware of how long she’d been in Louisiana—not long enough to be in some guy’s apartment, she supposed. Last year, she hadn’t known him at all. Didn’t that mean that they hadn’t known each other long enough for this?
Wait. What the hell was she saying? She was there to do school work. It just so happened that he had to feed his kid brother, that he insisted on her eating, and the conversations between them went on and on, approaching a comfort she would have never expected.
When dinner was done, Edy insisted on helping him and Levi with the dishes. Silas washed, she dried, and Levi put them away. They worked shoulder to shoulder trading little barbs about the thoroughness of one’s work or the lack of work ethic. She claimed to see nonexistent stains, Silas swore she needed to buff the dishes to a high gloss, and he also swore that his kid brother put everything in the wrong place. When both Edy and Levi grew tired of Silas’ mocking, she splashed him with dirty dish water. He, in turn, did the same to her. Levi disappeared, though when, Edy couldn’t say. By the time they were ready to work on choreography, both were soaked and dingy to boot. Edy’s white LSU shirt had an obscene wet spot dead center, complete with tomato splotches.
“I’d say I was sorry about that, but it would be insincere,” Silas said. He ventured around the kitchen’s island counter and down a short hall. Edy heard a squeaking door open. When he returned a moment later, he was shirtless and hard bodied before he pulled on a simple black tee.
“Want something to wear?” he said.
She nodded, eyes averted from him. Then he disappeared down the same hall.
“You’re tiny,” he said. “You can probably fit one of Levi’s shirts. Mine would swamp you.”
“Are you sure he wouldn’t mind?”
Silas shrugged. “I grabbed an old one. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Although…” he glanced down at her chest, “I’m not absolutely sure it will fit.”
Edy felt her cheeks grow hot. She snatched the shirt from Silas and started down the hall.
“Second door on the ri
ght!” he called.
She slipped into the bathroom and changed. It turned out he was right. Levi’s shirt practically strangled her chest. No way was she going out there like that.
“Well?” Silas called, his voice so close that Edy jumped. “What’s the verdict?”
“It’s tight,” she called.
He snorted. “Judging by your jeans, I’d say you were into that.”
Embarrassment flooded Edy. Was he flirting with her or making fun of her? With him, she could never tell.
“Just come out. You girls make a big deal out of everything. I’m sure…” He trailed off to nothing when Edy opened the door.
“Oh,” Silas said. He didn’t even make a point of lifting his gaze.
“See! You’re being a pig!” she cried and swatted him on the arm.
“I’m not, I just…” For a moment, he wore a bizarre look on his face, as if even he wasn’t sure what he was doing.
“Just what?” Edy said.
He shook off whatever he was about to say. “Let’s get some work done. It’s getting late and I know you have a curfew.”
Edy nodded.
Right. Work. That’s what she was there for.
Later that night, back in her room, Edy puzzled over that weird moment with Silas. He’d been looking at her, outright looking at her chest, and she’d accused him of being a pig. It wasn’t that she’d felt objectified though she implied as much. No, she had felt something else, something frightening, something she’d only experienced with Hassan.
She put the thought out her mind. There had never been anyone for her but the boy next door.
Edy and Silas didn’t get to practice again until the week after they faced Florida. Since there was no game and therefore no performance for Edy and her teammates, she thought it the perfect time for them to apply themselves to the assignment.
And it was. They managed to put together the beginnings of a decent performance, although it was shorter than Edy would have liked. And she got some great cooking out of the deal, too. Chicken alfredo. Jambalaya. Salisbury steak. On one night, there were barbecue ribs she moaned over. Edy was halfway through those and sure she had sauce on her face when Silas sat down, took a deep breath, and said, “Go out with me.”
Wrecked (Love Edy Book Three) Page 19