Sharing Harper

by V. Murphy

  “Anyway, I didn’t want to be involved in the real estate business, but this was not in my father’s plan. I had been a great football player when I was in high school. I loved the game, but my parents saw it as an after school activity, whereas I saw it as something I wanted to pursue. Football was my passion, but they always said that I was one injury away from retirement,”

  “When I was a senior in high school, the scout for the University of Texas Longhorns saw me playing as a quarterback one day when I scored the most epic touchdown anyone in college football has ever seen. It was the last quarter of the high school state championship game. I drop back in the pocket and gazed at the scoreboard seeing that there are only twelve seconds in the game. The high school state championship was on the line and my only shot at a scholarship was here so I had to make it worth and seize the opportunity. The linebacker ran at me and I dodged to the right. I ducked under the safety as he jumped to tackle me from above and looked down field and saw the wide receiver that was my only cover. I released the perfect spiral and I could sense the anticipation as the ball was flying through the air. The crowd silenced. As I looked up, I saw the receiver catch the ball at the end zone and I celebrated with joy as we won the last point.”

  I looked—mesmerized--at Ryder who was recanting a tale of his past. His face was lost in the past and I envied the fact he was able to talk about his past with such joy. This was a clear moment for Ryder where he escaped to another place in time where he was proud of who he was and who he had become.

  “Anyway, to continue with the story that you initially asked and not go on some rampant tangent.”

  “No, I loved your tangent, you looked completely lost in your past, and it was wonderful to see,” I interrupted.

  “It was stupid.”

  “It was not stupid Ryder.”

  “Well I played for the University of Texas for three years kicking everyone’s ass who tried to step on my game. I was the shit on campus. Everywhere I went people either wanted to be me, wanted to know me or wanted to get in my pants,” he said as he winked at me for effort as if to joke that was the only reason I was with him. “I was drafted by the Houston Texans with a 1.2 million dollar contract. After the second home game, I was tackled and felt the bones crush under me in my knees and ankles. I was blindsided with pain, but from what I heard, my ankle was 180 degrees from where it should be pointed and my right knee was crushed. That was the end of my career. Instead of listening to my parents tell me I told you so, I left Texas and moved here. I used surfing as my way of coping with not being able to play football and used the earnings I had made plus some of my trust to live, but to occupy my time, I work at the coffee shop, and I want to instill good work ethic in those around me.”

  “Wow,” was all I was able to say. I wanted to jump across the table spilling our glasses of wine and give him a huge hug. Although he drifted over the part where he got injured, it was clear in his body language that it hurt him that he failed at something he loved to do.

  “Have you picked up a football since?” I asked curiously.

  “Nope, I don’t think I can. It was too painful to be proven wrong by my parents. To this day, I am their biggest disappointment. My older brother runs the office with my dad and has the perfect southern belle family. That just wasn’t for me. I was too much of a rebel child.”

  “Do you blame yourself?”

  “Absolutely. You have no idea. When I ruined my knee and ankle, it didn’t just ruin my career; it affected everyone around me at the time. I went from being the irresponsible dope who just came into a ton of cash to knowing that I have absolutely no skills whatsoever and therefore have no idea what I would do.”

  “But you still found a job and you’re working now.”

  “At a freaking coffee shop Harper, I feel like such an ass. I am a complete and total useless loser.”

  “You are not. Do not say that. I think you should do something with football. You know there are things other than playing the game? Like maybe you could get into something like coaching or teaching kids?”

  “Maybe,” he said just as our waiter came with our salads.

  He dove into his, clearly wanting to avoid the topic by stuffing his face so he didn’t have to talk about it.

  “How did you find the coffee shop?” I asked in between bites of salad.

  “It is near my house and I loved going in there anyway, so I figure I might as well give it a go.”

  “I met one of your coworkers, her braces are super sexy,” I sarcastically joked.

  “You know I love young meat,” He winked at me making me blush.

  “I am not that young!”

  “No, true. I don’t really work with her but the guy who runs the place is my age and he’s pretty cool. His name is Christian.”

  “Oh! I’d love to meet him maybe?” I said unsure of where that came from. I wasn’t expecting this to even last after tonight, so that was completely unexpected coming from my mouth.

  “Yeah. We always go out together. He was with me at the club where we danced that one time.”

  “It would be nice to meet him,” I genuinely responded.

  As I took an obnoxiously large gulp of my wine, Ryder finished up his salad, which disappeared as fast as it appeared. I was beginning to think that Ryder told someone that we wanted to have our privacy

  “So, you and Skye are friends then?”

  “Yup, I have known her since I started school here. She’s my rock.”

  “She seems nice, very…bubbly.”

  “Ha, yes, that is exactly how I describe her. It takes a while to get used to her, but she really means well and she is certainly on your side.” He looked surprised but laughed.

  “Well, then I propose we go out together as a group one night.”

  “Let’s try to get through tonight first,” I responded hesitantly, not sure if we would make it pass tonight.

  “Oh, you trying to get in my pants again Ms. Mae? I just might have a solution to your problem,” he said while reaching his hand under the table and grazing his fingertips across the hem of my dress. Slowly pushing the hem upwards, he circled his fingers around my thigh instantly exciting my core. His hands were sliding upwards towards me while he maintained a completely relaxed face above the table.

  Almost immediately the waiter came back to take our entrée orders and Ryder’s face look frustrated as he slipped his hand back on top of the table.

  “What can I get you folks for dinner?” the waiter asked unaware of the fact that Ryder was just about to taste his own delicious dinner with me.

  I hadn’t gotten a chance to look at the menu and my appetite was fading quickly into lustful desire.

  “Whatever he’s getting.” I stared at Ryder hoping that he wouldn’t order something completely strange. I normally wasn’t a picky eater, but when it came to things I couldn’t pronounce I tended to shy away from those items.

  “We will have the spaghetti al mare,” he announced to the waiter who then quickly shuffled off leaving us alone yet again.

  “What did you order?” I asked hesitantly, only understanding that it was some sort of pasta dish.

  “It’s pasta with sea scallops, salmon, and other kinds of fish in a white wine sauce.” His voice was unassuming as if he knew these things, which was odd because I thought all Texans knew was great barbeque.

  Either way, it sounded delicious. “Yum.”

  “You know what is delectable? You.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I can’t believe he would say something like that while licking his lips. It made me seem like a piece of meat.

  “I could stare at you all day Harper, you amaze me and when I see the gears grinding in your head while you’re lost in thought, it’s something out of a movie. You are intuitive beyond your years.”

  “I am not. I am too young for my own good and I barely understand myself so that’s what you’re seeing. You’re not seeing someone who is producing something wonderf
ul in their head, but rather someone just trying to understand the world around them. I am weak.”

  “Don’t say that.” Ryder’s voice raised from his normal tone and his southern accent seemed to disappear when he commanded me with force to stop talking.

  “You don’t know me so don’t pretend that you do.”

  “You never tell me about you. You hide yourself when we are out together, pretending like everything is okay and asking questions and doing what is right and proper, but when you are alone I have seen you break down tearing, literally tearing, yourself apart.”

  His voice was hushed again and his accent returned to the drawn out in a slow southern twang.

  “Tell me about yourself Harper, it’s your turn anyway. Why don’t you talk to your parents?”

  I took a deep breath in knowing that I would have to start by telling him what happened to me in order to explain the situation with my parents. My heart started palpitating through my chest as if it was going to bust out of the muscle and skin protecting it. My hands started to get clammy and oozed with sweat as I continuously tried to rub it away with the cloth napkin in my lap.

  My head began to spin as if the dark room around us was closing in. I knew I was sitting, but I thought the chair was going to tip over and deposit me on the carpet so that I could sit hugging myself tightly, telling myself that everything will be okay.

  Instead, I was still sitting in the chair watching Ryder stare through me.

  “Go on, you can do it. No one else is here but me,” he urged on, gesturing his hands across the table opening up to show me that it was okay to tell him how I felt, that everything would be okay.

  “I can’t,” I hissed in a slurred manner, unable to form proper words.

  “You can do it. I want to understand you Harper. I want to show you that I won’t run away if you open up to me. I won’t disappear from you ever. Please, let me show you that. Tell me what happened to you when you were younger.”

  “If I tell you, you’re going to see me as a different person and I don’t want you to see me as that person. You’re going to see me for the person I was because of my past, but I am not that person.”

  “I will not. You are who you are because of your past, but your past doesn’t define you who are. You are your past, your present, and your future. I want to be a part of all of those to understand you.”

  I glanced at him and noticed him looking with deep passion set in his eyes. I knew he cared and wanted to know

  “What if you leave Ryder? I can’t open up to you knowing that you’re going to be so freaked out afterwards that you’ll leave me. Sure, you may have the decency to sit here while we finish our lovely dinner, but afterwards you’re never going to come back. I can’t have someone do that to me again. I can’t open up only to be shut down again.”

  “I will never do that to you Harper. I told you already, there is something about you that captivates me. I can’t seem to let you go. You have made yourself a permanent stamp in my life. I want you to know that I will forever be here for you, through the good and the bad, I am here to stay.”

  My breath started to quicken and my body responded to his outburst of emotion by breaking down. My head was throbbing and a migraine felt like it was about to come on. My throat was closing in on itself and my tongue was lost in my mouth, thick, dry, and unable to form words. I stared down at my fingers, picking the polish off my nails to try and buy time. I knew I would have to tell Ryder about him and I wasn’t prepared to visit him again. I wanted to do anything but revisit those moments, the darkest of my life.

  “Okay,” I said when I was finally able to speak.

  I wanted to test myself, see if I was able to tell Ryder everything, so I figured I would start off with the beginning.

  “Well I have to start from the very beginning for you to understand everything, so I hope you have time because this is going to take a while.”

  “I have all the time in the world for you Harper Mae.”

  I took a giant breath in and began my tale. A tale of sorrow and mourning was my story.

  Chapter 8

  “It all started when I was a freshman in high school. It was the second day of class and I was running late, which was very abnormal for me, but I was still trying to find my ropes around the school and couldn’t find the classroom I needed. I finally found my class and set out for my assigned seat, which I had been given the day before...” I felt like I couldn’t continue knowing where this story was going to head. My heart started racing, jumping around knowing I what I was about to say.

  “Go on,” Ryder encouraged, “I am listening.”

  “Okay, well I noticed someone sitting in my assigned seat and I was a stickler about that kind of stuff, plus I didn’t want the teacher to think I was disobeying her, so I went up to her and told her that someone was sitting in my spot. She went over to him and quickly ushered him away. He moved to the seat directly next to mine and when I was seated I was able to take a good look at him. He was grimy looking, but in a way that was appealing. He had a lip ring on his left side, small almond eyes, and lips that were miles wide. His hair was black and looked like a thick mop on top of his head. He was looking straight at me, but there was something missing in his eyes.” I shuddered thinking about him, knowing that look in his eyes would haunt me for the four years we were together.

  “Anyway, after class he came up to me and told me his named was Tyler Rhoads but that everyone calls him Tye. His hair fell down his face and his eyebrows scrunched when he looked at me through his small slits of eyes. His demeanor was cool and as a kid in high school, I was instantly attracted to him. The only problem was that I came from a very upper-middle class background and he was low class, from the dirty part of the tracks. After a few days passed, we started texting each other and talking almost daily on the Internet. He asked me if I wanted to go smoke with him one day after school at the park. As a fourteen year old girl, I had no idea what he meant by smoke, I had assumed it was just cigarettes, but it turned out it was marijuana.” My eyes darted up to look up at Ryder and his face was stoic still listening to my story. When he saw I was looking up at him, he urged me to continue on with his eyes showing empathy and finally an idea of where this story was going. An innocent girl wrapped up in the wrong crowds. It couldn’t be more typical, but it was life changing for me.

  “So we hung out smoking weed with his friends and I loved that I was finally being included in a group of friends. As the days passed, the style of clothing I wore went from being preppy to being more edgy. I started to wear heavy black mascara and deep black eyeliner that smudged through the bottom of my eyes. I started listening to music, if you could call it that, it was perpetual screaming. I desperately wanted to fit in with this group. I did anything in my power to become their friends.”

  “I noticed a few girls who used to hang out with them wore belly shirts with their stomachs hanging out and had sex with the guys in the group in exchange for marijuana. Well, I knew that isn’t what I wanted, so I talked to Tye about it. It turned out he wanted to be exclusive with me and I was just overjoyed that a boy was paying attention to me. I thought I could conquer the world at fourteen and this was the best thing that could happen to me. I know this may sound so stupid but I was young.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid, you were young. We all made mistakes when we were young.” Ryder exhaled. He looked at me intently when he spoke, lending me comfort in the fact he was still listening to me and maybe even understanding where I was coming from.

  “Please continue your story,” he said with ease.

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath hoping to rush the words out as fast as I could to get this whole thing over with. Although I must say, I already felt some burden lifted off my chest and my air capacity finally lending me some more room to breathe.

  “One day the group and I were sitting outside at night in this park. My parents really didn’t care where I was because they were too concerned with the
ir conventions, cocktail dinners, or some other bullshit party they just HAD to attend. So, we were hanging at this park smoking some pot and Tye told me that no one was home and he was alone in the house. I was nervous about the whole thing, never going farther than kissing a boy, but everyone in the group howled urging me on to go home with him, so I did. That’s where everything started going downhill, little did I know then that was the turning point in our relationship.” I sucked in the air, desperately trying to catch a break, but Ryder’s stare was laced with urgency for me to continue and comfort to try to understand how difficult this is for me.

  “When we went back to his place we had sex. It was painful and awkward. He shoved himself on top of me, grunted a couple of times and shoved his hand in my mouth when he was done. I didn’t think anything of it, but it was an action that I won’t ever forget. When someone wants to make sure that your pleasure is being suppressed so that his own pleasure was enjoyable this is what ended up becoming the basis to our relationship.”

  “We dated for a good year and everything was fine, we did our thing together and ended up being branded as an “it” couple that everyone knew at our high school. After about the first year, I realized that Tye was a drug-dealer. He took me along on one of his deals because we happened to be together, normally they were at night when I was home. We walked to this kid who lived a couple blocks down from me. He was from an extremely wealthy and prominent family in the community. I was shocked to see that he and Tye knew each other. I stayed back in the car, but it was clear there was a white powdered substance being distributed through them. When I brought it up to Tye it was the first time he ever stood up to me.” Small teardrops escaped my face as I was brought back to the day that it all started with Tye. I couldn’t look up, so I kept telling my story in a low hum with my head hanging low, ashamed of how disgusting I let myself become.