by Teagan Kade
One hand pinning down his wrist, I lift my other high and prepare to bring it down right into his smug fucking face.
“Go on,” he taunts. “Fucking do it, you faggot.”
I notice people assembled in the doorway, watching. They stand there with open mouths, at least two of them filming on their phones.
My fist unclenches.
Two security guards rush in. One pushes me away, holding me back with a hand as I try to regain my breath.
The realization that follows is so heavy, so utterly weighty as I look down at Leon, that it threatens to destroy me. Even when the cops arrive, my hands pulled together behind my back, I remain numb and distant.
It’s just a dream, I tell myself.
It’s all just a bad fucking dream.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WILLOW
The last person I expect a call from following my successful meeting with Karen is Constable Granger of the Penbrook Police Department.
So, here I am, waiting down at the police station with a prostitute on one side of me and a prime candidate for People of Walmart on the other.
“Willow Grant?” calls a stocky officer from the front of the room. “You’re up.”
I collect my bag and follow the officer down to the back of the station.
From what I was able to piece together, there was an altercation between Asher and Leon at the Quagmire. Both wound up bloody, but early reports suggest Leon got the short end of the stick. I’m praying it was simple misunderstanding.
Because ‘simple misunderstanding’ ends with someone’s nose being broken.
In truth, I have a pretty good idea what this was about.
The officer pulls us up in front of a cell. “I’ll be right outside if Evander Holyfield here tries anything.”
“Thanks,” I mutter.
Asher’s sitting on a bench against the far wall staring down at his bruised and broken knuckles. He looks up. “Thanks for coming.”
I step closer to the bars. “What the hell happened?”
He stands and leans against the wall with one hand, the other running through his hair. There’s blood on his shirt. “I don’t know. I snapped.”
“I’m going to need more than that.”
He pushes off the wall, pacing in the cell. “Your friend Karen just left.”
“Did she? I was just speaking to her this afternoon.”
He nods solemnly. “I know. Why didn’t you tell me they had Leon volunteering at the home?”
I have to look away for a moment. “I guess I was embarrassed for not saying no in the first place. The Dean, Karen… I didn’t want to let them down.”
Asher starts to pace again, hands on his head. “Yes, the Dean. Karen came on his behalf, you know. They found a small bag of cocaine on Leon. He’s suspended. I’m surprised he wasn’t expelled, truth be told. There was a fucking snowstorm in the first stall.”
I try to put a lid on the unease welling up inside me. “And you?”
He stops. “No more baseball this year. No more team captain.”
“They can’t—”
He looks dejected. “They can and, honestly, I deserve far worse. There’ll be plenty of community service lined up as well, though I imagine the McMahon Center’s off the list now. I really fucked him up, Willow. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.”
“What did he do?”
I see a cold glint in Asher’s eyes I’ve never seen before.
I don’t like it.
“It’s more about what he said,” Asher continues.
I take a step back. “Are you angry with me?”
He comes forward and holds the bars. “Leon told me about you and him. He was boasting about it, shoving it in my fucking face. Do you know how that felt? How could you neglect to tell me about that?”
He is angry.
“I told you. That’s all in the past. That’s not who I am any more. Leon’s part of that past, yes, but I didn’t think it was important. I’ve moved on. I didn’t know how to tell you without upsetting you.”
“He told me you slept around with everyone. The entire fucking…” He stops, shaking his head. “Said you were a…”
I step up to the bars. “What? What were you going to say?”
He pushes away and steps back into the shadows. “Does it fucking matter?” he snaps.
“Don’t take this out on me, Asher. I understand why you feel this way, but it doesn’t give you any right to speak to me like that.”
He rushes forward and slams his hand against the bars. “I’ll say whatever the hell I want.”
I flinch back. “What’s going on with you?”
“Me?” he bellows. “What’s going on with you that you didn’t think you could trust me, that I had to find out about all this from my supposed best friend? It was fucking humiliating.”
“It’s the past!” I scream, losing control. “I’m not that person anymore.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure I’m the only guy you’re sleeping with? Fuck. I mean you might be creeping around when I’m sleeping, knocking on doors, happily spreading your legs and lips for anyone.”
“Fuck you,” I jab, the cursing foreign in my mouth.
He laughs, mocking me. “You’re such a badass now, aren’t you?”
“You have no right!”
“Go!” he yells back. “You were nothing but another lay anyhow.”
I fight back the tears. “You don’t mean that.”
He’s locked into this now. He can’t back down. “Don’t I? Let me spell it out: You. Are. Nothing. To. Me.”
I swallow hard, voice caught in my throat when I go to speak.
I can’t take this. I signal the officer outside and start to walk.
“Yeah, go on,” yells Asher. “Lot of fucking good you could do anyhow.”
With those hateful words ringing in my ears, I run out of the station into biting cold.
How could I be so stupid, so delusional?
I don’t stop running until I’m back in my room, mercifully no Amy around to witness my subsequent breakdown.
*
“Ms. Grant, would you like to join us in the land of the living?”
I jerk awake, my cheeks glowing hot when I realize every eye in the auditorium is on me. “Sorry, professor,” I squeak, mortally embarrassed.
Everything has gone to hell. I’ve become that student, the one who falls asleep in class.
I’ve barely been sleeping. That’s the problem. Every time I close my eyes I’m right back at the police station with Asher, his eyes narrow and his words cold. I haven’t been hurt like that in a long time. The way he cut me to the bone, digging right into my deepest fears and emotions, was so hurtful, so completely out of character I’m struggling to believe this is the same man I was so at the home with, the same Asher who I shared my soul and my body with.
Big mistake.
I should have known it was too good to be true. The most eligible bachelor on campus suddenly develops an eye for the nerdy, pale waif he’s forced to do community service with—it sounds like the plot of a romance novel, pure fiction. Those kind of ‘I can’t live without you’ relationships don’t exist in the real world. They’re nothing but fantasy.
Still, it was a nice fantasy while it lasted. If I forget our last encounter, what we had was special. We connected and it was more than physical. Surely he can’t deny that, or maybe I’m deluded. Maybe this is what all the girls he sleeps with think, that they’re special in some way, the one girl who will make him settle down and commit.
Yeah, right.
Like I’ve done for days now, I head straight from class to my room. Amy’s always out these days, which has worked well. I lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling wondering where it all went wrong, trying to force myself to study but seeing only him—stupid, cursed him.
No charges were laid, for either of them. Their sporting status means more than one get-out-of-jail-free card it would seem. I’m just thankful
I don’t have to deal with Leon at the home any more. Last I heard he’d been assigned to a soup kitchen downtown.
Good.
As for Asher… If he is back on campus, he’s keeping an awfully low profile. Even when I pass the Quagmire it seems like the place is in mourning. Without Asher, the chances of another championship are slim. He wasn’t just the team captain. He was the Hellcat’s top hitter, too.
In habit, I pull out my cell and hold it in front of my face, but the screen’s as black as it was yesterday—no messages, no calls. Deep down I’d hoped he might try and contact me, at least explain, but no. We’re done. Maybe he was speaking the truth. I was nothing but another girl, another notch in his bedpost.
I toss my cell aside and cover my face with my pillow. I’m tempted to keep it there.
Word has spread around campus, too. I see the way people look at me now, like I’m part of Asher’s exclusive little club. I can’t pinpoint the look exactly, but it’s a cross between a sneer and curiosity—the kind of look you’d give to a plate of rotting fruit.
This will pass, I tell myself. It passed before, didn’t it? You survived.
Yeah, by changing my name and moving halfway across the country. Even then I haven’t been able to escape my past.
It’s too much to think about.
I remove the pillow and take a deep breath.
It will get better…
…Hopefully.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ASHER
It’s strange watching training from up here. The players are more ant than cat—stripy little ants. Naturally, Leon’s nowhere to be seen. The college managed to sweep up the whole incident quite nicely, I thought. I guess it helps when half the police force in town attended Penbrook. Still, Leon will be stuck down at that soup kitchen for the better part of a year making nice.
Like you got off any lighter.
The Hellcats were on track for a fourth championship, but even now, watching them, I see a team torn apart. It’s a close comp this year. There’s no way they’re going to pull it off without Leon and I. It sounds arrogant, but it’s true.
What the fuck happened? I ask myself. Everything was going so well. I had it all… only to piss it away because I let Leon get to me.
I sit there shaking my head, trying in some strange, physical way to bring sense back into it. All it does is give me a headache.
I slink around campus like a fucking ghost. I skip classes, not that I was big on attendance before, but this is different. I let her do this to me, turn me into something I swore I’d never be again.
Weak.
You know that’s not true.
Do I? The small sliver of sense I do have tells me that little voice is right. I took it too far. I let my frustration given what Leon told me boil over, and I took that frustration and anger out on the one person who deserved it the least.
What I told Willow was true. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The bile poured right on out, my caustic words tearing her apart, and the worst part? I was enjoying it, enjoying the power I lacked growing up, the power I so desperately wanted.
And what’s it brought you, huh?
Pain and fucking misery. I’m back to square one, worse now I can’t play and train.
The more I think about, the more I realize how immature my actions were. Willow did nothing wrong. There was no good reason to lash out at her like that. Hell, or Leon. The guy was drunk as a fucking ship’s cat, probably high, too. I let him get under my skin. True, I didn’t know about him and Willow, but who the fuck cares? That was the past. So what she didn’t tell me? She was under no obligation to.
I sit here and consider everything in the same seat she sat in weeks ago. She probably thought I couldn’t see her all the way up here, but she was hard to miss, even at this distance, her copper hair floating in the breeze.
Clearly, I need to do something. I need to claw back some semblance of the life I had, but how? I doubt she’ll take my calls, and face-to-face? That wouldn’t work. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe the thing she needs the most is distance—distance and time.
But Leon? I take a deep breath. I don’t know if I can do it, but I do know I can’t let what happened between us be the end of it. We’ve been through a lot together. I should at least offer him the chance to explain.
Start with him, I tell myself. Start with him and go from there.
*
It’s not hard to track Leon down. Any time he needs to get away, he goes to one place.
The batting cages are right at the back of campus, a rarely used area surrounded by trees and foliage on every side. It’s a kind of secret baseball glen few know about except local kids and town teenagers looking for a quiet place to get into each other’s pants.
A couple of kids are playing in one cage, barely old big enough to swing a bat. Leon’s in the other with a bucket of balls, pitching them one by one into the rear of the cage where they strike with a psht against the metal.
He’s suspended. He shouldn’t be on campus grounds at all, but I’m not going to do anything about it. Not today.
Sensing my presence, he turns, ball in hand. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I nod down at the bucket of balls. “Practicing your fastball?”
He pitches the ball in his hand and selects another. “I’ve got to do something. Fucking soup kitchen is driving me insane. I’m never going to pick up another ladle in my life after this.”
He goes to pitch and stops, looking to me. His eyes are still ringed black from the fight. Even the shadow of the cap he’s wearing doesn’t hide it. “Look, if you’ve come to here to start something, you can fuck right off.”
I grip the fencing, watching him through it. “Actually, I came here to apologize.”
He laughs, tossing the ball up into the air. “Really?”
“Really. The way I reacted…”
Leon catches the ball and lets it fall from his hand into the bucket. He crosses his arms. “I may have provoked you.” He pinches his fingers together. “Just a little. I was fucked up, man. It’s no excuse, but I was tripping hard. I would have fought a fucking bear.”
I smile. “I fixed your nose up at least.”
He smiles back. “You’re a fucking prick.”
“Says the biggest jerk-off on campus. I think we can agree it wasn’t our best hour, though what you said about Willow…”
Leon grips the fence and looks down at his shoes. “Six shots of tequila and a couple of lines will do that to you, loosen your tongue so much the shit slips right on out. Fuck. I don’t even know why I brought it up.” He looks up. “You want the truth?”
“No, I want you to lie to me.”
He smirks. “I’m jealous.”
I let go of the mesh and stand back. “Jealous?”
He shakes his head, staring sideways into the distance. “I don’t know. She’s a catch, always has been. I certainly didn’t treat her right.”
“But what you said was true?”
“Yeah, but who cares? That was years ago. Everyone’s allowed to change.”
I shake my head back. “Leon Hunter speaking sense. Who would have thought it?”
Leon nods to the back of the cage. “You going to get in here or am I going to have to keep pitching fastballs at the fence?”
I come around to the front of the cage. “Hey, kid.”
A boy standing at the back of the cage beside us turns, his eyes lighting up when he sees me. “Holy shit! Its Asher Slade.”
I lift my cap up a little. “The one and only. Mind if I borrow one of your bats there. How about the Easton?”
The other two boys in the cage are now watching.
“Sure,” the boy nods.
I take the bat and head to the back of the cage, setting myself up for Leon’s fastball.
The boys stop what they’re doing and gather around, watching with gleeful faces.
Leon pitches. It’s fast—real fucking fast. It slips off the
end of the bat and spirals up into the roof of the cage behind me.
I blow out. “Okay. I’ll let you have that one.”
He pitches again. This time I’m ready. I drive it home hard, almost nailing him in the process.
He laughs. “There are easier ways to take me out.”
I bring my bat up again. “But none quite so fitting.”
He pitches and I send it into the side of the cage, the boys jumping back with a wondrous “Whoa!”.
It feels good to have a bat in my hand again.
“What was she like, really, back then?” I ask. I don’t know why I am. Perhaps I’m looking for an in, a way to put things right with her.
Leon stops. “I’ve given you the worst of it, but you should know she didn’t leave town right away. Her parents had to sell up first. It took a couple of weeks. She barely left the house, became real lonely and closed off-like. We kind of spoke, on and off. I didn’t want anyone to know, but I felt shitty for what happened between us, and for the party thing. Like I said, I could have treated her better.”
I lift my bat, but the next pitch is way off, barely within striking distance. It sails into the side of the cage.
“You know the funny thing?” continues Leon. “Her parents got her this fucking teddy bear to cheer her up—a giant, ugly-as-fuck green thing she named Mr. Slimey. I kid you not.”
“Mr. Slimey?” I query.
Leon shrugs. “Don’t ask me, but yeah. She sent me a picture of it, loved the damn thing from what I remember. She lost it right before they moved, was really cut about it.”
An idea occurs to me. “You still have the picture?”
“Of the teddy?” He lifts an eyebrow, juggling the ball. “Yeah, I guess.” He pulls out his cell and starts thumbing through the screen. “Here. I can’t believe I still have it.”
I come forward and take the cell with one hand. Willow looks younger in the picture, but there’s no question it’s her. She’s in her PJs hugging what is indeed an ugly-ass teddy bear with an evil, nightmare-clown grin and overly beady eyes. I forward the pic to myself.
I pass the cell back and head back down to the rear of the cage, bringing up the bat.
“What are you going to do?” asks Leon.