Rough Guy: Providence Prep High School Book 3

by Allen, Jacob

  Or maybe he was feeling the way he had hoped I was feeling—alone and loveless.

  I was probably overintellectualizing a bully being a bully. It was probably me trying to control a situation that I had no control over. But I definitely started to analyze Nick through a bit of a psychological lens. Call it curiosity, call it self-protection, I didn’t really care.

  As soon as I thought that, my mind flashed back to homecoming, when Nick had gone out with Emily. Both Jackie and I could easily see that Emily didn’t have any real interest in him, but Nick didn’t seem to feel it that way. Nick had raised his head a little higher, walked a little more confidently, smiled a little more frequently once Emily had agreed to go to homecoming with him. He definitely wasn’t the sulking punk he’d become.

  All of that, only to have Adam swoop in and get her back.

  Wonder if he had a thing for Jackie as well. She’s too exotic for his tastes, but who knows?

  If that was true—and even if it wasn’t—it was small wonder that Nick was always trying to prove he was better than he actually was.

  But then why the hell did I have to be the one that got beat up by little brother? He didn’t need to be a giant tool. He didn’t need to be nice to me, but that didn’t mean he had to therefore acknowledge me.

  “Fucking asshole,” I muttered under my breath as I walked toward the water fountain.

  I glared at him on the way back. He never looked up at me, because of course bullies didn’t. Make a bully feel sad, or let a bully get sad, and he would never say a word to you the rest of the day.

  When the bell rang to end lunch and signal the warning for our next class, he did look at me as I left. But unlike before, when I’d felt fear, this time, I felt a certain sense of confidence. I may not have had Nick’s athleticism or smoothness with the opposite sex, but I didn’t have to feel insecure in my standing with everyone else.

  So, as his eyes locked onto me, I just gave a casual shrug, not even looking at him, as if he didn’t affect me.

  Which, you do realize, he is anyways.

  * * *

  The end of the school day came, but the end of my education for the day was still two hours out. Thank my parents who believed that education was a full-day thing and not just something to leave behind at 3 p.m. The sentiment was nice, if not the means of implementing it.

  My parents, ever since I had gotten my car, had made it a rule that I was not allowed to come home before 5 p.m. The idea in their twisted, overly-thought brains was that I could spend the time in between the final bell and coming home either at the library or just reading on my own. I guessed it worked.

  It sure didn’t hurt my reputation as the class dork. But by this point, I’d accepted and worn the title “class dork” with pride. To do so otherwise was to open myself up to feelings of pain I didn’t really want to experience.

  Once 5 p.m. rolled around, I left the school library, leaving behind only a few other freshmen and sophomore athletes who didn’t have cars who were waiting for their parents to come by. I got to the main entrance and glanced right.

  Nick was talking to someone much taller than him. His back was turned to me.

  I should have kept walking. But curiosity from the afternoon was getting to me. If there were issues with his athletics stuff, maybe I could learn more now. Mean as it sounded, if I wanted to push back against Nick at some point, I needed a few bullets to come at him with as well.

  “… like that?!?” the bigger guy said.

  He sounded much older, like the coach. I didn’t know our school teams’ coaches. I was so uncoordinated, I could barely play kickball and dodgeball, let alone an actual sport like basketball or soccer.

  Nick, though, said something inaudible. I didn’t want to press my luck—I still looked like a student just waiting for her parents to come and grab her.

  “You’re a goddamn disgrace, Locke!” the coach said. “I gave you the keys to lead the team and this is how you act?!”

  Nick said something more that could not be heard. It seemed like every time the coach spoke in response, his tone had become more combative and angrier.

  “Throwing it all away, you fool,” he said. “If you’re trying to ensure you never get any scholarships, you’re doing a marvelous job!”

  Nick shook his head.

  Then he turned.

  And he saw me.

  I gulped, feeling a sort of paralysis overtake me. I wanted to move, but what was the point? Nick had seen me eavesdropping. Nick knew I’d heard at least some portion of his conversation. No, at this point, I might as well just stay and listen for the encore.

  I couldn’t even gulp. Nick’s stare had me frozen like prey in the predator’s eyes. I was at his mercy.

  “I see,” Nick said, ostentatiously to the coach but in reality directed at me. “I see everything. I will take this under consideration.”

  “Look me in the goddamn eye when you speak, Locke!”

  And just like that, the shackles of Nick’s stare was broken. I could move again. I was released from this particular round of bullying.

  But I knew the predator wasn’t done hunting me. I had to hurry and I had to move before he broke free from his coach and really caught me. I had to get to my car.

  I moved in a fast walk, for once happy to be as tall as I was to ensure my strides took me father than Emily or Jackie walking at the same pace. I looked back and didn’t see anyone, but all it would take was Nick running at full speed to catch me. I could see my Honda Accord in the distance—I just needed maybe another twenty seconds of walking.

  My heart was racing. I’d dealt with so much humiliation from Nick. Imagining more… I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to take it.

  Sweat filled my top and my face. I was almost—

  “What the fuck were you doing back there?”

  I heard his voice before his footsteps. I was literally close enough to touch the back door of my Accord on the driver’s side, but I hadn’t cleared the final two feet. If I had just jogged even the slightest bit…

  “Don’t you dare leave without explaining yourself.”

  Somehow, not being able to see him as he spoke was even worse. Imagining his facial expressions, his anger, and his disgust was much worse when my imagination was in charge of forming the images than reality was. And even knowing this, I stood still. Such was the force of Nick’s words.

  I heard his footsteps and his heavy breathing a couple of seconds later. Either practice had still left him winded, or, most likely, he’d made it that much of a point to get near me.

  “Well?”

  He came into view. He was wearing a gray “Providence Prep Tigers” shirt with sweat dripping down from the collar all the way to the bottom. His armpits, his shoulders, his chest—they were all just drenched with sweat. He smelled of it, too.

  And… I couldn’t control the fact that the smell was kind of hot. I could control the fact that I was going to have no reaction to it, though, and so I used my brain to best establish that I would not show anything to him. Just because I couldn’t control my body’s reaction to his smell and his presence didn’t mean I had to accept it as gospel for how I should view him.

  Nothing had changed. The fact that he was handsome and smelled nice were just mere factors about him, not fundamentally altering perspectives.

  “Are you fucking mute, dork?” he said. “Cat got your fucking tongue?”

  The fact that was a giant ass was an unshakable fact.

  “What the fuck were you doing?”

  Finally, I found it to stand up to him, getting off the car and willing to stand in his face, even if that brought us mere inches from each other.

  “I was walking to my car.”

  “Oh fuck, whatever, walking to your car,” he said, laughing at me. “Does walking to your car also include the fact that you were just gawking at me and Coach Miller? Hmm? I didn’t know that was a pit stop you had to take. Did you think we had gas for your car or someth
ing?”

  “I have no idea what you and coach were saying,” I said. “It was loud and intense, and anyone would have stopped—”

  “Oh, yeah, right, anyone would have stopped there, sure, anyone would have. Isn’t that right? Your best friends, Emily and Jackie, would have stopped just as you did, huh?”

  What the hell is this guy’s problem?

  “Are you going to let me go?” I said. “I need to get home.”

  “Not until you fucking apologize for what you did,” he said. “Better yet, do it while groveling some. I don’t like you being so high up, you fucking gangly dork. Why don’t you get on your knees and then beg.”

  I tried to shove him away, but Nick just smirked as he barely moved, his shoulders only tilting slightly back as he held his ground.

  “First, you mock me at ice cream, and now you eavesdrop on a private conversation with me and my coach?”

  “You call that private?”

  Sometimes, boy, my lack of filter could get me into some seriously fucked up situations. This seemed like one of them.

  Actually, there was no seem—this just was.

  “There are consequences to your mocking behavior, you bitch,” Nick said, daring to come closer, close enough that he could just outright headbutt me. “You fucked with the wrong guy at the wrong time. You know what my scholarship offers mean to me, and you—”

  “And I what?” I said. “I rejected your attempts at a kiss? I’m sorry, but there’s nothing attractive about you.”

  Besides your smell and your presence. In the right context.

  “You have lost your mind over this scholarship nonsense. I have done nothing but stated that I do not have a romantic interest in you. Because of that, you have chosen to act like an ass to me. I don’t know if you think it’s you being cool or your way of taking out on me, but I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  That was sound logic. But logic never worked on bullies. If anything, it was something more they could mock and relentlessly pick at.

  “You are going to suffer for the way you’ve made me feel about this,” he said.

  What is his problem? Seriously! I know he’s in a dark place because of the scholarship stuff….

  If he keeps bugging me like this, if he keeps causing me hell like this… maybe I’ll have to drive the point home with the scholarship. Maybe two of us will have to play this game.

  “Don’t threaten me again,” I warned.

  “Or what?”

  But I ignored him. I tore past his arm, moving it with my body, as I got in the front seat of the car. Nick continued to taunt me from outside, telling me that I was going to pay for what I’d done—all it literally would have taken was for him to step back from the situation and realize I just didn’t like him, not that I had it out for him—before I threw the car into reverse and peeled out after putting it in drive.

  My heart beat stayed elevated for what felt like half of the car ride home. Would Nick have actually hurt me or made me suffer? It sure said an awful lot that that was even a question, didn’t it? The fact that I had to consider it as a possibility sure felt like abuse of some kind in some fashion.

  When I finally did come down and I finally did start to relax a bit, I didn’t think Nick was going to actually hit me. I didn’t think I’d actually have to strike back at him as he had struck out at me. His scholarship chances may have been low, but they and a whole lot of other chances would drop to zero if he struck me.

  But what to say of the stress from any other type of abuse he could heap on me?

  There wasn’t anything to say other than it was possible. And I didn’t know what I did to deserve this, but it was apparently now going to haunt me much as Adam and Kevin had haunted Emily and Jackie for years on end.

  Except with me, there was no chance of a happy ending. Just a relieved ending.

  6

  Nick

  Six Years Ago

  The first day of middle school football practice was set to begin in two days.

  But that wasn’t soon enough for my father. Nothing was soon enough for my father. If something was on time, it was late. If it was early, it was on time. It wasn’t possible for it to be early.

  And so it was that, under a hot Nashville sun, I found myself faced with an unenviable position. I had to train with my two older brothers, both of them currently in ninth grade, as my father had come up with an ambitious goal for them—they were to make varsity their freshmen year. I was to be the test dummy who was supposed to pick up on a thing or two.

  It wasn’t fair at all. I was good at football, but I was in sixth grade. They were now high schoolers. I was barely over five feet tall, while the two of them easily eclipsed six feet each. Not only that, I had never touched a weight in my life, while the two of them had started a weightlifting regiment about a year ago.

  “Listen up!” my father yelled, wearing sunglasses, a Marines hat, and a t-shirt, making him every bit the part of inscrutable, tough father. “I’m going to play quarterback while you three practice your wide receiver work. We all understand why we’re doing this, right?”

  “To play college football, and then the NFL,” all three of us said in unison.

  It was practically a mantra at this point that we could not escape. If we had a different plan, then that wasn’t something that we dared to utter to our father out loud. As far as he was concerned, the steps were simple—one, excel in high school. Two, get a scholarship. Three, excel in college. Four, get drafted.

  Well, unfortunately, they didn’t seem very simple. They seemed terrifying. And getting thrown in against two boys much older than me was the scariest part of all.

  We started out easily enough. We practiced basic routes while my father threw the ball, giving us feedback as we went. He was stingy with his praise and quick to criticize, pointing out when our feet didn’t move fast enough, when our eyes gave our cuts away, or when we short-armed our catches. Perfection wasn’t good enough for my father, because it somehow implied that we couldn’t get any better.

  We could always get better.

  But that didn’t meant that we wanted to get better. At some point, I think we just wanted to rest.

  But then came the part that I dreaded the most.

  One on one battles.

  The set up was simple. My father would still play quarterback. One person would play wideout, the other cornerback. The wide receiver would get a route, and he’d have to execute it, while the defender would have to break it up. If the wide receiver caught the ball, he’d become the defensive back, the current defensive back would get the play off, and the brother who had the play off would come in as the receiver. If the receiver did not catch it, they’d go three times until they rotated.

  This was a game that probably would have worked great for a bunch of ninth graders. For me, barely above 120 pounds soaking wet, against two ninth graders each over 180 pounds, it was downright cruel.

  “Alright, Nick, get your ass over here,” my father said. “Run a curl route. Ten yards out, cut in.”

  I gulped. Those were the easiest routes to break up. But I had no choice. I nodded and trotted over to Clarke in front of me.

  “Hey, midget,” he snarled. “I’m going to make sure you don’t catch shit today.”

  “Hike!” my father yelled.

  I ran forward, my brother giving me all the space I thought I needed. I tried to sell going deep before I planted my lead foot, turned, and saw the ball coming my way.

  But then my brother knocked me over, took the ball for himself, and spiked it inches from my face.

  “You gotta stay up, Nick!” my father yelled.

  “That’s pass interference!”

  “Pass interference doesn’t mean you can’t catch the ball!”

  Perfection isn’t even good enough. Nothing is ever good enough.

  This process repeated two more times before my father, frustrated, didn’t just rotate me to defensive back. He told me to take the next series o
ff so I could think about my mistakes.

  When I did, I sat about five feet behind him, bowing my head. Part of me wanted to cry, but if I did that, I’d never hear the end of it from the three of them. My mother certainly wouldn’t step in to help. She’d just say boys would be boys and leave it at that.

  I looked over to the right and saw a father playing with two little girls, probably in third or fourth grade. I wanted so badly to be like that family, to have the easy-going playfulness that they had. I wanted to have a father like that, who seemed encouraging and supporting.

  In other words, I wanted the exact opposite of what I had now.

  “Nick!” my father barked. “Get your ass up! You’re on defense!”

  Unfortunately, at this point, the only way I was ever getting that was if I was the father in that picture. Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to get it with my current family.

  * * *

  Present Day

  What the fuck is her problem?

  And what the fuck is wrong with me?

  It was one of the goddamn weirdest things I’d ever felt. When I was inches away from Samantha’s face, when I was trying to find the words to convey how pissed I was at her spying at me, even when she was speeding off from me and I wondered for more than a split second if she was going to run me over with her car… I felt so aroused.

  I was glad she never looked down at my gym shorts, because if she had, she would have seen a tent forming down there. There was definitely a sort of sexual charge that came from asserting myself in such an aggressive form. Maybe my first attempt at kissing her had come out of some sort of weird desperation to have something go right, but there was no mistaking what had happened in that moment.

  I wanted to control Samantha. I wanted her to be mine and to do whatever I said. That included the sexual—the line about her groveling on her knees was meant at first as a line about her just begging for forgiveness, but I definitely was owning the sexual imagery of it all.