“Whoa, easy, Keira. No reason to be a total hater.” Gwen gave me an incredulous look, and I didn’t blame her. I was being a kind of a bitch about the whole thing.
“Sorry. I’m just annoyed. And hungry.”
“Me too,” said Gwen. “Shall we head down to the kitchen area and rustle up some ramen.”
“Hell no. I’m ordering a pizza for us. Fending off Vanessa and her collective from the football team has made me ravenous.” I’d do just about anything at that moment to get the attention off of Nate, and me, and the fact that I not only knew him, but thought he was incredibly hot just like everyone else.
“Cool. Extra cheese, please. And no anchovies.”
“God, you’re so boring,” I laughed.
But it worked. We ate pizza for dinner and watched an episode of Mrs. Maisel on my iPad before we resumed our studies into the wee hours of the morning. There was no more mention of ‘The Buck’ or Vanessa or football period, thank god.
I did dream, though, about the pep rally we’d had in my sophomore year. It wasn’t required, but usually almost all of the band showed up so the fight song wouldn’t sound like shit, and most of the starting line up of the football team did too, because their egos wouldn’t let them blow it off. It had been a cold night, even for October. I couldn’t play properly with gloves on, so I’d left them at home. After about the third time we’d played the fight song, my fingers were numb with cold. I tucked my clarinet under my arm so I could concentrate on blowing warm air into my hands. How I ended up standing next to Nate I have no idea. He was the team captain along with being the star quarterback. He’d just finished a big speech about how we were going to stomp the other team into the ground, and people were cheering and shouting. Then the coach started to say a few words, and that’s when Nate stepped closer to me and tapped my arm. When I looked up at him, he held out his own pair of gloves to me.
“Go on,” he said. “Put ‘em on. Can’t have the band’s number one clarinet player getting frostbite.”
I glanced around, and no one was paying any attention to him or to me. So I took them. God they were so warm. My hands felt like a toddler’s inside those huge gloves. I wore them until it was time to play the fight song one last time at the end of the rally. He was still standing near, so I gave them back to him.
“Better?” He asked and smiled at me. I nodded and lifted my clarinet to my lips. True story.
Except in my dream, he took my hands in his and put the gloves on for me. Then he took my face in his hands and kissed me. Instantly, my tongue swept out to tangle with his. I felt worried that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but he moaned his approval into my mouth. I clutched at his jacket and stood on my toes to get closer to him, and he moved his hands from my face to my ass and half lifted, half pressed us together, groin to groin. My coat had fallen open and so was his jacket, so I had no problem feeling his hard cock straining against his jeans pressing into mine just where my sex would be.
I moaned, and that’s when I woke up with a death grip on my math theory textbook. I was holding it hard against me, and I sat upright in bed. Gwen stirred in her bed across from me. She’d turned the light out on her desk and apparently had gone to bed at some point. I just hoped she hadn’t heard me moan in my sleep.
My own light, which was clipped to my headboard, was still on. I clicked it off and glanced at the pale grey pre-dawn light of the sky outside the window. The clock said 5:34, and my quiz wasn’t until ten, so I set my alarm for 8:00, dropped my book on the floor, and climbed under the covers to get a little more sleep. Thankfully, I didn’t dream of Nate or anyone else in those last two hours of rest, so I woke up confident that not only had I gotten him out of my system, but that after last night’s disaster, I wasn’t in any danger of running into him again.
Chapter 1
Nate
I couldn’t have been more than four the first time my dad threw me a football. Granted, it was a Nerf, and a greased cat would have had a better grip. But I loved it, and after that, tossing the ball was all I wanted to do. Eventually I got my first pigskin, and as soon as I was eligible, my dad signed me up for my first Pop Warner league. My mom cried, but that’s where I also discovered that I had a magic arm, and I knew I was destined to be a quarterback.
So football is really all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever been good at. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. I embraced the whole scene—the image, the friends, the habits, all of it. I’m not really the dumb jock everyone always thought I was. I actually did pretty well in school, mainly because Pop Warner had pretty high academic standards if you wanted to keep playing, but also because I never minded school. It was a means to an end. Do I brag about having decent grades? Hell no. My posse would give me too much shit. I just keep my head down and do my work. Sure, I might bellyache about tough classes and exams, but so far, I’ve held my own.
I’ve also never been the “big man on campus” that everyone seems to think I was in high school and am now that I’m at MSU. Sure, I go out with my buddies, and do my share of partying. But just like I’m not interested in fucking up my football scholarship by failing out of school, I’m not going to do it with alcohol and drugs either. I smoked one joint on grad night back in high school and haven’t touched the stuff since. And sure, I’ll have a beer or two, and you’ll see me hollering along with everybody else at those keggers. But take a closer look, and I’m never chugging along with everybody else. And believe it or not, I’m shy as hell. But that’s okay too, because I really don’t have to look too far for a date. Football is a chick magnet, always has been, always will be, and when you’re the QB, it’s even easier.
I guess I just sound like a dick, and in a way I am. The girls cluster around me and my buddies on the team, and I don’t stop them. I don’t say much, because they don’t really expect me to—they want to be seen with me and vice-versa. And yeah, I lost my virginity in my senior year (same night I took my first and last toke, too). I enjoy a good amount of sex, and I don’t get tied down. But I don’t have a revolving door on my room, nor do I get that serious. Like I said, I’ve got my eyes on the prize, which is going pro when I graduate. I’ve got to keep my shit together. That means safe sex, and no relationships to tie me down.
I did pretty well with my plan at first. On the field, I was connecting more passes in practice than Mike Summers had in actual games. It sucked for him, but I was starting by the end of my freshman season. Off the field, I kept my grades up. I was no ‘A’ student, but I got mostly ‘B’s with the occasional C, which was a lot better than some of my teammates did. I met some nice girls—okay, some fucking beautiful girls—and enjoyed the hell out of my freshman year.
Sophomore year was more of the same. I won more games, met more girls, and all was right with the world. The team made the bowl games and we’d. trounced our biggest rival, Ohio State, once again. My coaches were happy, and so were my teachers. Things couldn’t really get any better, and it seemed impossible for anything to go wrong. I had no idea that my junior year would be the best and most difficult year of my college career both on and off the field.