“Giana, I know I don’t deserve it, but I want to explain why I left Friday night,” I mumbled to myself, reciting the words I’d planned out in my head. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want you. Trust me,” I breathed. “I wanted you so fucking badly I could barely breathe when I left.”
My chest stung with that, the memory of leaving her, of her wide eyes and quivering lip when I turned my back and walked out of her apartment. It wasn’t my brightest move, but then again, I knew if I stayed, I would have taken her. I wouldn’t have been able to resist her, not with her bare before me and begging me to have my way.
It had hit me like a sledgehammer to the head, my feelings for Giana, and it had taken me all weekend to untangle them.
Yesterday, football was my focus. It had to be. As a student athlete on scholarship, I had one job to do, and for the hours that stretched before the game until I was showering after the game last night, that was where my head was. We secured another win, steering us closer and closer to another bowl game.
This year, we wanted the bowl game, the one that would lead us to the championship.
If it was possible, we were on fire even more so than last season. We’d had a lot of new blood, myself included, and had to learn how each other worked, how to jell. This season, we were becoming more and more comfortable, running plays like we knew them better than the back of our hands.
It was all falling into place.
But the second the game was over, my mind shifted gears, and all thoughts were wrapped up in Giana.
Or should I say, ninety percent of them — the other ten were reserved for Mom, especially when I applied for a student loan late last night. It hadn’t been something I’d needed up until this point. My scholarship covered my tuition, books, dorm, and fees, and even gave me enough to live on — especially considering most of my meals were at the stadium.
But I had drained my savings helping Mom pay bills and get by, and rent was due next week.
It was a small loan, one I hoped I could pay off easily once I was drafted with a signing bonus. Still, my ribcage ached when I hit the submit button, when I got the automatic approval and realized I was in debt for the first time in my life.
It was so easy to do, and now, I understood why so many people were crushed beneath the weight of it.
“Don’t worry,” I’d told Mom after the loan was secured. “I will take care of you.”
“You always have,” was her response.
I still wasn’t over my anger with my father, either. I couldn’t understand how he could so easily turn his back on his family when we needed him.
But then again, we weren’t his family — not his primary one, anyway. We were a past life, one he clearly wanted to leave behind.
I sniffed against the fierce wind, a cool resolve sinking over me along with it. We didn’t need him. We would be just fine.
It had been a tornado of emotions over the last week, especially over the last seventy-two hours, and I couldn’t contain the hope that bubbled in my heart at the thought of telling Giana how I felt about her and having her reciprocate it.
I could see it already, her eyes watering as I pulled her into me. I could feel her lips on mine, her body melting as I held her, could taste her tongue and hear the sweet moans she saved only for me.
But there was a niggling fear tickling at my stomach as I approached her building, because I knew the other way this could go, too.
The truth was I didn’t know where her head was at, where her heart was at.
And the only way to find out was to put my own on the line.
I lifted my hand to ring the buzzer for her apartment, but before I could, I heard my name behind me.
“Clay?”
I turned, finding Giana shivering in a jacket I knew couldn’t be keeping her warm in this cold front that had swept in over the city.
Her eyes were dark, underlined with a deep purple that told me she hadn’t slept, her face red and blotchy like she’d been crying. Or maybe it was just the wind. Either way, she looked how I felt — emotionally drained.
She blinked at me, then at what was left of the flowers in my hand. She swallowed when she saw them, then held her chin higher, and I swore I saw her slip on a mask of indifference right in front of me.
“I was just about to text you once I got home,” she said, plastering on a smile as she shimmied past me and unlocked the door. We both ushered inside, the warmth welcome after being in the blistering wind. “You’re never going to believe what happened.”
I followed her up the stairs to her apartment as she peeled off her scarf and coat, and my heart hammered harder and harder in my chest with every step knowing the words I would say once we were inside her apartment.
“So, I was walking around campus, just…” She paused, eyeing me over her shoulder before she hit the top stair and unlocked her apartment door. “Enjoying the weather,” she finally said. “And who do I run into?”
She pushed the door open, slipping in first before I followed and shut the door behind us.
“Shawn.”
She whipped around as she said the name, her turquoise eyes catching mine just as her rosy cheeks lifted with the wide spread of her lips.
That blooming smile formed a knot in my throat, one I couldn’t swallow past as Giana hung up her coat and scarf before reaching for the flowers in my hand.
“Oh, yeah, I… I got these for you,” I said lamely, cringing a bit when she took them and surveyed the broken stems and ragged petals still holding on. “They looked a lot better before my walk.”
Giana smiled, though it was weak, a flash of something in her eyes as she looked at the flowers, then at me, then turned for her kitchen. She pulled a small vase from under the sink and began snipping the flower stems and arranging the ones that had survived.
“Anyway, so we talked a bit and…” She bit her lip, doing a little bounce when she looked up at me again. “He asked me on a date!”
Rage simmered in my chest. “He what?”
“I know, right?!” Giana mistook my question for pleasant surprise rather than the anger that it was. “It’s crazy. You really know what you’re doing,” she added with a wink.
“That motherfucker asked you on a date when you have a boyfriend?”
“Well, technically he just asked to hang out. As friends,” she said with a knowing grin. “To watch a movie.”
My hands curled into fists at my side, and I gritted my teeth together to keep from roaring at the bastard’s audacity. “What a disrespectful creep.”
Giana rolled her eyes, leveling her gaze at me before she snipped the stem of an orange daisy-looking flower and plopped it into the vase. “Oh, come on, this is what we’ve been goading him to do this whole time. Remember? It was your idea to play the part of neglectful boyfriend.”
She said the words so playfully, like nothing had happened between us Friday night, like everything was completely normal and we were still faking a relationship.
Like we were nothing but friends.
“I just can’t believe it worked,” she almost whispered, shaking her head with a dazed smile as she finished the last of the flowers. She shook her head then. “Anyway, I need your help. What do I wear? And what do I do? I mean, we both know what watch a movie means.”