Jockblocked: A Novel (Gridiron Book 2) (22 page)

He swipes a shaky hand across his face. “Guys like us. Like my old man. Like Matty. Women are just a convenience. There for the taking. There all of the time. The only thing we can do to minimize the damage we inflict is to pair up with women who want the same thing we want. They don’t want love or romance. They don’t require devotion. They give their bodies. They take from you, and you’re both fine. But that’s not how you’re built, Lucy.”

I hardly know what to say in response because he’s right. I tried the hookup route after my high school boyfriend dumped me. Those weren’t satisfying, so I tried dating my safe, solid boyfriends. Those weren’t successful either. I tried one night with Matty but couldn’t stick with it because he was too charming, too fun, too wonderful in bed and out of it. But I do require loyalty, faithfulness, and a certain amount of devotion. Matty’s already admitted he’s been a shitty boyfriend to one girl.

“Maybe I’ve changed,” I manage to choke out. The lie tastes bitter on my tongue.

“When did you start fucking him? Have you known all along? Have you been laughing about this shit behind my back?” The veins in Ace’s neck are bulging against his skin. He’s red-faced, and some of his words are wet, laced with spittle and venom.

I can feel a spike of stress messing with my system. “I slept at Matthew Iverson’s place the night my apartment was fumigated,” I say as evenly as possible.

“You slept with Iverson four weeks ago?” Ace yells like some outraged virgin.

My own temper fires up. He’s not the injured party in this scenario. I slam my spoon down again. “Yeah, because you were fucking some jersey chaser on the sofa, and I didn’t want to watch the porn show, okay? Matt offered me a place to stay.”

“Oh, I bet he did.”

I stare at him in confusion. “Yes, he did. And he was a perfect gentleman. He didn’t try anything. He made me breakfast and sent me on my way. We got together later and had sex.”

He screws up his face. “You know what? Take your little walk in the gutter with Iverson. But don’t come to my house weeping that he’s broken your heart and given you an STD.”

I rear back as if he’s slapped me. “That’s not fair.”

“Welcome to life, Lucy. Nothing is fuckin’ fair,” he spits out.

“Ace.” I try to soften my tone, but it’s difficult. His hurtful words are branded in my mind, making my hands tremble. “This has nothing to do with you. I promise you. I’m on your side. What position you want to play, what Matty wants, it doesn’t matter.”

Nothing I say penetrates Ace’s rage. He snatches his sunglasses off the table and is at the door in four long strides. Hand on the doorknob, he turns back. “You’re going to regret this. When he moves on, and he will, and you end up being humiliated after dozens of pictures are plastered on the web with him and some jersey chaser, you’re really going to feel good, aren’t you?”

“Please go.” My throat is tight. I can’t believe he’s saying these things to me.

“I’m telling you this because you’re too soft for Matty Iverson. If you have any doubts about what I’m saying, Google his fucking name. There are a helluva lot more pictures out there than what I showed you.”

I try swallowing, but there’s a huge lump in my throat. “What Matty did before me makes no difference.”

Ace looks at me like I’m the dumbest fucking girl on the planet.

“Have fun fucking him tonight.” And with that, he’s gone.

At the computer, I hesitate. I slam the laptop lid shut and then pace. I pace back to my desk and open it again.

I type in his name. Most of the pictures are of him in uniform, him on the field. There’s one link on the second page of him bending over, his broad shoulders between another girl’s legs. She’s wearing jeans but her shirt is off. His shirt is off. I don’t know what he’s doing there.

There are other pictures of him and another girl. Him and Hammer and two girls. They were all taken the same night.

My heart twists as I look them over. The dates of the pictures inform me that they were taken the night after the championship game. Just a few weeks before he came to the Brew House. Just a few weeks before I had my own personal, up-close picture of Matty between my legs.

I knew exactly how it felt for him to be there, licking and sucking and fingering me in ways that made my sex clench just to think about it. It kills me to know there are other women out there who have experienced that same pleasure.

Not a rational feeling, but it’s there and I can’t make it go away.

Can he change? Ace says no.

But then Ace has his own issues, his own demons that Matty doesn’t struggle with. I shut my laptop firmly and push it away.

So Matty had sex in the past. Big whooping deal. I repeat that to myself a hundred times, but Ace has stirred up the fear I thought I’d put behind me.

I
tuck
my phone away and try to curb my impatience. Wishing Ace and Luce weren’t friends is a fruitless exercise. They are, and I’m going to have to deal with it. I still think Ace is the snake in my garden because there’s no way he hangs Luce’s picture in his locker without having stronger feelings than
friendship
for her. But…there’s no point in bringing that up with Luce.

She thinks they’re friends, treats him like a friend. They’ve had plenty of time to knock boots in the past and haven’t done it. So I just have to trust that whatever feelings are involved, they aren’t on Lucy’s end.

“Where’s everyone else?” I ask Hammer as I wander into the living room. Earlier in the day we had half the defense in here watching ESPN’s Signing Day special, and now it’s just Hammer.

“Most of the guys went to the Gas Station. A few went to work out.”

Probably the guys who play the same positions as the blue chip recruits announcing today.

“You think about the guys you were replacing on Signing Day?” I ask. I know I hadn’t. I was too jacked up to get here and show everyone I was the man.

“Fuck no. I was thinking how I couldn’t wait until the fall was here and how I could strut my stuff on national television. I was practicing my hammer move.” He brings his arm down in an abrupt chop.

“Yeah, me, too. I wanted to replace those guys. Fuck, I was a terrible shit. I didn’t even care that they hazed me. I felt invincible, even when I was running around the stadium with just my jock on.”

“Good times.” Hammer reaches his fist out and I knock mine against it. “You talk to Lucy about Ace?”

“Yeah, last week. It didn’t go well. She’s not going to talk to him.”

“Ah hell,” Hammer sighs. “What’re you going to do now? Maybe if you bring it up with her later? After sex maybe, when you’ve softened her up.”

And maybe someone will knife me in the gut because that’s how I felt when I went up there and saw her, nude, crouched over on the floor weeping like she’d just seen her dad killed in front of her.

“No.”

He rears back in the harshness in my voice. “Bro, it’s not like I asked you to fuck her in the quad.”

“Hammer, man, I love you, but Luce is my girlfriend, and I’d like you to start treating her with respect.” I stare at him. Hard.

He blinks a couple times and nods in acknowledgment. “That’s cool. What about Ace, though?”

I grind my teeth together at hearing his name.

“What about him?”

“If Lucy isn’t going to talk to him, then are you going to him again?”

I run an agitated hand through my hair. “It’ll straighten out by itself. Coach will work the two guys out during summer camp. Let the chips fall where they may. On the field, like how it’s always supposed to happen.”

Hammer snorts.

“What?” I ask with exasperation.

“We both know that if Coach don’t like you, all the talent in the world isn’t going to keep you on the field. And if you aren’t on the field, there’s nowhere to prove yourself. Your skills atrophy and die.”

My answer? To pick up the remote and turn the volume up. It’s juvenile, but I’m fucking done with this conversation. Mostly because Hammer’s right and I don’t have a good goddamned response.

A little while later, my phone beeps but it’s not Lucy. She’s still dealing with the drama queen. It’s Stella Lowe, telling me that Coach wants me in his office in the next ten minutes.

“Coach wants to see me.”

“Sorry, son.” Hammer gives me a thumbs-up sign and a sympathetic smile.

He can smile because it’s not his ass going to the coach’s office. Again.

C
oach Lowe’s
behind his desk. The television is on and ESPN is handing out preseason grades based on our recruiting class.

“They’re saying Western’s going to be dominant for another four years,” Coach informs me as I settle into a chair.

“Congrats.” I try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“What kind of progress are you making with Ace?”

I launch into the argument I devised on my way over. “He doesn’t want to give up the quarterback position. And you know that he’s a smart player. He took us where Wilson Rogers didn’t, and we all know Rogers is going to be our next black president.” I smile, but Coach simply stares at me like I’m a moron. Still, Rogers, the quarterback who graduated last spring and almost led us to a National title my sophomore year, knew every player on the eighty-man roster and could probably tell you their moms’ names as well as their girlfriends’. That man was going places, although not in the NFL. He’s in graduate school now and is going to run the world someday. I power on. “I know Ace doesn’t have the most accurate arm, but he makes good decisions for the most part. This new guy coming in will be raw. He’s never played at the college level—”

“You become coach when I wasn’t looking?”

I wince and fight the urge to shrink in the chair. “No, sir.”

“Then you can keep your amateur scouting reports to yourself. You’re here to play the game as I tell you to play it, on and off the field. Remington Barr is going to be our starting quarterback next year. Whether we field a cohesive team is going to be on you. And, son, if you can’t convince a bunch of raggedy-ass boys to follow you on this field, there’s no way you’re going to play at the next level.”

What’d I tell Luce? That the Coach is the lord of your universe? I guess I didn’t tell her that you could hate the one in charge even as you played hard to win. Because you weren’t playing for him. You were playing for each other.

“Ace will either be holding the clipboard on the sidelines all season or he’ll be on the field as a safety. Your job is to make sure everyone gets behind our new quarterback.”

“Yes, sir.” I say the words even though it’s worse than swallowing a bunch of razors. If there’s a Mount Rushmore for crappy coaches, Coach Lowe is getting my first nomination. I sit there fuming in silence as Coach pretends I’m not sitting in the chair five feet away from him. Finally, when the ESPN college crew breaks for commercial, he swivels toward me.

“You’re still here?”

Yeah, meathead, I’m still sitting here like a good little soldier waiting to be dismissed. When Masters said he was declaring early, I didn’t envy him a bit. I was having too much fun. The real world could wait another year. I didn’t know that Coach was going to spend the year shitting down my throat while ordering me to smile as he did it.

“You’re dismissed.” He waves a hand, shooing me off like I’m a pesky, bothersome gnat.

One more year,
I remind myself as I stiffly rise from the chair and walk out.

Ten minutes later, Stella finds me in the weight room punching my way past a tackling dummy.

“Matty, I need to talk to you.”

God, I do not need this. I’m too busy pretending Coach Lowe is standing in front of me. I’ve gotten three good hits in, but I’m still sore from the proverbial fist Coach slammed into my face while I was in his office. That said, I can’t very well walk away and pretend I can’t hear her, can I?

“What’s up?” I say abruptly.

“No matter what you say or do, Ace is going to be either benched or moved.”

Wariness rises. “What do you know?”

“My dad…he found out about us,” she admits. “He caught me coming out of Ace’s room last year. The night that we ended up staying over in Wisconsin because of bad weather?”

“I remember.” I fucked a local chick and Masters walked in. I invited him to stay. I can’t remember the woman’s face or even if the sex was good. Only that I invited Masters to join us and he barely even noticed what was going on. At the time, I remember thinking,
Poor Masters. Still hanging on to his V-card.
He was wooing Ellie. I didn’t get at the time how one person could transform your life.

“He’s had it in for Ace ever since. He sought out Barr. He wasn’t even recruiting him hard. He had his eye on another quarterback from Utah. Thought they would try to sneak some reps in during this upcoming year. Anyway, when he learned about me and Ace, he told me to enjoy Ace this year because it would be his last.”

“Stella,” I say with a mixture of disappointment and dismay.

She hangs her head and I feel like a piece of shit. It’s not her fault that her dad’s a Grade-A prick. She should be able to sleep with whoever the hell she wants to. “I know. I argued and pleaded and told him I’d break it off with Ace. He told me to go ahead. So I did. I told Ace we were done and he laughed. He said he didn’t care what Coach made me say. So I told him I slept with Dayton Carter.”

Dayton Carter, power forward for the Western State Warriors’s basketball team. Now I’m feeling even worse. For her. For Ace. For all of us. “Oh, fuck, Stella.”

She nods sadly. “Ace…he told me that I was a convenient hole and he didn’t care who I slept with, only that he figured he should go get checked out since I was such a slut.” Her mouth twists in pain.

I furtively look to the door, wishing for all the world that someone would come and save me, but it’s no use.

It’s just Stella and me and her uncomfortable confession.

“Ace was probably…” Shit, I have no idea what Ace was feeling but for Stella’s sake, I make something up. “Torn up and…” What would I do if Luce told me she slept with someone else? I’d go beat his ass and then ask her what the fuck. And then, I guess, maybe I’d go sleep with a dozen chicks to make me feel better? Because that’s apparently how Ace dealt with his heartbreak. “He didn’t take it well.”

She snorts. At least she’s not crying. “I think he took it just fine.” She swallows a couple of times. “Coach…he wants to stay here with the Warriors. He’s spooked by the firing of the Chattanooga coach. Ten winning seasons but only one title, so the guy gets shown the door.”

Last year was a blood bath for college coaches. Down in the trenches, I don’t pay much attention to that. Who’s coaching which team only matters when you’re making your college commitment to a school.

“So Remington Barr is a two for one. He gets back at Ace for violating his precious daughter and hopefully secures his future.”

“That’s right. Coach is never going to allow Ace behind center again so long as Barr is healthy, and even then…” She shrugs. “I think even then the third string would probably be given the nod. Ace is done, and someone has to convince him of it. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that you can’t do anything to change Dad’s mind. It was made up months ago.” She walks to the door.

“You should tell Ace,” I call after her.

“I’ve tried. Many times.” Then she’s gone.

I spend another hour working the tackling dummies, the sleds, and then finally I give up and just pound away at the punching block, but the cloud of dread never escapes me. It hangs over me, like Damocles’ sword. I’m just waiting for it to fall and stab me through the skull.

“
S
tay away from Lucy
.”

No hello. No preamble. Ace just storms into my room before dinner, his eyes livid and his cheeks flushed red.

I almost wish he’d saved this confrontation for later. At least until I was able to put some kind of plan together. All I have at the moment is the vague idea of persuading Ace using the same case I presented to Luce. It’d be good for his future. So few quarterbacks make the transition. More safeties, d-backs and corners out there than quarterbacks. I’d ease into it, though, nice and slow.

“Sure, come on in, Ace. Good to see you. Nice that you could knock,” I say sarcastically, tossing my phone on the bed. “Beer?” I offer because that’s all I have in my room and from the wild, tense look in his eyes, he needs about five of them with a chaser of whiskey.

“Sisters and girlfriends are off-limits.” Ace ignores my offer, preferring to stand and glare at me. I’ve had enough of people spitting on my head in anger today. I get to my feet, fold my arms across my chest, and glare right back.

“And Lucy Watson is neither sister nor girlfriend as far as I know.” Ace had been hooking up with Stella all last semester, banging everything in a skirt, and now he’s trying to jockblock me? I’m going to need to lance this boil.

Ace’s lips thin into an unhappy line. “Lucy is my friend.”

“Like I said—neither girlfriend nor sister. So the locker room rule” —stupid as it is and one that nobody really observes—“doesn’t apply.”

“It does if it’s invoked, and I’m invoking it right now.”

I scratch my temple and reach for some patience even though that character trait isn’t even on my top twenty list of strengths. It lives somewhere down around my feet along with impulse control and restraint. “We’re not in grade school anymore. We can’t call out new rules on the field.”

“Lucy is not a jersey chaser,” he grinds out. “She’s not the type who’s interested in one-night stands and hookups, which is probably hard for you to understand given that’s all you do.”

Jesus. If this guy wasn’t taking it on the chin in the football arena already, he’d be kissing my knuckles.

“Okay, man, you need to take a step back.” I might have gotten around in the past, but I’m twenty-two. I was single, and there were women throwing themselves at me. That I accepted a few—or several—of those invitations doesn’t make me an asshole. “Seems to me that we’re two pumpkins in the same patch, brother. It wasn’t Stella Lowe who was sucking your dick at the after party in Phoenix after the National Championship game two weeks ago. Unless Stella suddenly grew red hair and has a twin that we don’t know about. And I could’ve sworn that you were screwing a Kappa in the bathroom at the Gas Station on Monday night.”

“My point exactly,” he huffs. “We both know that we’re here to play football, first and foremost. Everything else, including women, come a distant second, so stop screwing around with Lucy. You’re only trying to use her to get to me, and it’s not going to work.”

That pisses me off on Luce’s behalf. “Take your head out of your ass for just a moment and stop thinking about Ace Anderson, buddy. I like Lucy because she’s hot and interesting. She likes me because I’m…well, I’m awesome. It has nothing to do with you.”