Jockblocked: A Novel (Gridiron Book 2) (25 page)

I
t feels
like my insides have been scooped out by a melon baller and filled with acid. I go home and cry my head off.

“This calls for real ice cream,” Sutton says darkly.

Charity holds my head against her chest as I give myself two shots of insulin. That’s bad, I know, but I’m a mess.

Neither of them judge me. Neither of them tell me I’m a fool for breaking up with Matty, no matter that I cry so hard I become dehydrated. Sutton even runs to the store and buys some water they give babies because it has extra electrolytes.

Two weeks pass, but my phone remains silent. I have no idea if Ace is still calling or texting because I’ve blocked his number. I don’t block Matty’s because I still want him to call me and convince me I was wrong in my risk assessment, but he never does.

It’s hard to believe that in two short months, Matty made such an impact on my life. He was like a meteor, a hot flash of delight followed by a huge crater of destruction.

I throw myself into mock trial, but it doesn’t consume me the way it has in the past. Every time I enter the practice room, I can still feel Matty in the back, his eyes glowing with pride.

Heather’s reverted to sucking, but I can’t summon the energy to correct her even though we have only two practices before regionals.

When she stands for the third time and approaches Emily on the witness stand without permission, I fear Randall’s head will come off.

I try to prevent the impending explosion.

“This is like a game of Randall Says but instead of ‘Captain, may I,’ you say, ‘May it please the court.’” I stand up and demonstrate. “May it please the court.”

Randall nods smugly from his position on the makeshift bench.

Heather rolls her eyes. “May it please the court,” she repeats.

“You may proceed, Ms. Bell,” Randall intones. He’s enjoying this far too much. I flick a glance to Heather, who’s rolling her eyes. That’s better than her itching to hit Randall, so I lean back.

“May it please the court, may I approach the witness?” Heather says.

I wince at the awkward phrasing.

“No,” Randall interrupts loudly. “Say ‘May I approach the witness, your honor.’”

Heather slams her hand on the side of the table. “You just told me to say ‘May it please the court’ every time,” she hisses through clenched teeth.

“No, we told you to ask for permission,” Randall glares back. “It’s redundant when you say ‘May it please the court, may I approach.’”

“This is fucking stupid as hell!” Heather yells and storms out.

I drop my head to the desk and wonder if I can go to sleep now and wake up sometime after I’ve graduated.

“Can we take a break?” Emily asks.

“Yes. Take a break,” I mumble against the table.

“We shouldn’t even go to Regionals,” Randall remarks as he slides into the seat next to me. It’s a week away. I don’t bother to lift my head, which Randall takes as permission to keep complaining. “I don’t know why you asked her to join us,” he snipes.

I finally do raise my head to glare at him. “You were there. Don’t try to pretend you weren’t. She had the best closing of everyone who tried out. She was fucking
moving.
I think you were near tears.”

He averts his face. “I was not.”

“Liar.”

He sighs and swivels back to face me. “You could have done it. You could do the closing just as well as anyone.”

“Not really.” This time it’s my turn to look away. I stack my already neat pile of papers and tap them so their edges are all perfect.

“You know what your problem is?”

“Gosh, Randall, that question is such a fun one to hear and to answer. I’ve got so many faults, though, we’d be here all night listing them all.” I curl up the edges of the papers and fantasize about smacking Randall in the face with them.

“Your problem is you don’t take enough chances.”

My stomach clenches at his accusation. “I took a chance on Heather.”

He scoffs. “That’s not taking a chance. That’s you hiding again.”

The team files in before I can respond, but his criticism burns as hot as if he held a flame under my chair. As I watch everyone take their places—Emily on the witness stand, Randall back behind the two desks we set up to be the judge’s bench, Heather at the table opposite me—I wonder if Randall’s right.

Is that what I’m doing? Hiding behind Heather? Behind Ace? Do I use all these excuses so I don’t get hurt? So I won’t fail? Do I take the easiest path? And pretend that makes me happy?

“Ahem,” Heather clears her throat next to me. “Are we going to do this thing?” She gestures toward Emily.

“Yes.” I try to shake off Randall’s hurtful words. “Yes, we’re doing this thing.”

The rest of the team springs to action, and we make it all the way through the trial without stopping. None of us corrects Heather’s errors, or our own for that matter. We let it all slide. I’m too tired, still stinging from Randall’s rebuke, and too heartsore to really care.

“We’ll take a ten-minute break and do closings,” I say after finishing with the last examination. Beside me, Heather looks fresh and invigorated as if the last two hours weren’t completely draining. “Heather, I have some notes I typed up—”

“No, thanks,” she interrupts me. “I’ve got this. In fact, we can start now if you want.”

Randall wiggles his eyebrows at me, but I’m still angry at him to join in any of his games.

“Sure.” I slump against my chair. Anything for this practice to be over.

She stands and strides confidently toward the open space in front of the fake jury box. She extends one hand toward Randall. “May it please the court? Opposing counsel?” The other hand floats toward me. “Women and men of the jury. On behalf of my client and co-counsel, we thank you for your time. The right to trial by jury is as fundamental to this country as owning a gun or the right to vote or the right to practice one’s religion. It’s in both the 6
^th
and 7
^th
Amendments to the Constitution. By sitting here today, you are upholding the very document that created this country.”

Her reference to the Constitution is smart. I jot a note to make sure she includes it every time. Heather proceeds to tell the room full of weary students exactly why her client was victimized by a callous corporation seeking profits over safety.

Her rich voice, unhurried, weaves a tale of a hard worker, taken advantage of by a shoddily designed product that was inevitably going to hurt someone. In this case, that someone was our client.

By the end, we’re sitting there with our mouths hanging open, and I, pretending to be the counsel for the manufacturer, want to throw myself at her feet and beg for forgiveness.

After her last thank you, the entire room is silent until Randall releases an awe-filled, “Damn.”

And he keeps repeating it as our teammates jump out of their seats and rush Heather. They clap and smile and hug her. Every mistake she’s made, every insulting word she’s said, it’s all forgotten.

And seeing my whole team embrace her makes me feel even shittier than when I thought we were going to send another losing team to Regionals.

Maybe I’ve been too hard on Ace.

“What?” Heather demands. “Why are you looking at me like that? Did I fuck up again?”

“No. Everything was perfect.” And it was. Everyone performed flawlessly. Heather remembered to ask the court for permission. I didn’t screw up any questions on direct. All the witnesses looked either smart or vulnerable or, in the case of Emily, both.

“She’s just in shock,” Randall jokes. “Want to run through it again?”

“No.” There are thirty minutes left in our practice time, but I want to leave on a high note. “We’re ending early.”

The team whoops with joy. Even Randall, who ordinarily wants to stay longer, is excited. He leans down to give me a quick hug goodbye and gives Heather a kiss on the cheek. She shoos him away and soon it’s just her and me.

“Need something?” I ask as I gather the materials together. Evidently she wants to talk and if there was ever a time that I didn’t want to deal with Heather’s shit, it would be now.

I’m emotionally tapped out. I kind of just want to go back to my apartment, cover my head with a pillow and cry for a few hours—as I’ve done nearly every night since I broke up with Matt.

“Yes. I want to know what I did wrong tonight. You haven’t said more than two words to me. I want to know if I’m fucking up.” She juts out her chin pugnaciously, as if physically preparing herself for me to bust a fist across her chin.

“You aren’t fucking up.”

“I know I didn’t set that cross-examination up right. That I didn’t get her to admit she was under oath before asking her to read from the deposition.”

“Yeah, it’s okay, though. That’s a small error. Do you want to run through it right now?” I pull out the deposition.

Heather pulls it out of my hand and sets it behind her. “No, I want to know why you didn’t call me on that bullshit during the practice. You would have any other night.”

“You were in the groove, and it didn’t make sense to interrupt you.” I decide Heather can keep that copy. I can print out a new one. I shove everything else in my backpack, but before I can close it, Heather’s hand reaches out and rips the bag out of my hand.

“Something’s wrong.” If it were anyone else, I’d say there was concern in her voice. But this is
Heather
. Despite some evidence to the contrary, Heather is focused on herself alone. In some ways, I really admire that. She’s a sophomore, a year younger than me, but has the drive, determination and direction that people ten years older lack.

I reach for the bag, but she shoves the bag under the desk and plants her ass on the seat. I’ll have to crawl underneath her to get it, which sounds as appealing as running nude in front of the Playground.

I lose my temper. “For the past ten weeks, you’ve treated me like a nuisance at best and a demon who hates you at worst. Every time I’ve given a suggestion on how to improve, you’ve snapped my head off. Now you want me to confide in you?”

Heather waves her hand dismissively, as if the past few weeks of contentiousness haven’t happened. “I don’t want to be your friend, but I want to win this competition, and I know that if you’re not on top of your game, we aren’t going to win, so if talking it out is going to help you get your head out of your ass, then I’m all ears.”

“Gosh, Heather, with that kind of invitation, I don’t know why I’m not barfing out all my emotional drama to you,” I say sarcastically.

“Aha! So something
is
wrong,” she says as if she’s won something. But hasn’t she? I denied something was wrong. She kept pressing until I lost my cool.

I can’t keep in my surprised laughter. “Aha? Yes, Ms. Perry Mason, that was a pretty perfect cross-examination.”

Heather flushes. “I
am
getting the hang of things, aren’t I?”

“Yes. Yes, you are,” I agree. “Which is why I didn’t correct you even though you didn’t ask Emily if she was under oath at the time of her deposition just as she was under oath now.”

“Ahh, that’s the phrase.” Heather snaps her fingers. “I ask to approach the witness, wait for permission, and then ask the witness when she testified previously if she was under oath.”

“Right. That way you get her to subtly acknowledge she was either lying then or lying now.”

“And how many points do I get for impeaching the witness?” she asks.

“At least one full point, and they’ll lose points, so it’s a win/win for us.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Rarely.”

“Bummer.” She pushes her bottom lip out.

“On the plus side, you know how to do it now.” I hold out my hand. “Can I have my bag back?”

“No. Not until you’ve told me what is wrong.”

“I can fight you for it.”

“But you won’t because you believe in being patient and kind.” She taps the backpack with the heel of her foot.

“I don’t like you very much right now.” I stare at her in frustration. Heather’s completely unaffected by my growing irritation.

“As if that’s different from any other time.”

Oh hell, why not. I throw my coat down and take a seat across from her. “You remember Matty, right?” He’d come to a few practices.

“Did I suffer amnesia? Of course, I remember fuckboy.”

I stand up. “We’re done now.”

“No, come on, sit down,” Heather pleads. “I know I suck at this. Give me another shot.” I don’t move. “Please,” she says.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Heather shrugs. “I don’t know. I have no filter. My dad is a no-bullshit kind of guy, and he doesn’t tolerate any filter at home, so I’m a bitch.” She laughs, but it’s a bitter one. “But the ironic thing is that he dates these...babies who talk like babies and act like babies and everything that comes out of their mouths is fake and childish, but it’s me that he hates. I’m doing this whole thing to show him that I’m exactly what he made me.”

Jesus, that sounded awful. I sit down.

“So it’s guy trouble,” she muses.

I nod slowly. “Yes. It’s guy trouble.” She makes a winding motion with her hand. I heave a sigh. “I have a guy friend, and he was angry I’d been seeing Matty.”

She interrupts. “Can we have names or identifying marks?”

“Identifying marks?” I query.

“Yeah, like this one guy I slept with had a mole on his neck so I’d call him Spot and this other guy I slept with had a square head so I’d call him Frank.”

“Short for Frankenstein?” I guess.

“Exactly. So you have Matt and who?”

“JR. Or Ace. Everyone calls him Ace. Ace and I have been friends for a long time. He just busts out with the friend-zone accusation when he finds out I’ve been sleeping with Matty. But Matty apparently can’t keep his hands to himself. Ace took pictures of Matty being drunk and handsy with another girl.”

The latter accusation is a bit unfair to Matty, but there’s a ring of truth to it. I don’t trust him. I never really did, looking back. When he said he was falling for me, I was too afraid to give him the same reply in return, even though I knew I was under his spell from the minute he tossed me the aspirin packet.