Quarterback Bait (14 page)

The bed was tiny, and we both seemed to be expanding like
bread—our lungs seemed to require huge gasps just to recover all the spent air.
In the ensuing silence, I thought I heard the footsteps of a tentative
roommate, out in the hall. At this, I started laughing.

“Oh, he owes me,” Landon whispered, tilting his sweaty face
so he spoke directly into my ear. His morning stubble tickled. We tittered
together, until the laughter snowballed into a full-on guffaw-fest. He would
smile, and I would smile, and then we'd start up hooting like goblins again.

After the goofing had subsided, Landon rolled over and drew
his index finger from the pearl of my sternum down my shaking body, passing
first my breasts, then my belly, then the damp expanse of my lower body. His
touch was light and sweet. Had my eyes been closed, I might have thought it was
wind, or a feather. I turned to look him straight in his deep brown eyes and
felt nothing but incredible peace.

“I'm glad we did this,” he said. Then, just as quickly,
rolled his eyes. “Gah—I'm sorry. Is that super lame? Something a Dad would
say?”

“You're not lame, Landy.”

“Glad you think so, Doll.” His eyes blinked slowly as he
spoke my silly nickname. I leaned over and kissed him on the nose.

 “So,” Landon finally ventured, after a few dozy
minutes had passed. “Did I live up to the hype?”

I reached across the tiny bed until I'd grabbed hold of a
striped pillow. Then, I thwacked my stepbrother neatly across the face.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Landon

“What the fuck are you smiling about?” Clay murmured,
through gritted teeth. It took a second to snap back down to earth. I shrugged,
then waved away my buddy's attentions.
A whole pile of MYOB, Clay.

“Boys, I know y'all have been paying close attention to your
coach,” came the then-unwelcome voice of Special Teams Coach Yeardley, a tall,
oily, skeleton-like man with bad teeth and a comb-over. “He's been talking
about the scouts coming to watch the A & M game tomorrow. But then, because
you're a useful and contributing member of the Longhorn community, you must
know all about that.
Landon.
”

I wanted to throttle the sucker, but instead I nodded,
tightly. As soon as Yeardley had wandered farther afield Clay raised his
eyebrows at me, in a way I knew contained sympathy but also a willingness to
lend our coach a break. His sarcasm hit a chord, after all. For assorted
reasons, I had been super distracted the past seven days—or specifically, all
the days leading up to the big A & M game, the one that would allegedly
decide my future in the NFL. Or outside of it.

For starters, just about every minute I hadn't spent in
practice these past few days had been spent with Pop. After Anya had decided
she didn't want to press charges about the beating, Carson and I got together
and had a pow-wow. Missus Bohemia herself had given me the names of a few anger
management counselors she knew, several of whom had connections to the VA and
would be willing to work with Pop on his insurance plan. “Landon, you have to
do something about this,” she'd told me, when I'd protested. I was still so mad
at the geezer that it seemed just as well that he be sent off to a funny farm.
But Carson, something of an amateur shrink herself, had convinced me that I'd
feel guilty forever if I abandoned the old man full-out in his time of need.
She even got me to talk about some of my childhood shit with the Pastor, which
was surprisingly freeing. It's not like I'm going to sign up for group therapy
anytime soon or anything, but I must say—it did feel good to talk.

Anyways, I'd had to go crawling to just about every UT
Professor I'd ever had and get them to vouch for my personal problems so I
could get an extension on all my mid-terms while I shuffled Pop to and from
therapy. That was no picnic. Fortunately, our school was sports-crazed enough
that the whole Biology Department was willing to go to bat for a quarterback.
Lucky break.

But the sessions were slow-going. Pop, styling himself as a
man of the cloth, wasn't exactly sweet on the idea of psychotherapy. But when
I'd finally found him, that fateful morning after—curled up in a miserable
ball, clutching a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red that'd been some congregant's
wedding present—he had expressed nothing but remorse for the way he'd treated
Anya. I still get a cold feeling in my gut, any time I remember walking into
the living room and seeing him look so small. “I want to change, son,” he'd
actually told me, through a desperate mask of boozy drool and tears. That was
the worst I'd ever seen him.

Third straw on the camel's back was then, of course, the
fact that I had a new lady friend. Specifically, a lady friend who I couldn't
go blabbing about to friends or meeting in public, for the following (very
good) reasons: 1) Coach was in the mood to roll heads if he found out anyone
was spending what he deemed to be “excessive time” with a member of the
opposite sex. (“You can fall in love when football season ends, boys,” he liked
to say. “For these last few weeks, consider your nuts in a vice.”) 2) The lady
friend's mother and my father were still technically married, and dealing with
a shit-ton of personal problems. Didn't seem like a good idea to add “By the
way, I'm dating my sister!” to the long list of topics Pop and I had yet to
explore in therapy.

As a result of all this BS, Doll and I had elected to kick
it on the DL. This actually had its perks. Being with Ashleigh was nothing at
all like being with Zora. The former never flinched away from my touch. She was
proud of her body, and would walk around naked in my room like it was no big
thing. And best of all—she actually seemed interested when I would go on at
length about whatever geeky science thing was jazzing me that week from Earth
Science class (the only one I dug), or the latest mini-gossip on the team. I
was fascinated just to hear her talk about her classes. I truly believed, for
the first time, that despite the age difference my girl was way smarter than
me.

The first day we got together, Ash and I didn't get out of
bed. We'd fuck, then fall asleep, then fuck, then order takeout, then watch
some dumb movie on my laptop. Denny had texted me at 6:05 to ask why I was late
to practice, and Doll had laughed at me from bed as I'd hastened to get
dressed, hopping foot to foot. I'd waited to shower until I got home, so she
could come in with me. I'd taken her from behind as our bodies were lathered
with soap, one hand in the thatch of her dark wet hair, the other stroking the
supple flesh of her pussy. My roommates definitely weren't pleased with the
state of affairs (or the screaming) but then, what did they know about being
smitten?

“Hey, Landon!” shouted a familiar voice. I snapped out of my
reverie to see Denny, waving at me from the sidelines. The team was taking
their time to disband after practice—fellas were congregating by the cooler
while others made breaks for the locker room—but my old friend and confidant
had elected to go off by himself. He toed the twenty yard line like a guy
debating whether or not to ask some girl to prom. I was so surprised by his
powerless stance that I forgot for a second that he'd swooped in and stolen my
ex-girlfriend (before she'd technically been an ex-).

Curious, I moseyed over. Denny seemed relieved when I
arrived at his side. Palms up, to indicate I meant him no trouble. His
typically snarky expression seemed drained of joy today, and he didn't look
like he'd been sleeping well. Come to think of it, during last night's game
with Arkansas he'd made something like three errors. Neither of us were exactly
lavishing in the team's good graces at the moment.

“Hey, man,” he repeated, shuffling in his cleats. I just
crossed my arms. Let the sonofabitch work for it. Around us, most of the team
dwindled back towards the locker rooms. On the opposite end of the field, the
coaches bent their heads low in a dire-looking conference.

“I'm sorry,” my old pal blurted out finally, his whole pasty
face flushing red. “About Zora, and everything. I feel like a shit. I've liked
her for years, and I didn't think—I was just...” I raised my eyebrows, to
gesture him forward—but that seemed to be about all the apology my bro could
muster.

“I honestly didn't mean to hurt you, man. Never.” His tone
had shifted. He sounded more plaintive, more sincere, than I'd ever known this
fucking jokester to be. In a breath of clarity, I saw a vision of Doll in my
mind's eye. Right about now, she'd be shuffling to her Intro to Classics class,
probably in a hurry, probably straining to handle an armload of books. She'd be
wearing those cute-ass little booty shorts, and she'd be asking her professor
direct questions, brow all furrowed in that maddening way I'd come to
recognize. It was like a fog was lifting. I snapped back to the field, to
Denny, whining out his wimp's apology—and I decided it didn't matter. What did
I care who Zora wanted to shack up with? I knew her, I knew Denny—they were
total losers, but I wanted them to be happy. And nothing was going to rain on
my fucking parade.

“Dude, we're tight,” I said slowly, cracking a grin. Denny's
whole face collapsed with relief. We went in for a bro hug, and it felt good, I
must admit. In a weird way, I'd missed this fucking idiot.

“You're aces, man. And hey—don't listen to what all these
shit-stains say. We're gonna wipe the floor with the Aggies, and the Colorado
coach is going to tap you, and everything's gonna be wavy-gravy. You'll see.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said brightly. I mean, I knew how slim
the odds were that I'd make first pick of my favorite team as a freshman in the
NFL. And more and more, I didn't care. I could get to Colorado without
football. I could do tons of things without football, and live a perfectly
dandy life.

“Though I will say, your head does seem to be screwed on
not-quite-tight, my brother.” Denny took his big arm and linked it around my
neck in a half-nelson. “Come on! Tell your bro! What poon has got you trippin’
like this? Is this fucking Shakespeare-level love, or what?”

“Hey, man, I don't need to tell you what a man will put up
with for a good time.” No sooner had I said this then I felt a wave of shame.
Something had changed, somehow—talking about Ashleigh the way I used to talk
about all the football groupie girls felt distinctly wrong. Denny, however,
seemed pleased with the opportunity to conspire.

“Oh, do I. Zora's got these tight little...” I shot him a
steel-melting look of caution, and Denny pulled his arm back. “But, err, right.
You know all about that.”

We began to walk back towards the locker room in a tentative
silence—a new color for our friendship, but a hopeful one. I decided we could
continue if Denny could pass a confidence test; we always used to tell each
other shit. I stopped in my tracks, scoured the field for coaches, and turned
to face him.

“Okay, man. There is a girl. And—don't laugh, but it's Ashleigh.
Err—Ashleigh Bennett.” Denny reached back to scratch his neck, not looking at
me. We hovered under the hot noon sun for what felt like a minute, just being
weird.

“My...well, you know. There's actually been a lot of weird
shit going down with her—our—parents, and they're going to be spending some
time apart. And Ash and I have this really weird connection, and I know it
seems fast, but it's actually not...” I was totally babbling now, but something
about Denny's flinty stance was making me crave his approval.

“Classic Sterling,” my old friend said finally. “You like
something, you take it. Doesn't matter what the world will think, or how it
will affect anyone else.”

“Dude. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You seriously think dating your stepsister is a good idea?
By anyone's estimate? I don't care if her nipples taste like beer and her pussy
like honey, you're seriously gonna walk onto that field tomorrow and try to
convince some representative from the NFL that you're a squeaky-clean, scandal-free
candidate for a new standard in American football?”

“Where the fuck are you getting this, man? People date all
the time! And if you're so concerned with the moral code of the NFL, you're
really gonna hate this story about Ray Lewis that
the whole world must've
forgotten to tell you
.”

“Is she even eighteen, Landy?! Christ!”

“Oh, my bad. I'm thinking of Michael Vick. Oh, I'm thinking
of O.J. Simpson. Oh, I'm thinking of –”

“Will you cut the crap? For once?” In a fluid, furious
gesture, Denny slammed his helmet down against the dirt so hard he drew a divot
on the green. Across the field, our coaches looked up and shaded their eyes.

“Fine. Forget I said anything.” Feeling petulant and
confused, I started to amble away from the fucking Tasmanian Devil. What had I
even been thinking? Denny was a piece of shit, everyone knew it. Who needed
him?

“Landon! Landon, listen!” I didn't turn, just kept
walking—but his words carried. “You're so hard to be friends with, man. We all
just watch you making these stupid fucking mistakes, over and over and over.
You don't like Zora? Well, then why didn't you fucking break up with her when
you had the chance? You really hate football so much, you hate this team? Well,
no one is keeping you here! Your Dad messes you up? Then stop taking care of
him! Don't let him leech off you like this for your whole fucking adult life!”
I began to break into a run. Denny's words seemed to fall like raindrops on my
back. “And for God sakes, man! You could have any girl in the whole state and you
want your step-sister? Why do you make everything so goddamned hard for
yourself?”

The locker room door clicked behind me with a metallic thud.
For the first time all practice, I was seriously winded. It felt horrible.