Stadium of Lights: A Second Chance Sports Romance (24 page)

“Yes. You?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t look or sound happy.

“I guess I’ll see you when we get back. Are you planning to study while you’re at home?”

“Geez, you’re a machine!”

“I know. So, are you?”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Watch it, or I’ll have a whip the next time you see me.”

“Don’t get me excited again,” he growled as we got to the main doors of my building. I turned to him.

“Well, have a good break. I guess I’ll see you next Monday.” I wanted him to say he would miss me. After what we’d just done, it was the least he could say.

“Okay.” He backed away. “Later.”

My heart ached as he moved farther away. I turned so he wouldn’t see the tears build up in my eyes.

“Hey.” He took me by the shoulders and spun me around, then kissed me deeply. We stood there for what felt like forever, with his arms around my waist and mine around his shoulders. I stood on my tip toes savoring his lips. When we parted, I was breathless.

“See you when we get back,” he breathed. Then he turned and left for real, while I held onto the door to keep myself steady.

I
pulled
the truck up in front of the old rowhome. It looked exactly the same as it always had, only dirtier and older. The porch roof sagged. The concrete steps were cracked and crumbling. There were bars on the windows. The front door was scratched and grimy. I hated driving home in my SUV, always afraid somebody would steal it—even though most of the neighborhood knew who I was and didn’t screw around with me.

I wondered how much longer it would be before the whole house fell down on Mom’s head. Either that or the magazines and newspapers she insisted on stacking around the house would fall down and pin her tiny body until she starved to death—and she was already close to that.

The door opened and out stepped my mother. All ninety pounds of her.

“Jake! Come here, son!” she cried, holding her arms out.

I opened the car door, and the smell of cigarettes hit me as soon as I did. One of my biggest fears was that she would fall asleep while smoking.

I gave her a hug, noticing the old housedress she wore and how thin she was. “Mom, are you eating?”

“Of course. I’m alive, right?”

“You’re not eating enough. You’re going to waste away.”

“I’m just fine. Women are supposed to be slim.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. Women were expected to do a lot of things, according to her. They were supposed to have boyfriends; they were supposed to have fun. They were supposed to smoke cigarettes to keep their weight down. They were supposed to have a cocktail or two. They were supposed to walk around with their hair in curlers all day long.

“Come on in,” she said, pulling me by the arm. I wished to God I didn’t have to be there. I wished I could have afforded to go skiing or to the beach like my friends. I could hardly afford the payments on my car.

The house was no bigger than it had been over the summer, of course. The walls were still as depressing, with the brown paneling and faded pictures tacked up on them. The plastic cover on the couch was still torn in a few places, the TV just as old. The carpet was just as worn down, little better than a bare floor. There was still nothing in the wooden cabinets or the fridge.

“Mom, I have to go to the store. I can’t live on saltine crackers and orange juice all week.” I held out my hand. “Give me some money, and I’ll go for you.”

“I don’t have any,” she said. The look in her eye told me she wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I let it go. I knew she had money stashed somewhere—a coffee can, her dresser drawer, the cookie jar. She always hoarded money “just in case.” Just in case she ran out of smokes or cheap vodka.

“Can you get me a pack of Virginia Slims while you’re there?” she called out as I got into the car. I sighed loudly and turned up the stereo even louder. Five minutes, and I already wanted to get the hell out. How had I lived there for so long?

I drove through my old town. Nothing ever changed. I could have walked through blindfolded and known where everything was. I even could have sidestepped the broken concrete in front of Mr. Black’s barber shop. That sidewalk had been broken since before I was born, probably.

The corner store hadn’t changed since the seventies. The same faded awning that used to be red and green once, but was faded from years of sun and rain. The same handwritten ads in the window. Only the prices changed. When I walked in, it was like walking through a time warp. I could have been five years old again.

“Jake Jennings! How nice to see you!” Stella shouted from behind the cash register, with a smile just as big as ever. It matched her oversized body.

“Hello, Stella.”

“You’ve gotten so tall and big.” She gripped my biceps.

I blushed and told her I was in town over the break. She asked me college was going, and I told her, “It’s great, thank you, Ma’am.”

“I’m just here to pick up some things for my mother,” I explained.

“Such a good son. She’s always sayin’ what a good boy you are, too, every time she comes in here. She can’t wait till the spring when you get signed by a big team. We’re all rootin’ for ya!”

“Fingers crossed,” I smiled and held up crossed fingers, then pulled out a cart to do the shopping through the narrow, overstuffed, dusty aisles. As soon as my back turned to her, I stopped smiling. Of course, my mother bragged on me. Of course, she told everybody who would listen that her boy was going to be a big football star in the NFL. So he could support her, of course.

It boiled my blood. I wanted to take care of my mother, but I hated that she expected it. I would have her around my neck for the rest of my life.

“Jake?”

I looked down the aisle. For a split-second, I thought it might be my ex-girlfriend, Melissa. It wasn’t. Just a girl I sort of recognized.

“Yeah?”

She smiled. “Greta. From high school. Remember me?”

Then I recognized her face. She was a friend of Melissa’s. “Yeah. Sorry, it’s been a long time. How are you?”

“Good, thanks. You’re home on break too, huh?”

“Same for you?”

“Yeah. It’s a real brain shift,” she said, grinning.

“Tell me about it.” I rubbed my hand along the back of my neck then ran it through my hair. “Especially when nothing here actually changes.”

“I know. It’s like a spooky movie or something. Time froze here.” We both laughed. “Hey, did you hear Melissa and her boyfriend just got engaged?”

My heart clenched like a fist, but I smiled anyway. “No. No, I didn’t know that. My mom didn’t get a chance to tell me.”

“Yeah, they’re planning a big destination wedding.” She rolled her eyes. “Like any of us can afford to go to something like that.”

Because she doesn’t want you to, baby
. It was so obvious. Just another way for Melissa to forget all about where she came from. I couldn’t blame her. I’d been back for way less than an hour, and I wanted to get the hell out and never go back.

“That’s good.” I didn’t know what else to say. Was I supposed to be happy for my ex?

“So … you think of anything fun to do around here?” Greta asked.

“Around here? Unless they all of a sudden came up with something new, no. I can’t think of a damned thing.”

“Neither can I. Though we do have the pool at my parents’ house. Sometimes I like to go swimming at night. After they go to bed.” She gave me a look I recognized.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s a nice way to cool off when the nights are so hot and sticky, you know?” She smiled, and my cock stirred. She was hot, all right. Tight body, almost see-through shirt. No bra. Her nipples stuck out like pins. I wondered what they tasted like.

“What do you think?” she asked, moving a step closer to me. “Want to come take a dip with me?”

I opened my mouth, and I meant to say yes. I did. In my head, I was already with her. I was already bending her over the side of the pool and fucking her from behind. She was already moaning my name and pulsing around me as she came, while I fucked her mercilessly.

“I’m sorry, Greta. I can’t. I promised my mom I’d help her with something tonight. Maybe another time.” I shrugged with a smile.

She blinked once or twice like she was surprised. “Oh. Okay. See you around.” She pushed her cart past me and stormed away on her clunky heels.

What the hell was I thinking? A hot, tight college girl is all ready for me. All I had to do was ask for her address and the time. And I said no. Why?

It wasn’t like I wasn’t horny. All I could do was walk around the store, putting things in the cart at random while I waited for my erection to go down. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do than sit around the house and watch movies with my mom until she passed out. I planned to study, but only when she was asleep—I didn’t want to hear her telling me to stop wasting my time when I had a career in the NFL in front of me.

My heart wasn’t in it. What happened to the old me? The me who would have taken her out to the car and fucked the shit out of her before going back to the store to finish shopping?

Only one word kept coming to mind: Claire.

We weren’t dating, for Christ’s sake. We only slept together a few times. Otherwise, she was free to do what she wanted, and so was I. We had never talked about it, but it only made sense. There was nothing between us.

So why did I feel like the world’s biggest asshole when I thought about fucking Greta? Because I knew it would hurt Claire’s feelings if she knew there was anybody else. She wasn’t like the other girls. She didn’t roll with it the way they did. I still remembered what she told me about the losers who hurt her back in high school. She didn’t want to feel used again. If she knew I was sleeping around, she would.

Was that it, though? I thought it had to be.

I still thought about it that night, after I made dinner for Mom and me. The kitchen smelled like grease and ten thousand burned dinners. It was enough to make me wish I’d bought a gas mask somewhere.

I put a plate of roasted chicken and spaghetti on a TV tray in front of her, with a salad and garlic bread. “Please eat it,” I said. “You need the nutrition especially the protein.”

“I eat those protein bars.” She shrugged. “And I drink juice.”

“Juice is nothing but sugar. And when you mix it with vodka it kind of loses any nutritional value.”

“Don’t be a smartass with me, boy,” she snapped. “I’m still your mama.”

“I know. I know.”

We turned to the TV, where the news talked about all kinds of shitty things. Then in a human interest piece, they talked about fall break. Footage of kids living it up on the beach and all of a sudden, I wasn’t so hungry.

Mom was, and she ate almost every bit of the food on her plate. I wondered if it was the first decent thing she’d had to eat since I left in August. I wouldn’t doubt it. She was never good at taking care of herself.

“Tell me about college.”

I knew what that meant. Tell her about the football program.

“It’s going well. We still work out together every day, just about. I told you about Zack’s injury, right? I think he’s going to be okay. We have a perfect record so far this season, though I guess you know that already.” I wondered what it would be like to want my mother to go to a game, to watch me play for once. Other people’s parents came to cheer for them. It was the biggest nightmare I could imagine.

“Any scouts around?”

I nodded as Mom lit up a cigarette. “Yeah, there’s been a few. More than a few. Coach thinks most of us have a decent shot. I mean, Zack and Max, obviously. They’re amazing. Preston is one of the fastest guys on the field.”

“What about you?”

“I hold my own. I’ve talked to a handful of scouts already.”

“Where from?”

I rolled my eyes. “Mom, I don’t remember off the top of my head. Uh, Philly, Cleveland, Denver?”

“You don’t want to go to Philly. The fans are rabid. And Cleveland, who gives a shit about them? But Denver, that sounds interesting. I can’t wait till you get drafted and I get out of here.”

I might as well have asked her where she wanted to live one day since that’s how she weighed my options. She expected me to take her with me. That was always her plan. So she wanted to live in Denver. Then I would play for Philly and buy her a house in Colorado and visit during away games.

I bit my tongue—otherwise, I would have told her she could have been out of there years ago if she had just tried. There was nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t disabled. She was lazy. And she expected me to work my ass off to keep her comfortable for the rest of her life. I realized just then how much I resented her.

“I’ve got a tutor,” I said. I had to tell her, to see what she thought.

“A tutor? What the hell for?”

“I’ve got to keep my grades up, or else I won’t be able to play. Like you just said, this is my time. If I don’t play, the scouts don’t see me.” I could tell from her face that she had a hard time understanding what I said. “If I fail, I get kicked off the team. I won’t get picked up if nobody sees me play.”

“Oh, that’s no good. You’d better study. You have your books with you, right?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” It was almost too hard not to laugh. She was so predictable.

So I spent the week studying—for once, she forced me to do it. I wished I could go back to the younger version of myself and tell him the day would come when she would threaten to lock me in my room the whole week so I could concentrate on my work.

* * *

W
hen I got back
to campus the Sunday before class started again, there was only one thing on my mind: finishing
Hamlet
.

And seeing Claire again. So, two things.

What was happening to me? By the end of the week, she was all I could think about. It wasn’t even that I wanted to have sex—though I did. I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to tell her that I finished
Hamlet
. I wanted to discuss it with her. Who was I?

More than that even, I wanted to be with her. After spending a week in white trash hell, she was the only person who could make me feel like me again. She understood me in a way none of my friends did. I couldn’t talk about Shakespeare with them. They’d want to know if I got laid over break, and they would tell me about all the times they’d been laid. That was it.