by Zoey Shores
It’s true that the theater department is sort of a world unto itself here at Winthrop. It’s an incredibly prestigious program, with connections to Broadway and Hollywood.
“Did the newspaper cover that story a lot?” Katie asks me.
I nod. “Yeah, nonstop. It kind of revived the relevance of the school paper. It’s not every day that campus news is something people actually want to read about. But a big, high profile football team drama moved papers.”
“Did you write any articles about it?”
“No, that story was so hot that everyone wanted to write about it. Everyone wants to have the column space that readers actually read. But our advisor, Professor Gasten, only let us write on that topic if we were actually able to get a good scoop.”
Which locked me out. There are guys on the newspaper who know Alpha Kappa guys and had a line to the inside story. Me, though, I didn’t know anyone on the football team, or anyone even associated with the football team.
Well, I knew Luke … but that’s the thing – that’s knew, past tense.
Although it is true that, since most of the guys at the newspaper with inside scoops had those scoops because of their acquaintance with Alpha Kappa guys, it was only that side of the story that got heard. The new students’ side of the story never really got told. They were all new and tended to be tight knit and tight lipped. No one had an in with them.
Though, if someone could get into that circle, and get a real glimpse of the story from their perspective, some real scoops about how they think and feel about what’s going on …
Well, if someone could do that, they’d get all the column space in the newspaper they could ask for. Front page stories. And front-page writers at the Winthrop school newspaper are the journalists who go on the work for the New York Times, the ones who go on to win Pulitzers.
“Ooooh, look, it’s Jay,” I hear April croon. Looking at her, I see her eyes narrow in the direction of the dancefloor.
“He’s that guy from your Econ class last year you wouldn’t stop talking about, right?” Rory asks.
April nods her head and takes a long, slow sip of her drink. “We were flirting all the time last semester during class. But you know me, I never hookup with a guy I’m currently taking a class with.”
April’s about as sexually open as they come, but I know that’s one of her rules. I can definitely see the sense in it. If things get awkward, you don’t want to have to be confined into the same room with that person two or three times a week for an entire semester.
“Well, last semester is over,” I remind her. “If you want to capitalize on all that flirtation last year, you’re in the clear now.”
April tilts her head to the side. An ambivalent expression is written on her features. “But I don’t know if I have any classes with him this semester yet, though.”
“That’s because the semester hasn’t started yet,” Rory reasons. “So it’s fair game no matter what.”
April cocks up an eyebrow. “True, but that kind of sounds like a technicality.”
“Aren’t you a soccer player?” I ask, chuckling. “You should be all about technicalities.”
April’s eyebrows raise and her eyes light up. “Hard to argue with that … and it’s hard to argue with those tight jeans he’s wearing …”
I glance toward him across the room. True – speaking objectively, those jeans do hug some long, well-built, muscular legs, and when he turns around my eyes greedily take in a finely sculpted backside.
I quickly avert my eyes from the view though – like I said, I don’t even want to tempt myself this year. Not that hookups with guys I meet at parties were really my thing anyway. I don’t have anything against it, don’t get me wrong – just not the kind of relationship that appeals to me, personally.
“Well, girl, you better go stake your claim before someone else digs her nails into him!” Rory playfully slaps at April’s shoulder as if urging her forward.
“Hey, it looks like he’s with a friend of his. Oooh, he’s tall, too, and look at that blonde hair. Katie, what do you say?” April turns toward Katie, who looks taken off guard.
“Huh?” Katie’s response.
“Me and Jay, you and his nice blonde friend. Let’s have some fun before classes start.” A playful and seductive smile tugs at the end of April’s full lips.
“Yeah, don’t let Megan have all the fun,” Rory encourages her.
“You two will be fine by yourselves?” Katie asks me and Rory.
“Oh, don’t worry about them,” Katie flips her wrist as if to dismiss the concern. “These two are celibate for this semester. Impervious to any masculine charms.”
“Really?” Katie asks.
“Really,” April answers for us, a hastiness in her voice. “They can tell you all about it later – for now, we have to hurry up and chase off those other two girls eying up our men.”
“Your men?” I question, smirking.
April shoots me a cocky grin. “For tonight, yes.”
With that, April takes Katie by the hand and leads her over to Jay and his friend. Before long, the two guys look positively seduced by April and Katie. If there’s anyone I’d call a seductress, it’s April, after all. She flirts with guys so playfully and boldly, it can almost make Rory blush – let alone me.
I take the last sip of my drink. It’s my second of the night, and I’m feeling relaxed, but not buzzed or anything. Which is what I want. I need to stay focused this semester, which means not only does romance need to be kicked to the curb, but I don’t want to tax my mind or body with partying.
Sure, I’ll go to a party to hang out with friends now and then, like tonight, but I’m not really interested in raging this semester, or having the morning hangovers that come with it.
Just as I’m about to suggest to Rory that we call it a night and head back home, I hear a loud voice accost us.
“Hey, girls,” some guy approaches us, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other, flanked by a buddy to his right.
Surprisingly, Rory and I went this far without anyone trying to pick us up. Probably because we’ve been hanging out with April, and a three-girl-group is usually pretty good at discouraging pickup attempts.
“We had class together last semester, remember?” the guy on the left addresses me. He’s not bad looking, to be honest, but I’m not on the market this year.
“Uh, no,” I answer, unsure if he’s just forcing an opening to talk to me, or if he’s actually mistaken and thinks we had a class together.
“Are you sure? Because I’m positive we have chemistry.
I chuckle to myself a roll my eyes. “First of all, that only really works once the semester is already started. We can’t have chemistry if you’re saying it’s a class we took together last semester.”
The guy’s face is blank for a minute, his alcohol-soaked brain trying to compute my response. Soon, the look is replaced with an amused smile. “Well, it seems like you have enough brains for the both of us. I think this relationship could really go somewhere.”
Rory and I burst out laughing. “Good try, but my friend and I are actually just going home,” I answer.
“I’ll try that line again once the semester actually starts, next party I see you at,” the guy quips as Rory and I begin to walk away. He’s actually pretty good natured for being turned down, to be honest. Can’t say the same for a lot of other guys who attend these frat parties.
“I hope it works for you eventually – but it won’t be on me,” I smile.
Rory and I turn and start to walk toward the door, when suddenly a commotion rises up around the room. A murmur seems to be spreading from the back of the house near the back porch and yard, through the living room. People start walking and then running to the back of the house and out onto the yard.
“What’s going on?” I ask rhetorically.
Rory and I are drawn by natural curiosity to follow the flow of people. We squeeze through dozens of other
s out through the double doors leading to the wooden porch. About halfway across the lawn, some big commotion is going on. A lot of big, burly bodies jostling around, a lot of noise – shouting, cursing.
The sheer chaos becomes more ordered as the jumble of bodies drawing all the attention separates into two groups, each pulling back one man. As the two groups succeed in separating the two people they’re pulling apart, it’s clear they’re breaking up a fight.
“Fuck that, let me at him!” I hear coming from one of the two guys who are being pulled apart.
“Chill Carson, chill!” I hear a voice respond to him, and a chorus of others adding the same sentiment, trying to calm him down.
“Hey, you want more, any time buddy!” A second voice joins the fray. A familiar voice.
Narrowing my eyes and looking out across the lawn, I can make out the features of the second man, shrugging off the hands restraining him and walking back in the opposite direct, away from the guy he was fighting.
It’s Luke.
“Come on, Luke, let’s get out of here,” I hear another guy say to him, verifying what I already knew.
Luke and three other guys walk off, away from the scene of the commotion. The other bodies involved in the scuffle stay where they are, talking amongst themselves. The other participant in the fight, Carson, looks to have a bruise on his face – and face on which is written a scowl of anger. The large group of people is still trying to calm him down, talking him out of pursuing Luke. Even though it looks like it wouldn’t go well for him if he tried to.
The crowd around us is buzzing. Carson Wright is the one Luke replaced as QB. And the acknowledged “ring leader” of the “old guard” of the team – the Alpha Kappa guys who were players before Coach Riker came in a shook up the program. Everyone who’s heard about the drama knows that Luke and Carson hate each other, and now, tonight, they finally came to blows.
This news is going to be all over social media. It probably already is. Gasten will be pushing this as a front page story for the first edition of the student paper this semester, that’s for sure.
I turn my head to see Luke and three other guys walking around the side of the house. A cocky smirk rests on his face, and he looks pumped up.
Fighting. It’s why he got expelled from high school. And therefore, why we stopped dating, if you think about it. I don’t know exactly what the story was with the fight that got him expelled back then, but I did know there was more to it than it seemed. Something to do with Luke’s brother. I always assumed, and believed, that Luke was somehow defending his brother, and that’s the only reason he ended up in the brawl that got him kicked out of school.
I wonder what drew him into this fight tonight? Protecting someone? Too much to drink? Maybe the rivalry that’s been simmering between him and Carson finally just blew up.
I have to admit, the last glimpse I catch of Luke … his tussled, mess up hair, his face lit up with adrenaline, his clothes disheveled from the struggle … well, it’s pretty damn hot. Sexy. Masculine. Tough. A little dangerous. Maybe more than a little.
Luke is definitely all of those things. He was back in high school, and he still is now.
I shake my head, hoping to sweep away those thoughts.
“Ready to go?” I ask Rory.
She answers yes, and we walk back through the house and out the front door, the other partygoers around us still buzzing and gossiping about what just happened.
CHAPTER SIX: LUKE
I laugh like an idiot as I, along with Chase, Archer, Lincoln, and Sage, walk away from the Alpha Kappa house and onto the sidewalk. The adrenaline is still coursing through my veins. My blood is pumping hard and I’m pulsing with energy.
Honestly, I didn’t want that confrontation with Carson to come to blows. I just wanted him to know that I wasn’t a pushover, and he wasn’t ever going to intimidate me, even on his own turf.
I didn’t expect him to try to cheapshot me.
But he did, and I reacted fast, getting my left arm up to block his right hand. I wasn’t even going to punch back, but then, frustrated that his shot was blocked, he tried to tackle me. At that point, I had to wrestle him off of me and give him a crack across the face as a warning.
Not at full force, of course. I wanted to put Carson in his place, but I didn’t want to knock him out cold. Shit, I’m in enough trouble with Coach already, because I know this scuffle is going to be all over social media by practice tomorrow. It probably already is.
I finally quiet down from my adrenaline-fueled fit of laughter to see Lincon glancing back at me, a look of annoyance on his face. He’s got his shoulder wrapped around Sage, who is a stumbling, drunk mess. We had to get him out of there.
I feel bad since I know this party was supposed to be part of Lincoln’s attempt to heal the wounds between the team and bring us all together. Fuck, I didn’t mean to blow those ideals apart. I just couldn’t stand by a let Carson treat Sage like that. And after I got Sage out of there, I wasn’t going to let Carson feel like the big man and have the last word, or the last laugh.
Lincoln looks back at me again, this time his look softens. He knows the fight started because I had to intervene to protect Sage. Even though I didn’t do it in the most diplomatic way possible – understatement of the year – what I did was still right.
“So much for fostering team spirit,” Chase muses, putting into words the thoughts that are written on Lincoln’s face.
“I can’t believe I missed the fight,” laments Archer.
“It wasn’t really a fight,” I answer, the adrenaline wearing off quickly as I start to think about tomorrow. Our team practice session, and how Coach is gonna chew all of us out. Plus, I still have to coexist with Carson and the other Alpha Kappa assholes on the field for the entire season.
I’m already trying to downplay it, now that I reflect on all the implications.
“That’s not what those knuckles say,” Chase jokes, grabbing my right hand and lifting it up. He wears a big smile on his face, like he’s proud that I finally gave Carson at least some of the comeuppance he so richly deserves.
I shake my hand out of his grip. My knuckles are noticeably red, but not bleeding or bruising. Like I said, I held back.
“You better not hurt those pretty little fingers, Tanner. We need ‘em healthy to carry us to the national championship,” Archer teases.
National Championship. Heh, yeah right. Making it to the playoffs is enough of a pipe dream. As a team, we grew leaps and bounds last year, but we’re still a relative small fry compared to the big teams that dominate the playoffs year in and year out.
The quarterbacks of those teams are future first round draft picks. Even though a lot of the sports media has been captivated by the turnaround of the Winthrop football program under Coach Riker, and my name’s been talked up a good bit, I know at this point I’d be lucky to go in the fifth and sixth round if the draft were tomorrow.
The group of us walk down the sidewalk toward our house. The soft glow of the streetlights illuminates our surroundings. It’s a cool night; the atmosphere is still, though there are sparse groups of people walking up and down the street amongst us, students going back and forth between parties, or heading the pizza place for a nice, greasy, drunken slice.
Some of them gawk at us as they pass by. I don’t know if they’re gawking because of the notoriety we’ve already built up as players, or if the fight has already made its way across the social media feeds of almost everyone in the school.
“How Sage?” I ask, approaching Lincoln.
“Ah, he’ll be alright,” Lincoln says, optimistically. “He’s drunk off his ass, but he didn’t really drink a dangerous amount or anything.”
“Thanks to you,” Archer clasps my shoulder.
“You doin’ alright, rookie?” Chase asks Sage in an upbeat tone.
“N-never better,” Sage slurs his words and lets out a quick burp.
The other four of us laugh. “Yeah, he’ll
be alright. He’ll feel it in the morning, though,” I add.
“Where are you from, rookie?” Chase asks Sage.
“Cleveland,” Sage answers.
“How do you like it here so far?” Archer joins in the conversation with our newest teammate.
“It’s alright, I just miss—” Sage cuts himself off abruptly.
Archer’s eyebrow arcs and he addresses Sage with a bemused look on his face. “Miss what?”
“Miss who, it sounds more like,” Chase joins in, grinning.
“You guys are really gonna give the poor kid the third degree when he’s in a state like this?” Lincoln asks in jest.
“Miss who, rookie?” Archer brushes off Lincoln’s pleas for clemency. “Your girlfriend back home?”
“Girlfriend?” Sage forces a laugh. “No way, man.”
“Me thinks the rookie doth protest too much,” Chase confronts him. If there’s one thing both Chase and Archer love, it’s busting balls.
“No way, Cloe’s like a sister, man,” Sage answers. It sounds like he thinks we actually know what he’s talking about. The alcohol has no doubt loosened his lips far more so than he’d be comfortably with while sober.
Chase’s face lights up. “She’s got a name. Cloe.”
“Sounds cute,” Archer adds.
“It’s nothing like that, man,” Sage protests, his voice sounding more fatigued. He looks like he needs a couch to crash on badly. “She’s like a sister.”
Archer throws his head back and guffaws loudly. “Bullshit. Every time I’ve ever heard a guy say a girl was like a sister to him, who wasn’t actually his sister, the guy was just lying to himself.”
Sage only shakes his head back and forth. His head is drooping down and he can barely keep his eyes open. It’s up to Lincoln to hold up his bodyweight as they walk side by side.
“I have a feeling this won’t be the last we hear about this,” I quip. The four of us laugh as we continue our walk. We’re close to home by now.
“I guess Sage can just crash on our couch,” Lincoln says.
