All Lined Up

by Cora Carmack

  “Dad?” I glance at him in confusion, and only after a few moments do I realize he’s dressed for church. “Oh my God. I forgot about church.” I had no idea he cared strongly enough about my attendance to drag himself to my dorm. I’ve never skipped before, but clearly it matters to him. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I had kind of a rough night last night, and I fell asleep without setting an alarm.”

  “I know.”

  His expression is so neutral that I’m jolted by the barely concealed rage I hear in his voice. He can’t be that mad about church.

  “You know what?”

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just swallows, his thick neck bulging with strained muscles.

  Stella pops up by my side with her towel and shower basket. “I’m just gonna go take a shower so you two can talk.”

  When she’s gone, I step back to let Dad into the room. He takes a seat on Stella’s fuchsia bedspread because her bed is still made. He’s so big that he makes the dorm bed (hell, the whole dorm room) look miniature. And he’s wearing some expression that I have never seen on his face before. Not normal, not pissed, not football, but something that scares me far worse.

  “Dad. What’s going on?”

  He wraps the fingers of his left hand around the fist of his right and squeezes until I hear a few pops.

  He swallows and his voice is scratchy and uneven when he speaks. “I realize that I have not always been there when you needed me, and I’m sorry. I won’t make excuses because none of them are good enough. But I can do better.”

  I keep waiting for his yell to break loose, for this to turn into a fight. We’re in uncharted waters, and I’m in danger of drowning.

  “I never wanted you to feel like you couldn’t talk to me. But I let my unwillingness to talk about how I was feeling dictate how our relationship worked, and I’m sorry.”

  I feel tears prick my eyes, and I’m shocked that I even have liquid left in my body after last night.

  “So I’m telling you now that you can talk to me. Whatever is going on in your life . . . I’ll listen. And I will always, always take your side.”

  “Dad,” I start softly. “No offense, but you’re kind of scaring me.”

  He chokes on something that might be a laugh, and drops his head down, pushing his thumb and forefinger against his eyes. “At least we’re on the same page there.”

  When he finally looks back up at me, I raise my eyebrows and shake my head because I have no idea what’s happening here.

  He sighs. “You’re really going to make me be the one to say it?”

  “Considering I have no idea what it is . . . yeah. It’s gonna have to be you.”

  He unlocks his phone and after a few taps and swipes, he hands it to me.

  It takes a moment for my eyes to focus and process what I’m looking at. It’s blurry around the edges, but there in the center is me against a wall, looking up at Carson. The purple dress I wore last night is bunched up around my thighs, and he has his arm around my neck in a way that looks painful because of the expression I’m wearing, but I know for a fact that his touch was as soft as could be. His jaw is a hard line, and if I hadn’t been there myself, I would swear it looks like he’s hurting me. And with my dress all skewed, it looks even worse than that.

  “Oh God. Oh my God. How did you get this?”

  “Since the thing with Levi, I have a grad assistant keeping an eye on the players, their online accounts and stuff. I want to know what they’re getting into before it’s too late. He called me this morning to tell me he saw this popping up all over Facebook.”

  I need to sit down, but my bed is too far away, so I just plop down on the floor at Dad’s feet.

  “This is my fault,” Dad says. “I should have kept you away from athletes. They can be volatile and unpredictable, and now because of me you’ve been hurt by two of them.”

  “Dad, no.” I pull myself up on my knees so that I’m nearly at eye level with him. “This is not what it looks like. Carson didn’t hurt me.”

  His mouth twists like he’s tasted something sour.

  “I know you don’t want to talk with me about these things, but I can’t ignore something like this.”

  “I swear to you. I know this looks bad, but Carson is a good guy.”

  He grabs the phone out of my hand and holds it up. “However you may feel about him, this is not a good guy.”

  I can’t breathe. I might actually hyperventilate because this . . . this is worse than any outcome I could ever have imagined.

  I grab Dad’s hands in mine. They’re big and warm and callused, and they’re shaking. “I swear to you, Dad. Carson was trying to help me. I’m not making that face because of anything he was doing to me, but because I was upset. He was trying to talk to me, to get me to calm down.”

  “Your—” He hesitates, like he can’t even manage to say the word. “Your dress.”

  I blanche. There’s no good way to explain that, and I’m too much in shock to think of something clever, so I settle for the truth.

  “Carson and I have been seeing each other. I was planning to tell you this week, today even. I met up with him at a party last night after the game, but before I could see him, someone told me something, a rumor, that upset me. I thought . . .” Oh God, how could I say this? “I was stupid, and I thought that sleeping with Carson would make me feel better.” Dad’s hands jerk in mine, and I grip them tight enough to hurt. “He stopped me. He told me no. He knew I was upset, and I wouldn’t tell him why, and that picture is me trying to run away before he could make me explain. He’s the good guy in this. I promise. I promise.”

  “There are rumors. People are saying—”

  “I don’t care what people are saying! People are stupid. You said you would believe me and be on my side. Believe me about this.”

  He turns his head away from me and clenches his eyes shut.

  “The boy has only been here since August. You can’t have been dating that long because he hasn’t been here that long.”

  I let go of his hands, sensing the shift in his anger.

  “You’re right. We’ve been friends, I guess, since the first week of school. We’ve only been dating since right before the Levi thing.”

  We’ve not actually said the word dating, but considering neither of us wants to spend time with anyone else, I figure we qualify.

  He stands up abruptly, and I scuttle back out of his way. “A couple weeks, Dallas? Christ, you were going to sleep with that boy after two weeks?”

  The look of disappointment he levels on me makes me feel so small, like I’m shriveling right there on the spot.

  “It was stupid. I know that.”

  “Damn right, it was. I raised you better than that.”

  My first inclination is to get mad, to sling back insults and tell him that in fact, he did very little to raise me at all. But I swallow those words down. Push them so deep that I hope they’ll never see the light of day because I know he’s only yelling because he doesn’t know what else to do.

  I know that because that’s what I do, and he must have raised me, because I ended up exactly like him. Terrified of the things I can’t control. Desperate to subdue all the things I can. Frightened of my own feelings. Frightened of everyone else’s, too. For all the teams he’s built, and games he’s played, and championships he’s won—deep down, we’re both just afraid to lose.

  And if I fight now, neither of us win.

  “You’re right,” I say. “You did raise me better than that. I’m sorry, Dad. So, so sorry.”

  He purses his lips and swallows, paces back and forth a couple times, and then repeats it all over again. After he’s done that a few times, he takes a deep breath and says, “I want you to move back home with me.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t argue with me right now, Dallas. I’ve made mistakes. We both have. And I’ve still got time to fix them, and that starts with you moving back home until you can prove to me that you’re
responsible enough to handle this.” He gestures around me at the dorm, but I know he means all of it. School. Dance. Work. Carson.

  And even though it kills me, rips me into pieces, I nod and say, “Okay, Dad.”

  Chapter 27

  Carson

  I wait as long as I can bear, and when I show up at Dallas’s dorm on Sunday evening, it’s to find out that she’s gone, moved back home, and apparently the whole university thinks I’m abusive, possibly worse.

  I get sick in the bathroom down the hall from Dallas’s room, literally sick over what she must think of me, what everyone (my coach included) thinks of me. Stella tries to convince me that Dallas isn’t mad, that she’s just placating her father, but I don’t hear her.

  She went home with him. She hasn’t called or texted. It’s pretty clear what she thinks, so first thing Monday morning, instead of getting dressed for my usual workout, I walk into Coach’s office with my head held high and tell him, “I’ll quit the team.”

  His head jerks up from where he was slumped over some paperwork, and the look he fixes me with is damn near stone. He doesn’t say anything, just stands up, walks around his desk, and closes the door connecting his private office to the coaches’ lounge.

  He gestures for me to take a seat, but I shake my head, too keyed up to do anything but stand here. He crosses in front of me and leans back against the edge of his desk, pinning me with his stare.

  “Why would you go and do a thing like that?”

  “To save you the trouble of having to find a reason to cut me, sir.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest and asks, “Did you hurt my daughter, McClain?”

  I jerk back, but manage to keep my feet planted and my chin up. “No, sir. Never.”

  “Did you sleep with my daughter as part of some bet?”

  That time I do lose my footing. Is that what she thinks? That I’m part of whatever twisted thing Abrams and Moore had going at the beginning of the year?

  “No, sir,” I say as firmly as I can.

  “Did you sleep with my daughter, period?”

  I’m still too caught up in unraveling his last question, wondering how Dallas could ever think that, but I answer him, “No, sir.”

  “Then I think this is all just a misunderstanding, and we can move past it.”

  “Move past it?”

  “Yes, McClain. That’s what I said. Think you can do that?”

  No. No, I can’t. I have never let anything in my life slow me down. Not failure, not money, not missed opportunities. But this? It has me flat on my back, and I’m not sure how I’ll ever get back up.

  He lets me sit in silence for a while, but when I still haven’t answered, he shoves off his desk and pulls open the door.

  “Blake!” he calls.

  A few moments later, Ryan’s head pops into the entryway of the coaches’ lounge.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “McClain is going to need a little help getting focused this morning. Think you can help him out?”

  He steps fully into the coaches’ lounge and answers, “Yes, sir.”

  He turns back to me. “It’s done, son. Put it to bed. We’ve got homecoming this week, and I need you thinking clearly.”

  I might say, “Yes, sir.” I’m not actually sure. But a few minutes later I’m out of the office and staring at my usual treadmill with Ryan by my side.

  “You okay, man?”

  I take a deep breath, pump up the incline and the speed on the treadmill, and mutter, “No,” before I take off.

  SHE FINDS ME in the library on Tuesday right after my meeting with the private tutor the team set up for me. I’m packing up my stuff when I recognize the familiar odd positioning of her feet next to mine.

  I look up at her, and then around at the library.

  Everyone is watching. Even the librarian.

  She touches my forearm, and I slide back out of her reach.

  “Can we talk?”

  “Are you sure you wanna do that?” I ask.

  A couple of smaller sports blogs have already picked up the story, and even though everyone involved refused to talk to them, it didn’t stop them from speculating.

  It wasn’t exactly smart for us to be seen together.

  “Please, Carson. Just for a sec?”

  I nod, and follow her back to the same obscure stacks containing books about copyright law that we spoke in a few weeks ago.

  As soon as we’re away from prying eyes, she drops her bag and throws her arms around me. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I was so stupid.”

  By the time I slough off the stiffness in my shoulders enough to hug her back, she’s already stepping away from me.

  “You okay?” I ask. That’s all that really matters to me. Everything else I can deal with.

  “Humiliated, mostly. And very, very sorry.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

  She widens her eyes and nods. “Yes, I do. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t freaked out in Silas’s room.”

  “You’re okay?” I ask again, hoping she knows that I’m referring to that night in particular because I don’t really have the words to voice it.

  “Yeah, I am. I just heard this rumor, and—”

  “The bet,” I say.

  She jolts back a step. “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “Coach asked me about it.”

  “Oh God. I swear I didn’t tell him that. I just told him that I heard a rumor. He must have gotten it from someone else on the team.”

  “But that’s what you thought? That that’s what I was doing?”

  “No!” Her voice is too loud, and a couple heads peek around the corner to look at us. She lowers her volume and starts again. “No. I didn’t think that. I questioned it for a few moments when I saw you being all buddy-buddy with Silas, but decided you wouldn’t do something like that. What followed wasn’t about the bet so much as it was about some other issues that I’ve been dealing with for years now. That was me trying to hit my self-destruct button, and using you to do it. And I’m sorry.”

  “What other issues?” I ask, wondering what could possibly be so bad that she would have crumbled so completely.

  “Issues we can talk about when there’s not someone eavesdropping the next aisle over.” She glares at someone through the gap between the top of a row of books and the shelf above it, and they scamper away.

  “You moved back home?”

  “Temporarily. Dad got a little worked up about everything, and I decided it was easier for everyone involved if I let him feel like he was in control for a little while.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  She looks shocked that I agree with her, like she expected me to put up a fight.

  “You think so?”

  “I do. I think we both took things a little faster than we should have, and we let it all spin a little out of control.”

  She pauses for a few seconds, and then nods slowly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we did.”

  I step a fraction of an inch closer, and then stop myself. “I’m glad you’re okay, Dallas. I was worried.”

  Then, for both of us, I turn and walk away.

  Chapter 28

  Dallas

  They say misery loves company, and I’m fairly certain I occupy all of her time the next few days. I’m so pathetic, even she is probably sick of me. I go to class, while people whisper behind my back. I eat lunch with Stella, while people whisper behind my back. I gradually descend into madness, while people whisper behind my back.

  I go to work, and I complete my homework, and I crawl home, where I spend most of my time alone . . . continuing to be miserable. Because even despite all that, things must keep moving. I have a plan, after all. Work. Save up money. Audition to transfer to a real dance program. And do what I have to do . . . no matter what Dad says. And now . . . that plan is kind of all I have left.

  I take Annaiss up on her offer to talk
. She asks me about the picture, and I tell her the same thing that I tell everyone who asks.

  It’s not what it looks like. Carson would never hurt me.

  At least not intentionally . . . not like that.

  But I don’t want to talk about any of that. It’s still too raw and close to the surface. So, instead, we talk about dance. I tell her about Dad and my frustrations with his inability to see dance as a career. We talk about school and programs and summer intensives, and I concentrate on the things I can control.

  Thursday morning, Dad asks if I’ll go with him to some dinner that a board member is hosting for a few faculty members and important alumni who are in town for homecoming.

  I tell him no.

  I am maxed out on pretending, and I just don’t have the energy or inclination to perform for a group like that.

  So instead, I spend my Thursday curled up with the most depressing book I can find, one that will give me an excuse to feel sad without feeling pitiful also. I feel plenty sad when it’s over, but plenty pitiful, too.

  I’m curled up on my bed, swaddled in blankets when there’s a knock on my door and Dad steps inside.

  “You hungry?” he asks. “I brought Tucker’s home.”

  I sit up, still strangled by blankets. “I thought you had that dinner tonight.”

  He’s wearing dress pants and a tie that he struggles to loosen as he looks at me.

  “I did. I went there, made my appearances, and then I came home to have dinner with my daughter.”

  God, even Dad thinks I’m pathetic. I must be in terrible shape.

  “Yeah. Give me a second. I’ll be right out.”

  He closes my door, and I hear him walk down the hallway. I throw off the covers, and look down at the pajamas I changed into as soon as I got home. Eh. They’ll do.

  I pad down the hallway, pause, go back and grab the smaller blanket off the foot of my bed, wrap it around my shoulders, and then go to join Dad.

  When he says he brought Tucker’s . . . he means he brought all of Tucker’s. I swear there’s enough food to feed the Weasley family for only the two of us.

  “I wasn’t sure what you wanted, so I just got a few of your favorites. Figure we can warm up whatever we don’t eat later.”