And now his mother sees me as the Messiah’s beautiful daughter, sent down from heaven above to make all her baby boy’s dreams come true.
Whoops.
I step out into the hall and turn back to the stairwell when I pause, reading the tiny, faux license plate attached to the door across from the bathroom.
JUNIOR
Curiosity takes over and I twist the doorknob to let myself in.
The room is decorated black and blue with enough posters on the walls to cover up most of the white paint. Sports trophies line a shelf with medals and certificates flashing Junior’s name, most of them in gold.
I smile at a photo above his bed showing a pre-teen boy flexing in swim trunks over his big sister’s teenage head. No real muscle mass, no sign of tattoos. Just little Junior Morgan before he became who he is now.
“Ellie?”
I spin around to the door as Junior pokes his head in. “Hey.” I chuckle.
He inches toward me with suspicious eyes and nervous, pink cheeks. “What are you doing in here?”
“Snooping.” I shrug, glancing around again. He flips the picture frame down while I’m not looking. I pretend not to notice. “Sorry if I’ve invaded your private space…”
“It’s all right.” He laughs. “I honestly don’t remember most of what’s left in here.”
I scan the walls and my eyes land on a familiar face above his shoulder. It’s an old poster of my father; poised and strong in his jersey, holding a football and winking right at the camera.
“Even that?” I point.
Junior follows my gaze. “Oh…” He winces. “No, I remember that. I’ve had that for like ten years…”
“I guess you weren’t kidding when you said he was a hero of yours.”
“I really wasn’t.” He blinks at me and smiles wide. “So… who the hell are you because you are freakin’ amazing…”
I laugh. “I make a decent impression.”
“No shit.”
“I, uh…” I pause, searching my memory for the best explanation. “I used to spend a lot of time at friends’ and neighbors’ houses.”
He furrows his brow. “Okay.”
“My father was nonexistent. My mother often disappeared for days at a time. She’d leave me some money — a little chunk of my dad’s child support and take off with the rest until it ran out. Eventually, she got sick of coming back to check on me, so she put me into that boarding school. I saw her about once a month… maybe.”
His mouth opens and closes. “Oh.”
“Before then, people started to notice, so they’d take me in until she got back. I never wanted to be a burden on anybody but more often than not, I felt that way.” Junior stays quiet. I think to shut up, but the words just keep spilling out. “I was that Pierce girl, once again taking up space in places where I didn’t belong, but I did chores, helped make meals, and worked to earn my keep wherever I stayed. In the process, I learned a lot about manners and making a good impression from the grateful mothers of my friends.”
“Wow,” he says, his eyes soft on me. “That would explain it.”
I nod. “Couple that with natural acting ability and you have the perfect girl to bring home to your parents.”
He chuckles. “I’m sorry about her, by the way, she can be…”
“Like Maggie?”
“Maggie 2.0, really.”
I laugh. “They’ve been great. Really great…”
He steps forward, studying my eyes a little closer and I realize I’ve dropped my guard. “What is it?”
I bite my cheek, hesitating to say anything but I’ve already started the avalanche of weight falling off my chest.
My feet carry me away from him and I let my eyes wander again. “I’ve always wanted a family like this.”
“Like what?”
“Boring.”
Junior scoffs, feigning some fake offense with his hand on his chest. “You think we’re boring?”
“You know what I mean…” I rub my palms together. “Normal. Your parents love each other. They’re still together. You have a sister and you get along. Birthday cards and Christmas cookies.”
He gives a short nod. “I don’t know if we’re normal anymore, honestly. My family could easily be considered weird to most others.”
“Well… it just seems a hell of a lot better than having a famous dad you barely see or a mom that couldn’t even remember whether you’re allergic to peanuts or penicillin.”
“You’re allergic to penicillin?”
“Peanuts.”
“Noted.” He smiles. “Come on, Ellie, look around. You grew up in New York going to fancy schools. All we ever had was each other.”
“You were wealthier than I was, Junior.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
I take a step back, hoping it’ll hide the river of tears just begging to fall from my eyes. Years of repressed thoughts and feelings build up in my chest, but I fight the hormones down. This isn’t the time or the place for it and the last thing I want to do is get emotional in front of Junior. We’ve been exclusive for less than a day, for fuck’s sake, and yet…
“I became an actress just so I could escape my life. Be someone else — even for just a little while. It wasn’t about being noticed. It was about disappearing.”
Junior pauses and he stares down at me with kind eyes, completely void of judgment or annoyance. “I became an athlete so people would notice me.”
I stop a tear before it falls. Once again, we find ourselves standing at the opposite end of a long spectrum from each other, but I’ve never been anywhere else that makes as much sense.
“That’s some mighty green grass you got over there, Junior Morgan.”
He gives a short smile. “Looks a lot like yours, Eliza Pierce.”
“Sorry...” I turn away. “I didn’t mean to bring up this shit… I just felt like talking and you were standing there…”
“Hey.” He places his hands on my shoulders to draw me back to him. “You don’t have to apologize. You can talk to me anytime about anything. That’s why I’m here.”
For a second, I believe him. I believe that everything will be okay and that I really can tell him everything.
The second passes.
“Don’t let them see your weaknesses,” I quote. “Isn’t that what Cary Pierce always says?”
He shrugs. “Well… I hate to say this, but… Cary Pierce is kind of a dick.”
I laugh and Junior pulls me closer, wrapping his large arms around me in a perfect embrace.
“There she is…” he says, reacting to my smile.
I hold him tighter, entwining my fingers together behind his back to stay there forever.
His lips graze my head and he smells my hair. His arms flex slightly, holding me with an even tighter grip and I nearly cry again.
“We should get back downstairs…” I say, pulling away. “Before they start wondering what we’re doing up here…”
Junior nods but his eyes say differently. “Wait...”
“What?”
“You look really beautiful right now and I don’t want to waste it.”
He pulls me closer and kisses me. Happiness grows in me and I cling to his wild lips on mine. Every taste, every smell. Everything about him drives me as crazy as it always has.
“You’re perfect, Eliza Pierce,” he says.
I chuckle. “Promise?”
Junior steps back and draws an X over his chest.
* * *
“Eliza! Is that you?”
I shove the paper sack into my messenger bag, hiding it away as I kick the front door closed behind me. “Yeah!”
“Come here for a minute.”
I shake out my tension and throw on a smile before walking into the kitchen. “Hey, Dad.”
He sits at the counter with a cup of coffee in one hand and a sports magazine in the other. I lay my bag down on the counter’s edge, along with my
stack of notebooks.
“Where have you been?” he asks. “You didn’t come home last night.”
“Yeah… I, uh…” I walk to the fridge and pull it open. “I stayed the night on Grant’s floor,” I lie. “I was up a little too late doing homework and today we did some shopping.”
Dad stares at the notebooks. “What kind of homework?”
“Just memorizing a scene for class this week.”
He pulls a loose page out from the notebook on top and I cringe on the inside. “Why do you have Junior Morgan’s math homework?”
Shit.
“Oh…” I keep a smile and wave my hand. “He was having some trouble and asked if I’d take a look at it for errors.”
He raises his brow. “I didn’t realize you were friends.”
“We’re not.” I shrug. “I mean… we don’t hang out or anything. Someone must have told him I was good with math, so he asked me to help him.” I study his cold, stern eyes. “Is that okay?”
He sets the paper down. “Sure. That’s okay.”
I clear my throat and grab my things, eager to get away from the suspicion in his tone. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“All right.”
I rush to the third floor, firmly clutching the paper sack hidden away in my bag and lament the lack of lock on my bedroom door.
* * *
If knowledge is power, then this moment shouldn’t make me feel so weak.
It’s not exactly how I pictured it. I’m not sure if I ever did, but it’s pretty vivid now. That awkward look down the pharmacy aisle because you can just feel someone watching you, but there’s no one in sight. All the different choices involved. How in the hell can there be so many colors and variations for sticks you pee on?
And then, there’s this; the longest ninety seconds of my life, each second lasting at least three times longer than it should.
My heart knocks against my ribs so hard it hurts. My ears ring because of how strongly I’ve focused my hearing to make sure my father doesn’t accidentally walk in.
There’s no way I can explain this to him right now. I can barely even explain it to myself.
We were careful. Weren’t we? I’ve completely lost track of how many times we’ve done it — of how many spent condoms lie at the bottom of a trash can. All it takes is for one of them to be defective; just one tiny pinpoint-sized hole and hundreds of thousands of little sperm get to have their way with me. Did Junior accidentally forget to put one on? No, I definitely would have noticed that. I can’t imagine he would have done it on the sly.
None of that matters anyway. All that matters now is that it happened. I’m standing here, right now, in my bathroom, holding a test that tells me I’m pregnant. Two little, intersecting lines and my life has completely changed.
I can’t have this baby. That’s a fact. I’m too young for this kind of thing. I’m still in college and I would very much like to finish it. And Junior — he doesn’t need this. A baby would hold him back from his dream. I can’t do that to him.
So, I guess there’s only one thing to be done.
I pause, feeling the phantom touch of Junior’s hands on mine and how he makes me feel every time he looks at me.
A smile creeps across my face.
I’m carrying Junior Morgan’s baby.
An image flashes in my head; a fictitious spark of hope. Junior stands in front of me with his eyes gazing down at the swaddled lump in his arms and he just can’t stop grinning.
For a second, it’s the warmest thought I could ever imagine.
In a second, I fall in love with it.
I have to protect it. Even if the odds are as tiny as this baby is inside of me right now, I have to protect the possibility.
I sit down on my bathroom floor, staring at the stick in my hand, imagining the perfect world where this doesn’t come crashing down around me.
Chapter 25
Junior
November
“Ellie?”
She blinks and exhales a pleasurable sigh. “What? Why did you stop?”
I look down at her sweat-covered face, throbbing so deep inside of her I can feel nothing else but still — I pause. If there’s one thing I’ve grown to know about Eliza Pierce, it’s that her brain shuts off during sex. She gets into it and completely immerses herself in what she’s experiencing. Very rarely do her thoughts distract her, but right now…
She’s not even here.
“I said, are you okay?” I ask again.
“Yeah,” she answers quickly, nodding her head and flexing her inner muscles to lure my thrust to keep going. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t move, still fixated on the doubt in her eyes. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” I smile.
She sighs. “I’m just… freaking out about tomorrow, I guess.”
“Me, too. That’s why we insisted on stress relief sex before going over lines again.”
“Right…”
I kiss her neck and she tilts into my lips. “Calm down, Ellie. You’re going to be great up there.”
“I wish you could be there.”
“I’ll be there after the game,” I promise, licking along her collarbone. “And then, I’ll be in the front row on Sunday.”
“Really?”
I look into her happy eyes. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“I’m sorry I can’t make the game.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I shrug.
She smiles. “But I’ll be at the championship game.”
I wince. “If—”
“No if,” she says, brushing my hair away from my eyes. “There’s no way in hell you guys aren’t going to win tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe we’ve come this far,” I whisper. “One game away from the championship. That’s it.”
“I’m proud of you, Junior. I knew you had it in you.”
My heart bursts and I kiss her, crushing my lips on hers as if my life depended on it.
Cary Pierce couldn’t have gotten me this far on his own, that much is certain. As much as I admire him, it wasn’t his coaching that pushed me toward greatness and made me into a better man.
That was all her.
Her hands move down and grip my ass, pulling my hips closer to her begging body. I give her a thrust and she moans into my mouth.
Every time with her is like the first time, full of amazing sensations that I never thought possible, ones that I’ll never feel again after the moment has passed but that just makes them all the more intense.
I fuck her faster, gripping the sheets beneath us as her hips meet every move. She kisses me back, locked in the moment unlike before. I feel her body tense, just a few deep grinds away from climax and I race her to the finish line, bucking and moaning with her.
She grabs my hand and I entwine our fingers together, squeezing her hard as everything breaks apart inside of us. I tremble against her with closed eyes, wishing I could fill her the way I really want to—
“Junior?”
I open my eyes and she smiles. “What?”
“I said, are you okay?” She chuckles.
I shake it off. “Yeah.”
She pulls me closer and rests my head on her breast. I listen to her heart pounding away inside of her, feeling her lungs expand with each heaving breath she takes.
Eliza Pierce.
Nothing could ever come between this.
“It’s over,” she says.
I kiss her warm skin. “I don’t accept that,” I say, instantly recalling the response from habit.
“I don’t care what you accept…” Her breath quivers through her as I descend her body, but she never breaks character. “It’s over, we’re done. I can’t do this anymore.”
“You’ve sung this song before, Nora.” I nibble her hip. “What makes this different than—”
“Junior…”
I look up and see a little black in those blue eyes. “What?”
She moves away, throwing her feet off the bed while I stay in place.
“Wait, what?” I ask.
“Sorry…” She reaches for her sweater on the floor. “I’m still a bit distracted.”
“You just got here…”
“Three hours ago.”
“Ellie, what’s up?”
She stands up and turns to me, flashing a smile as she pulls her skirt up over her hips. “I’m just tired, Junior,” she says. “Really. I’m fine. I probably just need to take an aspirin, lay down, and pass out for the night.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’ll come running.”
Her lips curl into a quick smile, one that I easily could have missed if I blinked. “I will. Thanks.”
I stand up to block her path to the door. “I want to see you tomorrow. Before the game.”
She nods. “Sure.”
“The study room? Four o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.” She pops up onto her toes and kisses my cheek. “Bye, Junior.”
I grab her arm and pull her back in for a real kiss. “Bye, Ellie.”
Her eyes flutter open and she smiles one last time before opening the door.
I listen to her leave, sensing the shuffling of her shoes. Somehow, they sound heavier than usual, like the air before a vast thunderstorm.
I put on some pants and walk out into the living room.
“Eliza leave already?” Ty asks as he slides his jacket on.
“Yup,” I answer, beelining to the kitchen.
“She coming back? It’s early. And Friday night.”
“No. She’s freaking out about the play.” I grab a beer from the refrigerator.
Ty leans against the doorway. “And how are you feeling about tomorrow?”
“I’m fine.”
He chuckles. “I’m so nervous, I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
The Bad Baller Collection Page 18
