“It’s too much for me. You’re too much for me,” I gasp out.
Matty struggles into a sitting position and gives me a lopsided smile. “Too much what? Greatness?”
For once his teasing doesn’t come off as funny, but irritatingly arrogant.
“I can’t do this anymore.” I bend over and place my head on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I can’t remember the last time I took a glucose measurement. I feel weak and sickly. Hot and sweaty. It’s either I’m crashing or I’m experiencing physical side effects of my heartbreak. Maybe it’s some dangerous combination of them both.
“Do what?” he asks in bewilderment.
“I can’t take this risk with you anymore. My heart can’t take it.” I rub my palm across my chest as if I can eradicate the pain with enough friction.
I don’t know whether the pain is forming because I’m breaking up with Matty or because I dated him in the first place. I always knew this day was going to come. He’s going to hurt you was number one on the risk assessment. But stupidly, foolishly, I’d kept decreasing the weight I’d afforded that particular item on the list.
The truth is you can’t really prepare yourself for what it feels like because you never know how much anything hurts until the wound is inflicted. Until the knife is in your belly.
If I stay with him, he’ll only hurt me more. Just like my mom hurt my dad over and over.
I sit up and stare at him, into his precious blue eyes that I know I’m going to be seeing for years when I’m dreaming. When I’m just sitting and drinking coffee, I’ll see them. In that cloudy space right before I fall and asleep and right before I wake up, I’ll see him. It’s going to take a long time to get over him. A long time.
What did I expect, though? This is how I knew it would all play out. Oh, I didn’t have the exact scenario right, but it all ended the same. Safe may be boring, but it sure as hell isn’t as painful.
“You and me, Matty. We’re done.”
“What…what happened? I told you,” he stutters. His brain isn’t firing on all cylinders, and it’s taking him a moment, or five, to catch up. “I told you I wasn’t going to talk to you about Ace anymore.”
Still not with me. I lay it out as plain as can be. “Ace took some pictures of you kissing a girl last night.”
His face moves from confusion to comprehension to anger. “Goldie, I was drunk off my ass last night.”
The careless statement, the accusation that lurks behind his words that I’m the unreasonable one here, only fuels my rage. I feel myself shaking and this time I know it’s not because my blood sugars are out of whack. It’s because of him. Because I took a chance on him and he was supposed to understand this. He was supposed to act like he cared.
“I don’t care that you were drunk! If I was drunk, I would not be out kissing someone and getting my picture taken. That has never happened to me in all my years here at Western, in all my years of drinking.” I fling my arm out. “Even the night I drank so much my freshman year that Sutton had to call 911 because I went into a coma, that didn’t happen. I danced. I drank. I passed out. I didn’t press my lips against some random person!”
“I didn’t ask for her to kiss me. I didn’t want her to kiss me,” he insists. He swings his long, powerful legs over the side of the mattress and for a moment I’m distracted. His shirt is still askew, framing his defined abs like a half-drawn curtain. My eyes are drawn to the light dusting of hair that arrows from his belly button into his groin.
My mouth becomes dry for another reason.
He’s so damned sexy, and for a moment, my resolve wavers. I cover my eyes so I can’t be tempted anymore. A spot of self-loathing gets mixed into the cocktail of churning emotions, and suddenly, I’m just so tired. I want to be done here. I push to my feet and force my explanation out.
“I know you didn’t, but the point of the matter, Matt, is that your lifestyle is only going to get worse when you go to the NFL. There’s only going to be more women, more road games, more time for me to worry. Every sports blog, every forum, every newspaper is full of stories of pro athletes screwing around on their wives and their girlfriends. I don’t want that to be my life, and, really, you deserve someone who’s stronger than me—who isn’t as afraid of risks as I am,” I finish drearily. I’m disgusted at myself. At Matty. At Ace. It’s an ugly reality that I’m facing. I don’t like myself much right now, but at some point, I’ve got to protect myself.
“So you’re doing this for my own good is what you’re saying?” Matty’s own anger is beginning to fire.
I’ve burned through anger and now I’m swimming in regret.
“You can take it whatever way you want.”
“How big of you,” he growls. “This stuff you’re spewing is some of the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard. If you don’t want to be with me, then have the balls to say it outright. Don’t be mealy-mouthed about it.”
I can barely get the words out, but I say them. “I don’t want to be with you.”
Matty stands up then—a giant in his room towering over me. Angry is too soft of a word for what’s on his face. I’ve never seen him like this.
His words come out sharp, like a knife, and ice cold. “Get the hell out of my room.”
Unlike Ace, I don’t have to be told twice. I race out of there so fast that I’m sprinting by the time I hit the main floor. Hammer’s standing at the base of the stairs, but I can’t muster up even a polite goodbye.
33
Lucy
It feels like my insides have been scooped out by a melon baller and filled with acid. I go home and cry my head off.
“This calls for real ice cream,” Sutton says darkly.
Charity holds my head against her chest as I give myself two shots of insulin. That’s bad, I know, but I’m a mess.
Neither of them judge me. Neither of them tell me I’m a fool for breaking up with Matty, no matter that I cry so hard I become dehydrated. Sutton even runs to the store and buys some water they give babies because it has extra electrolytes.
Two weeks pass, but my phone remains silent. I have no idea if Ace is still calling or texting because I’ve blocked his number. I don’t block Matty’s because I still want him to call me and convince me I was wrong in my risk assessment, but he never does.
It’s hard to believe that in two short months, Matty made such an impact on my life. He was like a meteor, a hot flash of delight followed by a huge crater of destruction.
I throw myself into mock trial, but it doesn’t consume me the way it has in the past. Every time I enter the practice room, I can still feel Matty in the back, his eyes glowing with pride.
Heather’s reverted to sucking, but I can’t summon the energy to correct her even though we have only two practices before regionals.
When she stands for the third time and approaches Emily on the witness stand without permission, I fear Randall’s head will come off.
I try to prevent the impending explosion.
“This is like a game of Randall Says but instead of ‘Captain, may I,’ you say, ‘May it please the court.’” I stand up and demonstrate. “May it please the court.”
Randall nods smugly from his position on the makeshift bench.
Heather rolls her eyes. “May it please the court,” she repeats.
“You may proceed, Ms. Bell,” Randall intones. He’s enjoying this far too much. I flick a glance to Heather, who’s rolling her eyes. That’s better than her itching to hit Randall, so I lean back.
“May it please the court, may I approach the witness?” Heather says.
I wince at the awkward phrasing.
“No,” Randall interrupts loudly. “Say ‘May I approach the witness, your honor.’”
Heather slams her hand on the side of the table. “You just told me to say ‘May it please the court’ every time,” she hisses through clenched teeth.
“No, we told you to ask for permission,” Randall glares back. “It’s redundant when you
say ‘May it please the court, may I approach.’”
“This is fucking stupid as hell!” Heather yells and storms out.
I drop my head to the desk and wonder if I can go to sleep now and wake up sometime after I’ve graduated.
“Can we take a break?” Emily asks.
“Yes. Take a break,” I mumble against the table.
“We shouldn’t even go to Regionals,” Randall remarks as he slides into the seat next to me. It’s a week away. I don’t bother to lift my head, which Randall takes as permission to keep complaining. “I don’t know why you asked her to join us,” he snipes.
I finally do raise my head to glare at him. “You were there. Don’t try to pretend you weren’t. She had the best closing of everyone who tried out. She was fucking moving. I think you were near tears.”
He averts his face. “I was not.”
“Liar.”
He sighs and swivels back to face me. “You could have done it. You could do the closing just as well as anyone.”
“Not really.” This time it’s my turn to look away. I stack my already neat pile of papers and tap them so their edges are all perfect.
“You know what your problem is?”
“Gosh, Randall, that question is such a fun one to hear and to answer. I’ve got so many faults, though, we’d be here all night listing them all.” I curl up the edges of the papers and fantasize about smacking Randall in the face with them.
“Your problem is you don’t take enough chances.”
My stomach clenches at his accusation. “I took a chance on Heather.”
He scoffs. “That’s not taking a chance. That’s you hiding again.”
The team files in before I can respond, but his criticism burns as hot as if he held a flame under my chair. As I watch everyone take their places—Emily on the witness stand, Randall back behind the two desks we set up to be the judge’s bench, Heather at the table opposite me—I wonder if Randall’s right.
Is that what I’m doing? Hiding behind Heather? Behind Ace? Do I use all these excuses so I don’t get hurt? So I won’t fail? Do I take the easiest path? And pretend that makes me happy?
“Ahem,” Heather clears her throat next to me. “Are we going to do this thing?” She gestures toward Emily.
“Yes.” I try to shake off Randall’s hurtful words. “Yes, we’re doing this thing.”
The rest of the team springs to action, and we make it all the way through the trial without stopping. None of us corrects Heather’s errors, or our own for that matter. We let it all slide. I’m too tired, still stinging from Randall’s rebuke, and too heartsore to really care.
“We’ll take a ten-minute break and do closings,” I say after finishing with the last examination. Beside me, Heather looks fresh and invigorated as if the last two hours weren’t completely draining. “Heather, I have some notes I typed up—”
“No, thanks,” she interrupts me. “I’ve got this. In fact, we can start now if you want.”
Randall wiggles his eyebrows at me, but I’m still angry at him to join in any of his games.
“Sure.” I slump against my chair. Anything for this practice to be over.
She stands and strides confidently toward the open space in front of the fake jury box. She extends one hand toward Randall. “May it please the court? Opposing counsel?” The other hand floats toward me. “Women and men of the jury. On behalf of my client and co-counsel, we thank you for your time. The right to trial by jury is as fundamental to this country as owning a gun or the right to vote or the right to practice one’s religion. It’s in both the 6th and 7th Amendments to the Constitution. By sitting here today, you are upholding the very document that created this country.”
Her reference to the Constitution is smart. I jot a note to make sure she includes it every time. Heather proceeds to tell the room full of weary students exactly why her client was victimized by a callous corporation seeking profits over safety.
Her rich voice, unhurried, weaves a tale of a hard worker, taken advantage of by a shoddily designed product that was inevitably going to hurt someone. In this case, that someone was our client.
By the end, we’re sitting there with our mouths hanging open, and I, pretending to be the counsel for the manufacturer, want to throw myself at her feet and beg for forgiveness.
After her last thank you, the entire room is silent until Randall releases an awe-filled, “Damn.”
And he keeps repeating it as our teammates jump out of their seats and rush Heather. They clap and smile and hug her. Every mistake she’s made, every insulting word she’s said, it’s all forgotten.
And seeing my whole team embrace her makes me feel even shittier than when I thought we were going to send another losing team to Regionals.
Maybe I’ve been too hard on Ace.
“What?” Heather demands. “Why are you looking at me like that? Did I fuck up again?”
“No. Everything was perfect.” And it was. Everyone performed flawlessly. Heather remembered to ask the court for permission. I didn’t screw up any questions on direct. All the witnesses looked either smart or vulnerable or, in the case of Emily, both.
“She’s just in shock,” Randall jokes. “Want to run through it again?”
“No.” There are thirty minutes left in our practice time, but I want to leave on a high note. “We’re ending early.”
The team whoops with joy. Even Randall, who ordinarily wants to stay longer, is excited. He leans down to give me a quick hug goodbye and gives Heather a kiss on the cheek. She shoos him away and soon it’s just her and me.
“Need something?” I ask as I gather the materials together. Evidently she wants to talk and if there was ever a time that I didn’t want to deal with Heather’s shit, it would be now.
I’m emotionally tapped out. I kind of just want to go back to my apartment, cover my head with a pillow and cry for a few hours—as I’ve done nearly every night since I broke up with Matt.
“Yes. I want to know what I did wrong tonight. You haven’t said more than two words to me. I want to know if I’m fucking up.” She juts out her chin pugnaciously, as if physically preparing herself for me to bust a fist across her chin.
“You aren’t fucking up.”
“I know I didn’t set that cross-examination up right. That I didn’t get her to admit she was under oath before asking her to read from the deposition.”
“Yeah, it’s okay, though. That’s a small error. Do you want to run through it right now?” I pull out the deposition.
Heather pulls it out of my hand and sets it behind her. “No, I want to know why you didn’t call me on that bullshit during the practice. You would have any other night.”
“You were in the groove, and it didn’t make sense to interrupt you.” I decide Heather can keep that copy. I can print out a new one. I shove everything else in my backpack, but before I can close it, Heather’s hand reaches out and rips the bag out of my hand.
“Something’s wrong.” If it were anyone else, I’d say there was concern in her voice. But this is Heather. Despite some evidence to the contrary, Heather is focused on herself alone. In some ways, I really admire that. She’s a sophomore, a year younger than me, but has the drive, determination and direction that people ten years older lack.
I reach for the bag, but she shoves the bag under the desk and plants her ass on the seat. I’ll have to crawl underneath her to get it, which sounds as appealing as running nude in front of the Playground.
I lose my temper. “For the past ten weeks, you’ve treated me like a nuisance at best and a demon who hates you at worst. Every time I’ve given a suggestion on how to improve, you’ve snapped my head off. Now you want me to confide in you?”
Heather waves her hand dismissively, as if the past few weeks of contentiousness haven’t happened. “I don’t want to be your friend, but I want to win this competition, and I know that if you’re not on top of your game, we aren’t going to win, so if talking it out i
s going to help you get your head out of your ass, then I’m all ears.”
“Gosh, Heather, with that kind of invitation, I don’t know why I’m not barfing out all my emotional drama to you,” I say sarcastically.
“Aha! So something is wrong,” she says as if she’s won something. But hasn’t she? I denied something was wrong. She kept pressing until I lost my cool.
I can’t keep in my surprised laughter. “Aha? Yes, Ms. Perry Mason, that was a pretty perfect cross-examination.”
Heather flushes. “I am getting the hang of things, aren’t I?”
“Yes. Yes, you are,” I agree. “Which is why I didn’t correct you even though you didn’t ask Emily if she was under oath at the time of her deposition just as she was under oath now.”
“Ahh, that’s the phrase.” Heather snaps her fingers. “I ask to approach the witness, wait for permission, and then ask the witness when she testified previously if she was under oath.”
“Right. That way you get her to subtly acknowledge she was either lying then or lying now.”
“And how many points do I get for impeaching the witness?” she asks.
“At least one full point, and they’ll lose points, so it’s a win/win for us.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Rarely.”
“Bummer.” She pushes her bottom lip out.
“On the plus side, you know how to do it now.” I hold out my hand. “Can I have my bag back?”
“No. Not until you’ve told me what is wrong.”
“I can fight you for it.”
“But you won’t because you believe in being patient and kind.” She taps the backpack with the heel of her foot.
“I don’t like you very much right now.” I stare at her in frustration. Heather’s completely unaffected by my growing irritation.
“As if that’s different from any other time.”
Oh hell, why not. I throw my coat down and take a seat across from her. “You remember Matty, right?” He’d come to a few practices.
Jockblocked (Gridiron Book 2) Page 27
