“What? Why?”
“We’re spending some time apart. She’s moving in with her sister.” Does my father really have no heart? Telling his only child that her parents are separating in this way is infuriating. He just tacks it on after what he believes to be more important: football.
I walk out of the Athletic Department as quickly as I can, running over to my dorm. Opening the door to my room, I flop onto the bed, the tears falling as soon as my face hits the pillows. I’ll let it all out now then call my mother as soon as I put myself back together. Hopefully, I can keep her from falling apart too.
6
ZACK
My twelve-hour shift feels more like twenty-four hours. I leave the store, feeling more tired than when I play an entire football game. Add to the mix that I was hungover, and you get a perfectly terrible day.
The fun part is, I get to do it again and again…every day. I talked to Carl and told him I was looking for more hours. He jumped at the chance of having me in the back, sorting through boxes for a few hours every day. Apparently, the store is starting to get busier with increased shipments, but Carl hasn’t hired anyone else.
So now I’ll be working six nights a week instead of four. That’s an extra sixteen hours, which will make a little more money to send home. Getting Mom and Dad to accept my help without asking too many questions will be another battle.
Maybe I can pay off some of the bills without them knowing.
Standing at the bus stop, I readjust my hat, sit down and wait. A few minutes later, the bus appears. My phone buzzes in my pocket the moment I take a seat and I fish it out.
Nick-Terrible-Hunter: Dude, where did you go? There’s a party tonight.
I ignore that message and open the next one.
Mom: Please don’t worry about what’s happening at home.
It’s funny. My mother thinks that just by telling me not to worry, things will, somehow, be better. I’ve done what I can to alleviate her concerns, but I fear it won’t be enough.
I can’t wait until the NFL Draft so I can play professional football. The potential to make so much money means my parents won’t have to work another day of their lives.
Speaking of football, a notification shows I have an email from Coach.
To: Zack Hayes
From: Coach Wilson
Subject: Meeting
Hayes,
I need to see you in my office, tomorrow at 8 AM.
Coach Wilson.
He’s a man of few words, and his message both scares and annoys me. Coach doesn’t go around emailing us for no reason. Sure, when we play well and win games, he tells us how proud of each of us he is, but he does that in the locker room. Going to his office usually means you messed up in one way or another. I hope I’m not in trouble because I don’t know how much bad news I can take this week.
Also, 8 AM is way too early. I look down at my watch and see that it’s 10 PM right now. I’m exhausted and ready for bed. I was hoping to get the opportunity to sleep in a little tomorrow, but I guess that’s not happening anymore either.
Nick-Terrible-Hunter: Did you get my message?
Ignoring the new text from Nick, I shoot Coach a quick response, letting him know I’ll be there first thing in the morning.
Setting my alarm for 7 AM, I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, only to have them open again when I feel my phone buzzing against my leg.
“Nick,” I say with a sigh. “What’s up?”
“Are you ignoring me?” he asks.
“Always.”
“That’s so wrong. Where have you been?”
I wrack my brain for the next lie to tell. Only a few people know I have a job. Only Colton and Mia know I come from nothing. I have to work for everything I have while pretending I’m just like everyone else—a trust fund baby. I’d rather they think of me as the carefree clown who refuses to take anything seriously; it gives me a break from the person I have to be for the sake of my family.
“I had to work on a paper. I’ve been at the library all day.” Will he believe that?
He makes a gagging sound. “Dude, it’s Sunday and you spent the whole day at the library? You’re lame as hell.”
“I needed to get it done,” I tell him. It’s not a lie. I do have a paper to write, a final exam; I just haven’t started it. I will when I’m not exhausted from work, football and life.
“Whatever,” he says and I hear noise in the background. He says a few things I can’t decipher and realize he’s talking to someone else. “So are you coming?”
“Coming where?”
“To the party? Didn’t you get my text?”
I should say no. I should go home and sleep. I have an early morning meeting with Coach, then I have class, football practice and a couple hours of work.
If I go party, I’ll get mind-numbingly drunk and have a worse day than I did today. Knowing what choice I should make, I stupidly cave and do the complete opposite.
“Send me the address.”
Nick announces to whomever is with him that I’m coming. “See you in a few,” he says and I hang up.
My stop finally arrives and I get off the bus, saying goodbye to the driver on my way out.
EMMA
“You didn’t tell me about the party!” Zoe says, moving from her bed to mine as I exit the shower. I haven’t seen her since she left to go to the hospital this morning.
“How was the check-up?” I ask, itching to dive into a book with a happily ever after to help erase my father’s words to me earlier.
Zoe pins me with a knowing look. “You’re trying to change the topic, and I’ll entertain that for a bit, but we’ll come back to the party,” she says. At least it’s not about my dad. “I don’t know the results yet because we gotta wait for them to come back. It’ll be a few days before I know anything.”
“And how do you feel?” She’s probably nervous. I would be if I had to get a check-up every so often to confirm that the disease I fought against isn’t back for another round.
She smiles brightly. “I feel fine; I’m not worried.”
“I like your outlook.” I wish I had the same right now.
“I saw Maria!”
I sit on my bed next to her. “Maria, the little girl who was sick?”
“Yes.”
“How is she?”
Zoe’s eyes light up in excitement. “Good. They did the bone marrow transplant and everything seems to be moving in the right direction.”
“That’s great!” I tell her, excited for the little girl I’ve heard so much about. I can’t imagine what it’d be like for a family to have a child beat cancer only for it to come back. I wonder if Zoe thinks about this too.
Zoe gets up from the bed to grab her phone. “I wanted to show you something. It’s called Good Night Lights.”
“Good Night Lights?”
“Basically, every night in Rhode Island, the community near Hasbro Children’s Hospital turn their lights on and off at 8 PM as a way to say good night to the kids.”
“That’s sweet!”
“People park their cars in the hospital lot—even police officers. The kids in the hospital flash their lights too.”
“And you want to do the same?”
She nods. “I think we should. It’ll remind the kids there are people out there who care about them.”
“I’m in.”
“Awesome! I’ll tell Jesse and maybe he can ask some of the guys to join.”
“We can tell Mia and Kaitlyn too; I’m sure they’d jump on it,” I add.
Zoe gets a devious look in her eyes. “Speaking of Kaitlyn. Party. Details. Now.”
I give in, happy to be distracted from all the other things running around my head, like the fact that I’m tutoring a football player now. I wonder if I know him. I have been spending an insurmountable amount of time at the Football House lately.
Zoe snaps her fingers in front of me. “It must’ve been a hell of a party,” she says,
laughing.
“Well, it wasn’t bad,” I start. “I enjoyed myself. It was an experience—one that I’ll never repeat, but an experience nonetheless.”
“Could you stop being so coy and give me real details?!”
I scooch against the wall. “We got there. It was full of students. I danced—”
“You danced?” Zoe interrupts, shocked.
I adjust my glasses. “By myself. Don’t get all crazy on me now.”
“Continue!”
“There’s not much more to tell. It was good and then Kaitlyn got super drunk.”
“Oh no. Was it a repeat of Mia’s story?”
“Sort of. We ended up outside the ballroom, in the cold, sitting on the ground.”
“Did she throw up?”
I shake my head. “Not this time, thankfully. But I couldn’t get her to stand up. She even threw her shoes away.”
“Were you cold?”
“Freezing! Thank goodness one of the football players was there and took her home.” I never thought I’d be thanking God for a football player.
“Who was it?” she asks, and I can see the same worry in her eyes as I had yesterday evening.
“Chase.” At the mention of his name, relief washes over Zoe. This confirms what I already knew: Chase is one of the good guys.
“How did he get her to go?”
“He basically picked her up and carried her to the car.”
“How did you get home?” she asks.
“Chase drove her in his car and I took hers. I dropped Zack off last night and then dropped Kaitlyn’s car off this morning.”
“Oh, Red?” she says with a smile.
“Red?”
“Yeah, Zack’s hair is red!”
“So is yours,” I remind her.
She nods. “Exactly. Was he drunk too?””
“Very much so.”
Drunk enough to compliment me.
“That was quite an eventful night,” she says with a smile.
An eventful night followed by an even more eventful morning. I don’t add anything else—not even the fact that my mom and dad’s marriage is possibly ending.
For today, I’ll try and push that revelation down as far as I can.
“What are we doing tonight?” Zoe asks and I point at my bookcase. “No! No more books. Not today. Let’s do something else.”
“Like what?” I ask begrudgingly. Reading a book was my plan for the day—the whole day.
“Let’s go to the movies!”
A book is a movie, only better. That’s what I want to tell her, but I don’t. We don’t get to hang out too often and I’m sure it’ll keep other less pleasant things off my mind. “Fine.”
“You’re awesome.”
“I know.”
7
ZACK
“Finally, you made it!” Nick says, putting his arm over my shoulder the moment I walk into the party at the Baseball House. It’s funny that all of our houses are just named after the sport we play. Way to be creative, Bragan.
“Yup, I’m here. Where are the drinks?” I ask, my head already pounding at the thought of a repeat of today’s hangover.
Yes. A repeat because I never learn my lesson. A drink is exactly what I need to forget my problems—even if only temporarily.
“Hell yes,” Nick shouts. He turns around, ordering a freshman to grab a beer for me. “Thanks, dude,” he says when the kid returns. He’s probably aware of Nick’s fighting reputation, hence the reason he didn’t fight being told what to do.
“That was rude,” I tell him after the kid leaves.
He shrugs and hands the beer over to me. “You asked for a drink.”
“I could’ve grabbed one myself.”
“Well, now you don’t have to.”
I shake my head and gulp down the drink anyway. There’s no point in arguing; it’s not like Nick will listen anyway.
“I’ll be back. Let me go grab another beer,” I tell Nick after I finish the first. I walk away before he has the chance to order someone else to get it for me.
“Are you thirsty tonight or something?” I hear him shout from behind me but ignore it. I walk around the house until I find the kitchen, wondering why it’s always fuller in the kitchen. The Baseball House needs to learn from us: we have drinks all over the house.
I walk toward the kegs, the line of people moving when they notice I’m there. The power of being a football player is unbelievable. It’s one of the few times I feel like I have privilege. It’s too bad it doesn’t pay my parents’ bills.
Not yet.
I cut to the front of the line and fill up my cup. Chugging down that one too, I get a refill and step away. When I make my way back to the living room, I find Nick dancing with some girls. Little Hunter: always the center of attention.
Too tired to be in the middle of things, I find the nearest wall and rest there. From my little corner, I watch the drunk girls flirt, and the baseball players stare at the football players enviously. Taking another sip of my beer, I wait for it to numb me, but when I see a blonde girl dancing in the middle of the living room, my eyes open widely.
Today has been so busy that I hadn’t given much thought to the girl in the red dress I saw dancing in the ballroom last night. I don’t think I ever approached her. I don’t remember anything other than the shots I took with the guys—one too many shots. I push myself off the wall, ready to walk up to her and finally introduce myself, but she turns around and I can somehow tell it isn’t her.
Although I don’t exactly remember what the girl from the school party looked like, I have a vague recollection of her beauty. Her blonde hair was natural and this girl’s comes straight from a box. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just not my girl.
You’re seriously thinking about a mystery girl? My mind asks when I find myself scanning the room in search of my beautiful blonde.
It’s not like she’s going to be wearing a red dress.
If only you hadn’t gotten so drunk, you might’ve been able to talk to her—remember her.
I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but just as the thought had come to mind, I pushed it away.
I’m Zack Hayes.
I don’t do girls. I mean, I do, but not like that.
I don’t tell them they’re beautiful. Instead, I stay away from them. There are too many jersey chasers at this school—I swear there’s gotta be an application for that shit. They know Bragan Football is amazing, and the baseball team is getting better, so they flock this school in search of someone to punch their ticket. They’re athlete wives in the making.
So no, I wasn’t going to approach her and ask her about her day. I wasn’t going to tell her I liked her hair, that she looked gorgeous with that dress on or that I liked the way she danced.
Instead, I fought the urge and drank so much I forgot where I was.
I down the rest of my beer and head to the kitchen to get another. When I return, I join Nick and a few other guys who are talking about the upcoming championship game.
“Dude, practice is going to suck this week!” Nick says and we all nod. Practice usually sucks, but it’s especially horrible when we make it this far. Coach wants perfection and won’t settle for anything less.
“Shit, I’ve gotta go,” I tell them after I look down at my phone. It’s 2 AM, and while I’m not as drunk as I was yesterday, I am exhausted.
“It’s still early,” Nick argues.
“We’ve got practice tomorrow, and I have class.”
“Your point being?” Nick retorts. The rest of the guys watch us argue back and forth. They know we’re like brothers; they even think we’re cut from the same cloth.
“I have a meeting with Coach in the morning too.”
Nick’s eyes widen in surprise. “Oh, shit.” Glancing around, I notice the guys’ expressions have changed from relaxed to concerned.
I set my empty cup down on a nearby table. “Yup. At 8 AM, so I
’m going to need some sleep.” The truth is, I should’ve been asleep hours ago.
“Yeah, you don’t want to be late to that,” Nick says. The fact that he gives in so easily makes me even more nervous. He salutes me like I’m a soldier heading off to war. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
I knew I’d regret it, but I did it anyway. I stayed out too late. And now I’m running late to my meeting with Coach.
I skip the shower, brush my teeth, and throw on some clothes. I haul ass to Coach Wilson’s office, running the whole way. I spot a few of the guys heading over to the gym as I weave through the locker room, but I don’t even bother waving.
Letting out a deep breath, I knock on Coach’s door.
“Come in!”
My stomach drops at his stern tone. Even with the barrier between us, I know for a fact he’s not in the best mood.
I open the door and slowly walk inside. Coach sits at his desk wearing his signature Bragan University Football sweatshirt. He signals for me to take the seat in front of him and I do. I don’t say anything. Instead, I wait for him to speak first.
“You’re late.”
I cringe. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Do you think being sorry will turn back the clock?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re running two more laps at practice today.”
Dammit. “Yes, sir.” I straighten in my chair. I’m frustrated at myself because whatever he called me in here for, I’ve already made him angrier by being late.
He searches his desk until his hands land on a folder. He lifts it up and the moment I see my name on a label at the top, my heart drops.
“Do you know what I have here?”
“No, sir.”
Coach Wilson opens up the folder slowly. The anticipation is killing me. I wish I could press a fast-forward button and get it over with.
Bragan Boys (Bragan University Boxset) Page 41
