Deep End: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

by Roxeanne Rolling

  “You worried at all about graduating?” I say, over our Thai food. We’ve both ordered delicious soups that arrive to the table piping hot, with steam coming off their surfaces.

  Somehow, the hot soup is comforting even though the weather is warming up. It isn’t yet summer. It isn’t yet too hot for soup.

  “Not at all,” says Anchor. “Why would I be? It sounds like I’m really going to be on the team this time.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know, but I mean… I was thinking about the two of us. You do want to continue our relationship after we graduate, right? This isn’t just another fling for you, or something like that?”

  Anchor looks horrified, which makes me feel happy.

  “Of course it’s not just another fling,” he says. “I mean, Allison, I feel things for you I’ve never felt for anyone else. I guess I just haven’t given graduation a lot of thought, you know? I mean, I figure that we’re meant to be together, and that if we’re meant to be together, then everything’s going to work out fine.”

  “What if you go to the Olympic training camp, and I end up going to work for The Journal, and they send me to some crazy place?”

  “Why can’t you just cover the Olympics then?” says Anchor. He looks so innocent and well meaning.

  “It doesn’t just work like that,” I say. “Unless I write something really impressive for them, I’ll be lucky enough just to get the job. There are a thousand other heads of university newspapers, anyway, so that alone doesn’t guarantee me any special privileges.”

  “Well, I can just fly to meet you in New York, and you can meet in Arizona at the training camp. A lot of couples do that.”

  “Yeah, I guess we can do that,” I say, but inside I’m worried.

  I decide to change the subject. After all, there’s still almost a month left of school. What’s the point of worrying about all this now, when I could be enjoying my time here on campus with Anchor? Somehow being with Anchor has made the stress of running the paper, along with the stress of final exams and term papers—all the stress has faded into the background, and I’m able to go about everything more logically, with more self-assuredness.

  “So I’m writing an article about the swim team,” I say, trying to untangle my chopsticks from a mess of noodles.

  “Yeah,” says Anchor. “How’s that going, anyway? I haven’t seen you working on it much.”

  “Well, it was going to be about the swim team as a whole, but well, we’ve gotten to know each other a lot better.”

  “You can say that again,” says Anchor, leaning in to kiss me, both our mouths full of noodles.

  I giggle, then continue. “So I think the thing to do really is to write the article with you as the centerpiece.”

  “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” says Anchor.

  “Yeah, I guess it is, considering our relationship. But I’ve realized that everything in life doesn’t need to be so cut and dry. It’s just unrealistic to think that all journalists are the epitome of professionalism, as I once thought. Even Beaumont admitted to me that he got a little involved with one of his sources at one point back when he was a journalist.”

  “So it’s about me then?” says Anchor, seeming more pleased than anything else.

  “Yeah,” I say, and I start telling him about the really nice article I started to write in my email window. I don’t mention the one I wrote when I was mad at him, the one in which I wrote all those terrible things about the swim team. Back then, my intention was to bring the team to its knees, and to cripple any chance of a career Anchor might ever have. I can’t believe I ever wrote that article now. I feel so different about Anchor now. He really feels like a part of me, a part of myself.

  23

  Anchor

  The weeks are passing quickly. I’m still on the team but not racing. There’s only two big meets left. It’s frustrating sitting on the sidelines, but at least I know that I’m, most likely, headed to the Olympic training camp after graduation. And, plus, I have Dave to amuse me on the sidelines. He’s not going to recover from his broken ankle in time to race again. This is going to be the end of his swimming career, since there’s no chance he’s going to race after college. He doesn’t seem to mind, though, and although we try to keep our behavior on the calmer side, we still have a shit load of good laughs.

  Coach and I are still butting heads, over just about everything possible, every time we interact. Allison suggested I simply apologize to the coach. As much as I love Allison, she can still be naïve about some things like this. She’s never been on a college sports team, for instance, and doesn’t understand the way our egos interact and clash. It’s just natural, especially among guys.

  Things have never been better between Alison and me. I haven’t thought too much about the practicalities, but I know we’re going to be together after college. I just can’t see us being apart, no matter how I look at it.

  “So you going to marry her or something?” says Dave, one day, when we are bored out of our minds, watching the team practice. Pretty much all the swimmers suck. Well, they’re not Olympian material, like I am. I’m still mad I can’t race. Why can’t coach just let me get into the pool during practices? Who’s it going to hurt?

  “I think she’s the one, man,” I say.

  “Wow, man, that’s crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know man, I just never saw you getting married, that’s all.”

  “Sooner or later that one girl comes along for everyone,” I say. “Don’t worry, Dave. I’m sure she’s out there somewhere, waiting for you.”

  Dave just laughs. “I don’t think it’s my style, man.”

  “You’ll find her,” I say. “Someday. It may take you a hell of a long time, because I think you’re even more of an asshole than I am.”

  “Anchor! Get your ass over here.” It’s coach, yelling at me.

  “He sounds pissed,” says Dave. “And we didn’t even do anything.”

  I get up slowly and walk over to where coach is standing by the side of the pool.

  He’s got everyone on the team doing a brutal set.

  “What the hell is this?” says coach, still practically yelling, even though I’m standing right next to him.

  “A newspaper?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, you fucking prick,” says coach.

  Wow, I’m kind of surprised. Sure, coach can be a bit rough with his words, but he’s never called me something like that to my face before, right, except during the last meet.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, coach,” I say. “If you’re getting that mad about a newspaper, I don’t know how to help you.”

  “Asshole,” says coach, pushing the paper into my face.

  “I can’t read it when you’re pushing it in my face like that,” I say.

  “Your girlfriend wrote an article about us. You mean you don’t know anything about this?”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah, I haven’t read it yet, but Allison told me all about it. I bet it makes us look pretty good, right?”

  “Good? Are you fucking kidding me, Anchor? And you know what, this is all your fault!”

  “My fault, what the hell are you talking about?” I’m getting mad. Why is coach talking to me like this? After all, Allison told me all about the article, and it sounded fucking great. She was going to make me out like a real star. She even said she put the coach in a positive light, like he was some kind of tireless crusading hero or something.

  I grab the paper from the coach, and, holding it at a more comfortable distance from my face, I begin reading.

  Meanwhile, coach is still yelling at me. The volume of his voice is actually increasing. “This is your fault, Anchor! There’s no way she’d know all this stuff if you hadn’t told her. She makes the whole team look like a bunch of fucking criminals, and I guess that’s what you all are.”

  Everyone has stopped swimming. Some of the guys
are hanging out around by the side of the pool. Others have gotten out, and are standing around us, dripping wet, trying to read the article. But I pull away from them, and read as quickly as I possibly can.

  This doesn’t look like it’s the article Allison described to me. Not at all. Not in the least bit!

  There isn’t a single good thing about us in the article.

  Instead, the article details every single thing I ever told Allison about the swim team—every bad thing, that is.

  She paints a picture of us, using some, I have to admit, very impressive vocabulary and writing skills…what she about our ‘exploits’ would make even the most hardened criminal shudder.

  She writes about all the shit Dave and I have gotten into on our own. The statue is just the beginning of it. She writes about how the guys used ecstasy at the party. She writes about the steroids Dave got the guys taking… Shit! The steroids. This is a big fucking deal. This kind of stuff can’t get out to the public, or we’re in serious fucking trouble. But here it is, in black and white on the campus paper.

  What the fuck?

  How could Allison do this? How could she do this to me?

  Everything has been going so well between us. I can’t believe she would do this, but here’s the evidence right in front of me. So her career is really that important to her? She really wants to work for The Journal so much that she’ll throw me under the fucking bus just to write her killer article?

  “You OK, man?” says Dave, from behind me. He’s been reading the article over my shoulder.

  Someone grabs the paper from me. Whatever, I’ve already read it. I’ve seen what I need to see. Everyone else now is huddled around Thompson, who is reading the article out loud.

  Coach is still screaming. I haven’t been catching his words, though.

  Now I do. “Anchor, you’re off the team. Dave, you too!”

  “What did I do?” screams Dave, indignantly.

  “Doesn’t fucking matter, man. You’re not going to be racing again, anyway.”

  “Guess you’re right,” says Dave, shrugging. He’s always been an easy going guy in some ways.

  “I knew she’d get us into trouble,” says Spellman.

  “Shut the fuck up, Spellman,” I say, spinning around to face him. “Or I’ll knock you out again.”

  Spellman shuts his mouth. Fucking right!

  “All right, everyone,” I say, my voice loud, echoing around the swimming pool.

  Everyone’s standing around me. Coach has even shut up. That’s what my presence can do to a crowd. My real presence. They know I’m the boss here. They’re waiting to see how I’ll respond.

  My mind is rushing with anger and thoughts of Allison. How could she do this to me? I thought we had something real. Fuck, I was just talking about marrying her.

  “All right, team.”

  “You’re not even on the team anymore, Anchor. Get out of the building, now.” Coach says this in a calmer voice. I guess now that he’s kicked me off the team for good he doesn’t feel the need to yell at me.

  “I’ll leave. I’m headed to the swim house. And you’re all going to follow me.”

  “You’re all staying here,” interjects coach. “You have to finish practice.”

  “Listen,” I say. Everyone is staring at me with rapt attention, eyes wide, from the freshman to the seniors. Even Spellman is looking at me like I’m the savior. I guess I have more of a reputation than I’d even realized. But, after all, my exploits have been barely short of legendary. “We’re going to get in a shit load of trouble for this shit we’ve pulled. It’s all here, and everyone’s going to read it.”

  “It’s just the campus paper,” says someone.

  “Knowing this bitch, the article will be picked up by every paper in the country. They won’t miss a scandal like this. I mean steroids and ecstasy, wild parties! It’s a huge fucking deal.”

  “Dude,” says Dave. “Don’t call her a bitch.”

  “What the fuck do you know?” I say, turning to Dave. I approach him, getting right into his face. “You got a fucking problem with how I’m talking?”

  “It’s just that she’s your girlfriend,” he says.

  “Not anymore,” I say. “Now you still got a problem? Just because you’re my best friend doesn’t mean I won’t knock you down like I knocked down Spellman.”

  “No problem, man,” says Dave, quietly.

  “Good,” I say. “Now we can bend over and let them paddle our asses. They’ll slap us with all kinds of punishments. You know the fucking deal. We can either take it the way they want us to. Or we can take it like the fucking men that we are! We can either go quietly, or we can go out raging. Who’s fucking with me? We’re going to throw the biggest and most degenerated fucking party the campus has ever seen in its entire fucking existence!”

  24

  Allison

  “Allison, I saw your article. What the hell were you thinking?” It’s Beaumont. He’s just run up to me on campus. His corduroy sport coat looks disheveled, as does his hair.

  “My article? You mean the one I wrote last week about the use of hand sanitizer?”

  “No. God no! The article on the swim team. What the hell were you thinking, Allison? Do you think this is your ticket to The Journal? Because this is underhanded. I know we talked about making it devastating, but this is beyond devastating. Don’t you have a relationship with this Anchor character? What does he think about all this?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Professor Beaumont? I’m still writing my article.”

  “Well, it’s already published. How do you explain that?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I grab the campus newspaper from his hands. I’m expecting just to see my article on hand sanitizers and its possible uses and dangers, but instead the front page is covered with… my writing, my article...

  But it’s not the article I’m still in the process of writing, the article that shows Anchor, the coach, Dave, Spellman, just about everybody, as complete heroes.

  The article has my name on it. It’s titled “Criminal Enterprise Masquerading as Swim Team on Campus.”

  I definitely didn’t write the title. But I start reading the article, and they are definitely my words.

  To my absolute horror, the article is the draft I wrote a month ago when I was angry at Anchor, and decided to take it out by writing the worst stuff I could about him and the team.

  “The members of the swim team,” the article reads, “pretend to be upstanding citizens, and they have the full support of the University administration, but in reality they are nothing more than common criminals, willing to do whatever necessary, by whatever means, to win, and to have the best possible time while doing so…”

  “Oh shit,” I say.

  “How do you explain this?” says Beaumont, giving me a stern look. “Did you write this?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I wrote it.” My voice becomes quieter. “But, Professor Beaumont, I wrote it, but I never published it. I never even sent it in. The only copy that I have is on my computer.”

  “Then how the hell did it get into the newspaper like this?”

  “I have no idea, honestly, Professor Beaumont. The last thing I want to do now is hurt Anchor. It’s true, we’re going out, and it’s really been getting serious. Shit, what if he sees this? What’s he going to think? I’ve got to call him right now and find him. I’ve got to explain that this was just a horrible accident.”

  I’m getting frantic, and Beaumont can tell. I’m practically pulling my hair out while simultaneously searching through my backpack for my cellphone. Where the hell is that damn thing? Why can’t I just keep it in my pocket like everyone else?

  “Slow down, Allison. First things first, we’ve got to figure out what happened. I believe you. You’ve never lied to me before, and I don’t know why you’d start now. Also, you don’t have the motiva
tion.”

  “You would have made a good reporter,” I say, trying to make a joke, but it falls completely flat.

  “Where do you save the drafts of your articles?” says Beaumont.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where do you write them?”

  “I just write them in my email window. It’s easier for me to concentrate like that. I can pretend I’m writing to a friend. When I open up the regular writing program, I just go into a cold sweat. It looks so… blank.”

  “Well,” says Beaumont. “There’s a valuable lesson in this. And it is: never do that. Do you realize what happened?”

  “I…” I really don’t know. I’m too frantic right now to think straight. I’m still searching for my cell phone, pulling various items out of my backpack and throwing them onto the ground.

  “Did you put an email address in the recipient field?”

  I pause for a moment.

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I put the newspaper address.”

  “Well, shit, Allison. You should never do that. But it’s too late now. Obviously, you accidentally sent the article, and they published it.”

  “But I’m the head of the newspaper. How could I not know about this?”’

  “How much time have you been spending at the newspaper lately?”

  “Well…” In truth, I’ve barely shown my face there since Anchor and I started spending so much time together. He’s been sleeping at my dorm practically every night, and with school work and everything, along with trying to write the article for the paper, I really have been slacking on my editorial duties. I guess being in a relationship sucks up more time than I’d thought.

  “You haven’t been spending any time there at all. I warned you about getting involved with the subjects of your articles, Allison.”

  “I know, I know. But, the same thing would have happened if I had been in a relationship with anyone else. It doesn’t matter that he’s on the swim team…that has nothing to do with my slacking so much on my duties at the paper. Shit, Sally must have gotten the email and published it. I’m sure she wouldn’t have if had I stepped into the office once in the last couple weeks. I guess it seemed like a good article, so she published it. I can’t blame her. It’s all my fault, Professor Beaumont. What am I going to do?”