by Tia Lewis
“Easy, easy. Chill.” I held up a hand. “I was kidding around.”
She sighed. “Sorry. I got a little upset there.”
“Obviously.”
“I just don’t want you to see me as one of those girls.”
“Which ones?”
“Whichever ones you don’t like. I don’t want to be the stereotypical, clingy girl. I hate girls like that.”
I pushed a few strands of dark hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Don’t worry. I don’t think you’re one of those girls.”
She smiled in relief. “So tell me. What were you thinking about?” She rested her chin on my chest.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope.”
I searched around for something to say. “The last thing I had thought about before you tried to smother me was home. Being home for break. It was a fucking nightmare.”
“What happened to you back there?” she asked. “You’ve mentioned it once or twice, but you never say much, really.”
I looked down at her. Would she understand? Her face was sincere. She wasn’t the kind of person who would judge me. I hoped not, anyway.
I stared at the ceiling. I couldn’t tell Claire while I was looking at her. Some of it filled me with so much shame, after all those years.
“When I grew up, I was poor. I mean dirt poor. We lived in a tiny house in a crappy neighborhood where everybody else was as poor as us. Just my mom and me. I never met my father. I don’t know where he is or who he is. All I have is his last name. I used to dream about him, the sort of person he was. I mean, Jennings. That’s an impressive sounding name, right? I thought he had to be as impressive as his name was. I would imagine him coming for me, and every day I hoped just a little bit harder. Especially on my birthday and Christmas. I was sure he’d come. Only he never did, of course. I finally understood that he had no idea I existed. My mom didn’t even know him. He was a one-night stand or a quickie affair. Nothing special.”
Claire put her hand over mine.
“So we lived on welfare. Mom spent a lot of it on cigarettes and booze. You don’t know what it’s like to always be the kid whose clothes don’t quite fit. I grew fast—I mean, look at me. I’m a tall guy. I outgrew everything I owned. I started working when I was fourteen just so I could buy my own clothes. I couldn’t afford much, and they were always a little dirty, but they fit. I wasn’t busting the seams on them. I could buy enough food, too. I was always hungry.
“One thing Mom could always afford was the fees for football. I always had a jersey and equipment. Football was everything. Her brothers had played; her daddy had played. She used to be a cheerleader, or so she told me. I never saw pictures or anything. Whenever she saw me sitting around the house, she asked me to go outside and exercise so I would be ready for football. I watched it on TV every chance I got. I used to go to the park and ask the kids to play with me—none of them knew how to play since their parents couldn’t afford the fees. I taught them just so I could practice in the offseason.” I remembered being that kid with the too short pants and too tight shoes, explaining plays to the other children. They didn’t have a clue, but they were happy to have something to do in the shitty place where we lived.
“Mom made it clear that football was my only chance out of there. She told me over and over how important it was that I make it onto the high school team, then get a scholarship to college. I worked my ass off—you have no idea. And I worked part-time, and I did all right in school, too. Only she never wanted to see me studying. That was the fucked-up part.”
“Just that part?” Claire asked, and I knew she wasn't just a smartass. There was sympathy in her voice.
“Well, yeah. I get what you’re saying. No matter how many times I told Mom that I had to keep my GPA up if I expected to play, she still made me feel guilty for it. I used to stay late after school just so I could study in peace. She assumed I was training, so I let her keep believing that.
“God, we were so poor. She still is. She lives in the house, ready to fall down on her. She won’t do a damned thing to help herself. She’s waiting for me to save her when I get signed to a team. She already has the house picked out.”
Claire squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. I took a minute to compose myself since I got a little choked up.
“I went back to visit her over break. I can’t believe the two of us ever lived there together in that tiny house. Living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom. That’s it.”
“You used to be a lot smaller, I guess,” Claire pointed out.
“True. Now, I have to duck half the time. The bathroom’s so tiny, I can hardly fit inside. It’s a joke. She’s waiting on me. That’s when she’ll have the life she always dreamed of.”
“What if you decided to give up football? What if you said ‘screw it, I’ll be an English teacher’?”
“Then she would spend the rest of her life in that house. Dragging the laundry down to the washing machines once a week. Washing her unmentionables in the bathroom sink—that’s what she used to call them. Having her boyfriends over, playing her music too loud, getting drunk. That’s how she lives now, and that’s how she would die.”
I dared look over at Claire, and she was shaking her head. “I know it must sound unbelievable to you,” I said. “You have a great family. The kind of family I always wanted. Mom, dad, brother. Nice house. Plenty of money. You never had to wonder where the next meal was coming from.”
“You’re breaking my heart right now,” she whispered, big tears in her green eyes.
That shook me out of my train of thought. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept talking like that. I don’t hold it against you or anything, honest.”
“I know you don’t. But I hold it against me. It’s hard to explain. I always used to think I had it so bad growing up. I even thought about killing myself a few times. I never considered that there were other people with their own problems. You, a football player? I would have assumed you had it made because it was people like you who made my life miserable.”
“People like me?”
“The jocks.”
I nodded. “And the rich, smart kids made my life miserable. Until I hit junior and senior year, that is. Then I played as a starter, and nobody messed with me.” I could see her point. In the Midwest, being a football player made you special. You weren’t like other people anymore, and special treatment was typical.
“Before football, I was nobody. And if I didn’t have it, I’d end up like the losers who stayed around that shitty little town.” Like Melissa, though she was about to get out. And Greta. I couldn’t tell Claire about her. “Football’s all I have.”
“It’s not all you have,” Claire whispered. She moved closer to me, turning my head until I faced her. She kissed me softly. “It’s not all you have. It’s not.” She kissed my cheeks, my forehead, my nose, whispering over and over. All I could do was let her keep kissing me and saying it. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to.
She touched my lips again, and I held her close. The kiss deepened, and I pried her mouth open with my tongue. She whimpered when our tongues touched, and again when my hands traveled down over her luscious curves. Her ass was so firm and round, and I dug my fingers in. Her gasp made my cock hard in an instant.
I rolled her over, leaning on my forearms, and she wrapped her legs around my hips as I drove myself into her. I needed her, right then, at that moment. I needed her to make me feel better than I was. She always did. I never felt like the poor loser kid when we were together. I didn’t feel less-than, the way I felt when the guys talked about their lives and their families. I could never compete with that.
And I never had a girl like her—not at home, when I was a kid, and not in college, either. They were all sluts, football groupies, the girls who would sleep with anybody. Like, Jenny. Smart girl, not a bad person, but it never meant anything to her. Once she was done with you she would quickly move
on to the next sports player.
But Claire. She was different. When I slid inside of her, I felt like I was with somebody real. I couldn’t explain it. When she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and sighed, I felt like she was really there. Her mind wasn’t on anything else. She wasn’t just getting it over with to say she did it. She wanted to be with me—me, not the football star. Just me.
All this and a hundred other thoughts ran through my head as I drove myself further into her. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. I took my time at first, watching her. It was fascinating, the way her face changed when I was inside her. The way her mouth opened when she moaned, the way her breathing picked up. Her forehead creased like she was concentrating on the feeling.
She was so tight, so hot. All I wanted to do was fuck her hard, take her and make her scream my name. But I couldn’t. She wasn’t like that, not to me. I wanted her to scream, but I didn’t want to be rough. I understood what it meant to take my time. It wasn’t a race, and it wasn’t all about my vanity—how loud I could make her come. It was about her pleasure and mine. What we could do together.
She opened her eyes as I moved in and out, and she whispered my name. I groaned and drove myself even deeper. My pace picked up as she quickened beneath me. Her hips jerked upward, meeting me. I moaned against her shoulder then bit down until she cried out for more. I slammed into her once, twice, and she screamed softly.
The little noises that came from her mouth were like music to my ears, and they forced me to go harder and faster. My body took over for my brain, and I moved in deep, pounding thrusts that turned her cries to grunts. I grunted with her, and we rode each other until her tunnel tightened around my shaft and she clawed at my back.
“Oh, Jake! Yes!” she yelled then shuddered in release. I couldn’t do anything but let myself go along with her, and I groaned into her pillow when I came.
20
Claire
“I’m starving.” His face was on my pillow, his body stretched out on top of mine.
“Are you serious?” I laughed.
“Hell, yes.”
“That’s all you can think about right now?”
He pushed himself up on his arms and grinned down at me.
I loved the way he grinned.
“I already took care of the other thing I was thinking about.”
“You pig!” I smacked his arms. It was like hitting granite. His body never ceased to amaze me.
“What do you think? The diner or bar, maybe? I could go for some drinks.”
“The bar? How romantic.” I rolled my eyes as got up and dressed. “The diner is fine.”
“Can you drive?” he asked.
“You didn’t?”
“No, I walked here from the frat house. I had only planned on going to the library.” He looked away, and I thought he might be a little red with embarrassment. So he hadn’t planned on coming to me. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t hate it. Besides, he was going to the library? I’d been a better influence on him than I thought. I had a scholar on my hands.
So I drove to the diner, and along the way, we talked about Hamlet. He’d finished reading it over break.
“It’s pretty messed up,” he surmised.
“That’s a way to put it.”
“I mean, really. He couldn’t just come out and say he knew the truth about what happened to his dad? He had to be all sneaky about it? If he didn’t do that, Ophelia wouldn’t have gone crazy.”
“You think so? You don’t think she was crazy before that?”
“No. When he started acting like a prick, she went nuts. Then he killed her father. I mean, wouldn’t you go crazy?”
“I guess I would.” I looked out the driver’s side window, smiling to myself. I didn’t want him to think I was laughing at him—I wasn’t, either. I didn’t think he would believe me if I told him how adorable he was.
The diner wasn’t very full, which made sense since a lot of people hadn’t returned from break yet. It was nice, feeling like there was nobody else around but the two of us. The smells of frying potatoes and sizzling beef made my mouth water. I was glad he’d suggested it once we settled into a booth.
He pulled out his copy of Hamlet and showed me a particular passage he liked. The soliloquy. “It’s only the most famous soliloquy, like, ever,” I said.
“Really? I thought it was pretty cool, too. I knew I recognized the first line. To be, or not to be.”
“Do you know what he was saying, though?”
“Yeah. He was talking about dying. Pros and cons.”
I gave him a silent clap. “You have no idea how many people misinterpret that one. That, and the line from Richard III: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.’ People don’t get that he isn’t talking about actual seasons, but the way people felt. They were discontented, his family. Once his brother became king, things changed for the better.”
“What about ‘Wherefore art thou Romeo’? All the kids in my English class in high school thought she was asking where Romeo was, not why he had to be Romeo and not some other dude her family wasn’t fighting with.”
“Geez,” I murmured. “You’re much smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
He grinned. I had never met his mother, but I hated her for putting restrictions on him the way she had. There was no telling who he could have been if he had been pushed as hard in his studies as he was at football.
Our burgers came, and I watched with a bemused smile as Jake devoured his. I flipped through Hamlet, then pulled a post-it note from inside the back of the book and stuck it to one of the pages. “Professors always ask about this one section. The play-within-the-play. Where Claudius freaks out. He sort of gives himself away as the one who killed Hamlet’s father.”
I looked up at him, but he wasn’t staring at me anymore. There was someone over my shoulder that had his attention. I turned slightly to find a tall, dark-haired guy standing at the register. I could tell Jake knew him from the look on his face.
“Who is that?” I asked, still looking.
“Don’t worry about him,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I was still looking, though, and I made eye contact with the stranger. He looked at me, then at Jake. His face first registered surprise, then glee. He left, laughing and shaking his head.
“Who was he?” I turned to Jake. “One of the football players?”
“You really don’t know who anybody on the team is, do you?”
“I don’t.” I shrugged.
“Yeah, he’s one of my teammates. He lives at the frat house with me, too. He’s the one with the injury. Remember, at the beginning of the semester?”
“Oh, yeah. He looks fine now.”
“He’s good.” Jake’s voice was tight. I couldn’t understand why. I decided to change the subject, going back to Hamlet. Soon we were discussing whether he was really crazy, or just pretending.
I pulled up in front of Jake’s frat house and gave him one more kiss. We had already made out in the parking lot at the diner. I wasn’t sure I could ever show my face there again.
He groaned, and when I glanced at his crotch, there was no missing the bulge in his shorts. My body responded at the sight of it, but there was no way to give in to that impulse.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, climbing out of the car. “Library. Don’t wear panties.”
I giggled as I watched him climb the stairs to the front door. So that was the mythical frat house, huh? It didn’t look so bad to me. Sort of dilapidated, but it had charm. I pulled away with a smile.
Talk about a perfect day. The sun shone, kids played Frisbee and touch football along the lawns throughout campus. Everything seemed to have an extra bit of magic. Maybe because my day had been magic.
I could still feel him on me, in me. My lips tingled when I remembered how passionately he had kissed them, and that tingle traveled downward until it settled between
my legs. He had kissed me there, too, and I sighed when I remembered how blissful that had been. He showed me depths of pleasure I didn’t know were possible, especially for me. Especially from him.
It was the talking we did afterward that meant the most, though. Jake had finally opened up, and it was an honor that he thought I could be trusted with his secrets. I could, too. I would never use anything he said against him. It only brought us closer and made me like him more, knowing everything he’d gone through to get where he was. I finally understood why football was such a big deal to him, why he worked so hard to get ahead. Why schoolwork had taken the backburner. I wished he saw himself the way I saw him. I knew he was intelligent, warm, caring, and insightful. He only saw himself as a football player.
It wasn’t until I was a few blocks away that I noticed Jake left his copy of Hamlet in the car. I was close to my dorm but didn’t want him to miss out on study time. A few more kisses wouldn’t hurt, either. I smiled to myself when I thought about that last one before he got out of the car.
I couldn’t believe how far I’d come in such a short time. At the beginning of the semester, I’d been a gawky, sloppy girl who tried to hide behind books and baggy clothes. Less than two months later I was practically dating one of UM’s biggest sports stars. If not dating, at least sleeping with. I was all right with that, too. I didn’t need it to be any bigger than it was.
How lucky could a girl get? I smiled to myself as I pulled up to the frat house. How many times had I driven past without giving it a second thought? All the while, he had lived there.
Shoot. I was falling in love with him, wasn’t I? Too late, my heart said. You’re already there.
I jogged up the steps and raised my fist to knock on the front door, only to find it open. Should I go in? I thought I’d play it safe and knock anyway. The door swung open, and I made a mental note to remind Jake to close it all the way.
Voices in the kitchen. I told myself it was none of my business, no matter what they were talking about. Only … there was a lot of laughter. Nasty sounding laughter. It drew me in, even as my instincts screamed at me to go.
