by Teagan Kade
Jamie’s working at his phone like it’s a pinball machine. “I’m emailing you a list of everything these guys are offering. For fuck’s sake, take a look and get back to me, because—”
“These offers won’t last,” I finish, rolling my eyes beneath the smoky lenses of the Ray-Bans.
Jamie stands, buttoning up his suit jacket. “That’s right, son. Make your pops proud. Choose a team.”
I laugh. “Yes, because that’s exactly why I play ball, to make my father proud.”
Jamie laughs back. “Phoenix, I don’t care if you’re the next Lebron.” He shakes his cell at me. “If you don’t make a decision, and fast, the well’s going to dry up and you’ll be left on the court with dick in hand and nowhere to go.”
I sit forward, sliding my legs back either side of the deck chair. “I got it.”
“Good,” he nods. “Let me know,” and he’s off, evaporating through the French doors. I hear his Jag explode into life from the front drive, a screech of tires as he blasts his way down the street.
The French doors reopen and Nolan steps out into the sun, still with my bowl in hand, tipping it back into his mouth to get the last drops of milk. The tube sock has slid further down, looks more like a sad windsock now. “What did the J-man want?”
I recline back and place my head against the back of my arm. “What do you think?”
Nolan stands in front of me, blocking the sun. “Sooner or later, you are going to have to choose a team.”
“Who says?”
In truth, it’s nothing to do with deciding and everything to go with mustering the enthusiasm to play basketball in the first place. I think of a life spent on the boards and I want to scream. I’m good at it, sure, but do I enjoy it? I really don’t know any more.
Nolan hands me the breakfast bowl, placing it on my chest when I refuse to move. “Anyhow, nice talk.” He points back to the house. “Like I said, I’m expecting someone.”
“And keep it quiet, will you?” I shout as he walks back to the house. “The last thing I need to hear today is you jackhammering some poor freshman through the wall.”
“Who said we’d be inside?” he laughs back.
And all I can do is lie there in the sun with the faintest of grins forming.
*
If there’s one constant in life, it’s Crestfall. One of the most elite sporting academies the US has to offer is nothing if not consistent. My father attended, his father attended and now I attend—doing my best not to fall asleep during class.
The lecturer notices me dozing off. “Mr. King,” he exclaims, a loud shuffle as every eye in the room turns to me. “Care to join us, Mr. King, or should I roll out a mattress?”
“The red carpet will suffice,” I smile, a murmur of laughter following. So close to graduation no one is looking to test the limits.
The lecturer places his hands either side of the podium, smiling up at me. “Let’s just hope those magic hands of yours see you through, Mr. King.”
I can’t even be bothered with a comeback. “Yes, sir,” I reply.
I walk through campus in a daze. People stop to talk to me and I blurt out the usual macho nonsense. I pass through it all on autopilot, but as I get closer to the dining hall, things start to change. My heart beats faster, my senses become more aware and acute. Everything is sharper when I’m on the hunt.
I pass one of our point guards, Terrance, on the way in. He jumps in front of me. “Phoenix, what the fuck you doing here? Slumming it up with the rest of us?”
I shove him aside. “Hey, I pay my fees like everyone else. Thought I’d sample the goods for once.”
Terrance laughs behind me. “Brother, ain’t nothing good in this place.”
I raise a finger. “We shall see, young Terrance.”
Someone’s saying my name to the left, a girl I think I got with last month waving from a table, but it’s all noise. I’ve come here for one reason and one reason alone.
I join the line up front at the cafeteria and take a tray, the tank of a woman handing out cutlery surprised to see me. “Back for more, huh?”
I rub my stomach. “The good lord himself couldn’t keep me away.”
“Food poisoning might,” the guy behind me mumbles.
It is true the food is not why I’m here, not why I’ve been here every day the last week.
It’s an agonizing wait to get to her, the girl in front of me taking way too long asking if this is vegan or that is gluten-free. Move the hell on, Ellen! I want to shout, but I keep my cool, sliding my tray up to the reason I’m here.
The girl on the other side of the counter is nothing like the Crestfall groupies I’m so used to. There’s a life to her, a grit you don’t see around here often. It could be the nose ring or maybe the cherry bomb tattoo peeking out from her sleeve, or maybe it’s just the fact she’s drop-dead fucking gorgeous, but I’m smitten.
I’m smiling, lost in the hazel cornucopia of her eyes, but whatever charm I imagine I am projecting here, she is all but immune.
“Well?” she asks, serving spoon in hand. “You going to stand there all day smiling like this is a special school or you going to tell me what you want?”
I look down at the choice dining on offer, find it hard to tell if I’m looking at food or Play-Doh. “It all just looks so delicious.”
I can see I’m testing her patience. She looks down the line, growing longer by the second. “Yellow or green, make a choice.”
“Are those yams?” I point.
“No, it’s duck à l'orange, wiseass. Yellow or green,” she repeats, more forcefully now.
I keep the smile in place. “Surprise me.”
She shakes her head and scoops up a spoonful of the yellow surprise, dumping it into a bowl and handing it to me. “Next!”
“What?” I ask. “Not even a smile, a ‘Here you go, sir’?”
She eyes me with such vaulted intensity I half expect to be cut in half. “Move. Along.”
I put my hands up. “Jesus, I’m going, I’m going.”
I continue on down the line, but I can’t stop myself looking back at her. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to talk to her, and it won’t be the last. If it’s one thing us Kings have in spades, it’s a stubborn perseverance to get what we want, and I want her—bad. If I have to climb behind that counter and sweep her off her feet, I just might do it.
No, you won’t, my head intervenes.
It’s right. An entirely new, innovative approach is required here. The usual tactics are not working, which means we’ve got to go back to the drawing board and have a real think tank on how best to broach the subject of our impending coitus.
I near the end of the line, looking back at her one final time expecting her to meet my eyes and smile, to tell me there’s the slightest chance I made an impression, but she gives me nothing. It’s all focus with her. I’ve simply got to direct it away from her job.
I look down at the food, consider dumping it in the nearest bin.
Why do you even keep coming back? I ask myself. But the answer’s clear.
I can’t seem to stay away.
CHAPTER TWO
HEATHER
He’s back.
It didn’t take me long to work out who Phoenix King is. ‘Crestfall’ and ‘King’ seem to go hand in hand. I’m surprised there’s not a giant banner of the brothers flying above the front gate. I expected to see the odd King around campus, but I did not expect to see one on my turf—that being the dining hall, or, as the students like to put it, Bombay Alley.
Today marks the third time Phoenix has showed up and I know he’s sure as shit not coming back for the sloppy joes. I see the way he looks at me, fluttering those impossibly long eyelashes, letting those blueberry eyes do the heavy lifting. I’m sure he thinks those college parlor tricks are going to work on me, but he would be very, very wrong.
He’s cute, yes, in an all-American kind of way. I will give him that. You don’t get a body like that fr
om sitting on the sofa, and there is a certain allure to the sharp features of his face, the mystery, and no doubt wonder, within that gaze. I feel my body tighten when he approaches, the primal sexual pull being in his presence demands. But it can’t happen. It won’t. I’m sure his schedule’s more than full of field bunnies waiting to blow him and text their BFFs the following morning.
So, it’s not a problem of attraction, because I am attracted to him. We’re simply too different for anything to come from it besides a booty call, and I have higher morals than that. My interest in that kind of relationship is approximately nil, so I ignore him and how he makes me feel every time he rocks up with tray in hand tossing me that ‘Oh, come on’ puppy dog pout.
I know he’s watching me as he makes his way down the line. I keep my focus on the next student, waiting until Phoenix has his back to me before stealing a final, naughty peek.
Never going to happen, I tell myself.
I bring myself back to reality. “Yellow or green?”
*
It’s been a long shift. I’m going to be seeing peas and corn dogs in my dreams.
Being a line cook at Crestfall wasn’t, of course, my first career choice, but it’s a means to an end. After a while you become an automaton—drop arm, scoop, deposit. It’s almost meditative after a while.
The campus is quiet. Classes are long over and there’s only a rind of a moon above, leaving little light by which to navigate my way to the staff parking lot all the way down the back of the academy.
There are lights on at the football field in the distance, the sounds carried across the air making whatever’s going on over there far more militaristic than sporting.
I spot my car in the back row and hunt for my keys in my purse standing under the sole pool of light in the entire parking lot.
I hear the steps, but I don’t see them coming.
Something smashes into me from the side, hard, and I’m thrown to the ground, grit and gravel in my face. It’s only then I realize someone is above me, reaching down and trying to yank my handbag away, but I’m still holding onto it, clutching the strap like it’s the last lifeline from the Titanic.
“Fucking let go,” the mugger spits, male, young, though his hood’s up and I can’t make out any details of his face.
I keep my grip tight even though pain’s started to bloom in my side, my face, the hot flush of blood there.
“Hey!”
I can’t tell if it’s his voice or not.
“Let go,” he repeats. He seems to stop, and I think I’ve won, that he’s about to run, but instead he draws his boot back. It lashes out, striking me full in the face.
That’s enough to send the fight from me.
I slacken, dimly aware of the handbag being pulled away.
“You!”
I groan, arms splayed out on the pavement, see the mugger running off to my right, someone else approaching from the hill, but my vision’s blurry at best.
I look up at the sky. It feels like someone’s taken a wrecking ball to my face.
“Hey, you okay?”
I squint, trying to make out who it is crouched over me. I turn sideways and see a sports bag there, can’t quite seem to put two and two together.
“I can go after him if you want,” the voice says.
I reach up and find grip on something—a jacket, I think. “No,” I plead. “Stay.”
I attempt to sit up even though my body is fighting me. My vision starts to clear, and I finally realize who this mystery Samaritan is.
“Phoenix?”
It’s met with a smile. “So you do know my name?”
If I could roll my eyes without forcing a migraine, I would. “Everyone knows your name, dipshit.”
He points to himself. “The dipshit who just came to your rescue, you mean?”
He helps me up into a sitting position and I have to admit I don’t mind the feeling of his hand at my back. “He got away, didn’t he?”
He laughs. “You’re hard to please, aren’t you?”
I groan again, reaching for my lip and pulling away my finger spotted with blood. “Prick.”
Phoenix looks offended. “Jesus, I was only trying to h—”
“Not you,” I stammer, pointing to the loose direction where the mugger ran. “Him!”
Phoenix reaches up and lightly brushes my cheek with the back of his thumb, those famous King eyes penetrating even in the semi-light of the carpark. “You’re pretty banged up. I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car. What do you say?”
A new question forms. I look to his sports bag, note the team jacket he’s wearing. “Why are you even here? Aren’t the basketball courts on the other side of campus?”
He pulls back a little. “They are, yes, and I was at practice.”
“But?” I push.
He scratches his head, looking away. “Ah, I kind of was waiting for you.”
Not the answer I was expecting. “Waiting for me? Why?”
He goes to answer but I put my hand up. “No, don’t answer that.” I rock forwards closing my eyes, a sudden bout of dizziness overcoming me.
“You good?”
“Do I look fucking good?” I snap.
“Well… kind of like the lovechild of Furiosa and Gwen Stefani, so yes?”
I almost laugh at that. I extend an arm. “Help me up then.”
He hooks his arm under mine and lifts me to my feet. He takes off his jacket once I’m standing, wrapping it around me and keeping his arm over my shoulders as we walk-slash-hobble up the hill to where the student parking lot would be. I’m surprised at how solid his body is beside me, the warmth and heat it gives off.
“You want me to call the cops?” he queries.
I shake my head. “No, that won’t do any good.”
We finally make it to the student parking lot, Phoenix directing us to what looks like a brand-new Corvette parked, you guessed it, right up front in the priority area reserved for the campus’s big donors, the movers and shakers.
He pops the trunk and helps me sit down against the edge of it, the suspension not giving an inch. I watch him move to the passenger side and pull the door open, fumbling around in the glovebox before returning with a small first-aid kit.
He crouches and places the kit on the ground, going through its contents while I sit there feeling like a fool. I should have been more careful, even here at Crestfall.
“So you just carry a first-aid kit around for what? Kicks?”
He’s busy sorting the kit. “Be prepared.”
“The Boy Scouts’ motto. You weren’t a Boy Scout, I’d bet.”
“Technically, no, though my father did enjoy getting us out in the wilderness. ‘Builds resilience,’ he liked to say… while he left us alone in the middle of woods with nothing but a flint. Fucking hated those little surprises he’d throw up.”
“Your father’s Bear Grylls then?”
Phoenix laughs, dabbing a cotton ball into antiseptic and bringing it up to my face. I can smell the chemical odor of it overpowering everything else. “If Bear Grylls wore a suit and only cared about sport, sure.”
I grit my teeth when the cotton ball touches the graze on my cheek, don’t want to let him see it’s affecting me. “Isn’t that all you Kings care about? The next trophy? The next win?”
There’s complete focus in the way he operates, dabbing at the area next to my forehead where the heel of that fucker’s boot caught me. “A common misconception.”
“So you’re here to tell me you enjoy classical music and old black-and-white films, that you’re so cultured and nothing like the brutish player the folks around here would make you about to be.”
He stops, leaning back on his haunches. “First, wrong brother, and second, you don’t know me.”
I bite my lip, tasting the metallic tang of the dried blood there and feeling even worse. “Sorry.”
He puts the cotton ball down on the ground. “No need to apologize. You weren’t entirely wrong
.”
“So you do like a bit of Beethoven.”
“If you’re referring to the wholesome ’90s film starring a rather stately Saint Bernard, who doesn’t?”
Touché.
“Look,” he says, the joker evaporating, “I’m no doctor. We should go the hospital. You might have a concussion.”
“I’ve been through worse.”
He nods slowly. “Yes, but I wouldn’t feel right leaving you like this. At the very least promise you’ll report this to campus security.”
“I will.”
“You’re probably going to look like a raccoon tomorrow. You know that, right? A really cute, bad-ass raccoon.”
Now I roll my eyes. “You don’t come to the dining hall for the food, do you?”
“Fuck no,” he smiles.
He was planning to ask me out, waiting around out here like some kind of weird sporty stalker, but what am I to do?
He seems to read my thoughts. “At least let me check on you tomorrow, make sure you’re okay.”
Oh, god. Why am I doing this to myself? “I’m glad you were there tonight, honestly, so I’m going to buy you a coffee, to say thank you, but that is it, got it?”
He’s suddenly smiling like he’s won the state lottery, not that the Kings need any more money. “Got it, but you haven’t told me your name.”
Shit. I haven’t. “Heather.”
He starts to pack up the first aid kit. “Well, Heather, if I see that mugger again, I’m going to damn well rip his head off.”
“Appreciated, but unnecessary.”
He motions behind himself. “You want me to take you back to your car?”
With effort I push off the back of the Corvette. “Please.”
“You need any money, a place to stay?”
I eye him. “Easy now. Take what you can get.”
He smiles wider and salutes. “Understood.”
It’s a quiet, short drive back to the staff parking lot, my muscles pulling tight when he passes the area I was attacked.
Phoenix helps me out, waits until I’m seated and belted in my poor excuse of an automobile with one faulty headlight and three working gears. “You sure you’re good?” he asks.
