Vérité

by Rachel Blaufeld

  “Some man—no, not just a man . . . a coach—told me to back off. Said I wasn’t good for Tiberius or the team. He told me I was an unnecessary distraction, and he’s right.”

  Her eyes bulged at my revelation. “You’re shitting me?” When I shook my head, she blurted, “That’s not the truth, Tingly. He misses you every second. I know it; he told me. He tells the guys all the time. And look at you, you’re fading away to nothing, all bony. I know you’re not eating, and you been running like a Kenyan. And why? Because of this stupid coach butting in where he don’t belong?”

  Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, I admitted, “Tonight I sneaked into the game, and the same coach found me. Told me Tiberius is doing well without me.”

  She shook her head this time. “Huh-uh, he’s not. I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but he’s wrong, and he can’t do what he’s doing.”

  “You have to let it be,” I begged her.

  Stacy nodded, but looked away from me as she did. She was lying. Shit.

  Turning the tables on her, I demanded, “Now, what’s going on with you?”

  She shifted on the bed, her gaze anywhere but on me as she said, “I was pregnant. I ended it, and I can’t sleep now.”

  “What?” Tears gathered in my eyes all over again. This girl’s problems were so much bigger than mine. “What happened? Who? Why didn’t you lean on us?”

  She closed her eyes, forcing out a solo tear that escaped to tumble down her cheek. “It happened right when we got back to school. Chey doesn’t know. It was a stupid night, after a party. Things got carried away with a friend of mine, and we fell into bed. We didn’t use protection. He’d be so mad to know I did this . . . to his baby. It wouldn’t sit well, so I got no one. Chey’d freak out about it and tell him.”

  “Do I know him?”

  Stacy lifted her glistening dark gaze to meet mine and nodded. Her nose was running, her eyes swollen and red. “Jamel.” It was a whisper, almost inaudible.

  My hand flew over my mouth as I gasped. “He would never let you do this alone, Stacy. He’s a good guy deep down.”

  “I know,” she said in a small, sad voice before she crawled closer, then lay down on the pillow next to me. “But he woulda made me keep the baby, and I’m here on a scholarship for ball.”

  She sighed as I reached out to caress her hair. “We’re a messed-up bunch, Tingly. Those basketball boys have us tied in knots.” Trying to smile, she added, “Except yours can be fixed, and my baby is gone,” her last words said on a whimper.

  I drew her into my arms and hugged her tight, sobbing along with her. Before long, we fell into an exhausted sleep, spooning like sisters in my little bed.

  We were an unlikely pair, my roommate Stacy and me. I never would have dreamed that we could become good friends, drawn together by our deep, but separate, regrets.

  Stacy had gone to sleep snuggled in my arms for the last week, ever since she’d come clean about her painful loss. Now she looked better, her eyes brighter and her spirit and body stronger.

  This morning when she woke up, I took her hand in mine and insisted, “Today’s the day.”

  Her dark eyes searched mine, looking for an out, anything that would prolong her telling Chey. Poor Chey; she knew something was up, between Stacy hiding out in my room and my being so quiet about it. It was time for her to be clued in.

  “She needs to know, Stace. I know you don’t want to share, but you gotta do it. Secrets are toxic, honey. Especially between friends.”

  When she glared at me, I felt a whisper of shame. Like I’m one to talk.

  Forcing myself to forge ahead despite my hypocrisy, I said, “You just need to explain that you don’t want her to judge, but to try to understand.” With a firm squeeze to her hand, I went to go run the indoor track, leaving her to do what was needed.

  The January morning was bitter so I was bundled in my big down coat, shearling boots, a hat, and gloves to make the trek to the gymnasium. Pulling up the lapels, I puffed hot air into the downy layers of my coat, trying to warm my chin. The mild weather might be the only thing I missed about Los Angeles. My blood was still thin after a couple of years of living in Ohio, and it didn’t matter how many layers I wore, I could never really get warm in the winter.

  As I pushed the revolving door to the gym with one gloved hand, I pulled off my dark green Hafton Under Armour beanie with the other as soon as I was inside and shoved it deep inside my pocket. I was making my way to the locker room, unbuttoning my coat so I could enjoy the warmth as it trickled through my bones, when Logan came strutting out.

  Although I ducked my head to avoid his vicious stare and tried to step around him, he wasn’t going to let me off that easily. Tapping my shoulder, he said, “Heard you broke up with the baller. That make you fair game again?”

  Seriously? What a douche this guy was. Tried to rape me, then thinks he still has a chance.

  “I was never fair game to you, Logan,” I spat out, “and thank God those ballers were there to stop you from taking what wasn’t yours to take.” Pulling myself to my full height, I leaned in to make my point as his eyes grew wide. “So, just walk on by. You got lucky when I didn’t report that shit, but if I were you, I wouldn’t try that again with me or anyone else because those guys are watching. I don’t have to be dating one of them for them to keep an eye on an enemy. And that’s exactly what you are, you asshole.”

  Not giving him a chance to respond, I stomped away, ignoring his calling my name after me. After years of living among the sick pricks of Beverly Hills, I knew I was nothing more than a conquest to Logan. Guys like him were pathetic and predictable; once he was called out on his behavior and told the guys were watching him, he would be constantly looking over his shoulder. That was the thing about fake people like him—they were cowards, and didn’t want others to know the truth about them, only the facade they presented.

  With a small winning smile on my face, I changed into my running shorts and tank. Stephanie wanted the whole team at the track at least three days a week, and there was a sign-in sheet at the desk. After jotting my name down, I climbed the steps to the track. It didn’t take long for me to warm up, just a few laps at a rapid pace while Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” played on my iPod.

  Although I was required to do thirty-five laps, I ran forty-five. When I finally clomped down the stairs to head back to the lockers, sweat was running down my breastbone into my cleavage, my tank was soaked across the middle, my vocal cords were dry from heavy breathing.

  Inside the locker room, I plopped down on a bench and grabbed a Gatorade from my bag. I was guzzling it and nearly choked when I heard my name booming through the gym, bouncing off the tile walls inside the cavernous locker room. “Tingly! Where the hell are you? Tingly?”

  Now what?

  “You can’t go in there,” a girl shrieked from right outside the locker room door.

  “Tingly, you in there?” Ty shouted. “Get out here! I need to talk to you.”

  I didn’t answer. My head whipped in every direction, looking all around the locker room for an alternate exit.

  “There’s nowhere else to run, T. Get out here!”

  Great. Now Tiberius was a mind reader.

  “Come on, just step away from the door, please?” the girl, probably a gym employee, pleaded with him as he continued to yell my name.

  The wall vibrated from someone’s fist banging into it. Or maybe a foot?

  I quickly shucked off my shorts and kicked off my shoes, using my feet to push them off. Hurrying, I stripped off my wet tank, then yanked on sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt. After throwing my coat over my arm and hiking my bag on my shoulder, I shoved my feet in my boots.

  The truth was that I wanted to burst through the door and jump into the arms of the man behind the voice. But it was no longer like that between us, which was all my fault, but still. We weren’t together anymore.

  I tiptoed out, afraid of who or what else might be lurk
ing on the other side of the locker room door, other than Tiberius. As soon as I peeked around it, he threw his arm around me and held his hand up, saying, “Show’s over, folks.” Then he rushed me out of the building, steering me toward Trey’s SUV that was parked in front of the gymnasium.

  Tiberius hit the button on the key fob and the locks clicked open as we approached. “You know I’d never force you to go with me, but we gotta talk, T, so get in. We’re going to talk now.” He held the car door open, regarding me with curious eyes. “You’re not running. You’re getting in this car. We’re getting the fuck outta here and you’re going to explain what the hell Stacy is running off at the mouth about.”

  Knowing there was no use in arguing, I slid into the dark gray leather seat. As I reached for the seatbelt, Tiberius slammed the car door shut and ran around the front to the driver’s side. He shoved the car into drive and sped off, taking us across campus and up the hill past the Ag building. As we headed off-road into the clearing behind the trees where we first really talked, he shifted into four-wheel drive. The trees were bare, the shelter no longer covered in lights, but the sun shone through the tree canopy, lighting the space.

  Tiberius threw the gearshift into park and reached behind him to grab a blanket. “Wrap yourself up, Rex, because we’re not going anywhere for a long while.”

  He cut the motor and turned to me. Banging the steering wheel with his hand, causing me to jump, he gritted out, “What the fuck?”

  I sucked in a deep breath, my eyes wide. “You startled me.”

  “Not that, I’m sorry I scared you, but what did you say ’bout you and who? A coach? What coach? Don’t fuck with me, Tinglee?”

  The way he ranted on, drawing out my name at the end, cut me like a knife. I stared a hole into the dashboard in front of me as I lifted one shoulder in a weak half shrug. “I was only trying to do what was best for you.”

  “That’s bullshit. You wanted an out. You were looking for any damn possible out, any fucking excuse to cut ties and run. You’re making this shit up!”

  “He said you didn’t need any distractions, that my parents . . . Pierre . . . they were here and bad for you.”

  “Who said that?”

  “That man, your coach. Coach Smith.”

  “Stop with the lies,” he yelled, slamming the steering wheel again. “I’m my own man. Let me decide who or what is distracting. You’re not distracting. Not having you in my life is . . . is a big fucking distraction!”

  I’d never been on the receiving end of an angry Tiberius. His voice boomed throughout the car. A chill ran down my spine, causing my whole body to visibly shiver. Not out of fear, but panic. Panic that I’d screwed everything up, that I should have talked to Tiberius sooner, and that I’d lost him for good.

  I buried my head in my hands. I’d fucked up bad. I didn’t know—maybe I thought I’d end it for the season and then pick up after? But I wasn’t that special. I had no idea why I thought Tiberius would wait for me.

  “Tingly, look at me!” he shouted, but I merely shook my bowed head. “Look at me. Christ, you’re putting me through hell. I don’t have a Coach Smith!”

  I lifted my head, my thoughts all jumbled, my eyes burning from tears straining to break free. My heart galloped in my chest as my hands shook, and the pit in my belly was about to rupture from stress. What did he say?

  “You are not distracting,” he insisted. “I’m gonna quit the team if you don’t tell me what the hell really happened, and then you’ll really have fucked shit up.”

  “You can’t quit the team. Not because of me,” I squeaked out. “Your coach said you were gonna be a starter next year, and they need you without any distractions. Without me.” The last two words came out soft and forced because I didn’t want them to be true, but they were. “Coach Smith heard about my parents and Pierre in the locker room, about their visit and the guys’ involvement, and he didn’t want them to be a part of it.”

  “Fuck!” he yelled, making my ears ring from his roar.

  My hand went to massage my heart back to a normal pace. I didn’t feel well at all. My breathing was as ragged as if I’d just run across the United States, and I felt like my heart was going to rip through my chest and shatter my breastbone along the way. Something wasn’t sitting well in my mind, but I was too upset and frazzled to figure it out.

  “I’m sorry,” Tiberius said. “I’m going to calm down.” He took several deep breaths before asking, “Do you love me, T?”

  I nodded. “Of course I do. I did what was best for you, but I’ve been miserable. But you worked so hard to get here, and I don’t want to be the reason anything gets messed up.”

  “Did you hear me?” He leaned across the center console and swiped away my tears with his thumb. “I don’t have a Coach Smith.”

  I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the enormous lump in my throat. “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “A big white guy, ruddy cheeks, gray hair, pot belly, past his prime? Maybe I got the name wrong. Does that sound familiar?” I asked, my brain working overtime.

  He slid his hands on either side of my face, cupping my cheeks to steady my gaze on him. “T, there’s no Coach Smith, no overweight white dude on our coaching staff. He doesn’t exist, so I wanna know who came to see you. What really happened?”

  I tried to wriggle out of his hands, but he kept my focus on him—not with strength or pressure but the power of his gaze. His eyes pleaded with me to tell him the truth.

  “I’m not lying.” My denial came out so weak, even I could hear the defeat in my tone. I cleared my throat in an effort to dredge up some strength. “I was at your game, the one around New Year’s, and this man sat down next to me and explained how you were a top recruit. He said the team needed you free from distractions.”

  Tiberius dropped his hands from my face and gathered my hands in his, never taking his focus off me. I went on to describe my conversation with Coach Smith, and his later attempt to check in on me. I tried hard not to cry, but my body trembled from emotion. Tiberius tightened his grip on my hands, only breaking away to gun the car’s engine so he could turn the heat on full blast.

  With his hands back on mine, he said, “First off, we may talk like a bunch of sex-starved idiots in the locker room, but we do not discuss shit like what happened with Pierre and your dad. We know better than that; anyone could hear. Second, no one on the team would say you’re a distraction. Coaches like us to have one girl, not a million pieces of booty making us crazy. And finally, there is no Coach Smith. Someone set us up, Rex.” He stared me down, allowing me to come to my own awful conclusion.

  “My parents,” I breathed out. Then the dam broke and I was a sniveling, snotty mess. “S-s-seems like the only explanation.”

  My head throbbed; I felt like it was going to explode, or maybe it was just me that was going to combust. I broke free from Tiberius’s grip and threw open the car door, practically tossing myself onto the ground as I gasped for air. Pacing back and forth as I dragged the half-wrapped blanket behind me, I screamed, “How could they do this?”

  “Babe, breathe.”

  Tiberius made his way out of the car and wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulling me close to calm my flailing motions and flaming temper. I let myself relax into his hard chest, stilling my body and my mind.

  “They’ve ruined everything,” I said on a sob, swiping angrily at my wet cheeks. “They’ve taken everything from me, but why? All I did was be born, and they actually tried for that. Like really tried, spent money to get me—their perfect pink baby. But I wasn’t so perfect. They wanted to return me, fix me. I should’ve known they’d do anything to stop us.”

  Tiberius moved us backward until he was leaning against the car, and I was relying on him to hold me up. He whispered the whole way, “They’re not gonna ruin us.”

  “I was just an investment,” I shrieked. “My dad always said ‘You have to put money in to get money out.’ That’s what
fertility treatments were to him—putting money in. It’s always about that goddamn trust, you know. He’s so mad that he didn’t get his hands on it, but my grandparents wanted me to have it.”

  I was trembling with rage, my voice breaking toward the end. Between the long run inside in the dry heat and the coldness of the air now swirling around me, my body broke out into a cold sweat. I shivered while droplets slid down my back.

  “And you do,” he reminded me. “You have it.”

  “My grandparents were uppity, you know, they had their clubs and Rolls Royces and big mansions and all that. They would take me to tea, and I hated tea. But they weren’t like my parents—they wouldn’t care if I wore little shorts and a T-shirt rather than a frilly dress. They would talk to me, really listen to me when I told them about my Latin class or my running track at school. They even came to a few meets.”

  My eyes blurred at the memory, and I swiped at them as I laid my head on Tiberius’s chest. Unable to meet his eyes, I said, “They saw firsthand how my parents ignored me or put down my clothes or interests. When my dad found me with Blane Maxwell’s father, they took me to their house for the weekend and explained how bad they felt. They should have never given my dad so much power, but not once did they blame me for doing what I did with a grown man. In fact, they wanted my dad to press charges, but he wouldn’t. Had to save face, he said.”

  Tiberius stiffened at that last part, and I looked up at him. “They told me that weekend that they made changes to their will, that the money would be all mine so I could break free and make a life for myself away from my parents. They knew what I was up against, how horrible my parents are.” My words trailed off at the end until they were nothing more than a whisper. “My grandparents wanted me to be extra-ordinary in spite of all the money, the luxuries I was raised with. Because they’d had all that themselves, they understood what was important in life. And all I ever asked for was to break free,” I said sadly.