by Morgan Kyle
“I’ve fucked you so many times in my head,” he said.
And I swallowed hard, wanting him to do it now.
His next words told me it wasn’t going to happen right now: “We’re going to have to figure out something. We can’t do this here.”
“My place.” The words barely registered, I was speaking so softly. “We can go there now.”
He stood straight up, slowly, but I didn’t release my hands from around his neck.
He laughed. “I have a meeting.”
Shit.
I let go and let myself fall back on his desk.
“Sorry,” he said.
When I looked up at him, I saw a grin.
“Tease.”
He let out a little laugh. “You said you wanted this to be fun, right? What’s the rush?”
Before I left—which involved quietly opening the door and peeking out to make sure no one saw me leaving his office—we exchanged numbers. Actually, he just took mine. I wouldn’t take his. I’d already gone out of my way to come to his office, practically chasing him, so I didn’t want to be tempted to text or call him. It was his turn to come after me.
“Guess I’ll see you around, Coach.”
Chapter Five
I went back to my apartment after a morning class the next day, planning to eat lunch and set up a few things in my bedroom, when Miranda came home, Gwen in tow, the two of them talking about Cole or, as they kept referring to him, Coach Dempsey.
I was standing in the kitchen, eating some pasta (always carb up before practice).
They were arguing about his age, and whether he was twenty-something, or whether he’d crossed the thirty year mark yet.
“What do you think?” Miranda asked me.
“At least thirty,” I said, taking Miranda’s side of the debate, even though she was wrong.
Gwen said she didn’t care how old he was and, “If he was fifty and looked like that, I’d do him.”
I looked away from her and concentrated on the pasta, stirring it around in the butter and parmesan.
They went to her room, thank God, and I retreated to mine. I finished eating, then started hanging some of my clothes, and the phone rang.
Mom.
I let it go to voicemail. It was never good when she called.
I waited until I heard the voicemail chime and then I checked it.
“It’s your mom,” she said, as she did each time, as if I would listen to her messages, not recognize her voice, and wonder who the hell had just left me a message. “I know your classes started last week, or this week, but you didn’t come home at all in August and I think you should see your grandparents soon. You know, Mama isn’t doing well…”
It went on like that, pure guilt trip. The only good thing about her call was that she sounded sober, which was rare. As far back as I could remember in my life, Mom was never far from drunk. The best time to catch her was early in the mornings, or just after she’d gotten off work. Other than that, good luck trying to have a normal conversation with her.
My father wasn’t a drunk, though, at least as far as I knew. He was rarely home. As a long-haul trucker, he would spend weeks away from home, going God knows where, and then suddenly appear at the house, only to leave again within two or three days. It was like having an occasional drifter in the house. I don’t think my dad meant any harm. He’d grown up under his own tough circumstances, dropped out of high school his senior year because he’d knocked up my mom—that was me in there, readying for the world—and immediately went to work. Choices were slim, he became a trucker, and had been for the last twenty-one years.
Other options became available to him sometime around my tenth birthday. I remember hearing my mom asking him something about working construction locally, but dad kept at it with the trucking. In hindsight, now that I’m older and have some insight into what I think he was thinking, I’m pretty sure by that point he just wanted to stay away from home.
He was never a mean dad, and there were times when I could tell, even at a young age, that he was trying to connect with me.
I spent my thirteenth birthday on the road with him. It was the first time he’d ever taken me on one of his trips, and this one was a short run, down to St. Petersburg, Florida, a trip that would last three days, two nights. I of course jumped at the chance, not only because I’d never been out of the state of North Carolina before, but because I was curious about my dad, wanted to spend time with him.
I had never even ridden in his truck before. It took a few hours on the highway to get used to being that high up, above all the other cars, other trucks going by. We did a lot of waving, and Dad let me pull the cord that blew the truck’s loud horn. I got kind of carried away with it, though, and he made me stop. I didn’t care. I was having a great time.
The cabin in his truck had two beds, like small bunks, and the first night was like a fun sleep-over. Dad joking, me laughing, him asking me all about school, me telling him about how I was getting more and more into swimming….
It was like he was really getting to know his daughter, his only child. We had my birthday dinner in a steakhouse. When the waitress asked if we’d like desert, Dad declined, and I was a little surprised. No slice of cake for my birthday? No piece of pie? But he ended up stopping at a grocery store and buying a dozen cupcakes. We ate them in the cabin of the truck until we both fell asleep, somehow, even with all that sugar coursing through our veins.
The next night was so unlike the first, it was jarring. After dinner—at least he fed me—Dad said he was going to a bar down the road from the truck stop to have a drink with an old buddy of his. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it was odd that an old friend of his was in St. Petersburg. But whatever. He said he’d be gone no longer than an hour or so, and showed me how to work the portable TV in the cabin.
I didn’t want to watch TV. I was curious, bored, and gutsy as I always was, so I decided to get out and walk around the truck stop, see what I could see.
I went into the little shop that carried all kinds of travel necessities, and some trinkets and gifts—key chains, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, hats. I don’t know how many of those things I had, all depicting different cities along the east coast. Dad had brought something like that home to me each time.
There wasn’t much to look at, so I went back outside into the humid Florida night.
I heard the first comment as soon as I was off the sidewalk and on the asphalt.
Damn. Actually, with the guy’s accent, it sounded more like: Dayum.
I didn’t know who had said it, who he was saying it to, or what he had seen that made him say it. But as soon as I turned my head, I saw the guy’s eyes moving down my legs, back up to my ass. I was wearing white shorts, a light blue tank, and flip-flops. I was also 5’6”, taller than most girls my age, and I was well into a full year of being more developed than they were. That’s not to say I didn’t look my age. If the guy had seen my face, it would have been obvious, but he wasn’t interested in looking at my face.
I whipped my head forward again, picked up speed, thankful that he hadn’t been able to see my chest. I didn’t even get a good look at him, but I do remember what the next two guys looked like.
They were standing together in front of a truck that was parked two spaces away from my dad’s. They were blowing plumes of smoke up into the air, talking about something I couldn’t hear and didn’t care to anyway. They looked to be my dad’s age, or at least close to it.
“Hey there,” one of them said to me.
I gave him a half-smile, not wanting to be too friendly but also not wanting to ignore him. My pulse quickened, hands squeezed into fists, sweating, and I picked up the pace a little.
“Where you going in such a hurry?” the same guy said, and the other one laughed, saying, “Give it up, she wouldn’t give you the time-uh day.”
Fearful now of these older guys and what they might try to do to me, I decided to keep walking past my dad
’s truck, at least six or seven spaces down, then ducked between two trucks and weaved my way back, quietly getting into my dad’s truck and locking the door behind me.
I remembered that he kept a baseball bat—a large, wooden Louisville Slugger—under the lower bunk. I got it, went up to my bunk and sat there until he got back. Which was three hours later.
Climbing in, he said, “Go to sleep, Brooke.” The cabin filled with the pungent stench of smoke and beer. Dad was asleep long before I was.
Nothing bad happened, but it was the thoughtlessness that counted.
I didn’t say anything to him about what I experienced, and he didn’t apologize or even explain why he hadn’t come back when he said he would. We drove all the way back to North Carolina in almost complete silence. I wasn’t going to say anything to him.
The only person I told about this was Eric. Who else was I going to tell? My mother? No chance. The only reason she let me go on this trip in the first place was so that she could have the house to herself for a couple of days. I didn’t even think of that at first, but it was the only reason that made sense.
She worked at IHOP, day-shift, starting very early in the morning and getting home around three o’clock each day. She would drink in the afternoons, but she always had something ready for dinner, even if it was a Styrofoam box of something she brought home from the restaurant. She always made sure I did my homework, and always made sure I was in bed by nine. Other than the drinking part, she sounds like a halfway decent mother, right?
Mom had boyfriends. Several of them. Maybe “boyfriends” is giving the situation too much credit, but that’s how I labeled them in my early teens. As I got older, I realized what they really were.
I would hear the front door open at night, sometimes not longer after my nine o’clock bedtime. I’d hear heavy footsteps and a male voice, knowing it wasn’t my dad. It wasn’t always the same voice, either. Some were louder than others. Some were higher than others. Some talked faster, some slower. You get the picture. There were multiple guys, maybe as many as three, and they’d come around to the house on different nights of the week. It was like they were on a schedule. One showed up every Tuesday night, another every Wednesday night, another on Friday nights. All when dad was away, of course.
Sometimes I would listen and try to hear what they were saying, but never could. They kept their voices low, which meant the guys all knew I was there, which scared me in the early years, but not so much as I got a little older, maybe ten or so, and realized that they weren’t going to come to my room. I’d hear the voices, a few minutes of talking, and then I’d hear my mom’s bedroom door close. I learned very quickly that when that door closed, it was time to put on my headphones and turn on some music so I wouldn’t hear what happened next.
So while Dad was away, Mom would play, and that’s just how it was in the house.
When Dad was home, things were fine. They didn’t argue, didn’t fight, there was no physical or verbal violence in the house. It was…fine. And so weird. None of it made sense to me.
Eric knew all about this. He was my only real friend. The girls in the neighborhood were more like convenient playmates, not actual friends. So Eric knew, but no one else did.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell my grandfather. Pop was—I swear I’m not overstating this—quite simply the greatest guy I ever knew. Totally devoted to my grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s. It was a rough time for Pop, but he never let it show, always a huge grin on his face whenever I showed up at their door, always wanting to help with my math homework, always wanting to know what was going on with my swimming. Sometimes I wished he’d been my dad instead of my mom’s dad. I never got to know G-Ma, though; she’d been sick as long as I’d been alive.
I grew up torn between believing that relationships, specifically marriage, were doomed to end up as hollow as my parents’ or destined to be as wonderful as my grandparents’. I tried to be optimistic, but I ended up leaning toward the former.
Ryan changed that, though. I became a more positive thinker when it came to romance. Then—to put a fine point on it—he cheated, he was gone, it was over, and I was back to being the cynic.
Despite my studies in psychology, I really do try to avoid diagnosing people. At least officially, or seriously. But from what I witnessed in my own home, I’m comfortable diagnosing my parents: they’re fucked up.
Sometimes I wondered whether psychology was really the field I should be going into. How would I ever counsel couples? Maybe I shouldn’t at all. Or maybe I should. I could listen to their problems, tell them that they really shouldn’t be together, and that they should break up or divorce, saving them lots of time, heartache, and money.
But I still had a while to go before I had to decide which sub-field to specialize in. First, I had to finish school, and while that was going on, I’d have something wild and fun and exciting to occupy my time.
I just had to wait on his text or call.
Chapter Six
All weekend long, no text or call from Cole. I knew he liked to tease, draw things out, but I was beginning to wonder if there was something else going on. A girlfriend? A wife?
Whatever the case, his game was frustrating, stimulating, infuriating, and thrilling all at once. Crazy combination, right? Okay, maybe more frustrating and infuriating than the other two. Maybe I was just subconsciously seeking torture.
I saw Eric twice over the weekend. We went to a movie Saturday afternoon, an action thriller that involved lots of explosions and running. Eric liked it; I was bored and almost fell asleep twice. We went for a run on Sunday evening. Eric’s bad knee prohibited him from playing baseball, but he still worked out, including the occasional jog.
Monday morning, I walked with Miranda to the aquatic center for practice.
We were having an extremely mundane conversation about getting a new coffee machine for the apartment, when she surprised me by suddenly saying, “For two people who aren’t dating, it sure looks like you are.”
I almost stopped walking, but managed to control the little shock I felt. I thought she was talking about Cole, just for a split second, but she was talking about Eric. Cole and I had barely done anything yet, and there was no way anyone could know what we had done, so I chalked up those few seconds of shock to…paranoia, I guess. Was it already setting in?
“I mean, you spend most of your time with him,” Miranda was saying about Eric, “and I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
We were on the sidewalk. Two guys the size of trees were coming down the sidewalk, headphones on, walking right between us.
“Basketball players,” Miranda said, a little disgust in her voice.
“What do you mean, the way he looks at me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just a certain way he looks at you. When you’re not looking. Like he’s…not so much staring at you, but admiring you. I think it’s sweet.”
I managed a “Hmm,” and didn’t say anymore.
“But you guys have been friends for a long time. I guess if anything was going to happen, it would have by now.”
We were at the doors to the aquatic center. I reached for the handle, pulled the door open and let her walk in first.
“Believe me,” I said, as she moved past me, “we’re just friends. If it’s anything more than that, we’re like brother and sister.”
*****
After having practically ignored me through two full practices that day, Cole texted me just after six o’clock: I want to see you.
I took a selfie and sent it to him, along with: There you go.
Him: Tease.
Me: Ha. That’s ironic, coming from you.
Him: Brooke….
Me: Yeah?
Him: What are you doing right now?
Me: Nothing much.
Him: Here’s my address.
And the next text contained his address, nothing else.
That’s all he sent. No commentary, no more banter,
no begging, no cajoling.
Just his address. Like a dare.
I had just started some of that boil-in-the-bag rice to go along with some baked chicken, and I turned the stove off, leaving the pot there. I went to my bedroom, changed out of my sweats and into a different pair of shorts, went to the bathroom, tried to make my hair look marginally presentable, and was out the door in less than fifteen minutes.
*****
It turned out that Cole lived just a short drive from me, but it felt more like an hour. Like everything I was passing was going by in slow motion.
As soon as I pulled into the apartment complex, I felt another wave of that edgy paranoia. It was still late summer, the sun didn’t go down until after eight o’clock, so here I was out in daylight, walking up to my coach’s apartment. I had never been to this place before but I’d heard someone talking about. Couldn’t remember who it was. Maybe I’d be seen, maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe they’d know where I was going, maybe they wouldn’t.
I didn’t care right at that moment. All I could concentrate on was trying to calm the loud thudding of my heart in my ears and worrying if I’d be able to talk with this sudden dryness in my mouth.
Nerves. Calm yourself.
Cole answered the door before I finished knocking. He wore shorts, t-shirt, nothing else. Other than an intense look on his face—his jaw set, his eyes fixed on me.
I stared back at him and didn’t even notice his arm extending toward me. He took my wrist and pulled me into his apartment, closing the door behind me, then pressing himself against me, my back to the door.
He didn’t speak. His lips crashing into mine served as a “hello.”
I inhaled sharply as his tongue slid into my mouth and his hand swiftly dove beneath the hem of my shirt, lifting it, yanking it upward, his face pulling away from mine just long enough to get my shirt over my head.
His eyes seemed to be glazed over, a wide-eyed stare, a look I’d never seen on him or anyone else before.
