Stadium of Lights: A Second Chance Sports Romance (27 page)

I remembered watching the movie
Carrie
with my brother when we were kids. That climactic scene at the prom had haunted me for ages—to think of the possibility that somebody would do that to get revenge. I understood the impulse. I hadn’t even understood it in high school as much as I did then. If I could have brought that entire wretched house down over their laughing, mocking heads, I would have. The world would have been better off without them.

Stop this. You’re thinking crazy thoughts
. Who could blame me? My heart was broken. I was humiliated.

I’ll never let it happen again
, I vowed.
Not ever
.

I
waited
until the cheering died down before I said anything else.

“You fucking bitch!”

“Uh-oh! Look who’s getting all angry,” he chuckled, sitting on a backward chair. “Tell me how it really is, then. Come on. What is it like fucking fat chicks?”

It was as if I saw him for the first time. I didn’t know he could be such a fucking piece of shit. I looked around at all of them—they were all being assholes, too, but they weren't as cruel, the way he was. And I had thought he was changing, too. I had thought he mellowed out after getting injured. When he knew he wasn’t untouchable, that he was only human.

“Fuck you!” I roared, feeling sweat roll down the sides of my face.

“Calm down, bro! Take it easy. Just tell us what’s going on.” Zack replied.

“I needed a tutor this semester, all right!” I looked around the kitchen. “I didn’t want any of you to know. My GPA was shit at the end of last semester, and Coach got nervous, so he gave me a tutor. I’ve been meeting with her every night, at the library. Got it?”

“Oh, so that’s where you’ve been. We were wondering,” Zack said. “Why didn’t you tell us? It doesn’t matter that you had a tutor. Jesus, and I thought you fucked her. I didn’t mean to insult you like that.”

I glared at him, trying to slow down my breathing. “What’s so bad about her, huh?”

“For starters? Everything. Doesn’t she hang out with that weird Dungeons & Dragons crowd?”

“How would you even know, if you don’t play yourself?”

A few snickers from the rest of the room.

“Everybody knows who those nerds are. And I think I know her roommate. She’s been to a few parties here. A theater geek.”

“Geeks and nerds. That’s all anybody is to you. Oh, and pussy. That’s women in general.”

“What the hell happened to you, bro?” Zack stood. “You used to be cool.”

“And I thought you were getting to be chill. You're a fucking bitch! So what if I was at the diner with her? So what if I fucked her?” I stared him down, ready to fight. “Who’ve you fucked lately, huh? Oh, that’s right. The chick from the therapy program. She doesn’t want to have shit to do with you anymore, does she? What happened? Did she finally figure out what a piece of shit you are?”

Zack launched himself at me, taking me by the collar and throwing me against the wall. About a dozen guys got between us before I could swing and knock the shit out of him. I saw the truth in his eyes, though.

“You’re only on my case because you screwed it up with your girl. Admit it,” I spat, struggling to get to him. I wanted to kill him.

“Mind your own business if you know what’s good for you, Jake!” He tried to fight off Brad and another two players, but they held him back.

“You started this, man! You made a joke out of her!” I shook off the hands holding me back. “She’s a good girl, and she deserves better than that. I actually like hanging out with her and yeah, I did sleep with her. We’ve been sleeping together for weeks.”

“Oh, shit, dude.” Brad looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed.”

“None of you should have,” I shouted. “This is bullshit! I’m out of here.” I didn’t know where I was heading, but I had to get the hell out of that house before I lost it, fought Zack and risked the possibility of getting the cops called on me. If the UM or Coach found out, then I could kiss football goodbye.

I stormed out the kitchen before giving Zack one last glare and walked through the first floor, toward the front door. I passed the coffee table in the living room when something caught my eye and made me double back.

Hamlet
. Not just any copy. It had the same post-it note Claire had stuck in it to hold my place when we were going through it together. I hadn’t left it on the table.

A cold pit of fear lodged itself in my stomach.

“Jake, wait up!” Brad came running behind me.

“What the fuck?”

“You okay, man? Zack can be a real piece of shit, and I apologize for laughing—”

“Did you hear anything out here?” I interrupted.

“What do you mean?”

“Like noises, anything?”

He shook his head. “It was too loud in there with you guys fighting. Listen, man, I really am sorry—”

“It doesn’t matter right now.” I held up a hand. “This book. I didn’t bring it in with me. I left it in her car.”

“Wait, what?”

“I left it in her car. I remember putting it in the center console, and I left it there.” I looked at him. “She was here.”

Understanding crossed his face. “No way. You must have brought it in when you came in. You just forgot.”

“No. I wouldn’t have just left it here like that. She did it.” How much had she heard? I couldn’t wait there, thinking about it. I had to know. I ran out of the house and straight to my car.

It wasn’t until I held the book in my hand that I knew how I felt about her. When the ice filled my stomach, I knew. I cared how she felt—she meant everything to me. She didn’t deserve to be hurt. Fuck, why hadn’t I said anything to Zack sooner? There was no telling what she might have heard him say.

* * *

I
pulled
in at the dorm. Her car was there. I ran inside the building and straight to her room.

“Claire? I have to talk to you! Claire!” I put my ear to the door, and all I heard was what sounded like muffled crying. Pain ripped through my chest. “Please, Claire, if you’re in there, let me explain. I’m begging you!”

I had attracted attention—five or six girls hung out of their open doorways, watching and listening. I even recognized one or two of them from parties, and I hated myself for it.

“Claire, please. I don’t know how much you heard, but if you had stuck around long enough, you would have heard how it turned out. Let me tell you. Please.”

The door flew open, and she was there, in front of me. Her face was red, swollen, and her shirt was soaked with tears. There was so much rage in her eyes. “Fuck you! Like I care about anything you have to say! I was right about you all along! You’re just like the rest of them! Standing there laughing at me!”

“I didn’t laugh—”

“But you didn’t stop them, either! You let it keep going! You didn’t stand up for me. I’ve always been a joke to you, haven’t I? That was why you always wanted to keep us a secret. Nobody could know we spent time together because they would know you were with a fat—geeky girl like me. Do you know how fucking pathetic you are?”

I heard a few snickers and slow claps from around me. The second time that day that I’d been humiliated. This hurt a lot worse. Tears streamed down her cheeks. All I wanted to do was wrap her in my arms and tell her how sorry I was, but I had the feeling she would rather die than let me touch her.

“You’re pathetic, you know? You act like this badass when you’re just a scared little boy who has to look big in front of all of his friends. Letting them treat me like a joke! Because that’s who I am to you, isn’t it? I’ve been a joke this whole time!”

“Claire, stop. That isn’t true!”

“Yes, it is. I am a joke for letting you do what you did to me. I’ll never forgive myself. I hope you remember that, and I hope it makes you laugh the way the rest of your boys laughed at me. You’re all a bunch of assholes, and you fucking disgust me.”

“Please, let me explain!”

“I’m sorry that I’m not a bimbo groupie who sleeps around. I’m sure you and your teammates would treat me differently if I was, huh?”

“No, Claire. Listen. I told him what a fucking asshole he was being, you didn’t stay long enough to hear that. I called him out and almost got into a fight defending you! I told them all about us and how amazing you are. I could care less about groupies. I want
you
. I’m attracted to
you
. I told my teammates that we were together.” I explained.

“Ha! Together?” She sneered. “Pfft, we were never together. Maybe I was using you. You ever think of that? Maybe I decided the money I was getting wasn’t enough. I wanted a little something extra. So I decided to let you screw me.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Jake!”

“Look, let’s talk about this inside.”

It was getting pretty intense in that hallway, as more and more girls came out to see what the noise was all about. I wished we could at least go into her room, but there was no way she’d let me in.

“Answer me! How does it feel, Jake? Huh? I used you. How do you feel about that?”

“Come on, Claire. Enough. I get it. I’m trying to make all this right.”

“You’ll never make it right. Okay? Not ever. So don’t waste your time and stop wasting mine.”

“Claire.”

“Lesson learned. I’m fucking done.” She went back to her room, and the slamming of the door made it all real. That was it.

I didn’t bother looking at any of the girls in the hallway, though I was glad a few of them went to Claire’s door to ask if she was okay. She needed friends to talk to.

I couldn’t have described what I felt if somebody offered me a million dollars. It was all a mess in my head.

I drove back to the frat house, and when I walked in, there was a lot less noise than there was when I left. Everybody looked embarrassed. Nobody would meet my eyes. Especially Zack, whose body language told me he was still mad at me for calling him out. His clenched fists and flared nostrils kept me away.

Brad saw me come in and came over. “So? What happened?”

“She heard everything.” Brad’s face fell, and he put a hand on my shoulder. I looked around the room. “She heard all of it. Every word you said. I don’t even care about how she feels about me now. She thinks I’m shit, and she’s right. I care about what you pieces of shit did to her. You’re a bunch of fucking cowards!”

“Chill, bro,” Brad replied.

“You’re lucky, Zack. You’re
very
lucky because I was
this
close to giving you another injury.” I threatened as I turned away and went upstairs, slamming my bedroom door.

O
ne of the
best possible things that could have happened after Sunday’s blowout was the support I got from the other girls on my floor. It was incredible. Three of them walked right into my room after I slammed the door and made themselves comfortable, even though they had never been there before.

“You’re not the only one, sweetie,” one of them told me, shaking her head. “Those assholes are the worst.”

“Which ones?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

“All of them,” they said in unison. I couldn’t help laughing a little. I recognized all of them after running into them in the bathroom, going into or out of the shower, that sort of thing. We had never really talked. I wondered why—they all seemed sweet.

“The worst is when they think they can just sleep with you and forget about you. Toss you to the side like trash. Like you didn’t even matter.”

“Has that happened to any of you?” I asked.

The three of them nodded.

One of them, a beautiful blonde named Beth, rolled her eyes. “Girl, please. The boys on this campus are nothing but a bunch of male sluts. All they want is
one
thing and will manipulate you to giving it up. They think because they play sports and everybody treats them like celebrities that it’s an automatic pass for pussy.”

“Beth! So vulgar!” Vanessa shouted.

“What? Am I wrong?”

“No. Actually, you’re right,” the third, Traci, added. She twirled her long brown hair around one finger. “I mean, get it while you’re young, right?”

“But it’s not cool when your feelings are involved,” Beth said. “Obviously, hers were.” She looked at me.

I nodded.

“So, what happened?” Traci asked. “What did he do to you?”

I looked around. “You won’t tell, will you? I mean, I would rather not have it spread around campus.”

“Sisterhood,” Vanessa said. “We keep secrets.”

I felt warm, all over. It was like the three girls accepted me. I felt like one of them. So with a deep breath, I told them the short version: I tutored Jake. We slept together. The last time we did it was earlier that day. I heard what his friends were saying about me.

“Oh, Claire.” Vanessa’s hands were over her mouth. “I can’t believe it.”

“And he’s still alive? I would have killed him.”

“Who was it, the one saying all those terrible things?”

I shrugged. “I think his name was Zack.”

“Oh.” The three of them looked at each other.

“Oh?”

“He’s the biggest prick on campus!” Traci shuddered.

“I did it with him once. He’s such a freak.” Beth shook her head.

Vanessa nodded. “And he’s an asshole too. Remember when that one girl, what’s her name … she said she slept with him at a party, and he told her to put her clothes on and go back to the party after? And then she caught him making out with another girl later on!”

I gasped. “Ew!”

The three of them nodded.

Beth gave me a hug. “Seriously, don’t take anything he says to heart. He’s one of the biggest losers on campus. Everybody knows that.”

“He’s perfect for the NFL,” Vanessa said. “A bunch of arrogant misogynists.”

By the end of the night, I felt a lot better. They shared their own stories—some of which put mine to shame. It was incredible the things girls put themselves through sometimes.

Still, my heart wasn’t totally healed. I wondered if it ever would be.

* * *

O
n Monday morning
, I did the unthinkable: I skipped class. It was for a good reason, though. I had to talk to Jake’s coach. There was no way I could tutor him anymore.

When I entered his office, it was like he knew what I had to say even before I said it. “What did that idiot do this time?”

“Excuse me?”

“Please, have a seat, Claire.” He took his cap off, running an arm over his forehead. “I know that boy. I knew he would cock this up somehow. Pardon, the expression.”

I smiled half-heartedly. “It’s really nothing I feel comfortable getting into, Coach.”

“I should have asked a man to do it,” he said.

“That’s a good possibility.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I’m here to respectfully request that I never have to see him again.”

“What about your work-study?”

“Thanks to your generosity, I don’t need the money—I’ve already made more than I would have in a full semester elsewhere. Thank you for that.”

“Not a problem.” He smiled warmly. “It was worth every penny.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Jake has gotten straight A’s all semester. Even if he … cocked up … the rest of his grades, he would still pass comfortably.”

“Do you think he will?”

I thought about it, all emotion aside then shook my head. “I don’t think so. He’s much smarter than he gives himself credit for. He has a real passion for learning new things. It’s surprising. I’ve asked myself more than once who he could have been if football hadn’t always been the priority.”

“Lucky for me, it was the priority.” He smiled.

“Lucky for you,” I agreed.

“Thank you, then. You’ve turned him around. I wish I could say you turned him all the way around, but if you had, you wouldn’t be here telling me you can’t be around him anymore.”

I shrugged. “We both got what we needed. Jake got the grades, I got the money. Simple as that.”

“I wonder if that was all he needed,” he said, his gray eyes sharp.

I stood and shook his hand. “Well, that’s not my problem anymore.”

* * *

L
ife PJ
—post-Jake—was much like life had been before him. Hard for me to believe, but it had only been six weeks that we’d been spending time together. Seven, counting break. Seven weeks could seem like a lifetime if enough things happened over the course of them.

I got back into my normal rhythm. Up early for class, typing my notes afterward. Lunch in the student union while I studied. More classes. Studying in my room until dinner time. Then, even more studying after that.

There was something comforting in sliding back into a routine, but it only took a day before I discovered how boring my life had been before I met Jake. Everything was rigidly structured—even my bedtime, which I rarely strayed away from except on Friday and Saturday night. I was a creature of habit, sure. But being able to mix things up every once in a while, would have been nice, too.

With Jake out of the picture, that would never happen. I had no one else in my life like him. Who would I hang out with? Jess? Sure, she was always busy and always welcomed me to join her at parties and such. I didn’t know anyone there, though. I would stick out like a sore thumb.

There were Thomas’s boring Dungeons & Dragons games. No.

Marcie sometimes hung out with a group of her friends from one of her science clubs, but that didn’t seem like it would be much fun for me. I didn’t hate science, but I didn’t love it, either.

Adam? He was a lost cause. Even if he spoke to me, which he hadn’t done in weeks, all he did was study like a madman. More than I did.

The thought of making new friends was exhausting. And it would take more time than I had to give—there were still my grades to think about, my transcripts, and my pending law school applications. I had to be serious and focus.

I just wanted a little fun on the side. Was that too much to ask?

I mulled it over as I walked into the campus cafeteria on Tuesday evening. I had elected to stay in on Monday night, still licking my wounds. Jess and I had ordered dinner, and she had listened while I poured my heart out to her. It was getting easier to tell the story, which I knew was part of getting over something so heartbreaking.

There were my friends, sitting at our usual table. I wondered how they felt about me crawling back to them. Would they see it that way? Marcie wouldn’t. She understood. But the others? I would have to see for myself.

“Finally having dinner with us, huh?”

I glared at Thomas. He had a way of putting things in such a way that I wanted to slap him silly. He was so damned snide, so superior. I slid into my chair and ignored the comment. I didn’t care about what he thought.

The person I cared about was Adam. He didn’t seem to have much to say. He didn’t even look at me. How much did he know? Probably a lot—word got around pretty fast when a star football player got his ass chewed in public.

“How was break?” I asked Adam.

He shrugged. “I studied the whole time.”

“Did you do any studying, Claire?” Thomas took a bite of his pizza.

“Yes, of course. Every day. You know me.”

“Any tutoring?”

“Not today, Thomas,” Marcie hissed. “Why are you such a troll?”

“Oh, come on. It’s not every day that one of us makes a fool out of one of them.”

“One of whom and one of who?” I asked. “You're being cryptic.”

“A person like one of us. You know what I mean. The ones who don’t exactly play sports or go to parties.”

“Oh. Gotcha. I still see you’re not over your daddy issues.” I stood up and picked up my tray. Marcie tried to stop me.

“Claire.”

“What? I won’t sit here with him.” I glared at Thomas. “You know, you’re just as bad as any of them. Except in their case, it’s ignorance. In your case, it’s jealousy. Fuck off!” I found another table and sat alone—not for long, though, as Marcie joined me.

And so did Adam.

“He’s been getting on my nerves lately, anyway,” Adam muttered. I smiled at him. Finally, he gave me a small smile in return.

After we had finished eating—I had no idea where Thomas went once we left him alone, and I didn’t care—I pulled Adam aside.

“Listen, Adam I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”

“Hey, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Are you sure? Because I feel completely awful for leaving you hanging the way I did.”

“It’s all right. I get it. You and me … it would have been nice. But I’m no match against UM’s top football player. I’m just an average dude—”

“Adam, stop.”

“And I wouldn’t have made you scream at me in the middle of the hallway. I heard about that.”

“I figured you would.” I blushed. “Everybody is talking about it.”

“It wasn’t meant to be between us. I’m glad we can chat about it, though. I’ve missed you.” He opened his arms, and I walked into them.

“I’ve missed you, too.” Then I patted his back, his sides. “Skinny. You’re too skinny. Why aren’t you eating enough?”

“I’ve been busy.…”

“Nonsense. I’m glad we’re eating dinner together again. I can keep an eye on you.”

He sighed, but it was with a smile.