Monica Murphy - Four Years Later

I’m sorry.

One step at a time. Fake it till you make it. I can do this. Approaching Fable is the first step. Figuring out what I’m going to do with Mom is the second step.

Begging Chelsea’s forgiveness will be the third and final step. The scariest step of all.

“You dressed?” Wade asks as he barges into my room.

“Would it matter if I was, considering you just busted right in?” I stand and shove my phone into the front pocket of my jeans, pretending it’s no big deal that I haven’t heard back from Fable after my text. She’s usually so quick, texting me back as fast as I answer her.

My phone is silent. Mocking me. Making me feel like a failure.

“Come on.” Wade flicks his head toward the front of the house. “Your guest is waiting.”

I follow Wade out into the living room, nerves gnawing at my gut, making me almost nauseous. I haven’t eaten much this last week either, so that could contribute to the queasy feeling I’m having.

The nausea hits me tenfold when I see who’s sitting on my couch.

“Coach.” I stop when he stands, big and wide and intimidating as hell. He played football all his life, had gone to the pros only to have to bow out due to an injury two months into his first season. So he turned to coaching and is one of the best coaches in the state, if not the entire country.

Everyone has mad respect for Coach Halsey. And I’ve shit all over it practically the entire season.

“Son.” He nods, his mouth grim. “You’ve missed practice.”

I stand up straighter as I watch Wade wander off into the kitchen. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Got any excuses you want me to hear?”

“No, sir.” I shake my head. Coach hates excuses. He thinks they’re nothing but a bunch of bullshit and lies.

“Good.” He approaches me, stopping just in front of me so he can poke the center of my chest with his index finger. “This is your last chance. You screw around again, miss one practice, screw up your classes, whatever, I’m dropping you for the rest of the season.”

Swallowing hard, I meet his gaze, grimacing against the pain in my chest when he pokes me there again. “I understand.”

“For whatever reason, that brother-in-law of yours thinks you have a lot of potential. I was just on the phone with him last week. Right before you ditched us.”

“You were?” I rub my chest, surprised that Drew would bother to call him.

“I was. He thinks you could go pro. I agree with him. But if you’re going to blow it every time you get your panties in a twist or your heart broken, you’re never going to make it.”

Coach Halsey is right. He gives me another ten minutes of the same speech and I take it, bowing my head, saying “yes sir” and “no sir” in all the right places. Until finally he claps me on the shoulder, tells me to show up tomorrow afternoon for practice or else, and then leaves my house as if he’d never been there in the first place.

I am a lucky bastard, that he’s giving me another chance. I don’t deserve it.

“Did that work?”

I turn to find Wade studying me, his expression completely neutral. Right about now, Wade would make a most excellent poker player. “If you mean did Coach set my head on straight, then yeah. I think so.”

“You’d better do more than just think so. One more screw-up and you’re gone. Don’t fuck up.”

“I won’t,” I promise, but I know that’s going to be near impossible. I fuck up all the time. Even Wade said so.

“Stop faking it and actually make it for once,” Wade continues, his gaze level with mine. “I think you can do it if you just let yourself. You’re stronger than you think, dude.”

I wish I believed in myself as much as Wade does.

Owen

“You shouldn’t do it.”

I glance up to find Wade studying me, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowed. He’s let his dark hair grow out since the beginning of the semester and it falls around his face in downright curly waves. I’ve told him more than once he looks like a pussy with all that hair in his face.

But the chicks fucking dig it. He’s had more tail than I ever did. Big bad football player with the shaggy hair and pretty face gets all the ladies, which doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever.

That’s what we’re doing now. Having yet another party at our house. But this one is legit. We’re celebrating the big win, the one that’s taking us to the playoffs. Practically the entire team is in our house, spilling out onto the front porch, the front yard, the backyard. The neighbors are tolerant, the majority of the houses on our street are filled with college students, but still.

We’re loud. The party is getting semi out of control and it’s not even midnight. There are girls everywhere. The place is crawling with them. Even Des is here. Wade reluctantly let him come over since for whatever reason, Wade has decided to become my personal bodyguard, detective, and bouncer, all in one.

This is how he’s caught me, all alone in the bathroom with a joint in one hand and a lighter in the other. I’m happy as fuck, thrilled we’re on our way to the playoffs, but I’m plagued with thoughts. Bad thoughts.

I swore I saw Chelsea this afternoon at the game. Same hair, same style of clothes, same long sexy-as-hell legs, the girl had been with her friends, both male and female, and she kept distracting me. Especially when the guy sitting next to her slung his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close, kissing her.

Jealousy had torn at me and I ripped off my helmet, glaring at her. Glaring at him. Could she really be ballsy enough to show up at a game and make out with some jackass right in front of me?

Turned out it wasn’t her at all, but it was too late. My brain was fucked. Chelsea was in there. Insistent and sweet and pissed and sexy and naked and smiling, and hell.

I couldn’t shake her.

“Come on, dude, give it to me.” Wade holds out his hand, waiting for me to drop the joint in his palm, but I don’t.

Instead I flick the brand-new lighter and the flame appears. I spark the joint up, take a long, slow drag, and let the harsh smoke fill my lungs, holding it there until I finally can’t take it anymore and exhale.

“Bastard,” Wade mutters when I drop the joint in his palm after that one-and-only hit. He shoves the joint in his jeans pocket. “I thought you were laying off the weed.”

“Something fucked with my head today,” I tell him as we emerge from the bathroom together. Three scantily dressed girls stand in our hallway, bursting into laughter as we push past them, the noise grating on my nerves.

“Something or someone?”

I shrug. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So you’d rather pretend it never happened by smoking. Gimme a break.”

“Who are you to judge? You never refused when I offered you a hit.” He’s been my partner in crime for years. He’s my best friend. We’ve always been in this together.

Since when did he grow up and turn into the responsible one?

We stop outside the kitchen, the two of us just taking it all in. The place is a madhouse. Loud music, louder people, lots of beer, and the living room is filled with smoke, the pungent smell of marijuana permeating the entire house.

Fucking great. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“I know how to control myself. You don’t. There’s the difference.” He gives me a shove on the shoulder. “We’re not kids anymore, Owen. It’s one thing to fuck around, get in trouble, and smoke it up all the time when you’re a kid. It’s another thing entirely when you fuck around and do all those same things as an adult. You get arrested, and suddenly you’ve got a permanent record.”

Valid point. One I never really thought of before, but shit.

“Don’t let weed control you. Or your guilt, ’cos I know you have a lot of that, too,” Wade says, his voice firm. “Now, I’m gonna go find a girl, feel her up, and drag her back to my bedroom where if I’m lucky enough, I’ll get her naked. You game for finding one for yourself?”

I shake my head, disgust filling me at the thought of finding some girl I don’t know and dragging her back to my room. “Hell, no.”

I only want one girl and she’s not here.

“You still not over her?” Wade’s voice is gentle, like he’s afraid I might freak out if we talk about her for too long, which is probably pretty accurate. Just thinking about her hurts.

And he doesn’t have to say her name for me to know who he’s talking about. “She’s the reason I needed to take a hit,” I admit. “I thought I saw her at the game earlier, but it wasn’t her.”

“I saw her, you know,” he says nonchalantly.

“Where? At the game?” Bastard. Why didn’t he tell me? Not that I would know what to do when I did see her. Still, I’m jealous.

“Saw her on campus. She ran right by me like she didn’t see me, but I think she did.” Wade rubs a hand along his jaw. “She looked sad.”

I blow out a harsh breath, training my gaze on the party going down in my living room. Some chick has already taken her top off and all the guys are yelling at her, encouraging her to take off more. She does nothing for me. Her tits are way too big and the bra she’s wearing doesn’t do her any favors. Not that any of those guys are protesting. “Don’t tell me that kind of shit, man.”

“Whatever. Thought you should know.” Without another word Wade leaves me where I stand and merges into the crowd, plucking a red cup from some random chick’s hand and taking a long swallow before he hands it back to her, a giant smile on his face.

Just like that, the girl is caught under his spell. Shaggy hair and all. That used to be me, minus the hair. I walked in a room, flashed a smile, said a few words, and I had girls surrounding me. It was easy. Too easy.