Page 75 of I Want to Know What Love Is

“Don’t you say a word to me,” She screams. “After all your counseling about why I shouldn’t care about him, why I deserve better than him and here you are.”

“Everything I said was true. You deserve someone who--”

“Save it.”

“Amanda—Coach’s advice was good,” Dylan says. “You should listen because I’m a no-good jock. I’m kissing the teacher because it was a horny teenage fantasy of mine to do it and no more. You’re both better off without me.” He picks up his jacket and his backpack and storms to the door past Emily and I see the look he gives her and it shatters me. He pleads with her. For me. He’s willing to take all the blame, to blow up his life. For me. He meets my eyes for one stormy painful second in which I see a universe of pain, sorrow and regret. Damn regret.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him sacrifice everything for me. He strides out the door and keeps going.

“Wait.” I sprint after him into the cold, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn around. He breaks into a trot and then a run. I try to run after him, call his name, but he doesn’t turn or stop or even slow down, he speeds up. I slow to a stop in the middle of the street in front of my house with the hot sting of tears on my freezing face. I watch him disappearing into the early twilight of the cold November afternoon.

Emily comes up behind me. It’s all I can do not to shrink from her. She caused this. Hell no she didn’t. I brought it on myself

“Don’t cry. He’s not worth it. You were right about him.” Her voice is dead, like she spent all her energy and rage.

I shoot a look at her and she looks confused, defeated. I’m not sure what’s on my face but what’s in my heart is broken and angry and sorry and mean. But the mean disappears under the weight of loss because he’s gone.

In this moment, I don’t even care that my career may be gone too. I do care a great deal about what’s going to happen to Dylan, if he sticks to his horrible story, if Emily believes him and presses it, tells anyone.

“Not a word of what he said is true,” I say to her, my voice shaking more from emotion than the shivering cold. But I force my legs forward in long strides to go back inside, separating myself from her, not wanting to talk to her and at the same time wanting to shake her with the truth, to force-feed it to her until she swallows it all and digests it.

“I don’t believe you.” The hesitation in her voice gives me hope. She follows me inside and slams the door behind her. I turn to her and stare her down, seething and ready to explode with the weight of the truth, that I feel a hell of a lot more than attraction and lust for Dylan Jones.

“Are you telling me you’re … into him?” She opens her eyes wide and throws up her hands. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Either way it’s horrible. And wrong. Just wrong.”

I want to ask her why it’s wrong. I mean, I know it’s wrong on a technical level, against all the non-frat rules. But morally? I can’t figure it. Maybe I’m missing something because I’m blinded by need, desire and the sheer joy of him, being with him, feeling all those emotions, having him get me and understanding him and just how beautiful a person he is. All of that makes me wonder where the wrong is.

I’m older, but only by six years. I’m a coach, but not his coach. I’m his tutor, but I’m doing it for free and I already quit that even though I didn’t want to stop helping him. I wanted the excuse to spend time with him.

My biggest sin is the lying and pretending. Pretending to coach Radz and Coach Ryan and my head coach and everyone else on the planet that I feel nothing, that there’s nothing between us, not even attraction. Most of all, I’m guilty of pretending to him that what I feel isn’t a shitload more than lust.

At least I’ve stopped lying to myself. Now I need to stop lying to him. Somehow that matters most to me. Even as I watch my player and see the respect oozing from her and realize how unprofessional I’ve been, it’s not a sin to be unprofessional. It’s stupid maybe, but it’s not a sin.

“What are you going to do about it?” I’m brave enough to ask because I’m thinking about Dylan and his need to confess and I don’t want him to do anything stupid. If Emily isn’t going to say anything, we can find another way to fix this.

But if she is going to report the incident, and I can’t tell by looking at the dismay and hurt on her face because in her mind I’ve betrayed her—and maybe I have—maybe I need to own up to that—then I’ll need to do something.

If Emily reports the incident, then I’ll need to come clean and take all the blame. Because there’s no way in hell I’ll let Dylan take the fall and ruin his life. He has too much at stake. If they believe his story, he could face criminal charges for fuck’s sake.

Me? I’ll figure something out. I came back from being jilted at the altar in front of what seemed like half of Long Island’s society world, so I can come back from a little fooling-with-a-student scandal.

The waves of nausea that rumble through me aren’t about the fall-out from a scandal, they’re from the thought of losing whatever I have with Dylan, whatever we have. Because surely it’ll be gone, blown to rubble in the process of taking the blame and making a deal. I’ll have to leave and he’ll have to stay. That’s the only way I can let it go. I can’t let him lose anything.

Except me.

“What’s wrong?” Emily asks me, concern replacing the disrespect on her face. I hadn’t realized I was still crying, but I swipe at the tears streaming down my cheeks now, hating the vulnerability, hating that I feel worse than I did that day at the church when I didn’t shed one single tear. I thought it was because I was tough. Now I know it’s because I hadn’t cared so much.

“Don’t worry about me. You need to understand that Dylan is blameless in all this no matter what you’d like to think, Emily. If you need to report something, you should stick to the truth.”

She shakes her head, confusion and upset giving rise to red splotches on her face. I take her hand and pull her into the kitchen, turn on the cold water and have her splash cold water and hand her a towel.

“I… I don’t know what to do.”

“You do what you need to do. I’m sorry if I betrayed you, Emily. I never meant to hurt you.” I’m not going to try and explain things to her because it’s too personal, too new and raw. She’s seen what she’s seen and I’ll own up to the truth, but no more. And take all the fucking blame. For what? For having a heart.

As soon as Emily leaves, I pick up my phone—then I blow my nose because I need to be sharp—and I call Reverend Church, SPU’s president, on his personal cell number to set up an appointment with all the people I need to be there first thing in the morning. Reverend Church and Dean Lassiter, Coach Ryan and Coach Radz. Not Dylan. He’s not invited to this party and I don’t mention his name, not at this point. I only make it clear to Church that it’s very important and it needs to be tomorrow.

I have no idea what Emily is going to do or when she’s going to do it, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be today since it’s Sunday evening, so I have until tomorrow.