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Her high heels made a clip-clip-clip sound as she hurried across the brick and back into the hall.
Fuck.
I climbed into the SUV and mumbled an apology to one of my dad’s drivers. “Sorry, Sam.”
“No worries. Hey, I didn’t say it before, but tough break today. Your team did you wrong, man.”
I blinked at his face in the rearview mirror before huffing out a laugh. “You’re the only person who’s said that to me today. Everyone else has either given me pity face or blamed me for the loss.”
He rolled his eyes before shifting into Drive. “They’ve obviously never played the game. Team sports aren’t about you. You’re just one of the players. You gotta do your part, but so does the quarterback. And that’s okay. He’s new. Give him time.”
We talked a little about the upcoming season, the rookie players, and our toughest schedule lineups, until the rhythm of the tires on the road began to have a drugging effect on me. Sam turned up the smooth jazz music playing over the speakers and let me drift away from the conversation.
Demere was about an hour north of Roswell, tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains on a big, sprawling campus near the tiny college town of Tritt. It wasn’t very far, but it was still far enough away to feel like an oasis sometimes. A lucky escape. By the time we pulled up to Whitman, I was fuzzy-headed and drooling.
“Shit, sorry,” I mumbled. “Thanks for driving me all the way up here. You going to be okay getting back?”
He laughed and nodded toward his insulated coffee mug. “I’ll be alright. You take care of yourself, Bett. See you next time.”
I moved out of the SUV and up the walkway. On the other side of campus, the frat parties were still going strong, and there was a part of me that actually considered heading down there to get shit-faced, if only so it would guarantee my sleep tonight.
But my Rhetoric professor was a stickler, and I didn’t want to take any chances at ruining tomorrow’s productivity with a hangover.
When I approached the room, I saw our door was propped open, and I could hear the giggles of multiple women.
Fuck me.
Again, I considered leaving, finding somewhere else to get some sleep, but then I remembered the Calhoun Street house would be full of drunk assholes, music blaring, and all the soft surfaces fair game for hookups.
No fucking way.
I’d shower off the stench of my father’s shitty friends, my mother’s late-evening slurring, and Arden’s bullshit. Then I’d throw my earbuds in and pull a pillow over my head in hopes of getting some sleep while Vaughn fucked whoever he wanted only three feet away from me.
“Hey, aren’t you that guy?” one of the girls said as I walked in and made a beeline for my shower stuff.
I felt Vaughn’s eyes on me. “Yes,” I said dryly. “I’m definitely that guy.”
Vaughn’s barely there snort of laughter surprised me, but I ignored it, grabbing my towel, bathroom stuff, and a pair of basketball shorts to change into.
Despite the hot spray pelting my face, I couldn’t get my damned shoulders down from around my ears.
Today had been a lot. Too much.
My brain was like one of those cyclonic vacuum commercials where the dust and particles swirled around, accompanied by the kind of irritating noise that made your eyebrows twitch.
The pressure didn’t usually start this early in the season, and I was pissed.
This was exactly why I’d second-guessed playing this season, even though I loved it.
The incessant noise in my head, most of it my father’s voice. “How do you think it reflects on me when my son botches it in the final five seconds, huh?”
Knowing all my meditation and mindset stuff resulted in evenings of mental chaos as it all came spiraling out of whatever-the-fuck box I’d shoved it into earlier in the day.
I stayed in the shower for a long time, hoping I could let the thoughts run their course until they were all out. Completely done.
But that wasn’t how it worked. They’d follow me into my sleep and plague me with either vaguely unsettling dreams or actual nightmares.
It was a routine I’d become familiar with over the past five years. Ever since my father had hired a mindset coach the summer before my junior year in high school, with the pronouncement that if I was going to do this shit—by which he meant football—I’d better be the best.
