Love in Vein Read online

  I doubt there will be anyone there who I need to clean up for, but I’m eager for a bit of downtime. There’s a dull throbbing at my temples caused by the combination of the heat, the noise, and the emotional hangover that I’m currently experiencing.

  I manage to unwind with a quick nap and then a shower. I have no idea why people are always complaining about the conditions in dorm rooms. It’s a comfier bed and cleaner bathroom than any that I’ve ever experienced.

  No sooner have I finished showering though, than Dawson’s at the door, asking if we’re ready to leave, clearly keen on experiencing his first university party. I want to roll my eyes, but his energy is infectious. I can’t tell if Jeremiah is annoyed by his insistence on joining us; if he is, he does a good job of hiding it.

  “Yup, but not before you change,” Jeremiah responds, teasingly gesturing to Dawson’s dress shirt. It’s well-pressed and, if I had to guess, is worth considerably more than the entire contents of my wardrobe.

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  “Nothing, if you’re about to go on a date with a preacher’s daughter. But you’re going to a party with a bunch of rowdy guys who have never worn anything fancier than a t-shirt. Rowdy guys who love to have a reason to roast each other. The shirt has to go.”

  Dawson looks over at me as if for a second opinion.

  “I know shit-all about fashion. But I do know football guys, and they’re not going to be impressed by your ironed shirt.”

  “Good thing I couldn’t care less about impressing a few meatheads,” Dawson retorts. “This is just my style.”

  “Style is a strong word,” Jeremiah laughs. I can tell that he respects Dawson’s willingness to stand up to him, though; there probably aren’t that many people who have ever talked back to those biceps.

  As we make our way over to the locker room, I wonder whether I should be nervous. I’ve heard the news reports about hazing on university sports teams: guys consuming perilous amounts of alcohol, and suffering corporal punishment. And they’re probably the lucky ones. There are also the rumors about females suffering significantly worse fates, but those stories are usually suppressed before they have a chance to make the news.

  It turns out that I don’t have much to be worried about, though. Other than being challenged to a shotgunning competition by a couple of other freshmen and being subjected to towel-whipping and other antics typical of males in the limbo between adolescent immaturity and adult expectations, the night is relatively laidback. It’s more of an opportunity for the older guys to get a feel for the freshmen than any kind of hazing ritual.

  The camaraderie between the guys surprises me. There are some obvious rivalries between the players with the most potential, but for the most part, everyone is pretty easygoing. I guess you have less to prove if you haven’t been branded as white trash since birth.

  Even Dawson is getting a warm welcome, although they probably assume he’s the water boy or something. Regardless, he and Jeremiah are both busy socializing and consuming copious amounts of beer, so it isn’t until a few hours later that I’m reunited with them.

  “I think I’m gonna call it a night. If I drink any more, tomorrow’s gonna be real rough,” Jeremiah confides.

  I’ve only had a couple of beers, but I’m eager to be reunited with my bed. “Let me find Dawson, and then I’ll walk back with you.”

  Locating Dawson proves to be harder than expected, given that he’s at least 6 inches shorter than almost everyone else in the room. I have to shoulder my way into a few semi-circles before I manage to locate him.

  “Jeremiah and I are heading out.”

  “I’ll come with.”

  I can tell by the thickness in his voice when he says “with” that he’s had more than his fair share of beer too.

  The three of us set out into the night. It’s darker and quieter than I expected. I’d been anticipating that the quad would still be overrun with students. It turns out that it’s a lot later than I thought though, the clocktower that overlooks the university grounds revealing that it’s nearly two a.m. I’m reassured by the fact that I lost track of time this evening. It means that I still have the ability to enjoy myself even though there’s a dull ache lodged in my subconscious.

  “So this is what college is going to be like,” Dawson marvels. “It really is a world apart from high school. I never would have dreamed that I would befriend a couple of football players. You’re the type of guys who would have pushed me into lockers a couple of months ago.”

  I can’t picture Dawson at my high school. Even if he lost the ridiculous shirt and the glasses, he never would have survived. His measured way of speaking and keenness would have been beaten out of him before he even made it to middle school, leaving a sullen and resentful teenager: one of the guys who sat at the back of the class and wouldn’t speak unless spoken to. Maybe even the kind that you hear about on the news: Five dead and eleven wounded in shooting at Tennessee high school.

  “I never would have dreamed that I would be befriending a couple of nerds. But I wouldn’t have pushed you into any lockers; I would have stood up for you. Only for the sake of copying your homework later, though,” Jeremiah jokes.

  Jeremiah probably would have fared a lot better. He still would have ended up bitter and jaded, of course. But he’s big enough that even Colt would have thought twice about messing with him.

  It’s been a while since I’ve thought about Colt. According to Charlie, he’d accepted an offer - one of several - to the University of Tennessee. I’m sure he’ll thrive among the frat boys and have a bevy of cheerleaders throwing themselves at him. It’ll be the best two months of his life - until he starts failing all of his classes and gets kicked out. At least I hope that’s what happens. It would infuriate me to no end if he actually does go on to play professional ball.

  See? Even those of us who are reasonably well-adjusted and manage to escape can’t stave off the bitterness. I immediately regret the spiteful thoughts, though. If Colt does manage to succeed, that would be beneficial to Charlie. She seems to be the only human he feels fondly towards.

  And just like that, I’m thinking about her again. I wonder if this is what the rest of my life will be like: pursuing random trains of thought until they lead back to her and I’m once again plagued by memories and a tightening sensation in my chest.

  I can tell that, despite his drunkenness, Dawson has picked up on my silence and change in mood. He doesn’t pry, though. We’re both quiet as Jeremiah recounts an incident that one of the other players told him about a cheerleader streaking across the field on a dare and trying to evade campus security.

  “Hey, guys? Thanks for letting me tag along tonight,” Dawson says as we reach the entry to the dorm.

  “That was fun,” I reply. It probably sounds hollow, given that that’s how my entire life feels now that I’ve been reminded of Charlie, but I mean it. At least as much as I can, given my current emotional state. Maybe between the beer and the thoughts of Charlie I’m being overly sentimental, but I have a feeling that an unexpected friendship has just solidified between the three of us.

  Chapter 13

  I approach the dorm room cautiously. Jeremiah rebuffed my idea of a Do Not Disturb sign even though he could clearly use it. Our room has been a revolving door of girls since the night after we initially moved in. It doesn’t bother me, though. I’m happy to leave Jeremiah to his dalliances and spend most of my evenings in the library with Dawson. He’s brilliant and hasn’t failed to solve any of the equations that I’ve asked him for help on. For the most part though, I’ve been doing pretty well on my own. I’d initially been worried that going to school in the poorest county in the state would mean that I had the poorest education. So far, I haven’t had any problem keeping up with my classes though, and I even managed to pull off an A on my first assignment - with a little input from Dawson.

  I put my ear to the door and, hearing nothing, enter discreetly. Jeremiah is
on his bed - alone - hunched over a textbook. It’s the first book that I’ve seen him crack in the nearly two weeks since we moved in together.

  “And here I thought you came to university to learn about the wonders of the female body, not anything academic.”

  Jeremiah throws me the same grin that he uses to charm his female prey. “Absolutely, man. I have a quiz tomorrow though, and I have no idea what’s going on in class.”

  He’s a sociology major. A choice he made because he “likes socializing, and the full list of majors and course descriptions was too long to read through.” He’s not the most studious, but he’s a good guy and an even better football player.

  “You mean none of your girlfriends have offered to let you cheat off of them yet?”

  He pretends to be offended. “Never. I’m an upstanding guy.”

  “Really? You’ve spent most of your time since you’ve gotten here horizontal,” I retort.

  “Am I detecting some jealousy? What’s your situation? You haven’t even tried to get laid since we’ve gotten here, and Miranda’s friend was definitely checking you out the other night.”

  He’s referring to his favorite - or at least his most frequent - female visitor, who he introduced me to in the dining hall last week. She’s a pretty blonde with an equally pretty friend who asked me a lot of questions about football and pretended to be interested. I couldn’t even pretend to be similarly intrigued, though. Talking to another girl just reminded me of how much I would rather be talking to Charlie. This is the longest we’ve gone without speaking since we met, and I’m feeling every second of it.

  “I’m not really looking for anything. I left a girl back home.”

  “So, you have a girlfriend?”

  She’s not my girlfriend, but I still belong to her. I have a feeling that Jeremiah won’t understand that, though.“We broke up…” I attempt to explain, but I don’t know how.

  “Because you left?”

  “Because I don’t know if I’m ever going back."

  He contemplates this for a minute. “Do you have to? You could meet in the middle or something.”

  I don’t think I meant my statement literally, but maybe he didn’t either. There has never been a middle ground with Charlie and me, though. I was all-in nearly from the moment I met her. There’s a binary quality to our relationship. We had to relinquish our ties to each other to achieve individual self-actualization. We couldn’t possibly maintain both. Life has repeatedly shown us that we don’t deserve nearly that much.

  “You could invite her to a game?” Jeremiah suggests.

  I don’t respond. I wish I could, but I don’t think she’d want to come. She’s supported me enough in my dreams, I need to give her the space she needs to move on and pursue hers.

  We have our first game against Eastern Kentucky tonight, and it’s going to be a brawl. They’re a tough team, reminiscent of my old one. The Eastern Kentucky poverty rates are among the highest in the country, and the team’s ferocity reflects that. I’m not particularly concerned, though. I’m the backup quarterback now - a role that I relish. I get to experience all of the team camaraderie, the satisfaction of a productive practice, the purpose of having something to train for, without the anxiety of having the team’s fate on my shoulders.

  “You wanna grab something to eat?” I ask, eager to change the subject.

  “Yeah, gotta fuel up for tonight.”

  We make our way to the dining hall, where Dawson is already seated at our usual table, book in hand, and a heaping pile of spaghetti in front of him. For a guy who looks like he weighs less than 120 pounds soaking wet, he sure consumes a lot of calories - almost all of it junk food.

  Jeremiah, on the other hand, is religious about his diet and eats almost exclusively “lean protein” and assorted green vegetables, most of which I can’t even name. I’ve been trying to follow his meal choices though, and I have to admit that I’m feeling stronger and more energized than ever. But I would never give him the satisfaction of letting him know that maybe he’s onto something with his rabbit food.

  It’s become an unspoken agreement that the three of us convene at a corner table near the back of the room for dinner every night. Jeremiah and I banter while Dawson occasionally looks up from whatever book he’s reading to grace us with his commentary.

  “My family’s coming this weekend. I want you to meet them if you have time,” Jeremiah tells me excitedly.

  He talks about them a lot, and always with fondness. His dad is ex-army and now runs a property management company, to which I attribute his discipline when it comes to training, and his mom is a hair stylist, which probably explains his obsession with bi-weekly hair cuts.

  “Yeah, I’d love to meet them.” Mostly I love the fact that I’ve become the kind of friend who you actually want to introduce your parents to.

  “I can’t wait to show my sister around. I need to convince her to come here when she graduates.”

  She’s two years younger than Jeremiah, and it’s evident that he misses her a lot based on how often he brings her up in conversation. I wonder if he feels the same dull ache for her that I do for Charlie. Or if completely tangential topics like a buddy talking about his family somehow lead back to him thinking about her. Somehow I doubt it.

  My love with Charlie was imbued with a fierceness born from desperation and a mutual yearning for companionship, a bond formed based on being unloved outcasts left stranded by scarcity. I’d thought that finding someone who understood me on that level was incredible. Now, with agonizing hindsight, I think that laying myself that bare was devastating. Things both beautiful and terrible aren’t meant to survive for long; it’s too hard to sustain that kind of intensity. They eventually disappear from your mind, but not from your memory, lurking within your subconscious and waiting for an opportunity to surface.

  I can’t keep ruminating over this, over her. When I get into these pensive moods, they’re nearly impossible to shake and leave me in a foul mood for hours. It’s not the kind of mindset that I want to be in going into my first college football game. I need to push my body and mind until I can’t follow a linear train of thought and lapse into the meditative state that only comes to me when I’m running.

  “You want to jog over to the field to warm up?”

  “I don’t jog, I run,” Jeremiah jokes.

  It wasn’t entirely in jest, though. Despite my frequent running, I’m finding it hard to keep up with him as we set off across campus. Especially having just eaten. But he doesn’t have my endurance. The field isn’t far from the dorm - less than a mile - but Jeremiah slows with more than a quarter-mile left to go. I take advantage of his deceleration to pull ahead; this is probably the only time that I’m going to beat him at something athletic, and I’m not going to miss the opportunity. It’s turning into an Indian summer, and the sun is unrelenting overhead. But it’s not going to stop me from pushing myself as hard as I can through the last few yards. I can no longer hear Jeremiah’s heavy footfalls or panting behind me, but I’m still unwilling to let up.

  I nearly bowl over Coach Carson as I make the final turn towards the field house.

  “Jesus, save some of that energy for the game,” he grumbles, turning towards his office.

  “Sorry, sir! I will!” I apologize, embarrassed by my exuberance.

  I head for my locker - a lot more slowly now - grateful for the coolness of the locker room. I’ve already stripped down to my boxers by the time Jeremiah ambles in, complaining about a stitch.

  “You sure it’s a stitch and not a lack of stamina? Maybe that’s why I never see you with the same girl twice.”

  The comment earns a few guffaws from the other guys who have assembled to change into their gear. Jeremiah takes it all in stride, though; he’s always game for a little self-deprecation. “Hey, at least I have no problem always finding new ones."

  I appreciate his sense of humor. I could use some levity right now. My thoughts about Charlie have lef
t me feeling raw, an exposed nerve further aggravated by my anxiety about having to go out under the lights tonight. I wanted so badly to make this team, but didn’t think about what it would actually entail. About how I would handle playing in front of thousands of people.

  I reassure myself by telling myself that the majority of the people attending don’t really care that much about the game and are mostly here for an excuse to socialize and drink. I cling to that thought as we run out onto the field, trying not to be overwhelmed by the brightness, the noise, the crowd. I want to appreciate this moment: the cheerleaders and the marching band who have spent hundreds of hours practicing, the thousands of people who have congregated to watch. It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about it, all of this time and effort spent in order to watch a bunch of guys chase a ball.

  It turns out that I didn’t have to stress about the lights. They transform the crowd into an anonymous mass. And I’m equally anonymous. Other than Dawson, who’s attending the game somewhat out of mild curiosity, but mostly out of a sense of obligation to his new friends, I don’t know a single person out there. For once, I won’t have to deal with seeing the disappointment on everyone’s faces when I make a shitty pass, or feel the pressure of sustaining a winning streak for the sake of giving a nowhere town something to be proud of.

  I’m starting off on the bench tonight: a position I haven’t held since my freshman year of high school. Unlike most benchers though, I’m perfectly happy here. I wanted to make the team because it was my ticket to higher education and because, as long as we’re not doing burpees, I enjoy the training. I’m realistic enough to accept that I’m not destined for the NFL, and I’m not nearly extroverted enough to want the attention associated with being one of the star players.

  By the time we’re halfway through the first quarter, we’re up by twenty-two points.

  “You ready to go on?” Coach Carson hollers over to me.

  The question isn’t entirely unexpected. I’ve been playing well during practices - it’s amazing what a regular diet and sleeping in a real bed can do for a person - and Coach Carson offered to put me in during the last half of the game if things are going well. At the time, my stomach jumped at the prospect, though I wasn’t entirely sure if it could be attributed to a thrill or to sheer terror.