Love in Vein Read online

“Yeah, the female attention must be a nice bonus,” she smiles slyly.

  I’m relieved that it’s dark enough that she can’t see me redden. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that I would be invisible if I wasn’t the quarterback.”

  She shrugs. “Being unremarkable has its benefits. No expectations, no pressure.”

  My blush deepens. “I wasn’t implying that you’re unremarkable.”

  “I know. My legs must be remarkable at least, you’ve been staring at them pretty intently.”

  She has me flustered. She’s right; I’d been eyeing the smooth expanse of skin between her denim cut-offs and scuffed combat boots appreciatively. They’re lithe and lightly tanned. It’s hard not to look.

  I force myself to meet her eyes even though I’m nervous about doing so. I can tell even in the dim light that they’re an almost aquamarine blue and unblinking, much more discerning than I’m used to. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that I was staring. I was just wondering how it’s possible that we haven’t run into each other before.”

  She looks to be either my age or slightly younger. There’s no way she attends high school with me, though. I wouldn’t have missed those legs. Or anything else about her, honestly. She could be in a movie, and not one of the shitty made-for-television ones either. There’s no other school in the district. And it’s not like we get any transfers. People occasionally escape this place, but nobody willingly enters.

  Now it’s her turn to be uncomfortable. She fusses with a loose thread on her oversized t-shirt, delaying her response. “I don’t go to school. Just an unremarkable dropout.” She laughs, but it’s hollow.

  I’m surprised by this. She’s articulate, quick, and doesn’t appear to be pregnant. The baggy shirt makes it hard to tell, though.

  I shrug, “You’re in good company. I don’t think most people around here have made it past the tenth grade.”

  “You consider that good company?”

  It’s my turn to laugh hollowly.

  “Rumour has it that some football scouts are sniffing around,” she muses. “You practically have this town in your rearview already.”

  I wish that it was as simple as she’s making it sound. “I’ll be lucky to get even a partial scholarship. I’m not that good compared to most of the college players.”

  “Unremarkable?”

  “Maybe. But you haven’t seen my legs yet.”

  She rewards this comment with a laugh - a real one. I’ve never found a woman truly beautiful until now. I’ve fantasized about my fair share of the hot cheerleaders. Even fucked a few. But their attractiveness always felt disposable. If you stripped away the peroxide and the bottle tan, the facade would crumble. When Charlie laughs though, I understand what it means for a woman to be beautiful.

  “Are you going to show me?”

  I’m caught off-guard by her forwardness. I’m accustomed to the coyness bred from insecurity and outdated advice from women’s magazines - girls who laugh at everything you say and think that femininity and docility are synonymous.

  I don’t know how to respond, so I allow instinct to take over, leaning into her. She meets me halfway, full lips parted. I start to kiss her hesitantly, afraid that she’ll pull away if I rush anything.

  She has no such reservations. She hooks a leg over my lap, straddling me. There are a couple of wolf whistles and exclamations from around the bonfire, but they don’t register. I’m finding it hard to breathe, never mind process what’s happening around me.

  She kisses me hungrily, undeterred by any attention we’re receiving. Her lips are soft despite the urgency, tasting vaguely of coconut. It’s not a bad combination with the whiskey. I want to taste more of her.

  She pulls away abruptly. “I’m not going anywhere,” she laughs breathlessly.

  I’m momentarily confused until I follow her gaze down to her thighs and my iron grip on them. I loosen my hold to reveal marks red enough to be visible even in the darkness.

  I exhale shakily, “Sorry.”

  She appears completely unfazed. “Should we take this somewhere more private?” she asks, pressing her forehead to mine.

  I don’t know if I trust myself to be alone with her and the headiness of my desire. But there’s no way I’m leaving her and the sublimity of this moment. “Let’s go.”

  Charlie extricates herself from my grip gracefully, moving towards the passenger side of my truck. My hands are so unsteady that I can barely fit the key into the ignition. She fiddles with the radio dial, pretending not to notice my struggle to start the truck.

  We don’t talk, listening instead to Faith Hill sing about a wild child - an omen? - while I guide the truck a few miles down the road and pull off into a section of particularly thick brush. I’m afraid of saying anything that will mar the surreal juxtaposition of a gorgeous woman in my old Ford, so I watch her wordlessly while she removes her shirt and shucks her cut-offs.

  She looks at me expectantly, obviously waiting for me to shed my jeans. I’m too busy staring, though. At her long hair, mussed up from our earlier make-out. At her lips, slightly swollen. At her collarbone, reflecting the moonlight. I’m afraid of what will happen if I look any lower.

  “Well, it’s hardly fair for me to be the only one who’s half-naked,” she teases as she reaches over to unbutton my jeans with practiced ease. I raise my hips enough to allow her to push them down.

  “You do have good legs,” she says, placing a hand on my thigh.

  “You have good everything.” I realize how stupid the words sound before they’re even out of my mouth. They’re true, though.

  “Just good?” she teases. Her hand is making its way from my thigh to my beyond-erect package.

  I’ve never been so aware of so many disparate parts of my body at once. My dick, at the forefront, is straining towards her touch. My thigh is still burning from her touch. My hands are white-knuckling the steering wheel so tightly that it’s becoming painful. Every muscle is tight with anticipation.

  I watch as she pulls her hair into a ponytail, exposing the delicate curve of her throat. I won’t dare to hope what this gesture foreshadows.

  I don’t have long to wait, though. She immediately slips her hand into my boxers, stroking me slowly before leaning over to take me in her mouth. The feeling is exquisite. Not just the physical sensation which, by the way, is better than anything I’ve ever experienced. But the intensity of the yearning is something I’ve never encountered. I’ve never wanted anything this badly, not even a football scholarship or a normal family.

  I’m coming before I even have a chance to register it. Hard enough that I involuntarily buck my hips, causing her to gag slightly. But she doesn’t withdraw until I’m finished, and I slowly disentangle my hands from her dark hair. I can’t remember whether I was pulling or not.

  Now I understand why people commit crimes of passion. I would definitely kill to experience that again.

  She withdraws, re-covering herself with her shirt. It occurs to me that I should be doing something. Touching her. Holding her. Thanking her. Anything. But I’m sapped of energy in a way that no football practice has ever made me feel. She has her shirt and shorts back on before I manage to say anything.

  “Sorry, I should have warned you that I was coming.”

  She waves me away. “It’s fine. Can you take me back to the bonfire?”

  “I can drive you home.” It’s the least I can do after she completely altered my existence. Life does, in fact, get better than football games, diner food, and beer. I’m not sure whether that realization is reassuring or distressing.

  “Just back to the bonfire is fine.”

  “ Do you have a car there?”

  “I have a ride,” she responds evasively.

  “Are you sure? It’s not a big deal for me to drive you home.” If only I had displayed this level of chivalry before Charlie got undressed, maybe she wouldn’t be rushing to get away.

  “That’s ok.”

  I don’t
want to press the issue, so I drive us back to the bonfire in silence. She’s out of the truck before I even have a chance to cut the engine.

  “It was nice to meet you, Levi,” she tosses over her shoulder before shutting the door.

  It’s only after I’ve watched her walk into the darkness that I realize that I forgot to even ask for her number. Of course I couldn’t hold on to something that exceptional.

  Chapter 3

  I can feel my heart rate start to speed up as soon as I catch a glimpse of the trailer lights in the distance. I glance down at the truck’s clock: 2:34 AM. Nothing good can come of Brandi being awake at this hour.

  There’s a rusty car that I don’t recognize in the driveway, so I park on the lawn. I take a few deep breaths before heading inside, steeling myself for whatever I’m about to encounter.

  I’m barely in the doorway before she’s going at me. “How nice of you to grace us with your presence.”

  The lank-haired man seated at the Formica table beside her sniggers. I’ve never met him before, but that’s hardly a surprise. They rarely last longer than a week. Even that is an impressive amount of time to put up with Brandi; my nerves are usually frayed after a couple of minutes.

  I bend down to unlace my boots, unperturbed. If I’m going to verbally spar with someone, it’s not going to be my wasted, grade-nine educated mother. When I straighten, she’s standing beside me.

  “Do you know what time it is?” she pokes the neck of her whiskey bottle into my chest for emphasis.

  “Do you?” I shouldn’t let her get to me, but it’s hard not to react sometimes.

  “Do I? I’ve been waiting for you for hours,” she slurs angrily. I’m not sure who this performance is for the benefit of, the derelict at the kitchen table, or her conscience. Either way, I’m too exhausted to indulge her tonight.

  I try to get past her and she stumbles, the bottle slipping from her hand. I try to dive for it but, even with my football-honed reflexes, it proves impossible to catch. The moldy linoleum floor is deceptively hard, shattering the bottle into dozens of pieces that I’m sure neither of us will bother picking up. It’s the equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb. Nothing pisses Brandi off more than being deprived of alcohol, and her disability checks don’t usually allow her to purchase more than a bottle or two at a time.

  She immediately begins screaming incoherently and trying to claw at my face, heedless of the glass that she’s now stepping in. She’s causing more damage to herself than to me, and this only makes her angrier. She clocks me in the jaw, hard enough that I know it’s going to leave a mark. I push her backward, trying to get her far enough away so that I can grab my boots. She steps back onto a particularly sharp piece of glass and becomes suddenly quiet. I’m not sure if her silence can be attributed to pain or to shock: I’ve never retaliated before. Regardless, I seize the opportunity to grab my boots and retreat to the truck.

  I can hear the man guffawing behind me like this is the best Jerry Springer episode he’s ever seen. If it wasn’t happening to me, I would agree.

  Fighting with Brandi is not an infrequent occurrence. Neither is spending the night in my truck, so I know where I can park without being disturbed. I drive a couple of streets over to a cul-de-sac of mostly uninhabited pre-fab houses and pull out the scratchy camping blanket that I keep behind the driver’s seat.

  The emotional rollercoaster of the last five hours has drained me to the point where the cramped nature of my sleeping quarters doesn’t even register. I’m asleep within moments of reclining my seat.

  I wake to sunlight streaming so brightly through the windows that it’s almost painful. I barely drank anything last night, but I have a headache bad enough to rival any of my worst hangovers. Brandi tends to have that effect on people.

  The cloudless blue sky is uncomfortably incongruous with my morose mood. I used to think that the most depressing part of my life was that there might be nothing to aspire to other than a job with health insurance and a doublewide with nice laminate floors. Now I know that there’s a level of bliss that I never thought possible - but that I’m not the kind of guy who can maintain it.

  Another Saturday stretches endlessly before me. I have football practice at five, but until then: nothing. I’m feeling restless, so I decide to go for a run. I could use the endorphins today. And it’s not like I have anything better to do. I retrieve a pair of sweatpants and sneakers from the duffel bag of clothes I keep in the backseat: I’ve done enough truck camping recently that I’m prepared now. I glance briefly in the rearview. My hair looks like I’ve been sleeping in a vehicle - if not a bush - but I don’t have any way to fix it. I run my fingers through it a couple of times, probably making it worse, before exiting the truck.

  Even on the worst of days, running feels good. There’s something satisfying about the concept of continually moving forward. Like if I just keep going, past the town limits, beyond the county line, maybe I’ll actually get somewhere. The repetitive motion is meditative. I couldn’t tell you what I think about while running. But I can tell you that it has nothing to do with replaying last night’s events, or stressing about the fact that I’m in my senior year of high school and higher education seems less and less likely to be achievable. I just focus on my breathing, the tree-lined roads, the distant hills. It’s only when I’m running that I can appreciate the tranquil beauty of this place.

  I head west, following the semi-rural roads towards the center of town. The roads are quiet, everyone sleeping off celebratory hangovers, so I’m startled when a horn sounds behind me. I look over my shoulder to see Coach Hayes’ Suburban. I know it’s his because no one else in this town drives a vehicle less than ten years old, never mind one with custom rims. I wonder what it says about us that the football coach is one of the highest-paid guys in town.

  He pulls up beside me and instructs me to get in. I comply out of habit, only belatedly realizing that I look, and probably also smell, awful.

  “Rough night?” he grins impishly.

  Coach hates when we get buzzed before a practice or game, but he has nothing against a little post-game partying. Drinking and hooking up is the least destructive of vices we could pick up around here.

  “Something like that.”

  “I was looking for you. I went by your place…” There’s a question in his statement, but I don’t know how to answer it. God only knows what he encountered there. I know that he won’t push, though. In a town where nearly everyone has a shotgun poised beside their bed and a relative with a lengthy criminal record, you learn pretty quickly to mind your own business.

  “That was quite the performance yesterday. I got a call from the Tennessee Tech coach asking for a character evaluation.”

  “For me?” I respond dumbly.

  “Who else, asshat?”

  My stomach knots in a combination of excitement and terror, growling uncomfortably: I can’t fuck this up.

  “Let’s grab some breakfast and talk?” he suggests.

  “I didn’t bring my wallet,” I mumble, reddening.

  He waves me away, turning the SUV in the direction of Pete’s. “It’s on me. You can get me back when the scholarship money comes in.”

  I’m much less confident than he is that that will ever happen, but I don’t protest. I could use a meal, and I have no desire to go back home to raid the near-empty fridge. The last thing I want is another confrontation with Brandi to put a damper on this rare moment of optimism.

  We settle into a booth at Pete’s and talk football over heaping plates of greasy eggs, bacon, and grits. I’ve never thought of Coach as being particularly intelligent, but he’s practically an idiot savant when it comes to college ball. He knows all about Tennessee Tech: not one of the hot shit schools as far as football is concerned, making it to the NFL ain’t likely, but the coaching staff is half-decent, and college chicks are sexy everywhere, according to him.

  “That’s my biggest regret,” he sighs.

  “Not goin
g to college?” I had kind of tuned out when he started rhapsodizing about sorority girls.

  “Not working hard enough for it to be in the cards. You’ve earned this, kid. Now you just have to start playing like you have.” He stands, clapping me on the back. “You need a ride somewhere?”

  “Nah, I’ll jog back. Can’t ease up now.”

  “Good call. I’ll catch you at practice tonight.”

  I wait for him to pull out of the parking lot before rising. I’m too full to run, but I figure I’ll walk around for a while, maybe head to the public library before going home. I need to allow enough time for Brandi to recover from her hangover and be forced to venture out for whatever addiction is the most pressing: liquor or cigarettes.

  The morning is already scorching, and I’m uncomfortable in my heavy sweatpants, so I make my way towards the cool darkness of the library. It’s empty aside from the librarian. Unsurprising, considering the book collection consists almost entirely of children’s books and cheap romance novels donated by housewives from neighboring counties.

  I sit down at the lone computer, typing “Tennessee Tech” into the browser. I devour as much information about the university as the pitiful internet connection will allow. Coach was right: they’re not one of the top schools as far as football is concerned, but their academic programs are favorably ranked.

  I’m so engrossed in my research, that the librarian has to tap me on the shoulder to let me know that it’s closing time. The clock above her desk reads 4:00.

  I have ample time to make my way back to my truck at a leisurely pace, but I almost sprint the 2 miles or so back, buoyed by my hopefulness. I should be conserving my energy for practice, but I’m too jittery to slow down.

  I pull into the empty high school parking lot mere minutes later, the first one to arrive, as per usual. I go to my locker and don my gear quickly, hoping to get a few minutes alone on the field. I jog a few laps, trying to calm my nerves a bit, while the guys start trickling in.

  “Where’d you disappear to last night?” Cody calls, jogging over to me. “You missed the team chugging competition.”