Draw Play: A Sports Romance Read online

  “Hang out with the mouth breathers you call friends? Uh no, thanks.”

  I couldn’t help but take offense. “Once again, only Thomas is a mouth breather, and it’s because of his asthma.”

  “It’s because of his asthma and because he’s around a hundred pounds overweight.”

  “Really, Jess?”

  “Just kidding. You know I’m just joking.” She grinned, finishing up her makeup.

  Jess, since I’ve known her, has always kept herself slim to ensure she kept getting cast in leading roles. She wasn’t a character actress, she’d told me once, so she couldn’t afford to blow up.

  I turned away, feeling self-conscious about my curves as always. Jess had a way of making me feel like a cow without meaning to. I knew she thought I looked good—she was always trying to get me to hang out with her friends so she could hook me up with one of them. If she’d thought I was unattractive, she wouldn’t bother. That was what I told myself.

  I caught a quick glimpse of myself in the mirror sitting on top of my dresser. Poker-straight, thin brown hair hung in front of my face as I bent over my drawers to put away fresh laundry. I wasn’t overweight—far from it. But I didn’t fit the ideal, either, and every time I saw Jess running around in her tiny tank tops and short shorts, I felt that much more insecure.

  Yet, hanging with my friends was the only time I felt confident with myself. They accepted me for who I was. In fact, the sort of thing that got me tormented in high school, my brains, earned respect in my circle. We even competed to see who could do the best each semester. That was my definition of fun.

  I looked over at my desk, where my new law books sat in a stack. My wallet had wept tears of blood when I paid for them earlier that day.

  Jess saw them, too. Missing them was hard. “I don’t know how you do it,” she announced, flopping back on her tiny twin bed—which was common to those of us who lived in the dorms. Just like the painted cinderblock walls, the gray tile floors, overhead fluorescent lights. Jess and I did our best to make the place homier with flowered curtains, floor lamps—we never turned on the overhead light if we could help it—a pink throw rug that covered most of the floor between our beds. Girls who visited generally commented on how much nicer our room was than theirs.

  I looked at her, shaking her head at my course load. “I don’t know how you do, either,” I admitted.

  “Do what?”

  “You work hard in a different way. You shop hours for class credits and rehearsals. Working on sets at the last minute to make sure they’re ready. Putting costumes together. Don’t get me started on how you memorize lines for a show.” What I couldn’t say, but sat in the front of my mind, was the way she put herself out there during auditions. I didn’t know how she lived with rejection, either—then again she wasn’t rejected all that often. If she had my curves, my average medium height, or my total lack of style when it came to clothes or makeup or hair, she wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Once I finished straightening up my side of our dorm room, I texted my friends to see who was around to have dinner together at the campus cafeteria. “You sure you don’t want to join us?” I teased Jess.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Cafeteria food is so disgusting. How can you eat that crap?” Jess usually went for takeout with her theater friends.

  “Well, it’s cheap. So it works.” I shrugged then waved before leaving. I wished I could afford to throw money around on takeout. Who would pick cafeteria food if they had a choice of something better? My job at the campus bookstore barely kept my head above water as it was.

  By the time I got to the cafeteria, Thomas, Marcie, and Adam were already there. The campus was still quiet, and most tables were empty.

  “How was summer?” Marcie gave me a warm, inviting hug. She’d traveled across Europe and Asia with her family throughout the break, so we hadn’t kept in touch. I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have college professors for parents, always studying new places and cultures. It seemed so exotic and exciting.

  “Same old. Mom trying to feed me, Dad watching too much baseball.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes when he overheard. “Same here. It’s Dad’s religion. He made me sit through a game with him—I think we were supposed to be bonding.”

  “I guess it didn’t go well,” I joked, choosing a cup of chicken noodle soup and fresh salad. I’d eaten way too much junk over break thanks to my mom’s insistence on spending her time feeding me, and the slight tightness around my waistband told the grim truth.

  “You could say that. My dad got pissed when I didn’t understand the game any better when it was over than I did before it started.”

  “You could just pretend, you know. It’s really not that difficult of a game to follow.”

  “Why would I do that? He knows I don’t care about sports.” Yes, and that lack of interest drove his father crazy. He’d always wanted a son who would follow in his athletic footsteps. Thomas cared too much about physics, food, and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.

  I turned to Adam. “You’re the only person I know who could look stressed out two days before classes even start.”

  “You try studying for the MCAT,” he said. He sounded exhausted.

  “Did you take any time to relax over break?”

  “Yes, Mom.” He grinned.

  I couldn’t help blushing—he was the only guy in my circle of friends who I was ever vaguely interested in. His hazel eyes gleamed above dark circles.

  “You don’t look it. You look like you haven’t been sleeping at all.”

  Marcie nudged me under the table, and I kicked her. She was telling me to chill.

  “I do what I can.”

  I left it at that before she opened her big mouth.

  When the boys got up to get dessert, Marcie turned to me. “Why don’t you just make the move and get it over with? I see how you look at him.”

  “Oh, please,” I said, waving dismissively. “Adam is not interested in me.”

  “I think you need to give him a chance.”

  “He looks at me like a sister.”

  “Then he and his sister have some gross Game of Thrones-level stuff going on because I know my brother never looked at me like that.”

  I glanced across the cafeteria at where the boys stood at the soft serve machine. Adam was cute in a goofy kind of way. He always seemed a little too tall, a little too clumsy. It was like he hadn’t grown into his body yet.

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “And I’m not going to lead myself into believing he likes me.”

  Marcie sighed. When she shook her head too, bright red curls bounced around her shoulders. “Do me a favor, Claire.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t talk yourself out of what could be good for you, okay?” She managed to get her advice in just under the wire, as the boys sat down a moment later. My cheeks burned warm—did he like me, really? It didn’t matter that I felt tongue-tied since a distraction entered the cafeteria.

  “Oh, here we go,” Thomas muttered. “Here come the meatheads, y’all.”

  I half-way turned in my seat in time to see four jocks walk in. They each took two trays, which they proceeded to load with food. Sandwiches, Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, pasta, fruit, milk, and even cereal. My stomach turned at the thought of eating all that food at once.

  “Greedy assholes. I can’t stand those fuckers,” Thomas remarked as he took a heaping spoonful of ice cream. “They think just because they can hit a ball or carry a ball or whatever, the world stops and starts around them like they’re celebrities on campus.”

  “If they’re in training, they need the calories,” Adam said distractedly. “Especially if they’re wrestlers, which I think they are, judging from the shape they’re in.”

  “So all they do is grapple and sweat. Big deal.”

  If I were a psych major, I could write a graduate dissertation on Thomas. He was obviously jealous of anybody with a shred of athletic ability�
�the one thing his father wished he had.

  “And they probably take remedial reading,” I added.

  “They’re only eating all that food so they’ll have the energy to rape a girl later on.”

  Marcie and I winced, glaring at Thomas.

  He averted his eyes. “Too much?”

  “Uh, yeah, dumbass!” I scowled. Fun was fun, but he took it too far. “You really need to fix your relationship with your dad.”

  “My relationship with my dad is fine.”

  “Which is why you see red whenever you’re around sports players? Yeah, okay,” I added.

  “Whatever,” he mumbled, continuing to eat his ice cream.

  “You got issues kid,” Marcie replied as we cleaned up our trays. “Anyway, is Jess still dating that basketball player?”

  “I don’t think so. Jess hasn’t mentioned him in a long time. I believe she decided to stick to theater guys. They’re in a class of their own. Nobody else understands their schedule.”

  “Please,” Adam muttered. “What do they do? Play pretend all day?”

  I bristled, knowing how hard my roommate worked on every show. “Hardly,” I snapped. “We can’t all be pre-med, Adam.” That quickly killed our conversation, and we left the cafeteria in awkward silence. Marcie turned right, toward her dorm room. Thomas walked straight ahead to his. I went left, while Adam lived in an off-campus apartment.

  “Hey, Claire! Can I walk you to your room?” Adam shouted.

  Usually, I would have liked the idea, but I was still irritated with him. “That’s okay. It’s not far.” I put on a fake smile to avoid a fight.

  His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry for what I said about your friend. I didn’t know it would piss you off like that. We were all making fun.”

  I frowned, hating my hypocrisy. “Yeah, I know. I said some things, too. I don’t know why it made me mad. I guess because I know Jess, and I know what she does isn’t as easy as just playing pretend all day.”

  “You’re right. I mean, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a school play before.”

  “Wait. You didn’t take Intro to Theatre?”

  We grinned at each other. Intro to Theatre was a “dumb” elective for people looking for an easy A. One of the requirements was seeing all plays in a single semester and writing a paper on them. The sort of class a jock took to sail through.

  “I must have missed it.”

  We both chuckled then silence fell between us. I wondered again whether Marcie was right about him liking me. I didn’t dare to get my hopes up.

  “Well, I’m going to head back to my room. I have my first shift at the bookstore bright and early. I can only imagine what the rush will be like.” Most people waited until the day before class started to get their textbooks since they didn’t typically arrive on campus until then. Others waited until the end of the week, in case they decided to drop a class—everybody knew you got the merest fraction of the cost back when you returned a book. For people in majors like Adam’s and mine, though, there was no dropping courses.

  “Sure, I’ll see you later, then. Have a good night, Claire.” There was the slightest hesitation on his part as he turned to leave, and I felt the same. Maybe Marcie was right, and I had been missing something so obvious for so long. After all, Adam lived off-campus. He didn’t have to eat at the cafeteria with us, as busy as he was. Could it be…?

  I was smiling to myself with a racing heart as I returned to my dorm room. Jess was on her way out. “Hey, Claire! The Wi-Fi is finally working,” she mentioned. “I was able to get access to my email a little while ago.”

  “Okay, great.” I sat down at my tidy desk, hoping to find Marcie on Skype so we could analyze the awkward moment with Adam. Before I could look for her, an email from the financial aid office caught my eye.

  “What?” I shrieked.

  Jess rushed to my side. “What happened?”

  “It says my work-study has been reassigned because they accidentally overstaffed the fucking bookstore!”

  Jess leaned over my shoulder to skim the email. “Oh, that sucks. I’m sorry, Claire. I’m sure they’ll find you something else, right?”

  “You don’t understand. I put in for that position early last semester. I even have my schedule for the week. How did the people at the financial aid office just now figure this out?” I sat with my head in my hands, despairing. “I need that job. It’s the only thing helping me make ends meet.”

  “They have to give you something soon. It’s part of your financial aid package, right?” Jess patted me on the back.”

  “Ugh, I don’t know,” I grunted. “I hate all this stress!”

  “You know what? Come out with me. It’ll get your mind off things.”

  Even in my despair, I had to smile at her kindness. “No, thanks. I’m not in the mood. I’ll hang out here. Maybe get a head start on some reading.”

  “I still don’t know how you do it.” She smiled, shaking her head. “It’s okay to take a break once in a while.”

  “I know, Jess. Have fun.”

  My eyes found the laptop monitor again, and I wondered how I would continue doing it if the financial aid office didn’t come through soon.

  3

  Jake

  “What the hell’s your problem?” Preston turned down the volume on my car’s sound system. I had agreed to drive him to the store since my SUV held more liquor than his little two-door.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Busting my eardrums, for starters. What’s wrong with you tonight? You were in a good mood when I left the training center.”

  I hadn’t told anyone on the team yet about my meeting with Coach. I didn’t know why I dreaded it so much. Maybe because of the stigma. Only idiots needed tutors.

  “Listen, Coach pulled me into his office,” I started, and the whole story came out.

  “Okay? So, what’s the big deal?” Preston asked when I was finished. “You need a tutor. Lots of students do.”

  “Only the dumb jocks do. I never wanted to be one of them.”

  My eyes were on the road, but I heard Preston sigh. “Nobody said you were dumb. You just need help. Coach is doing everything he can to make sure you stay on the team. What’s so bad about that?”

  “You don’t get it. Now I have to report everything to this fucking tutor, and they’ll report everything to Coach, and I won’t get a single minute to myself.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that sucks, man. But it’s for your own good, right?” He punched my arm, lightly—not a good idea to do to somebody while they’re driving.

  I swerved a little. “Great idea. Make me crash the car with two kegs in the back, plus three boxes of liquor. The cops will love that.” I was tense, and even I could hear it in my voice. I clenched my jaw so tight it made my head throb.

  “Chill, man. Maybe once he sees you’re taking it seriously, he’ll call off the tutor. I mean, once you’ve done well enough for half the semester, you can’t screw up that bad on your final grade, right?”

  It was a good idea, but I didn’t want to give myself hope. I shrugged instead and let the subject drop. I was never going to see it in the positive light like Preston did.

  The rest of the frat house poured out through the front door to help us unload the second I pulled up to the rambling old three-story Victorian monstrosity we called home. I had almost missed the peeling shutters, windows that required a book to prop them open, drafty halls, creaking pipes.

  “Hey, calm down,” I warned as a few of my more eager buddies pulled a keg out a little too fast, bumping it along the inside of my car. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were dying of thirst. “This keg’s mine,” I said, slapping it with the palm of my hand. “You all can have the other one.”

  I intended to get shitfaced. After two hours, I was there. Even as I drank, I knew I would have stopped one of my friends if I saw them pounding back beer the way I did. We were all big guys, and we all had a pretty high tolerance,
but I wasn’t drinking for fun. I was drinking to forget how pissed off I was. I may be a jock, but I’m definitely not dumb.

  How many times could I have studied harder last semester? How many fucking times did I blow off class because I was still hung over, or felt sore after that weekend’s game? What was I thinking?

  Whenever a thought like that came up, I poured another cold beer—and I had a lot of thoughts like that. It stopped mattering after a while, once the girls started showing up. Not the girls who came at the beginning of a party—they were always too desperate. I waited for the girls who came a couple of hours after the party started. They were the cool girls, the ones who knew the real fun didn’t start until later. Or they’d already been to another party and came late because they knew our parties were the best. My frat was legendary since it was full of football players.

  I had my back to the spacious main room between the sitting room up front and the kitchen in the back, pouring myself another beer when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “Hey, Jake,”

  I smiled when I recognized Jenny. We’d hooked up a few times in the past, and after the last time, I told myself we wouldn’t again. She was the kind of girl who thought hooking up meant we had something together. Not that I didn’t like her—she was actually kind of cool. I wasn’t trying to make us a regular thing, though. Plus, it was hard to take her serious when she made it her mission to sleep with all my teammates and the rest of the UM sports players. She took pride in being a groupie.

  “Are you ready for the season?” she asked. What else was she supposed to ask? Generally, girls at our parties told us how amazing I looked on the field, or what an incredible job the team did at the game. Whatever they said, it was always “amazing.” Without a game yet, what else was there to talk about?

  I didn’t want to talk about that, though. “Fuck football,” I said. “Here. Have a beer.”

  “I guess the answer is no, then,” she muttered over the voices around us.