Page 54 of Big Dix

“Ugh, fine, but someone is driving me because I’m drinking all of Rim’s booze.”

“That’s going to be impossible, Ev.”

I lift my head to take in Ti. “Why?”

She chuckles. “He just bought a distillery.”

I laugh, the first real laugh I’ve had in several days, and it feels good. “Never, ever let Rim go.”

We all laugh then, but the girls are right. I can’t just stop living. Life marches on whether I like it or not, and I need to march along with it.

Time to dust myself off and move on.

THIRTY-TWO

Atticus

Yesterday’s practice was fucking brutal. I fucked up every which way I turned. Today, I need to be one hundred percent, but my mind isn’t here. My heart is pulverized. All I can think about is Evelyn. I don’t even care about today’s bowl game.

That is definitely not like me.

Two weeks. It’s been two miserable fucking weeks, and I still haven’t seen or heard from Evelyn. I’ve called, but she just lets it go to voice mail. I poured my heart out each time, but she never called me back.

It really must be over.

The most important game of my life starts in a couple of hours, and instead of going over plays and hyping my team, I’m drowning in self-pity.

Fuck. Get your head in the game, man.

Everyone is in the player’s cafeteria as I toss my clothes into my locker and make my way through the empty locker room with a towel and my phone to the showers.

Maybe it will help to get me out of this funk. Although, I don’t think anything will work until I actually see Evelyn.

After turning on the shower, I take the towel from my hips and hang it on the hook. Then I pull up a playlist and place it on a shelf outside the shower above where my towel hangs.

Stepping in, the steam envelops me, and I stand underneath the torrent of water. I close my eyes and picture Evelyn’s smiling face.God, I miss her.

The delicate notes of Eric Carmen’s piano drift throughout the room. I haven’t heard this song in forever. I’m not sure how this got on my playlist, but I can absolutely relate to the lyrics.

Listening to the lonely piano play and the melancholy of Eric’s voice, before I even realize it, I’m thinking about Evelyn as I belt out the chorus.

Eric Carmen croons, and I match his despair note for note, our voices bouncing around the walls.

Fuck, will she ever talk to me?

“Don’t want to be…” I’m singing into my fist like a microphone, eyes closed, heartbroken while the music builds. And what the fuck, am I crying? I can’t even care because now I’m gearing up to belt out the crescendo with Eric Carmen, my new best friend. This guy clearly knows what I’m dealing with here.Eric fucking gets it.

“All by myse—”

“Dixon? What in the shit are you doing?”

Shit. Busted.

Hearing Trent’s voice causes me to pause a beat, my eyes still closed. Once another man has heard you singing eighties love songs while you are naked and crying from heartbreak in the shower, there’s nothing that can erase that from his mind.

Shit.

I open my eyes, and Trent starts laughing.

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