Page 34 of The Jock
Wes’s fingers skimmed the grass again. Sun warmed. Freshly cut. Chewed up from cleats. He breathed in. Pads shifted. Leather groaned. His muscles clenched and released, waiting to fire.
Maybe all that shit you did over the summer was good for you.
Colton was talking about the hours he’d thrown into the gym, the days and nights and evenings and mornings he’d spent on the field, running routes and practicing his footwork in the empty stadium until he couldn’t move and he couldn’t think and all he could do was lie on his back and try to breathe and, hopefully, for one damn second, not think of Justin’s smile.
Justin.
He missed the snap and stuttered over his feet when he tried to recover. In less than a second, Anton, the strong-side linebacker, was on him, up in his face and containing his run. Wes was supposed to be tackled if that happened, but he spun, trying to salvage the play. Anton wasn’t expecting the move, and he jerked right as Wes faked left, then grabbed him around the waist and yanked, trying to bear hug him in a soft hold.
Wes planted his foot but stumbled. Lost his balance and felt himself start to go down.
Wes was over two hundred and fifty pounds, and Anton was almost two-twenty. All that solid muscle spiraled around Wes’s unstable center of gravity. He tried to go with the motion, but he ended up jackknifing his knee over Anton’s thigh before he face-planted on the grass, twisting at the last moment and pulling in his arms to take the hit to the center of his chest and not his wrists. Still, as he hit the ground, he felt a twang vibrate up and down his leg, centered in his knee.
“Oh shit!” Anton was down on one knee right away, holding out his hand and helping him sit up. “You all right?”
Coach’s whistle screamed, and he hauled ass across the field, his face red and twisted like a prune as Wes peeled grass out of his face mask.
Wes cringed as he bent his knee. Not an excruciating pain, but a dull ache, a soreness. Damn it.
“The fuck is going on over here?” Coach bellowed. “You two fucking square-dancing? Why the hell are you on the ground, Van de Hoek?”
“I tripped,” Wes said before Anton could speak. “Landed wrong. I think I tweaked my knee.”
Coach’s expression rippled, concern, fear, superstition, anger, disgust, and anxiety all rolling in one wave across his weathered face. “Get up and get into the locker room,” he growled. “Get ice on it right away. Get a trainer to look at it.” No one messed with knee injuries. Nothing could bench a player faster. “After practice, you can ice it some more while we review tape in my office.”
Anton silently helped Wes to his feet, steadying him as he tested his knee. He could put about half his weight on it. Not too bad, then. It was angry, but ice and heat and he should be fine. Wes limped off the field as fast as he could.
When he passed Colton, Colton slapped the back of his helmet and called him a quitter, and he flipped Colton the bird behind his back. At least they were good. Colton wasn’t holding any hard feeling about his criticism earlier.
And, well. At least he’d get practice throwing to other guys.
Wes limped into the tunnel, heading for the locker room, his thoughts circling around and around the moment he’d lost focus, the moment he’d been distracted.
Justin.
What was Justin doing at four in the afternoon on a weekday? Was he in class, or was he at dance practice, or… Was he already doing his placements for his nursing major? What department did he want to work in when he had his RN? Where did he spend his free time? Where did he hang out on campus?
Did he like living on West Campus? Wes had lived on Southside his freshman year, and he’d hated it. It was a rabbit warren of underclassmen who were on their own for the first time and reveled in the freedom with complete lack of responsibility. Wes had hated picking his way past the pools of vomit or trying to sleep through the drunken shouts and late-night parties. He was invited to the jock house on West Campus his sophomore year, and he’d moved in and never left. He liked living with his teammates, his friends. He liked the tree-lined streets and the peace. There were Buddhist monks who lived a few streets over. They nurtured beehives and had about fifty hummingbird feeders in their yard. Wes watched the hummingbirds every time he jogged by.
Had Justin jogged the neighborhood yet? Had he gone to Daisy Lane? Or found the monks? Did he walk down 24th to campus, or did he drive? Or take the bus?
Wes slumped against the tunnel wall. It was cool there, the sunlight from the stadium barely making a dent in the darkness. He sank down on one leg, favoring his twanging knee, and curled over his helmet. His sweat-soaked hair dripped onto the concrete as he tried to steady his breathing.
Inhale. Exhale. He gripped his helmet until his fingertips turned white and his bones ached.
It didn’t matter what Justin was doing, or where he was. He wanted nothing to do with Wes. Not ever again.
Wes tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
* * *
He wasten minutes late to French class the next morning.
Coach and the trainer had told him to stay off his knee and alternate ice and heat for the next three days. He had a brace he was supposed to keep stuffed with ice packs. He’d slept in the damn thing, then woken up at four to shove the packs back in the freezer and wrap a heating pad around his knee as he tried to read the first chapter of his epidemiology textbook.
He wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to see Justin, though, even if all he could do was stare at the back of his head. So he’d strapped the ice brace on and driven the three miles to campus, hunted for a parking spot, nearly pulled his hair out, and finally limped nearly a mile to the humanities building. He kept his head down and tried not to make eye contact, but he still got a dozen questions lobbed his way, grating concern andOh noandHope that isn’t serious! He tried to wave it all off with “Just a little twist” and a polite smile.
When he finally made it to class, he was breathing hard and had worked up a sweat, and he was limping even more. The professor’s face went from pissed at the late entry to horrified in a single cartoon smear when he took in Wes’s injury.
