Page 77 of The Quarterback
It shouldn’t feel like he’d taken a bullet to his chest to see his closet door open and Colton’s clothes scooped out. Or his toothbrush and his razor and his deodorant gone from the bathroom sink.
Or Colton’s charger missing from his nightstand.
He’d wanted more time, wanted a longer goodbye. Wanted the chance to tell Colton—
He fled back to the living room, trying to escape the hollowness of Colton being torn from his life. His bare foot scattered a cluster of empty tea light tins across the cold concrete, the dozens of candles he’d lit with shaking hands as he’d imagined making love to Colton. His eyes swept the room, then stalled on the couch.
Colton hadn’t taken everything when he left.
There was the controller, the one Nick had bought for him, that he still used even after his arm was strong enough to play two-handed.I like it, he’d said.You bought it for me. And I’m used to it now.
And his football, the one they threw every day. Left behind, discarded, like Nick had been discarded.I don’t need these things anymore.
He sank to his ass against the far wall as he buried his head in his folded arms. How could one morning go so wrong?
Was it the morning, though? Or was it every decision he’d made, every compromise, every rationalization, from the moment Colton’s lips had brushed over his, all the way to now?
You selfish, greedy bastard.
Justin, gone. Colton, gone.
Finally, noise tore through the oppressive silence in his condo: the sound of his weeping.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Colton had nowhere to go.He couldn’t go to the jock house, not with Wes and Justin back in town. And the place he’d thought of as home for the past six weeks—
He’d never be going there again.
He almost bit the bullet and drove down to Sugar Land, almost headed for his childhood home. But his mom would be as thrilled to see him appear on her doorstep as Justin had been to see him come out of Nick’s bedroom.
If one more person looked at him like he was a barely tolerable presence, someone to be put up with—it was just summer—he was going to shrivel up and blow away. He already felt desiccated on the inside, like all those places that had bloomed under Nick’s affection had turned to dust, coating the shards of his broken heart.
No to Sugar Land. No to the jock house—and not only because of Wes and Justin. What did he say to Orlando and Art, Josh and Patrick? When everyone came home with their stories from the summer, of their vacations or their jobs or their girlfriends, and asked Colton what he did and how his summer went. Did he hook up with anyone? Finally find a girl to go out with? And how was that internship he stuck around for? It was with Justin’s dad, right?
He smashed the sob that wanted to escape, pounding it down inside until he couldn’t feel the sting of tears in his eyes any longer. On the road ahead, off the county highway, he saw a fleabag motel with a lit Vacancy sign. It was a way station for truckers and drifters and the homeless.
That was him, now.
He guided his truck into the lot and grabbed his duffel from the front seat. The old man at the check-in desk looked like he was three hundred years old, like managing the front desk was his second job after his first career as a scarecrow. He peered at Colton as Colton scribbled his name on the check-in slip and passed over his debit card.
“She break your heart, son?” the old man asked. He was stooped almost in half, the skin on his hands as dry as paper sacks. Colton could see the creek beds of his veins snaking up from his wrists under the hem of his flannel shirt.
He frowned.
The old man motioned to his face and grunted.
Colton’s hands flew to his cheeks. Tears ran silently from the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away angrily when the man’s back was turned.
“You’re in room 223,” the old man said. He handed Colton an actual key, with a maroon plastic diamond dangling from the key ring. “There’s pay-per-view if you want it. Pizza delivers from Sal’s, but they take forever. If you go another five miles up the road, there’s a gas station that sells some decent microwave burritos and has a good selection of booze.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s hard to live in this world, son,” the old man said. “Some days are harder than others. But they even out, in the end. Eventually.”
Eventually. Someday, maybe, he wouldn’t feel like this. Like he’d spent his whole life waiting for one person to love him, but when he thought he’d found them, they scooped him out and left him hollow and empty like an old fruit rind.
Maybe someday he wouldn’t feel so stupid.It was just summer.
