Page 68 of Fair Catch
And the next night, Riley texted me as the locker room started to clear.
Meet me in the shower.
It wasn’t enough to have each other in our dorm. Any minute that passed without my hands on her or her mouth on mine was too long. And while the rest of the team was none the wiser, while we kept up our charade of hating each other — or, at the very best, tolerating each other — when it was just the two of us?
We were on fire.
Hours bled into days and days into weeks as I lost myself in Riley and football. I devoured her until she came on my tongue in the athletic training office, and she rode me torturously slow and quiet in the back study room of the library. When we went to the movies with the team, we both snuck out at different times and met in the family bathroom, locking the door before I had to cover Riley’s mouth to subdue her screams.
And while I was a mad man for those stolen moments, for the way my heart would race with the risk each and every time she gave me that knowing smile — it was when we were home that I savored time the most.
Her bedroom door never slammed shut anymore, and the labels on what was whose disappeared. It was like we really lived together, like we shared a home.
What was mine was hers, and what was hers was mine.
I reveled in her lying on my chest after a long night of practice, my fingers dancing in her hair as she slowly fell asleep. My chest ached when we sat on her bed in the middle of the afternoon, her massaging my calves as I smiled and listened to her talk about her classes. Even studying was more fun, especially when she’d bait me with the best reward of all.
Finish this assignment and you can have me in the kitchen.
Get a page of that paper done and you can take me to bed.
Just an hour of studying, and then this mouth is yours to claim.
There was no way to avoid the cold, hard truth of it all.
I was addicted.
And like any addict will tell you, it didn’t matter that I knew in the back of my mind that we were playing with fire. It didn’t matter that one day it all would have to end, that one day I’d have to go through withdrawals and peel myself off the floor.
Right now, I had her.
And though she told me she couldn’t give me more, I pretended like this would always be enough.
Coach gave us the Sunday after our seventh win off. Win number seven was a big one in college football — it meant we’d clinched a bowl game. How the rest of the season played out would determine which bowl game, but right now, we were seven and one — and that was something to celebrate.
Gavin had been busy with classes and basketball practice, the season in full swing now for him, too. So when we all found ourselves with the same day free, we decided to spend it together.
“So, you think you’ll make it to the ship?” Gavin asked me as I slowly pushed his chair through an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It had been Riley’s idea, of course, and as much as it wasn’t my favorite way to spend a day off, there was no way in hell I could ever say no to that girl.
And after just an hour of walking behind her, of watching her eyes light up when a piece struck her — I wanted to take her to every museum in the world just to see her this way forever.
“I don’t know,” I confessed, stopping us at an impressive portrait of an African king. It was part of the Dutch and Flemish exhibition, the whole reason Riley wanted to come, and Gavin and I both let our eyes wander the canvas as I spoke. “We’re good. Best in our conference without a doubt. But…” I scratched the back of my neck. “The toughest part of our schedule is here at the end. Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia Atlantic…”
Gavin whistled. “Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“At least you know for sure you have a bowl game.”
I smiled, shaking my head as his words sank in. “I’m going to play in a bowl game, Gav. A fucking college bowl game.”
Gavin looked up at me with a shit-eating grin. “Better not blow it like you did when we played that season of NCAA on Xbox.”
He made a choking sound then, eyes going wide as he wrapped his hands around his throat and exaggerated the theatrics.
I nudged him forward, making the foot of his chair cross over the line that alarmed he was too close to the painting. He cursed when it went off, backing up as I walked away from his chair with my hands in my pockets, whistling like I had nothing to do with it.
