Chapter Sixteen
Parker
There was something about being back in my room on campus. As a junior on the team, I had been given the option to take a rookie as a roommate or spent extra time helping the redshirts get the swing of things, keeping an eye on them on road trips. It wasn’t official policy, but something our head coach implemented. Since I liked taking the younger guys out for parties anyway, I’d opted for the single room.
Dropping my duffel on the floor, I stretched out on the extra-long bed against the wall. The only thing on my schedule coming up was the Thorne party. Other than that, it was classes. Lying there, I couldn’t believe how good I felt just to be in my dorm room, no paparazzi flashing cameras at me, no shots of alcohol beginning to boil in my stomach, none of that need to channel whatever it was football gave me into an aggressive search for the next evening’s “fun.”
Suddenly my door burst open. Three of my teammates came in as I just lay there, grinning at them.
“Thought I saw you getting back!”
“Yo, Park, we’re hitting Burpee’s, get your ass in gear!”
Burpee’s was the tenth incarnation of the exact same bar in the exact same place, two blocks from campus, that it had been for at least a generation. It was marked by the permanent smell of stale beer, and a white plastic floor so sticky it made sneakers feel like they had a million suction cups on their soles, erupting with a loud shlorp with every step. The reason for all the name changes, I assumed, was because not a day went by without massive amounts of underage drinking going on.
At one point in every semester, we’d show up on a Thursday night, out for a couple cheap beers and a shot at a sorority girl, only to find it boarded up. We’d shrug, hit the second option which was a slightly nicer bar with higher prices, and next week the joint would re-open with a new cheap sign up top. I wondered if it was always the same owners with a family so large they just handed it off to a different branch so they could take their six-month turn.
I hadn’t actually been to Burpee’s since the beginning of my sophomore year, but we’d call it that until we left and let the next year’s starters take over with their own out-of-date version.
“You fellas have fun,” I said.
“What, the chicks up north tire you out, Park? You catch something from that one in the pink getup?”
“You kidding? They haven’t invented the rubber I’d wear for that!” I belted.
“I heard you hooked up with a cheerleader so fine she made everyone at the combine have to wait till their hard-ons went down before they could shower!”
I just grinned. True or not, it wasn’t something a player was going to deny.
“Yeah, shit man. You ain’t tired. Get up. Let’s go!” one of the guys commanded.
“Sorry. I’ve got plans,” I told them.
“Shit. Probably a tri-Delt.”
“He couldn’t get it anywhere else?”
“Maybe he’s tryin’ to grab a Kappa.”
I just smiled as they kept going with the old, bad sorority name rhymes all the way down the hall and to the stairs.
From outside my window, I heard the last one and rolled my eyes. “He might try to pry some Pi Phi thighs!”
The truth was, all I could think about was my books, which had not been true a single time before in my life. It wasn’t that I was a bad student. Actually, it always came easy to me, especially in college. High school was a grind. Private prep boarding schools give you classes and homework up the freakin’ wazoo. I could have gone to a much tougher academic university, but I was sick of it, especially after Jason died. I came to college for football, and really all I had to do was show up to class and pay a little attention, which I could do in my sleep after the high school I went to. My GPA was up over 3.5 and I felt like I’d been cheated. If one of the questions during all the psych tests and interviews had been, “What did you learn in college,” the honest answer would have been, “Picking up girls and where to get cheap brewskies.”
I did have a paper due at the end of the week. Suddenly I wanted to do more than just churn out the usual garbage. I looked at my backpack right next to my desk, where I’d left it. Pulling everything out of it, I found a couple books from the previous semester I no longer needed. Checking class emails, I saw I had a few chapters to catch up on in every class, on top of the paper, and instead of just thumbing through the chapter headings I realized I was excited to dig in, maybe even go back and actually read them. Reading had never been a chore for me, but I’d spent my years in college with novels, just barely skimming the textbooks. I’d never taken a single exam that couldn’t be passed, easily, by knowing the chapter headings. It was easy when you knew which classes to pick.
I could have stayed right there at my desk, reading light on, keeping company for the first real time with my textbooks, but suddenly I wanted the full experience. I filled my reorganized backpack, put on a baseball cap, and walked as fast as I could to the main library on campus.
It was fucking ridiculous. By that, I meant awesome. The only time I had ever been inside the building before was during my tour in high school. First, I had to hunt through my backpack, lucky as hell to find my student ID sitting in the outside pocket. Nobody at the desk recognized me, and I loved it.
Then I went through a pair of doors. A sign requested I wait for the first set of doors to close before entering the “library proper.” After I had done that, I opened the wood paneled doors and walked into a different kind of heaven.
The first thing that caught my eye were the simple, yet solid, long even rows of wooden tables, but before I could take in the details, the high domed ceiling tore my eyes upward. It was as beautiful as any museum, large square tiles growing steadily smaller as they reached the center. It had the effect I’m sure the designers were going for, a feeling of all the daily concerns being lifted lightly out of my head, freeing the mind to expand. After staring up for a few moments, I looked again at the tables. Wide wooden chairs that looked comfortable, but also firm enough to keep one from falling asleep lined the tables. Spaced enough to give every single student there room to spread their books, were emerald green lamps.
Nobody looked up at me. Freshmen to Seniors had their heads in their books, and I almost laughed out loud at myself, because I realized suddenly I was staring at them with envy. They were real students. The older ones actually had the right to call this library theirs, the same way I called the football field mine. The concept of spending years in this room, learning, seemed so appealing to me that I wished I had it all to do over again.
Right then I vowed to at least get as much of it as I could in my remaining weeks as a member of the university. I found an empty seat and looked around. Some people had their packs on the table, others on the floor. I almost laughed again, realizing I felt like a rookie, expecting someone to glare at me or smirk because I was doing it wrong. I sat and pulled out all of my books, stacking them in order of what I wanted to get done.
At first, I glanced up a lot, not focusing, and noticed a few other people doing the same thing, all young, probably freshmen. Everyone else was hardly stopping, only taking the occasional moment to stretch. One girl wearing a t-shirt lifted her arms up and arched her back, and that did get a bunch of guys glancing at her, because her fantastic breasts stretched the fabric and lifting toward the ceiling. She had to know what she was doing, but she didn’t look around and simply got back to her books. I saw one guy actually shake his head, trying to clear it.
Then I settled in, telling myself the whole point of this magnificent room, this building, and the whole campus was right in front of me on the table. I studied.
Before I knew it, hours had passed, and an announcement came out that the last escort service would be leaving in five minutes. Long before I’d ever arrived, some girls had been molested on campus on their way back from this library, more than ten years before in fact. Since then, every half hour after dark the university provided escorts for any undergrads who did not want to walk alone.
I went to the restroom and on the way out asked someone when the library closed. She told me midnight, in half an hour.
I managed to read one more chapter, wishing I could spend the whole night inside, then packed up and left, the last one to leave the building other than the night watchman who was locking up.
As I headed back, I thought of what it might have been like to walk Lily back to her dorm room or apartment late one night. I could have tracked her down when she’d still been a grad student. She might have laughed at some sophomore football player, but I didn’t think so.
The moon and stars were out, and I could see the five-story clock tower that marked our campus. I don’t know what it was about such structures, but so many of the universities had them, and they seemed to add that finishing touch to these small cities of learning that was just right. Also, there had been permanent rumors of couples sneaking in between patrols and grabbing a quickie with a view. I couldn’t help but think of doing that with Lily. Would she have gone for it?
I pulled out my phone and called her.
“Hi,” she answered.
One word and she was back inside my head.
“Hey, I’m back on campus,” I told her.
“I miss it sometimes.”
“You do?”
“Just a bit,” she said.
“Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry, for the other night. How was I on the phone?”
“You were fine.”
I didn’t believe her. “Uh huh. So, what are you doing awake at midnight?”
“Answering your phone call,” she joked.
“You got jokes. Seriously, I didn’t wake you up, did I?” I asked.
“No. I’m in the office, working.”
I could hear the smile in her voice.
“You there alone?” I asked, a little concerned that she likely was.
“Yes. I like being the only one here.”
Her voice was getting to me. It was as soft as she was the first day I met her, and I thought of her there alone, with the view of the city lights from her window.
Words came out of my mouth before I knew it. “You know, when you interviewed me back then, there hasn’t been a day since I haven’t thought about you sitting there with that pen in your hand and your hair hiding half your face. I think you saved me that day.”
She didn’t say anything. She was probably trying to figure out how to react to some young punk who ran around a field every day and was acting like an idiot after his very first trip to the big library. Her silence pushed a button. “I’ll talk to you later, Lily.” I didn’t give her time to say anything else. I hung up.
Instead of going back to my dorm, I wandered the pathways on campus, between buildings and wide open squares, through grassy, tree-lined expanses, feeling the moisture of the night cooling my skin, exploring my home of several years like I should have done before.