Shawn
Weird things are happening to me.
Lately, my fraternity brothers have used a few choice words to describe my erratic behavior. And they’re right. Desperate—a feeling I had never experienced until my Cinderella ran down the alley behind my house last week. Pathetic—what I look like right now, as I walk through campus, asking strangers for help and hoping that I don’t sound like a total loser. I sure as hell feel like one. Delusional—what I must be to seek her out as if I have any shot at finding her.
“Have you seen this girl?” I show a lanky boy with dark hair a picture of the masked girl.
He shakes his head and walks away.
Yup, I look like a total loser.
I repeat this process at least a dozen times before I swear people are dodging me as they pass. It also looks like I’m trying to find someone who’s legitimately lost—as in her face could be on a milk carton—when it’s not that serious. But I need to find her.
I lucked out by finding the heart charm on the ground. But my luck didn’t stop there. When the girl had walked into the house, a few people snapped her picture with their cell phones. She’s the kind of girl you want to photograph. A girl like that turns heads, even in a crowded room. Having the pleasure of kissing her, and then devouring her delicious body with my tongue was a bonus. I’d kill for one more second with her.
I haven’t been able to get her out of my head in over a week. That has never happened to me. With so many girls coming and going from my house, it’s not often that anyone, in particular, catches my eye. But she did. She has crept under my skin and made me feel something I’ve never felt before for a woman.
This compulsion forces me to search for the woman of my dreams and chase after her, even though she probably doesn’t want to be found. We had a deal—no names. She wanted it to be this way for a reason. But the connection we shared was so intense that I have craved it from the moment she’d walked away. I have to see her again. I need her back.
Scanning every face in the crowd, I study the curves of each girl and appraise their delicate features, all with one goal in mind—find my mystery girl. But, as each day passes, certain details are less clear, as if she were a drunken memory or an all too real dream I cannot shake. She was real. I wasn’t that drunk. In fact, I wasn’t drunk at all.
After Law and Ethics class, I meet up with my fraternity brothers. We share the same class, but they sit in the back of the auditorium, where I cannot see a fucking thing to take notes. Unlike my roommates, my grades in this class are shit. I’m not even sure why I chose law as a major. I was undecided until the second semester of freshman year. But I was not the same Shawn Finch everyone knows now. Nope, back then, I was still growing into some of my weight and had no clue how to talk to girls.
Joining a fraternity came in handy. I learned a lot from Luca, Mark, and Hunter. Those guys could sweet talk a girl in a white dress into eating a ketchup popsicle. Bash and Clay are the same as my fraternity brothers. Scoring girls was never a problem for them either. Between football and fraternity life, my life was and still is good. But my lack of experience had made me awkward, to say the least.
I chose Law as a major because of a hot girl. Without thinking it through, I was like why the fuck not? She’s the reason I barely made it through my final years. I should have switched to business or something more practical.
Mark, Luca, and Hunter wait for me outside by the picnic tables. As always, Mark has his usual smirk plastered across his face, looking like the fucking Joker. We have been roommates long enough for me to know what he thinks before he speaks.
“What did you get on the test?” Mark asks, taking a seat on top of the table. He plants his sneakers on the wooden bench and leans forward.
I glance away from him, annoyed that he’s doing this in front of Luca and Hunter. He loves to embarrass me.
“Nothing good,” I spit back, pissed about the D I got on the test.
“Hmm…” Mark murmurs and doesn’t say another word. He’s such a dick sometimes that I want to knock him off the table.
“You have to keep your grades up, man,” Mark says, after a long pause. “You can’t afford to lose your scholarships. I can talk to Teach for you if you want. I’m sure she’d be willing to give you some extra credit.”
Luca laughs and runs a hand through his dark waves, the muscles flexing beneath his fitted shirt. “You’re already working her over enough for all of us,” he says with a wink.
Slapping his hand down on his knee, Hunter laughs at Luca’s comment. Hunter is on the football team with me and about the same height and build. He’s on defense, where I am on offense with Bash and Clay. Hunter is also one of the shiest people I have ever met. He’s the type of person who only speaks when he has something important to say and mostly just listens to all of us fuck off with each other.
Mark shoots Luca a look that could cut through steel. They have been friends since they were kids. The two of them share a special bond that apparently doesn’t require words because Luca just shoves his hands into his pockets and clears his throat as if he’s already said too much in front of me. Hunter follows suit. The three of them are inseparable, practically joined at the hip.
We all know Mark is hooking up with our professor. You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out. Mark is so goddamn transparent, drooling over her in class and making stupid sexually laced remarks.
“Did you find the girl yet?” Luca asks to change the subject.
I shake my head. “Nope. I have no idea who she is or if she even goes to school here.”
“You are wasting your time,” Mark says, his tone serious. “If she wanted you to find her, she wouldn’t have run away in the first place.”
I hold up the gold chain around my neck for him to see. “She will want the charm back, and if so, she knows where to find me.” For a second, I feel like a total loser for showing my brothers that I have her charm on a chain.
Mark cocks an eyebrow at me as if I lost my mind. “Dude, you need help.”
At least Mark is right about one thing. I have not been able to shake that girl from my head. When I’m awake, I clutch her charm in my hand and think about the way she smelled, the way she tasted. Even in sleep, she occupies my thoughts. Every night since the party, I dream of her. Then, I wake, drenched in sweat and out of breath, as if I had been chasing after her again.
“You do, bro,” Luca says. “No girl is worth that kind of hassle.”
I roll my eyes at Luca because he has no room to talk after all the things he did to get his girlfriend. “You would do it for Izzie,” I counter.
He shrugs. “Yeah, but that’s because Izzie is the one. She’s the kind of girl you don’t let go.”
Annoyed with this conversation, I say, “I don’t see how my situation is any different than yours.”
“I have known Izzie for most of my life. She’s connected, part of my lifestyle. You don’t even know her name. There is a big difference between what I did and what you are doing.”
“I think they call it stalking.” Mark laughs.
I lean into Mark, just enough to shove him off the table, but he grabs hold of the wood before he falls off, regaining his position. “I’m not stalking her, dick.”
“You say chasing; I say stalking. Is she even real? Knowing you, I bet you chugged half the keg, passed out in the hallway, and imagined the entire thing.”
“Say what you want. I don’t care.” My tone is angry, defensive. “When I find her—and I will—then we’ll see who’s laughing at who. I didn’t make her up.”
Hunter slaps a hand on my back, almost knocking the air from my chest. “Don’t get all worked up over nothing. We have to get to practice. Use that aggression on the field instead of wasting it on these punks.”
I walk away without even bothering to say another word to Mark or Luca. Hunter stays behind to mutter his goodbyes, quickly joining me on the walkway. We stroll through campus without speaking until we get into the locker room.
“Look, man,” he says, sitting on the bench. “Don’t let them get under your skin. I believe you if it helps at all.”
I open my locker, pull out my practice uniform, and throw the clothes on the bench next to Hunter before taking a seat. Searching for this girl has me so mentally and physically drained that hearing my friends say aloud that I’m losing my mind only makes this harder on me. But Hunter is always the calm one, the voice of reason.
“I don’t even know why I’m looking for her, but I have to find her. I want to know her name. She already knew mine, so that tells me she goes to this school.”
Hunter looks at me with his deep brown eyes that pierce through me, a beat passing between us before he speaks. “I would have done the same thing for Silvia. Sometimes, you just know.”
“My mom always says that,” I say, not feeling as dumb as I did around Mark and Luca.
When he talks, I can open up to Hunter.
Hunter presses his palms to the wooden bench and pushes himself up to a standing. “Keep looking for her. She has to turn up at some point.”
I nod, and he digs through his locker for his uniform, leaving me with my thoughts.
Lost in my head, I don’t even notice someone tap me on the shoulder until I hear Coach Davenport’s deep voice in my ear. His guttural tone shakes through my body. “Finch, get your head out of the clouds and your ass in that uniform.”
I look over my shoulder at him, just enough that I can see his face turn red. “Sorry, Coach.”
“Get dressed and meet me in my office,” he growls and then walks away.
Like Hunter, Coach is a man of few words, and when he speaks, it’s always with a purpose. Although not uncommon to meet in his office, I’m a little nervous after being off my game for the past week. My grades have slipped even more than normal, and I played like shit last night. I deserve whatever lashing I am about to get from Coach.
After I get dressed and head to the back office, Coach is still bright red when I step inside, except he’s a deeper shade than before. He points to the chair across from him. I sink into the plastic chair and wait for him to begin, the silence between us maddening.
Coach leans forward and rests his elbows on the desk, his eyes locked onto me. “You have two weeks until the end of your last season with the Senators, and you decide to screw around again while we’re in the playoffs?”
Can you be more specific? I’ve done too much screwing around lately to keep track of anything in particular, so I keep my mouth shut.
He slides a piece of paper across the desk to me. “These are your grades and the semester has barely even begun. If you don’t get your act together, son, I will have no choice but to bench you for the remaining games. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, Coach. I want to finish out the season.”
“Then, you had better get your grades in order.” He raises his voice just enough to startle me, and then lowers it back to normal. “I spoke with the tutoring center about helping you pull up these worthless grades. The tutor you worked with last year is already with someone else, but I was able to find you a replacement for the rest of the school year.”
“Thanks, Coach,” I mutter, trying not to say too much until he finishes.
“I’m sure you know your way around the library by now. You are to report there after practice today to meet your tutor. I expect you to show up on time, or you will not play. Do you understand?”
“I’ll be there, Coach. Don’t worry. My grades will be back to normal in no time.”
He flashes a semblance of a smile. “Good, that’s good to hear. Now, get your ass on the field.”
When Coach gives an order, you follow it. So, I do as he says, keeping Hunter’s advice in mind as I head outside. I’m not going to stop looking for my mystery girl. But I need to get my head straight.