College was everything it had promised to be. Actually, it was better. Football players were gods on the Brooks campus and we were treated as such. Sure, it was unfair, but it would continue on long after I was gone so, as my reasoning went, why not enjoy it while I could?

Academics were an afterthought - a box to tick. And literally everyone around me made it clear that they would do everything possible to make sure I kept my grades up. Now, I was never a straight-A student, but I wasn't a straight-C student either. Solid B- seemed to be my territory. So it wasn't too much trouble to keep that average up, but it was also nice to know there was nice, big safety net waiting to catch me if I fell.

Outside of academics, it was all gravy. Constant parties - and not the kind of cheap beer in run-down apartments parties that a lot of my non-football playing peers went to but parties in beautiful houses stocked with expensive liquor and attended by the cream of the Brooks crop. Media attention just added to my reputation - even during my first freshman semester, there were sports reporters regularly showing up on campus or e-mailing me asking for interviews.

A few of my teammates and frat brothers went a little too far - too much drinking, too much sex, that sort of thing. But I'd been seized with a new purpose and although I definitely indulged I never went too far. Working with the team fitness coach had me in the best shape of my life.

The one thing I haven't mentioned, the one thing that my friends would probably have placed at the very top of the list of 'Reasons To Love Being At Football Player At Brooks' - was the women. Never before, or since, have I ever been around such a sheer number of beautiful women. To say that we took advantage would be an understatement. Well, it would be an understatement for everyone but me. I got away with it at first, telling my baffled teammates when they witnessed me, once again, turning down the obvious advances of some total hottie, that I was at college to work on my game, that I didn't have time for girls in my life. After awhile, though, it started to become odd. Even to me.

I thought Natasha Greeley would, with time and distance, fade from my mind. What actually happened was almost the exact opposite. The more women threw themselves at me - and some of them were incredibly persistent - the more the single thought grew in my mind with every new girl I met: she's not Tasha.

And it was true. None of them were Tasha. They were pretty, yes. Beautiful, even. But not as beautiful as Tasha. Not as smart or together as Tasha. Tasha would never have thrown herself at any man the way they threw themselves at me. She had too much self-respect. Too much dignity. And Tasha knew how to take care of herself. She was a grown-up and I was surrounded by oversized children - male and female. The girls at Brooks came from wealthy families. Their clear belief that the world was their oyster, that nothing bad was ever going to happen to them, was one I couldn't even scorn. They were probably right, after all. But the minute something went wrong, they fell apart. A bad grade was cause for tearful meetings with professors, phone calls from parents, make-up work. The guys, too. One of my teammates broke his ankle falling drunk down a flight of stairs and spent the next six weeks in a state of pure rage at the people responsible for building the stairs, Brooks itself for daring to have the stairs located where they were and the football coaches for reprimanding him. He was angry at everyone except the one person who was responsible for his drunk ass falling down in the first place: himself.

Tasha would never have acted like that. She knew shit happened and she dealt with it with the kind of inner strength that money and privilege could never buy.

But Tasha was gone. She was back in Little Falls, working her ass off to support herself and her family, probably dating. I couldn't even think about her dating other people without wanting to hunt them down and rip them apart, so I tried not to think of it.

But yeah, people noticed. The guys started giving me shit for it. Anytime they spotted a girl trying to flirt her way into my good graces (and that was often) one of them would come up to us and warn her off, tell her she was wasting her time because I didn't have room for girls in my life, I was too busy memorizing poems for Lit class and making myself kale shakes. It never worked, either. It just made the girl in question see me as even more of a challenge. And remember, these ladies were not used to hearing the word 'no.' The come-ons were pretty crazy. A few of them did things like cornering me in bathrooms at parties and dropping to their knees, smiling up at me and biting their lips as they reached for my zipper.

My sex drive wasn't dead. It just wasn't interested in any of those easy, vapid girls at Brooks. No matter how much I tried to exorcise Tasha's ghost from my heart, it always came back.

After a year or so of taking shit for my monk-like ways, I finally met a girl I could spend time with. Her name was Jess and she had long red hair and a friendly, outgoing manner. We were at a party when I ran into her in the kitchen, just taking a breather from the antics. I remember looking at her, waiting for the come-on. And then realizing she was doing the exact same thing - waiting for me to hit on her. When it didn't happen, she just giggled and apologized.

"Sorry, Kaden. You are Kaden Barlow, right?"

"Yep, that's me."

"Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, sorry about that. I guess I'm just so used to fending off frat boys that I don't know what to say when one of them doesn't immediately try to get into my pants."

"You might be surprised," I told her. "Being the quarterback kind of puts me in a similar position, believe it or not. The girls here put the girls in high school to shame when it comes to knowing what they want and going after it."

She leaned back against the kitchen island and offered me her hand. "I'm Jess, by the way. And I promise not to try and take advantage of you."

I laughed and asked her what she was studying and we ended up spending the rest of the night chatting to each other. At one point one of the other football players - a meathead named Troy - came in and widened his eyes at us.

"Damn!" He yelled, to no one in particular. "Barlow's finally going for it! You good, man? Do you know where to put it?"

If he hadn't been so drunk he could hardly walk I would have told him to fuck off. As it was he soon lost interest and wandered off.

"Sorry about that," I said to Jess, who was watching the interaction with amusement. "Football players aren't well-socialized."

She laughed and shrugged. "Yeah, I kinda figured that out my first week here."

We kept talking and it was actually strange to be in that situation - alone, with a girl - and not feel like she was going to try and jump on me at any moment. It was Jess herself who brought it up, in a pause in our discussion of football players and football culture at Brooks.

"Just so you know," she said, "I'm not single. I'm not trying to be rude and it doesn't feel like you're hitting on me but if you are, I just wanted to let you know. You know, so you don't waste your night talking to a girl who's just going to turn you down at the end of it."

"Oh that's OK," I said. "I'm not single, either."

It was only a few seconds later that I realized what I'd said and tried, clumsily, to correct myself:

"I mean, I am single, but I'm not looking if you know what I mean? It's a huge relief to be able to talk to a woman and not have to worry about whether or not you're going to stick your tongue down my throat at the first opportunity."

Jess giggled at that. "It's funny, isn't it? You guys are like the alpha males of the place but in a weird way you have to worry about the things women worry about, don't you? Getting hit on all the time, stuff like that. Is it really that bad?"

I shrugged. "Yes. I guess the vast majority of us - the football players - just enjoy it, though. Like, it's not a bad thing if you're into it, you know?"

"Yeah, they've got a buffet of women in front of them and they're determined to sample every dish before we graduate."

I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."

"So you're not single then? Or you are?" She asked, catching me in my own confusing statements.

"Uh," I said, thinking. "I'm single. Completely single. I guess. It's so weird to be talking about this, I don't tell anyone this - but the truth is I don't think I've gotten over my girlfriend back home. My ex-girlfriend, I should say."

"Ah," Jess nodded knowingly. "I understand. Was she your first?"

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean-"

"Wow, this girl really did a number on you, huh?"

Jess was joking, continuing the conversation in the light-hearted vein it had been started in, but I was starting to get annoyed at myself for being so flustered. What the fuck. I hadn't seen Tasha for well over a year, why was I getting all tongue-tied about her in the middle of a party?

"Nah, it's not that," I said, which was the exact opposite of the truth. "I just wasn't sure what you meant. She was the first girl I loved, yeah, but she wasn't the first girl I was with. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah. I mean, you were the quarterback in high school too, weren't you? I bet your bedpost is probably one big notch."

Part of me wanted to protest that. It made me sound like some sleazy player. But the truth of it was that I was a sleazy player - or I used to be. Before Tasha, anyway. And now I was in college surrounded by young, willing women throwing themselves at me, and none of them raised any interest in me at all.

"What about you?" I asked, eager to change the subject, feeling that I'd already revealed too much, and to a stranger at that. "You said you're with someone?"

Jess gave me a rueful little smile. "Yeah. It's sort of the same thing as you, though. He's back in our hometown, we're trying to make it work."

"And is it?"

"So far. I mean, it's not easy. And it makes me feel like kind of an outcast with all my friends dating around here at Brooks and me always on the sidelines. But it's only four years, right? I fly back to see him every holiday, we Skype almost every day. I miss him and we get into stupid fights a lot but we're doing our best."

I spent most of the night in the kitchen with Jess, just chatting about life. She was easy to talk to - probably because I knew she wasn't going to start ripping on me every time I admitted to having emotions, and she seemed relieved, as well, to have found someone who could maybe understand a little of what she was going through. At the end of the night we exchanged contact details and within a couple of weeks were firm friends.

When I had time we would meet up on campus. We tried it a few times in my dorm - our common area, the ex-ballroom, was perfect for hanging out - but she would just have to endure getting hit on by every single football player that walked into the room and that got old fast.

We learned a lot about each other's relationships - her current, mine former. Jess was full of questions about Tasha, about why we hadn't tried to make it work and all of that. Eventually, under her gentle but persistent questioning, the whole story came out.

"I don't know why she refused to even give it a chance," I said one day over some weird iced chai concoction Jess had insisted I try. "I mean, you're making it work, right? Sure it's not easy or perfect but you're doing it. I wish Tasha had just given it a chance."

"It sounds like she was scared to death," Jess replied, swirling the ice cubes around in her glass.

"What?" I asked, confused. "What would she be scared of?"

Jess took a sip of her drink and rolled her eyes. "Listen, Kaden," she said. "Don't take this the wrong way, but men can be really fucking dumb when it comes to women. Are you seriously asking me what she had to be scared of?"

I sat back, wracking my brain. Scared? Tasha? But we'd worked things out, hadn't we? At least about prom night and what happened there? "I don't know," I said, conceding the point. "I don't know. I explained the prom situation to her - eventually, I mean, when she would let me talk to her - I would never have done anything to hurt Tasha. I still wouldn't do anything to hurt her. I honestly don't see what she had to be afraid of."

"Yeah," Jess said, speaking a little slower. "You explained prom to her but did you ever look at the bigger picture? At the risk you were asking her to take?"

"What risk?!" I asked, hearing my own voice rising and feeling that same frustration I'd actually felt at the time with Tasha herself. "What the fuck?! I loved her, I didn't cheat on her and I was totally willing to go long-distance while I was away. You're acting just like her right now, Jess. You're telling me oooh, everything is scary etc. etc. but you're still not actually telling me why. Fuck!"

Jess looked at me over the table, raising a single, skeptical eyebrow and saying nothing.

"What?" I asked after a few moments had passed, still irritated by that cryptic female communication style I could never quite decipher.

"OK," she said, eying me. "I'll try and answer this on one condition."

"Sure. Yeah, anything."

"That you actually listen. I mean that you don't interrupt or argue, you just listen."

I was about to protest when Jess's words sank in. So I held my hands up and say back, saying nothing.

She waited to see if I was going to stay quiet before starting.

"OK, Kaden. Here's the thing. I don't think you're a bad person, alright? Let's just get that straight right now. I can tell you really loved this girl - that you still love her, it seems. But you're also one of those guys who's not used to hearing the word 'no' aren't you? I mean, you might as well admit-"

"Yeah," I said. "I am."

"Right. So. I feel like you were so desperate to hang on to her that you didn't really listen to any of her concerns or-"

"No," I cut in, "no, Jess, that isn't-"

"Kaden!" She yelled, loud enough to make everyone at the surrounding tables stare over at ours. "You said you would listen. I didn't even get a sentence out, there, and you're already arguing. Just stop, OK? This shouldn't be difficult, you know. You're twenty years old, you should have acquired the ability to listen to people by now."

I reached sheepishly for my cold, overly sweet tea and nodded. "OK, sorry. Sorry, Jess, go on."

"Now. As I was saying - and as you have just so perfectly demonstrated - I'm not sure you're the greatest listener. Not all the time, but maybe when there's something you want, or something you feel strongly about. You don't have much to worry about, do you, Kaden? I'm not trying to insult you or say your life has been easy or anything like that. But your parents are well off. So are mine, I admit it - I haven't ever really struggled, either, so don't think I'm being condescending right now."

"OK..." I said, feeling my heart rate rising with the effort it was taking not to cut in.

"All I'm saying, Kaden, is that it sounds like Tasha had a pretty different life, you know? It sounds like she had to grow up way before we did - if either of us can even say we're grown-up at this point, anyway. She had responsibilities that we didn't have. You said she had really good grades, right? But she couldn't go to college because her family relied on her?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"A long-distance relationship is hard, Kaden. I'm not just saying that, either. Me and Mark are both from relatively wealthy families. The only thing we have to do is make sure we don't fail out of college. Even with literally zero real, adult responsibilities, it is still almost impossible to maintain things, do you get that? Neither of us has to work, let alone full-time like Tasha does. Neither of us has a sick family member or a young family member that needs looking after, especially living in the same house. I mean, I don't want you to feel like I'm insulting you here but did you ever think about how much time that must take? How much effort? Do you understand what you were asking her for?"

For a moment or two, I was tense, poised to fire a response at Jess, to tell her how wrong she was, how she didn't know how it was between Tasha and I. But before I could say anything I just felt a kind of awful acceptance crawling through me. She was right. Tasha had even told me that she was scared, that day we met in the coffee shop after she decided to hear me out about the incident at our prom.

"Shit," I said, looking Jess in the eye. "Oh shit, Jess. I fucked up. Didn't I? I didn't even mean to. You probably won't even believe this but I thought...I thought I was fighting for us, you know? I thought I was fighting for me and Tasha, to be with her."

Jess reached across the table and gave one of my hands a squeeze. "I know, Kaden. Believe me, I know. This isn't about me thinking you're selfish or anything like that. These situations can seem so clear from one side, I understand that. And it's not like her family situation was the only thing, either."

"It wasn't?" I asked despairingly. "Jesus, this feels like a really unpleasant kind of therapy, you know."

"Ah," Jess giggled, "but you got free tea! Worth it!"

"We should have done this somewhere I could have had a drink. A real drink, I mean. I need one."

"We don't have to do this," Jess said quietly. "We can talk about it some other time if you want. I think one of my roommates has a six-pack in the fridge back at our apartment, too. We could go drink a beer and talk about something else."

"No," I sighed. "This sucks, but I want to hear it. In some messed up way, I feel like I need to hear it. So go on, you've cut my chest open, why not finish the job and rip my heart right out?"

I was laughing as I spoke, clearly joking around, but I knew - and Jess knew - that it wasn't really a joke. She started talking again, both of us committed, by that point, to having the conversation in full.

"You were her first, weren't you? I mean, she lost her virginity to you? And you were her first boyfriend, too?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Yeah, I was. I told you we only had sex that one time, too. Afterward - even after we sorted out the whole prom mess - it was like she was wary of me somehow."

"Uh-huh," Jess said. "Yeah, that's not surprising. She was a smart girl, right Kaden? She saw how your life was, all the girls, the NFL scouts at your high school games? You think she acted like that because she was over you or she wanted to hurt you?"

"I have no idea why she acted like she did, Jess," I sighed. "I honestly have no fucking clue."

"No, you do know. You said it yourself. She was scared."

"Scared of what?" I asked, frustrated to the point of restlessness.

"Of how she felt about you, probably. She knew you were leaving Little Falls and she knew she wasn't leaving - that she couldn't leave. What I'm saying is that Tasha knew there was an end-point on the relationship. You're never going back to Little Falls. It wasn't going to be two years, or four years of college and then a reunion, was it? As long as you manage not to get your throwing arm caught in any industrial machinery, you're going to the NFL. Everyone knows it. I probably would have done exactly what she did, you know. It was self-protection."

Why did it make sense, now that Jess was saying it? How hadn't I figured out that Tasha's behavior was most likely due to how strongly she felt about me? And not about her losing her feelings for me at all?

"I could have taken care of her," I said to Jess, almost cringing at the begging note in my voice. "If I get drafted next month I could take care of her whole family. I would have! I just didn't - I didn't think of any of the things you're telling me right now."

"And do you think that's what Tasha or her family wants? I mean, I don't know them at all so maybe I'm wrong but they sound pretty proud to me. It's not always as easy as paying the bills, Kaden. So if you're thinking of calling her when you get home tonight and promising to pay off their medical bills, I suggest you think about that."

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Goddamn, Jess. Are all chicks psychic? I didn't even realize I was thinking about that until you just said it. The thought was already there in my mind - message Tasha, offer to pay her mom's bills. How do you guys do that?"

"It's a side-effect of estrogen," Jess said, grinning. "Psychic abilities. We generally don't talk to men about it."

It was lucky for Jess I had football practice that afternoon - if not, I probably would have stayed there into the night, peppering her with questions about Tasha, women, life in general. When she dropped me off at the practice field she grabbed my arm just before I got out.

"Kaden?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"

"Stupid?" I asked. "Like what?"

"Like calling her up and making promises you haven't really thought through, that would be my first guess."

"Don't worry," I reassured her. "I'm still an idiot. But I'm not as big of an idiot as I used to be."

That was the basic truth of it, too. When I got back to my dorm after practice and had a few moments to myself I lay on my bed and scrolled through the contacts list on my phone. There was Tasha's number, still there because I'd never quite been able to bring myself to delete it. But I wasn't going to call her - and not just because Jess told me it would be a bad idea.

Tasha probably had a whole new life for herself. New friends, new daily routine, maybe even a new man. In fact, almost certainly a new man. She was young and gorgeous and smart. The exact kind of girl who gets snapped up right away. I put the phone down eventually, unable to deal with the way it made me feel to think of her with someone else. My brain refused to let it go, though. It did that a lot. I'd be sitting in class or hanging out with friends or in the middle of a conversation with one of my football coaches and an image of her with a man - a man who wasn't me - would pop into my head. Was someone else putting their hands on those curves? Was some other man enjoying the way her breath quickened when he touched her in a certain way?

I almost ran into the kitchen to find a beer - a beer we weren't allowed to have but that everyone knew we had and no one cared to stop us having - and twisted the cap off, taking a big, long swig and praying the alcohol would take effect before any more gruesome scenarios decided to play themselves out in my mind's eye.

When was I going to get over her? It had been almost two years at that point. Everyone always said time heals all wounds but I was starting to wonder how much time. Wasn't two years enough? How much longer was I going to have to wait?

There didn't seem to be anyone home so I slumped down on one of the sofas in the common room with a second beer, trying to distract myself, trying to think of anything so long as it wasn't Natasha Greeley. The NFL draft was coming up, that should have been the main thing on my mind. I'd already met with representatives of three or four teams. Middle-aged men with a slightly sleazy, salesman-y air about them, hinting at all sorts of perks and profits to choosing their team, even if I ended up drafted by another.

I'd done the NFL Combine in February with all the other NFL hopefuls, but everyone knew that for me it was mostly a formality, one last checkmark in a long list of boxes that had already been definitively checked by my performance as Brooks' main quarterback. Training camp started in July - so although I had no idea where that would be, I knew it wouldn't be at Brooks.

Lying on my bed I was seized with a weird kind of regret. Maybe it was fear. Wherever I ended up I still planned on finishing my degree - eventually. But what about everything else? The college 'experience'? Had I just wasted two years of what I was probably going to look back on as the best years of my life pining for a girl I lost before I even left Little Falls?

No, that was stupid. I'd participated in all the usual college shenanigans. All except girls. And I didn't regret it - how could I, I just didn't feel the interest that my fellow students and players seemed to. But what if I did regret it, one day far in the future?

The sound of my phone ringing finally succeeded in shaking me out of my mental spiral and I picked it up. It was my dad's number. That was odd. My parents usually called on Sundays, sometimes on Wednesdays if I was around. It was a Monday. A little tickle of fear ran through me.

"Hello?"

"Kaden, son. It's your dad here."

My dad sounded weird. His voice was oddly thick. Was he - was he crying? Alarm bells suddenly started blaring in my head.

"Dad?" I asked, pleading with the universe to let it be nothing. "Is - is something wrong?"

Silence on the other end, followed by the sound of throat clearing.

"Dad!" I shouted, sitting straight up on the sofa. "Is something wrong? What's going on? What's-"

"Kaden, it's your mother."

My head started spinning as soon as I heard the word 'mother.' I listened to my dad take another deep, shaky breath.

"She's been in an accident. A car accident. I'm at the - I'm at the hospital."

"I'm coming home," I said, half-expecting my dad to protest. When he instead agreed and told me that that was probably a good idea, it freaked me out completely.

"Dad?" I asked, as my stomach started to feel heavy with dread. "Is she OK?"

"They don't know, Kaden. It just happened. They - the doctors told me they don't know. She's in surgery right now."

"OK," I said, both shocked at the emotion in my father's voice and suddenly filled with an intense desire to be there for my parents. "I'm leaving right now, Dad. For the airport. I'll call you when the plane lands. OK?"

"Yes, OK, son."

He sounded so lost. I had never heard him sound like that, not ever in my life. It felt like being in a house and feeling the foundation starting to shift underneath you.

"Dad?"

"Yes, Kaden?"

"I'm coming right now. I'll be there soon. If you talk to mom, tell her I'm coming. Tell her I love her. And also, Dad," I paused, steadying my voice. "I love you."