Two Years Later…
“Come on, dude. Wake the fuck up.” It’s the first thing I hear the moment the morning sun stings my eyes. Throwing my arm over my face, I groan, stretching out my legs.
“What time is it?” I grumble, scratching my head as I peer up at Wilson, LSU’s star running back and one of my closest friends.
We were lucky enough to get bunked together my sophomore year after my first roommate dropped out and moved back home. Wilson was just a freshman then, but we hit it off instantly. Since then we’ve pretty much been inseparable. He, like me, likes to play hard and work even harder, putting everything he has onto the field.
The one glaring difference between us is his drive to play ball professionally whereas I’ve chosen to walk away from it all together. I lost my love for the game a long time ago, and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t seem to get it back. So I rode out my scholarship and declined to speak to any reps from the NFL when they came knocking.
Will thought I had completely fucking lost it. He’s been dreaming of playing pro since he was little and can’t see a world where someone else might not want the same thing. He’ll no doubt go in the first round of the draft next year barring any crazy injuries. There’s no way he won’t. The kid is fucking magic on the field.
“It’s fucking late, that’s what time it is,” he says, throwing a pair of dress pants over his shoulder. “Only you would be late to your own graduation.”
It isn’t until then that I remember what today is.
“Fuck,” I groan, rolling to my side, the entire bottle of whiskey I killed last night burning the pit of my stomach.
Then I remember that my parents’ flew in this morning, or at least they were supposed to, and my stomach lurches for another reason entirely. I haven’t been home since two summers ago when I had yet another blow up with my father and he ended up kicking me out of his house.
Since then my relationship with my parents’ has only gotten worse. Quite frankly, I’m surprised they even want to come to my college graduation at all. At this point, I think our relationship is beyond salvaging, so I’m not really sure why they even care. Then again, I’m sure it’s nothing more than to save face. They’ll take pictures and smile so they can brag to all their friends about what amazing parents they are.
Fucking pathetic.
“You can always stay here with me.” I hear a female voice seconds before the bed shifts and an arm drapes over me from behind.
I glance over my shoulder to see bright green eyes, a pretty face, big red curls cascading over her slender shoulders, and while she’s beautiful, I’m flooded with the same sensation I get every time I wake up next to a different woman—guilt and disappointment.
I slide her arm off of me and quickly sit up, holding the sheet in place as I do because I’m very certain I have no clothes on underneath. I look up to find Will fighting a smile as he slinks out of the room and into the adjoining bathroom, shaking his head.
“You better hurry the hell up!” he calls over his shoulder, laughter in his voice, seconds before the bathroom door slams shut, vibrating the wall.
“Last night was amazing,” redhead croons as she slinks up behind me, pressing her bare chest against my back.
“Yeah, it was,” I grumble out, running my hand over my face as I lean forward, elbows on my knees, still feeling the effects of the alcohol from last night.
When a few of the guys from the team, most of which are graduating today, suggested we spend the night at the bar just off campus celebrating, it sounded like an amazing idea. Now, well, now I’m wishing like hell I had taken it a bit easy. At this rate, I’ll be showing up at graduation still drunk.
Glancing at the clock, I stand abruptly the second I register the time, the sheet falling from my lap. I hear an audible purr behind me but am too frantic to pay her even a second of attention. The ceremony starts in just over an hour, and I have to be there thirty minutes prior.
Racing around my room, I slip on a pair of boxers as I quickly gather the suit I plan to wear today, draping it over the back of the desk chair before turning to usher redhead out the minute she’s dressed. I thank her for an amazing time, like I have so many other women before her, not even bothering to try to remember her name; I know I won’t ever see her again.
I’ve watched countless girls walk out of my dorm room over the last four years, but every time there’s only one girl I see… Tess.
I can’t imagine she’d be proud of the man I’ve become or the fact that I’ve slept my way through half the student body just trying to fuck her out of my heart and my brain. It hasn’t worked yet and I doubt at this point it ever will, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.
Will exits the bathroom, successfully pulling me from my thoughts. I blink, realizing I’ve been standing in the same spot looking at the back of the door where redhead just exited for who knows how long.
I shake my head, quickly slipping past Will and into the bathroom. Hitting the shower and then shaving faster than I probably ever have in my entire life, I re-emerge within twenty minutes looking a lot more put together than I feel.
Will is decked out in a navy suit, his dark skin accentuating the white collar of his dress shirt making him look like he’s already a rich NFL star. Hell, with the traction he’s received already he might as well be.
“Bout time. You ready?” he asks, strapping a thick banded gold watch around his wrist before looking in my direction.
Even though he doesn’t graduate until next year, he and the entire rest of the team, along with the coaches are coming to the graduation ceremony to support their graduating teammates.
“As I’ll ever be.” I let out a breath, waiting for Will to slip on his dress shoes before following him out into the hallway.
***
Graduation goes by in a blur of smiling faces and handshakes. I swear one minute the ceremony is starting and the next I’m climbing into my car, tossing my cap and gown into the passenger seat, getting ready to head to the graduation luncheon.
I didn’t speak to my parents’ during the ceremony, but at least they showed up. I honestly don’t expect to see them at lunch, and I can’t say I’m upset by it. They’d only end up making this day about my failures, about what I didn’t accomplish that I should have.
I mean, fuck, I just graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine. Most parents would be satisfied with that, happy even, but not my parents’. More specifically, not my father. If it was up to him I would’ve followed in his footsteps—attended an Ivy League school and took over the practice from him someday.
He never accepted that I would do anything but that, and had I not fought so hard to get a scholarship, he might have actually gotten his way. Because then it would’ve been his school and his way or no way at all. Hell, he likely would’ve cut me off financially altogether had he not been so worried about what other people might think.
So, me being me, I burnt through more money in the last four years than I did the eighteen leading up to it. I maxed out credit cards on shit I didn’t need and managed to drain the account he set up in my name to damn near zero. I wish I could say I was bigger than that type of behavior, that I wasn’t stomping my foot like a child, but that simply wouldn’t be true.
Just one of the many things I’m not proud of.
Catching my eyes in the rearview mirror, I take a long hard look at myself and wonder what Tess would think of me now.
She was always my voice of reason. She would have set me straight, told me to grow up and stop acting like a spoiled child, and I would have listened to her, too. But Tess isn’t around anymore and even if she were, she probably wouldn’t want a damn thing to do with me.
The women, the drinking, my clear taste for self-destruction is not likely something she would understand.
I ignore the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach and try to focus on the road. I’ve been thinking about Tess a lot more than usual over the past few weeks now, and it’s brought up a lot of unresolved feelings that I have.
Maybe it’s because of graduation and knowing that all of this is coming to an end. Maybe it’s because I’ll be moving to California in just a few days having just secured an athletic assistant position working with one of the medical trainers at USC. I think I always knew I’d end up back there one day, but a part of me always thought it would be with Tess by my side. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s what has my insides in knots and my mind unable to focus on anything but the girl I left behind.
I know it sounds crazy, how someone can have such an effect on your life in such a short period of time. But in the almost year that Tess and I were together I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted out of life.
Truth be told, if it wasn’t for her I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to stand against my father and go after what I wanted. Not that she did anything specifically to drive that decision, but just being around her made me want to be more than what he wanted for me.
I wanted to be my own man, to stand on my own two feet and pave my own life. Tess made that feel possible.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her, that I don’t wish things had ended up differently. There’s been a hollow feeling in my chest since the moment I let her go, and no amount of women or booze could ever fill it.
Which leads me to the real reason why I’m so nervous about facing this next phase in my life because I think I’m finally realizing that I don’t want a future without Tess. And that scares me more than I thought it could.
I try to push the thoughts away as best I can, slapping on a fake smile the second I enter the luncheon and working the room like I always do. But once the seed is planted it starts to fester, and by the end of the day, nothing has been able to distract me.
Not even my parents’ showing up at lunch, which was a total shock, or the fact that for the first time since as long as I can remember my father actually shook my hand and treated me somewhat as an equal. Nope, not even that could stop the constant wheels from turning in my head.
My parents’ left shortly after lunch, heading to Georgia to visit my mother’s sister before flying back home in few days. If I wasn’t already in a state of shock over the way they both behaved toward me, I certainly would’ve been watching them drive away in the same car together. I can’t ever remember a time that my father has gone to Savannah with my mother. Add on the fact that he got into the car sporting the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen in a very long time, tells me there is definitely something going on with the two of them.
By the time I return to my dorm room hours later, having had a few drinks with the guys, the buzz running through my veins has only intensified my earlier thoughts of Tess. It’s like once I open up and let the voices talk I can’t get them to stop. And one voice is louder than all the others, the one that’s been singing in my ears since the moment I looked out into the crowd at graduation and realized that the one person I wanted to see smiling back at me wasn’t there. The voice that tells me it’s time.
It’s time to get my girl back.
I know I have a lot to figure out and a huge move coming u,p but for the first time in nearly four years something finally feels right, and I’m going to chase that feeling no matter where it leads me.
***
Stepping out of the airport into the bright sunlight, I take my first breath of New York air in over four years. God, I’ve missed this place.
After throwing my bag into the trunk of the cab, I quickly climb in the back seat, rambling off the address to the driver that I got from Courtney when I called her this morning. Funny, she didn’t seem at all surprised to hear from me even though it had been nearly two years since the last time I checked in.
I try to keep my nerves at bay, but it’s nearly impossible to do that the further into the city we get. By the time we reach the dorms where Tess lives, I feel like I’m seconds away from bouncing right out of my damn skin.
I can’t remember a time I felt so nervous.
Okay, that’s not true. But it’s been years, and that night at Tess’ senior prom feels like a lifetime ago. Just another thing I’ve tried to bury that has always found its way back to the surface. Just goes to show that some things are just not meant to be forgotten.
After paying the driver, I quickly exit the car, grabbing my bag before closing the trunk and turning toward the large four-story brick building in front of me. I take a deep breath in and then slowly let it out, trying to convince my feet to just fucking move already.
One step, two steps, three steps. I count each one as I make my way toward the front door. I’ve almost reached the sidewalk that wraps around the building when a sound I haven’t heard in years whips around me, freezing me where I stand.
I’d know that laugh anywhere. The sweet airiness of it intoxicating as it dances around me.
I shift, my eyes seeking out the source, frantically searching until finally, finally after three long years, they land on the one thing they’ve never stopped looking for… Tess.
Just the sight of her has all the air rushing from my body in an instant. She looks exactly as I remember and yet so different at the same time. Her long brown hair is now cut to her shoulders and there’s a grown-up quality to her that wasn’t there when we were kids. It makes me realize just how much a person can change over the years.
My heart constricts as I watch the smile spread across her face. It’s the same smile I used to see my future in. The smile that used to make me weak in the knees. A smile that still does.
That is, until I follow her gaze to the man standing next to her—the man whose hand is wrapped around hers and looking down at her like she’s all he can see. I know that look because it’s how I used to look at her.
The realization of it all crashes over me, but before I have time to react, her blue eyes find mine and time seems to freeze me in the moment, paralyzing my ability to do anything but stare back at the love of my life, realizing that my worst fear may have just become my reality.