I want to sleep for a week.
No, scratch that. I want to sleep forever.
Everyone thinks I should be out partying, celebrating the end of another perfect season, capped off by our second straight National Championship win.
“This is the season of your life, Falls!” I’ve heard from numerous fans. “The Miners were undefeated; you won the Heisman and a national title! Live it up! It’ll never be as good as this again!”
They’re right about one thing. It’ll never be this good again. The odds of the stars aligning the way they have this year are slim to none.
I’m starting to think there’s a very valid reason for that.
Even elite athletes whose bodies are honed to sustain long-term top physical performance can’t ride an unending wave of euphoria and adrenaline without eventually crashing.
I’m crashing so fucking hard.
The curse is already upon me. Evie keeps laughing off my superstition, but it’s all downhill from here. I know it. I think in some sense, even my dad knows it.
We’re just waiting to see where the chips will fall.
Right now I’m the chip. And I’m down for the count.
Our bed is so comfortable, so warm, smells so much like Evie that I never want to leave it. And I haven’t. For two straight days.
I’ve had months of always being “on.” For my teammates, the fans, the cameras. Smile! Shake hands! Play nice! Be a leader!
My mental exhaustion far outweighs any aches and pains that come with the end of a long season. Evie gets it. She’s been pampering my ass like I’m a spoiled princess ever since we got back from Florida.
Full body massages? Check. Homemade meals brought to me in bed? Double check. Hell, she’s even washed me in the shower so I had to do as little as possible. I draw the line at her wiping my ass, but I have this nagging feeling if I asked, she’d do that, too.
She’s always been supportive of me, always understood the mental and physical toll the season takes on me in a way most girls wouldn’t, but something’s off.
Mike’s concerns from before Christmas weigh on my mind. Julie’s warnings from last year haven’t quite come true, but…I don’t know.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid.
A few more days of R&R and I’ll feel normal again. Hopefully.
A loud crash in the living room followed by giggles and commands of, “Shut up, you idiot! You’ll wake Rob!” force me to drag my sorry ass out of bed.
The sight that meets me would be funny, if it wasn’t so damn annoying.
Alex and Evie are in a heap on the carpet, laughing and trying in vain to disentangle themselves from each other, their coats, and their snow-covered boots.
“Where’s Mike? He usually manages to keep you two in line.”
They freeze, then look up at me in slow motion, their expressions equal parts cat that ate the canary and cartoon-like caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Evie elbows Alex. “I told you we were being too loud! Now look! You woke him up!”
“I didn’t do anything you didn’t do!” Alex retorts, relaxing against the carpet and closing his eyes. “Mike bailed on us. He’s a wimp like you. Said he wanted to go home and sleep.”
Mental note: never believe Mike when he says he’ll keep an eye on Evie if she wants to go out without me. In all fairness to him, I should’ve known he’d want to leave early. He loves parties about as much as I do.
“What kind of trouble did you get in without Mike?” Beyond the obvious getting drunk out of their minds.
Evie huffs at me from her prone position on the floor. “I didn’t get into any trouble, I’ll have you know! I was an angel all night!”
I shift my gaze to Alex, waiting for him to tell me the truth.
“I got into plenty of trouble with a redhead, a blonde, and…a rainbow fairy? I dunno. Her hair was weird, but that was the hottest foursome on the planet.”
“Eew!” Evie shrieks, ineffectively pushing at Alex’s much larger body. “Get off me! I don’t want any of your communicable diseases!”
He just laughs as I pull Evie up from the floor. “Hey. I’m always safe. Can’t risk getting put out of commission by an STI or worse, knocking someone up.”
I’m not sure I agree with his logic that knocking someone up is worse than contracting HIV, but at least he always wraps it before he dips it. Alex might be a player, but he’s responsible. Just…not with Evie. Not when there’s more entertainment around than she can provide.
Thank God I trust him to never cross that line, even when he’s drunk and horny.
I hold Evie up, scanning her face as she smiles dreamily up at me. “How drunk are you? On a level of one to I’ll be holding your hair back in the bathroom later?”
She tips her head from side to side, seeming to actually think it over. “I’m gonna go with eight, and I’m actually feeling the need for you to make me scream in the bedroom later.”
Nope. Not eight. At least ten. For one, Evie’s never been a screamer. For another, she’s clearly forgotten we have an audience.
Not missing her suggestion, Alex cackles. “Can I stay and watch?”
“No,” Evie and I tell him in unison.
Okay. Maybe she is an eight.
“Aww, man,” he whines. “You’re no fun.”
“Since when are you a voyeur?” Evie questions. “I always thought you more of a hands-on kind of guy.”
He shrugs in response, never opening his eyes. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“You had a foursome tonight. You clearly aren’t begging anyone,” Evie sneers.
“All right. Time to break it up, kids.” I help Evie remove her coat and boots, then glance down to where Alex seems to have fallen asleep on the floor. I’ll come back for him later.
Evie doesn’t resist as I strip her and lay her down in our bed. For as much as she claimed she wanted some action, she’s quickly losing the battle with wakefulness.
Which is fine by me. I’m not a big fan of making love to her when she’s inebriated. I can’t shake off the fear that even though she’s my girlfriend, I’m taking advantage somehow. Just another little life-long gift, courtesy of her stalker.
I’ll never let myself assume she wants me the way those other guys believed she wanted them.
She wraps her arms around me when I try to stand up, effectively holding me hostage. “Come to bed. I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
Her skin feels warm under my lips as I kiss all over her face. “You don’t have to sleep alone anymore, at least until training camp in the summer. I’ll be back. Just let me get Alex up on the couch.”
She blinks her sleepy eyes at me, but relinquishes her hold. “Do you think he’ll always be that way?”
“What way?” It’s not like she has a lot of room to criticize him for getting pass-out drunk.
Evie chews on her lip and seems to sober before my eyes. Her voice comes out in a hushed whisper, thoughtful and laced with worry. “It’s like he uses sex as a coping mechanism. I’d understand if he didn’t do relationships because he wants to be young and single, but it feels like something more. Like he’s always trying to level up to the next lewd act. I hate to judge, but Rob, for Christ’s sake, he had a foursome tonight. Who does that? The Alex I know wouldn’t do something like that. It’s like there’s some disconnect between who he is and what he does.”
If Evie thinks that’s bad, what would she think of the numerous stories of full-on orgies Alex has supposedly participated in? She’s closer to an answer than she realizes, but it’s not my story to reveal. She and Alex have grown close over the years. If he wanted her to know, he’d have told her by now.
“I think you’re right. We shouldn’t judge. We do the same thing, just in different ways.”
“How do you mean? You and I aren’t inviting random people into our bed.”
No, but we haven’t exactly had traditional sex in our bed yet either, even though we’ve been together for over three years. I’m not about to point that out.
“We wear different personas in public than we do with each other. Alex is doing the same.”
Evie yawns, releasing a wave of Ouzo breath that forces me to cough. “I suppose. I always thought things would get easier as we got older. That we’d outgrow the high school drama and rumor mill. It’s so sad none of us can be ourselves. Even Mike’s not immune. He just hides it better.”
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Mike always seems like the most stable out of all of us, even if Chelsie cheating on him kind of fucked him up in the relationship department.
“When you stop and think about it, none of us has to hide who we are. It’s a choice we make for ourselves. In a lot of ways, it makes our lives easier, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re selective about who we trust. Most people are probably like that. Everyone has a story, and just like I told you back in high school: None of our lives are perfect; we’re all coping however we can.” I tuck the blankets around her to help her feel more secure until I come back to bed.
She latches onto my wrist before I can go. “Where do we draw the line, though? What if Alex gets so lost he never comes back? What if he loses himself in the pretend and our friend disappears forever?”
In her ocean blue eyes, I see all the things she’s leaving unsaid. It’s not just her worry for him, but for all of us.
I place a kiss on her lips. “I guess it’s lucky we have each other, then. If even one person sees us for who we really are, then we can’t ever be lost.”
I wish I felt half as confident as my words sound. Still, they seem to bring Evie some comfort. She snuggles down into the pillows and a small smile graces her lips.
“I see you, Rob Falls,” she whispers. “And I love what no one else sees.”
“I see you too, Mrs. Falls. And I’m honored to see what no one else sees.”
Although in some sense, it seems such a shame. Evie’s right in a sense. It is sad the world will never truly know us for who we are. In her case, it’s a crock no one else will see the most gorgeous woman in the world, though they think that’s what they’re seeing every day. More importantly, I wish Evie could see herself through my eyes. Everything she tries so hard to hide is what makes her beautiful.
The same goes for Alex.
I don’t know what Mike’s story is, but it must be similar.
I’m the only one hiding the true ugly.