Page 40 of The Way the Heart Breaks: Jade’s Story

“I’m not losing the opportunity to see two of my men get into a D1 university, and I’ll be on the bleachers when they both go pro.”

I run up the stairs and throw Lucas’s bedroom door open; thankfully, his bed is empty. “Where you at?”

He walks out of the bathroom, toweling off his hair and looks me over, then he rolls his eyes and drops the towel. “Spill it.”

“Got a call from Saville today; he wants to meet with⁠—”

He cuts me off as he walks past me to his closet. “You’re a shitty liar.”

Fuck. “Not lying. He wants to meet with us tomorrow.”

He walks out, pulling on a pair of boxers. “Which means he talked to you today.”

“Why do you always assume that?”

“Aside from the fact it’s true?” He pulls a T-shirt over his head.

“Yeah.” I realize I’ve just confirmed. “Fuck.”

“He likes you more,” Lucas chuckles at my obvious fumble.

“Not true.” I start to sit on his bed and think better of it.

He rolls his eyes. “He tolerates me.” Then he nods to the bed. “Clean bedding. Sit and spill it.”

“How about you and I go for a ride?”

“You’re messing with me, right?” Lucas asks as soon as I cross Route 90 heading. “Blue balls were at the bottom of our list, Tommy.”

“There’s a method to his madness.” I laugh.

“There better be.”

I decide to ease into the rest of the crap I’m leaving out. “He’s played with the stats, watched them practice. Saville says there are two new studs that have been out to pasture and are jumping back on the field.”

“They any good?”

I look over and laugh at him, “Does it really matter? We’ll carry them all the way.”

“Damn right we will, then it’s you and me, and Notre Dame.”

“We Irish now?” I grin.

“We’re going to be whatever the hell we want to be.”

“Damn right we are.” I nod to the radio. “Now find me some country music, so when the ladies want to dance at homecoming, we can sing along.”

He doesn’t move, so I hit the button and scan, stopping when I hear the twangiest song I can find and crank it up.

“Jesus L Christ.” Lucas pulls the brim of his hat down low and slouches in his seat.

By the second chorus, I sing along, “Well, I ain’t first class, but I ain’t white trash. I’m wild and a little crazy, too. Some girls don’t like boys like me, aww, but some girls do.”

As he heads into a town, he and I have never perused another song starts, the one by the guy who made every idiot in our school think mullets were cool, and Lucas and I bust up, and then both of us sing along.

We pass two trucks, one loaded with hay, another pulling a hay wagon right down Main Street; both say Ross Farms on the side, and two trucks behind it say Ross Construction.

“First one to fuck a Ross gets to choose where we spend Spring Break.”