AllFreeNovel
Share Us
43
Taylor
The Stallions won the game in exciting fashion. Everyone was buzzing with excitement and energy.
But all I could think about was Brody Carter, standing on the sideline, hanging his head after his fumble.
We took a bus back to the Nashville airport. Now that it was obvious how Isabella was treating me, the other girls acted like I was radioactive again. Nobody sat next to me at the airport gate. Patti was normally friendly and talkative on planes, but as soon as we sat down, she put her headphones on and pretended like my seat was empty.
I wanted to reach out to Brody. To tell him I was sorry. Or that I was glad the team won despite that one bad play. Everything felt inadequate, or worse, patronizing.
Instead, I purchased the in-flight Wi-Fi and watched the Broncos game on my phone. They got out to a big early lead, and unlike the Stallions, they never gave it up. The final score was 42 - 13.
The Stallions would play against the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game. The media was going to love it. A rematch of last year’s playoff game, but with bigger stakes this time: the winner would go to the Super Bowl. The Rocky Mountain Rivalry was about to get cranked up another notch.
It felt hopeless, though. The Broncos had absolutely crushed their opponents today, while the Stallions barely beat the Titans—a team which they should have handily defeated. Not to mention the Stallions had lost both regular-season games against the Broncos.
How could they possibly beat the Broncos now?
I needed a distraction, and the universe had a way of delivering sometimes. The next day was the beginning of the spring semester at Utah. As I drove to campus, I felt a pang of dread at the possibility of the media returning. I didn’t know what I would do if my building was surrounded by reporters and camera crews.
But when I pulled into the faculty lot, all was peaceful.
My first class should have been at eight in the morning, but that was the one the Dean took away from me and gave to Eric. So my actual first class began at ten. It was in a big lecture hall with stadium seating. I arrived early, set up my laptop to the overhead projector, and readied my slides.
It was a full class of a hundred and twenty students, and they slowly filled into the room. By the time the clock struck ten, nearly every seat was full. That would change as the semester went on and students began to slack off, but for now, I had a full audience.
“Good morning, and welcome to Earth Science 101,” I began.
Lecturing was calming for me, even on the first day of class when we mostly just went over the syllabus and schedule. I fell into a routine of explanations, information, and a few well-rehearsed rock jokes that drew an acceptable amount of laughter. For a while, it took my mind off all the other problems in my life.
Until class ended, and one girl came up to me with a piece of paper in her hand.
“Professor Fox? I was wondering if you can get an autograph for me. My boyfriend is a huge fan, and his birthday is coming up…”
It took me several embarrassingly-long seconds to realize she didn’t mean my autograph. She meant Brody’s.
“If you do not walk away right now,” I said, “then you are getting an F for the semester.”
I took only a small amount of satisfaction from the way she hurried out of the hall. Moments later, the satisfaction disappeared as Eric strode inside.
“You certainly put the fear of God into that young woman,” he said. “Did you tell her about the Proterozoic Conundrum?”
“What do you want?”
Eric smiled that smug smile of his. The smile of a man who always thought he knew best—and usually did, too.
“I came to reiterate my offer to you. It really is for the best, Taylor. Your boyfriend is playing horrendously. I try to stay as far away from sports talk as possible, but even I heard about his fumble yesterday. It stands to reason that you two are a poor match. Beauty and the beast.”
“Eric,” I said, “will you please just fuck off?”
He blinked in surprise, but smiled. “It appears his locker room talk has certainly rubbed off on you. Soon you will be spitting and scratching yourself.”
I grabbed an eraser from the whiteboard and hefted it like I was Dallas Lockett about to make a pass. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to start throwing things.”
For a moment, he looked like he might make another quip about how Brody was rubbing off on me and leading me toward a more violent nature. He wisely refrained and left instead.
The only thing that kept me sane that week was that I had a good group of students in my classes. They were awake and attentive, which was all you could really ask for from a group of nineteen and twenty year olds who had to listen to someone lecture for an hour.
