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Sitting my phone down very slowly I cross my arms over my chest and stare up at the ceiling.
Last night was wild. Deadly actually.
Not the way a twenty-first birthday usually goes down, but then again who celebrates themselves in the first place?
A lot of random occurrences. Maybe this is what I get for breaking my schedule and trying to partake in a night out with the general populace. This is why I should stay in, study, and get a good job…which has always been the plan and has worked like clockwork for the last three and a half years for me. Only one more semester and I’m out of here, into the real world with real people, not just the bevy of self-entitled college kids who drive the latest model Mercedes, have the newest iPhones, and spend five figures a year on Equinox memberships and the trainers and organic juices that go along with it.
This isn’t real life…is it?
I sure hope not, especially if it involves murder on the one night I try and have some fun.
My phone vibrates but my mind is turned off and I don’t reach for it. Instead I roll over onto my side. I need to get some sleep…if that’s even possible right now.
5
Sam
My ass finds the wooden bench in front of my narrow metal locker with the horizontal slits at the gym I frequent.
Leaning forward I rest my forearms on my thighs just above the knees, trying to catch my breath from the intense workout I just completed.
No matter how fast I move the rowing machine, how many squat reps I get in at heavy weight, no matter how many pool sprints or punches to the heavy bag, my pulse will never beat like it does when I’m taking a life.
Until her.
She. Changes. Everything.
Including my schedule, which was a fucking mistake. And I don’t make mistakes.
Staring down at the plain tile floor with the mildew-darkened grout there are sounds all around me. The clang of metal doors opening and slamming shut. Duffel bags thump onto the other benches in the surrounding rows. Even the weights being dropped and racked out in the gym echo into the locker room, dueling with the sound of shoes scuffing and squeaking across the floor, the hiss of hot water from the shower and flip-flops snapping across the tile.
Not to mention the hiss of the aerosol cans emitting body spray, deodorant, hairspray and anything else that does a poor job of covering up the mix of sweaty gym clothes and body odor.
Grabbing the protein bar next to me I rip off the packaging with my teeth and then shove the entire damn thing in my mouth, causing it to fold in half as my molars get to work on it.
The energy drink next to me sits untouched. I don’t drink when I eat, it’s a rule…supposedly better for digestion. But how can I digest the actions I just took when it comes to Erica?
I went to her too fast, too aggressively. For all I know she was in my apartment within an hour or two before I pretended to bump into her in front of her place.
Does she know how easy it was to track her down? How quick the campus administrator was to give me her contact info when I called pretending to be her brother serving in the Middle East, wanting to talk to her for her birthday, which the administrator surely could verify right in front of his face with her record pulled up?
How I told him I was late and felt so bad, which made him feel bad and he handed over not just her phone number but her address, where I said I wanted to send her a package.
Oh, I brought a package all right. Me.
But too soon.
It’s ironic that I’m sitting in a locker now, the same atmosphere where teammates would play the blame game after a loss. But there is no one to blame but me. As a man who lives as a lone wolf the buck starts and stops with one man and one man only. Me.
And I take full responsibility. For everything.
Which is why I have complete confidence that she will be mine.
Does she think I didn’t see the way she looked at the body I keep perfectly sculpted year round? She probably thinks it’s for vanity purposes, but that’s not even close.
When I was a kid I was the stereotypical buck o’ five soaking wet weakling, a pushover. I struggled to walk against the direction of a strong Santa Ana wind. That’s how skinny I was.
And powerless.
