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“And what year are you?”
“I’m a freshman. I took a few years off after high school.”
“What’s your major?”
“Right now? Football,” he said with a laugh.
“Football?” I said feeling the air release from our bubble.
“Yeah. I’m here on a scholarship. So right now I’m eating and breathing it.”
I stared at Nero not hearing another word after he said “football.” A pain shot to the pit of my stomach until I was forced to cut him off.
“No! I’m sorry, no. I can’t do this. Football? Hell no!” I said stepping away and pointing my finger. I stared at him again as the shock washed across his beautiful face. Why did he have to be a football player?
“Fuuuck!” I shouted in utter frustration before storming off and not looking back.
Chapter 2
Nero
What just happened? One minute I’m talking to the guy I had met the night before. Things were going well. I was feeling like he could be someone special. Then, out of nowhere he yelled at me and told me to fuck off.
“What the fuck just happened?” I shouted at Kendall as he walked away.
He didn’t turn around or reply. A part of me wanted to chase him down and force him to tell me, but I wasn’t going to. Did it have to do with me playing football? How? Why?
Football had always been what everyone liked about me. Even the people who hated me loved me when I stepped onto the field. Hell, even my mother loved me when I stepped onto the field.
For so many years she had been missing from my life. Not because she had abandoned me like my father. But because she had disappeared into her own world. And the only time she would rejoin this one, would be cheering for me under Friday night lights.
Football had been how I and my newly discovered brother, Cage, bonded. Football is what is paying for my escape from the small town I grew up in. Football has given me everything good in my life.
But, the first guy I’ve ever admitted to liking, the first guy who has made my heart tumble just looking at him, hates me for having anything to do with it? Why can’t I catch a fuckin’ break?
Standing where Kendall had left me, my thoughts spun. It wasn’t just that Kendall had walked off rejecting me. It was everything else going on in my life. Coming from Snow Tip Falls, big city life was hard. There was so much pressure. It took everything in me to stand out on the field. Waking up earlier than everyone else to run suicide sprints until I puked, was just the beginning.
Last night had been the first night I had felt okay about things. Meeting Kendall and him being so forward had made me think I could maybe be myself as well. I was as nice and considerate as I knew how to be with him. I really didn’t want to screw things up. He was my chance to be who I really was for the first time in my life. And all of that had ended with him pointing his finger at me and yelling, “hell no.”
That hurt. It ripped my guts out. I started walking so my head wouldn’t explode.
Leaving the pond I headed to the street. It was the one that cut through campus. But instead of heading to my cramped dorm, I jogged in the opposite direction. I needed to get away. I needed to breathe.
My jog quickly turned into a run. As I did, my mind swirled. Thoughts of Kendall shifted to the last twenty-one years of my life. I had had to fight for everything. No one had given me anything. Not even my mother.
While she was catatonic, I went to work. Someone had to make sure we had a place to sleep and food to eat. By 14-years-old, the only person I could rely on was myself.
Most of the time I wore clothes that were a size too small. I couldn’t afford anything else. And when the first kid at school pointed it out, I whooped his ass for bringing it up. No one made fun of me for it after that.
I went from doing errands that could have gotten me killed at fourteen, to betting on myself in fight clubs at 20. I had always done whatever it took to survive.
If Cage hadn’t found me and told me we were brothers, I would probably still be doing it. Instead, he introduced me to his college football coach, arranged for my scholarship, and rescued me from that world.
Yet even with how far I’ve come, the guy I fell for still thinks I’m too hard to love. That had to be why my mother chose to vanish into her own world and why I grew up without a father. I was too hard to love. I was a nobody worth nothing and that was all I was ever going to be.
Thinking that, everything became too much. My head throbbed and a painful agony ripped through me. I felt like I was going to explode. I needed to release it. So, doing it the only way I knew how, I locked my eyes on the next parked car in front of me and let go.
Kicking the door as hard as I could, the metal bent on impact. It wasn’t enough. I needed to hear a crash. So balling my fist, I pounded on the passenger window. It wouldn’t give in so I slammed harder. Eventually, the glass exploded into a thousand pieces.
