I look down at her hand until she removes it. “I’m studying.”
Good thing about these girls is they don’t like to be denied any more than they want to be humiliated. They’ll try again, another night, but they give up easily and move to the next willing guy. I’ve heard girls say how desperate some guys are but I think that’s a fucked up phrase. I’ve seen more desperate girls than I’ve seen guys. Maybe because they’re thrown our way or they simply hang around like leeches waiting on their next meal.
Maybe.
When the girls leave, Saylor notices I never gave any the time of day. “What are you doing?”
Saylor knows about Madison. Aside from Landon, he’s probably the only one. “I’m not interested.”
“But you’re fucking around with Madison still?”
“I love her.” I admit knowing he’s not going to judge me.
“Are you sure?” His lips purse as he runs his dark skinned hand over his face. “Cause she gets around from what I hear.”
Nodding, I bite the inside of my cheek and shake my head pushing my book away from me. “You don’t know her.”
I’m lying to myself. Turning in my chair, I face him.
I know he’s about to say something I’m not going to like. “She’s a druggie, man.”
“No, she’s not.” I lie again. “She’s lost.”
The truth is, Madison is in more trouble than most realize. More than even she leads on. I see it in the tears she hides and the dark circles under her eyes she tries so hard to cover up. Sometimes I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to know how bad it is.
Sometimes I don’t know why I call her. Why do I bother?
I guess I bother because I can’t not. I have to know. I have to believe I didn’t lose her too.
Sometimes I wonder why she does this to me. I hate that I can’t get away from her. There are when times I look at her and I wonder what she’s thinking. She used to love me. She used to look at me like she loved me. Now I just wonder.
It’s fucking frustrating.
It’s torture.
For a while, we thought we could make it work. It wasn’t easy after what happened at prom. I told her we were done.
“Cash… please just try to understand.”
I shook my head, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I can’t. I’m done trying to understand you.”
I said I was done three years ago but I wasn’t. Come college and football camp, she started slipping and I couldn’t not be with her. She’d disappear for a week at a time, started failing classes and I wanted to believe that those texts helped her. Let her see there was still something good in her life.
When those texts started coming, most of the time before practice, we started in with the early morning fucking in her dorm. It was an arrangement that worked. It wasn’t that I wanted to hide my relationship with her, it was just the time that worked for us. She didn’t want a public relationship. In fact, it was far from that. She wanted the seclusion we had.
I was really good at being indifferent. It wasn’t easy but eventually, sometime my sophomore year, I got good at it. I learned things like keeping my eyes relaxed and controlling the hurt.
Love makes people do stupid shit. Makes them look past lies and see a truth they believe is there.
Only it’s not.
I did that.
I saw what I wanted time and time again with the hope that she might change. That our situation might change. That someday, somehow she’d open her eyes and see I was still there, waiting. She controls me. She takes my fucking breath and she suffocates me with just one look and she’s mine.
I don’t know why I do it.
I can’t tell you.
It’s like I say I’m not going to call. And then I do.
Football players have play books. We’re expected to memorize them and know when and where to play them. Quarterbacks call the plays based on the offensive coordinators call, and then sometimes we look at the defense and we change it when we see how they are positioned.
We call an audible. We change the play on the line of scrimmage.
She’s my audible.
I change the play at the line of scrimmage.
I fall asleep at my desk that night, drooling all over my research paper. Sitting back in the chair I turn off my lamp and then run my hands over my face.
I sit there and stare at my phone for probably thirty minutes, trying not to pick up the phone.
Reaching for my phone, I look at the time. It’s that time. I try. I fucking try not to call. I’m not supposed to care anymore. I’m not. But I do and fuck me for it because I can’t help myself.
I lose that battle every morning. I text her when I can’t take it.