Forever Love: A Novella Collection, page 25
No, I need to focus. And right now, I’ve decided the best thing to do is to set my sights set on what happens after graduation because once I’m out of college, I’ll be meeting and interacting with different men. Surely it will be easier to find someone, right? In a perfect world, Monday through Friday my man will wear a suit, and on Saturdays, he'll wear nothing at all because we'll be busy rolling around in his bed. Sundays will be casual—maybe khaki pants and a button-down that is most definitely not sexy jeans that perfectly emphasize a ridiculously sexy ass or a T-shirt that shows off an unbelievably perfect upper body. Certainly not a chiseled jaw with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, perfectly kissable lips and coppery chocolate colored eyes that make me weak in the knees.
Andddd I’m now thinking of him again. Dammit!
Picturing that body and those see-through-everything eyes, even for a few seconds, makes my heart beat funny in my chest. I do my best to push those thoughts away. I need not to focus on him anymore. When will that get easier? I’m so lost in my thoughts that I startle when Becky taps my shoulder.
Following the finger she's pointed to the front of the room, I realize our professor is writing something on the board. Shaking off my dreams of a perfect future, I open my blank notebook and uncap my pen to take notes as the first class of my senior year gets underway.
2
Elena
I had to run all the way across campus to make this meeting on time. I'm not even sure how I managed it, but somehow I did. A quick glance around the gym shows that the bleachers are almost full of cheerleaders, football, baseball, soccer, and basketball players. I breathe a sigh of relief when I see that none of the coaching staff are in place yet, which means I'm not going to get yelled at for being tardy. I spot my best friend waving at me from the very front row of the bleachers in the section where the cheer squad is sitting. I hurry across the shiny wooden floor and take the seat he saved me next to him, stretching my legs out in front of me dramatically as I lean into his side. Yes, my best friend is a guy. No, he isn't gay. No, we don't like each other. There's zero sexual tension, and there has never been.
Miles is the yin to my yang. In addition to being the best friend a person could ask for, he's also my cheer partner and has been since we were thirteen years old. I love the camaraderie of the cheer squad in general, but Miles is my person. The two of us are considered to be a big deal in cheerleading circles, which is why we were offered full scholarships to a dozen schools. We narrowed it down to two universities with Division I teams, one Miles wanted and the one I'd had my heart set on from the start. There were two reasons I wanted to come here. First, it's less than twenty minutes from Nanny and Pop's house. Second, it’s his alma mater and I idolized him. What can I say—my reasoning on the second thing seemed solid at the time.
In the end, Miles let me choose, which is why we're here, under an hour away from where we went to high school. The university Miles wanted to go to is clear across the country. Especially after the events of this summer, I know we made the right decision in coming here.
On every level, this school has been good to us both academically and physically. In the three years we've been here, we've helped the cheer squad earn half a dozen state and national championships, and for the last three years running we've taken first place in every one of the coed partner stunt competitions.
The trust I have in Miles—as the person who tosses me into the air only to catch me—literally—within the palm of one hand is immeasurable. I’ve met dozens of fly girls over the years who could be amazing but are instead stuck at being “good” because their partners aren't rock solid. That isn't the case with me. In all honesty, Miles is the more talented of the two of us. It takes incredible strength and stamina to throw a one hundred and twenty-five-pound five-foot five-inch girl for hours and hours every day, but he does it without complaint. I enjoy cheerleading, and I always have, but at the end of the day, the reason I've taken it as far as I have is entirely down to Miles.
I grin as he playfully jabs at my side with his elbow so that I don’t do something crazy like fall asleep on him, something I’ve been known to do. The joke on the squad is that I’m borderline narcoleptic. I frequently fall asleep while waiting for the team to assemble and I also tend to nod off at the picnic tables on the quad. What can I say? I like sleep. A lot.
“Are you cooking chicken breasts tonight or am I on my own for dinner?” Miles asks.
After our freshman year when we both lived in dorms, we moved in together into an off-campus townhome his parents rent for him on a month-to-month basis. His family refuses to allow me to pay rent or any of the bills, despite my protests. I make up for it by keeping the house stocked with food and by doing all of the cooking. It’s the perfect arrangement for all of us.
I yawn and stretch my arms as I sit up straight. “Don't be a dope, of course I'm cooking. I forgot my afternoon snack, which means I haven't eaten since lunch. Two tablespoons of peanut butter, an apple and a cup of cottage cheese weren't enough to fill me up. You don't know how badly I wish there were a way to automate the chicken breasts dropping onto our George Foreman grill about eight minutes before we get home. I’m that hungry.”
Miles narrows his eyes as he shakes his head. “You know how important the afternoon snacks are,” he scolds. “You’re off by about two hundred calories for the day because of that. I should’ve checked your backpack this morning before you left the house.”
I shrug, not in the least bit concerned. “Cut me some slack, Dad," I say dryly. "I was in a rush this morning and forgot. The first day of school and all, ya know? I solemnly swear that I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“See that you do,” he says firmly. "I'm the one throwing you around all afternoon, and when you're hangry, you turn into a major bitch.”
I snort out a laugh as I give him the finger. It’s not like I can argue—he’s one hundred percent right. I get cranky as hell when I’m starving, and during our official season, I'm hungry almost all of the time because my diet is so strict. I have to keep my weight steady and my core strength on point, which doesn’t give me much wiggle room at all. There are no off days for flyers—there can’t be. If I gain five pounds, that’s five extra pounds that Miles has to balance when he’s tossing and catching me. Cheerleading is a far more brutally regimented sport than most people realize.
Since Miles and I spent a fair amount of our free time today texting each other about the gossip with the football team, I'm able to launch directly into questioning if he's heard anything about who will be replacing Coach Adams.
“Just wait until I tell you what’s up! I just found out before I sat down—I can’t believe you don’t know yet. First of all, this has been going on for quite a while. I gotta think the school got lucky that it all blew just after the semester officially ended because it meant the football season was over and they could keep it quiet. They've spent the weeks since it all hit the fan scrambling to find a new coach. The football team was told about this last week, at which time they were warned that if they valued their scholarships, they would need to keep their mouths shut until the announcement could be made. They'd originally offered the coaching job to Mr. Peters, but since he didn't want to move from the assistant coach position, they went outside and found someone else."
I nod as he finishes talking. “Interestingggg,” I drawl. “Any word on the new guy?”
Miles leans in closer with a look of clear excitement on his face. "It's your… um…" his brow furrows as he pauses. After a second of thinking he makes a dismissive motion with his hand. "Doesn't matter I guess. I just never know what to call him, so I guess we need to work on that. Anyway, it's none other than Colin Findlay! Makes sense they went with an alum. Gotta say though if the dean was looking for a way to ward off sexual crushing on coaches, he just failed miserably. I think you might be the only person here who’ll be immune to him.”
My smile feels frozen in place, my stomach is buzzing like I just arrived at the top of a roller coaster and my mouth seems to have become a damn desert. I let out a fake sounding laugh because I know I have to react to Miles’s words, but it’s the best I’ve got.
As far as Miles knows, Colin Findlay is merely a part of my extended family. That's a very simplistic description of how we're connected, but it's the one I normally go with. I know Colin because his grandparents were such a huge part of my life. Miles has no clue that I've had feelings for Colin since forever, and I would like to keep it that way especially since he's asked me a million times who my first crush was, and I've always said I can't remember.
That is one big ass lie because a girl never ever forgets her first crush. That's doubly true when the crush in question is Colin Findlay. I just never wanted to talk about it because I knew it would get me a ton of side eye and jokes about me wanting someone so far out of my league. Colin is ten years older than I am, after all.
I swallow nervously as my heart skips a beat. Jesus. Of all the colleges in the world, he’s taking a job at mine? And why freaking now of all the times?
The Findlays came into my life when my mother—I use the term loosely— rented the guesthouse on the back of his grandparents’ property. She was there from the time she divorced my dad when I was six until she went off to find herself shortly before I started seventh grade.
During those years unless there was a game, Colin would show up at his grandparents’ house every Sunday to hang out during the afternoon and then have dinner with them. Since the majority of my time was spent in Nanny and Pop's house, I got to spend a lot of time swooning over Colin up close and personal. Of course, there was nothing real to it back then—he's ten years older than me and even as a kid I was smart enough to know that little girls in pigtails doing cartwheels on the lawn were hardly going to light up his heart. It didn't matter though because he was always, always nice to me. As a child I idolized him, but around the time I was fifteen, my feelings started to morph into something a lot deeper than that.
Colin has always been gorgeous and he could’ve been a giant, entitled prick who blew off the annoying little girl who trailed after him and hung on his every word but he never did. Instead, he was kind and engaging, and he never made me feel worthless, something I'd needed back then since my mother spent the years between divorcing my dad and marrying husband number two “finding herself.” I suspect the reality is that what she was actually doing was trying to figure out a way to make me disappear. Her lack of interest in me and the endless caravan of boyfriends strolling in and out of her life had been difficult.
The one good thing about living with her during those years had been the Findlays. Nanny and Pop, as they'd instructed me to call them, were the grandparents every child wishes they had. On the alternating weekend that I wasn't visiting my father, my mom found one reason or another to dump me on Nanny and Pop, and they never hesitated to take me. They were my constants during those years, and I'd missed them desperately when I'd moved forty minutes away to live with my dad.
Fortunately, my dad had been good about allowing me to maintain a relationship with them. He was smart enough to know that cutting off the people I considered to be my grandparents would've gone over like a lead balloon. I'd visited the Findlays every other weekend for at least one night; they were always in the bleachers for my cheerleading competitions—even the ones that were out of state—and they attended both my junior and senior high graduations. They were two of the most important people in my life until nine weeks ago when they passed away within hours of one another.
It was a nightmare, something I'm still struggling to deal with. Nanny passed first, very suddenly in her sleep. The tone of Pop's voice when he called that morning to tell me she was gone is something I'll never forget. If heartbreak were a sound, it was his the way he spoke when he said she was gone. I raced out of my house and drove like the wind to get to Pop so that I could be by his side when the funeral home came to take Nanny away. Colin arrived less than an hour after me, and his parents showed up about ten minutes after that. We all stood together and prayed as the hearse took Nanny away.
I flash back to that day a lot, looking for a moment where maybe there was a clue that Pop was about to die too, but there's nothing. He was heartbroken and sad, but he didn't seem ill. It was the first—and obviously last— time I ever saw him cry. About two hours later Colin's dad, Carson, picked up soup and sandwiches for lunch and the five of us ate it at the table together. After we finished eating, the men had gone to the funeral home, and I'd stayed behind with Colin's mom because she wasn't getting around well.
As bad as the day had been it only got worse when Colin and his dad walked back into the house two-and-a-half hours later, without Pop. In a voice thick with emotion Colin had been the one to tell his mother and me that Pop had died. We hadn't believed him until he and Carson explained how it happened.
After they’d finished agreeing on all the arrangements, the funeral director had left the room to give his secretary the obituary so she could call the paper. Colin and Carson told us that about a minute or so after the director left the room, Pop, in the middle of nodding his head at something one of them had said, abruptly stood and smiled. “It’s time for me to go,” he’d said before he hugged his son and then his grandson. “I love you all. Kiss my girls for me.”
They understood he'd meant Colin's mom and me, but were confused about why he was talking like he couldn't do that himself. Then he held out his arms as he took three steps across the room like he was going to hug someone.
"My Gracie," he'd said.
Colin and his dad were understandably confused about why Pop was talking to his wife like she was there. They never got to ask what was going on since the next thing they knew, Pop crumbled to the ground, dead. He was just there and gone from one minute to the next. Colin performed CPR, and the paramedics were there within minutes, but it was too late.
Losing two of the most significant influences in all of our lives rocked our worlds, to say the least. Because of that, I'll never be sure if what happened in the days that followed was just a moment of insanity brought on by grief. The only thing I can say about that is it didn't end well.
Before the drama between us, Colin was the person I fantasized would be my husband someday. Some might say that it was nothing more than a case of hero worship or even wave it off as some form of weird attraction because he was once a big deal in sports. He'd been drafted about four seconds after he graduated from this university and was then in the NFL for three years before a torn ACL sidelined him for good. He took two years off after that and then went back to school one state over to earn his MBA. After graduation, he took a job there on the coaching team. Granted, coming here isn't a big move—it's only about a two-hour drive—but it is a big surprise. Why he's picked up his life and moved here is a mystery—one I'll likely never get an answer to, considering the way things stand.
Realizing that Miles is staring at me because he's expecting a response, I shrug and toss my hair over my right shoulder in a disaffected way. "That's, uh, great," I offer weakly. "It'll be… nice to see him and say hi," I lie. "How's the team about all of this? Excited?"
Miles shrugs. “They’re kind of all over the place from what I’m hearing. Coach Adams was like fucking royalty here—they all looked up to him. To find out that he was cheating on his wife with a student didn’t sit well. I mean, it’s a Division I team, and no one wants to fuck with success. It’s a big old mess.”
“I wonder why Colin took the job,” I say, thinking out loud. “I didn’t know he’d even thought of coming… um, home.”
Miles is only half listening to me because he’s suddenly busy eye-fucking Stella, one of the female soccer players who just sat down across the way on the bleachers. “It’s possible that he’s going back,” Miles says in a distracted sounding voice. “It’s a trial contract—the school is understandably wary about committing to anything in the wake of what Adams did—so right now it’s only for one season. I'm sure he'll tell you all about this at some point. I'm surprised he didn't call to tell you this. I guess there hasn’t been time. Dude’s been single for a long time—maybe he finally found a serious girlfriend."
Miles has no idea how those two throw-away sentences just sliced at me, and I do my best not to let it show on my face but the truth is that inside I feel like I just got kicked in the gut. I don’t know what I’ll do if Colin is dating since the very idea makes me ill. The last serious girlfriend he had, Amy, was in the picture from around the time I was sixteen to sometime before Christmas about two years later. He hasn’t brought anyone else home for any family events since Amy, and Nanny and Pop had both commented that he was holding off on dating until it felt real. If he’s dating again now, that’s not good.
Forcing myself not to think about the possibility of him having found the future Mrs. Findlay in the weeks we haven’t spoken, I focus on the other issue—the fact that he didn’t call or write to tell me he was coming. Granted, I’m the one who didn’t take his calls for several weeks but this is big news. You’d think he’d have found a way to let me know. At the very least he should’ve had Sam or Lolo—his two best friends—call to give me a heads up.
I’m a mess and staying in this seat is costing me. Apparently I have acting skill I never knew about. Taking a deep breath I try to pump the brakes on the million scenarios that are going through my head right now. Colin is here. At my school. And Miles is right too in pointing out that he didn't bother to call, text or email any heads up.
