Chapter 17 Vince
Vince
The morning after Adrian leaves, I wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck. The resort suite feels too big and quiet, like the walls have absorbed all the words we didn’t say and are pressing them back into my lungs.
I drag myself to breakfast, where Trevor’s already holding court at our usual table, gesturing wildly about something involving the wedding reception, cousins he likes to be there, and those not.
“You look like hell,” George says, not unkindly.
“Thanks. Always what a guy wants to hear.” I slump into the chair across from him and reach for the coffee pot like it might contain the answers to life.
“Adrian left early,” Trevor mentions with forced lightness.
I don’t respond. I just pour coffee and pretend the mention of his name doesn’t make my chest feel compressed.
“Everything okay between you two?” Lance presses gently.
“There’s no ‘us two,’” I say, sharper than I mean to. “There never was.”
The defensiveness in my voice betrays me instantly, answering a question Lance didn’t ask. My friends exchange glances, unsure how to approach me when I’m being such an asshole.
“Sorry,” I say, forcing a small smile, especially at Trevor. “Ignore me. I shouldn’t be a dick on your wedding week.”
“Nah, you’re good. Come on,” Trevor says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Let’s hit the beach. Get some sun, maybe rent those jet skis you were talking about yesterday.”
I want to say no, hole up in my room, and nurse this hollow feeling in my chest. But they’re trying to help, and this is my best friend, and I owe them that much.
So I nod and follow them out into the blinding California sunshine.
The beach should be a distraction, exactly what I need with sun, surf, and the mindless physical activity of cutting through waves on a jet ski. But everywhere I look, I see reminders.
That building visible from the shoreline looks almost the same as the old wing at Santa Ynez Valley High School.
The couple sharing a book under an umbrella makes my stomach clench.
Even the way the light hits the water reminds me of how Adrian used to paint, all movement and feeling, like he could capture the soul of a thing with just a few strategic strokes.
I gun the engine and take off. But even the adrenaline of riding this thing can’t touch the ache spreading through my chest. Because every time I close my eyes, I’m eighteen again, standing in that dusty theater space, watching Adrian work magic with paint and light.
And remembering how it all fell apart.
I never should have taken that art class. It was a last-minute elective, the only thing that fit my schedule that final term. My guidance counselor had chuckled when he suggested it, saying, “You can’t throw a football forever, Holloway.”
I remember just staring at him, thinking, you have no idea.
Football was more than my life. It was my structure, pressure, and future.
I played outside linebacker, the kind of position that demanded speed, instinct, and ruthless awareness.
I’d already caught the attention of recruiters from Golden State University, Oregon, and Texas A&M.
Some of them flew in just to watch my practices.
Word was, if I stayed healthy through senior year, I had a real shot at playing Division I ball.
My father made sure of that. He was a legend back in the day, a former linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys who’d retired after two Pro Bowl seasons and transitioned straight into coaching.
Now he ran an elite youth football program in Orange County, one of those “by invitation only” training academies where five-star recruits were practically minted like coins.
He was respected, feared. He’s the kind of man who shook hands with college athletic directors and expected them to remember it.
And I was supposed to be his legacy.
Golden State University was the crown jewel, the program we’d been building toward since I was fourteen.
Their football program was legendary, producing more NFL talent than almost any other school in the country.
Coach Morrison, their head coach, had personally called my father twice that season. They were interested. Very interested.
My daily schedule left little room for anything else. I would be up at five for weight training, downing protein shakes in the locker room before class, film review during lunch, and practice until dark. It was a tight unit of sweat, silence, and pressure. That’s the world I lived in.
And then came Room 3B. Visual Arts, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 10 a.m.
It didn’t belong in my schedule and in my life.
The old wing of Santa Ynez Valley High School’s auditorium always smelled like turpentine and damp paper, and the desks were scratched with years of boredom.
At first, I kept my head down, told myself I’d do just enough to pass and stay on track for graduation.
But after a few weeks, I’d already lost that battle.
Because that was the room where I noticed him.
Adrian.
He always arrived a few minutes late, sliding into his seat like he’d been born there, not in a rush, not ashamed of the disruption.
He carried energy with him, warm and grounded with something a little wild around the edges.
His skin was sun-warmed and golden, his hands stained with ink or graphite, and his hair looked like it had been through a storm, never combed but somehow perfect.
He didn’t walk like the rest of us, shoulders square and prepared. He moved like someone who didn’t even realize the world might be watching, until it did, and then he made a show of ignoring it.
I sat in front of him for four weeks before either of us said a word. When he finally did, it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a real conversation.
He leaned forward from behind, tapped my shoulder, and slipped a page across my desk.
I blinked at him, confused. “What’s this?”
“You,” he said, like it was no big deal. “Keep it.”
It was me. He’d drawn me, my arms folded across my chest, back straight, jaw clenched like I was ready to fight someone. He’d captured something I didn’t even know I showed.
I stared at it too long and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
He just smiled like that was enough and turned around, his fingers smudged with charcoal and still twitching, already halfway into the next thing.
I stuffed the sketch into a textbook. But after that day, I couldn’t stop watching him.
It was not because I liked him, not in that way. At least, not then.
It was because Adrian was the only person in that school who didn’t seem weighed down by anything, and it made me wonder if there was a world outside mine. Maybe a place where you didn’t have to fight for everything, where someone might see you before you even looked up.
Two weeks later, I joined the theater crew part-time out of necessity.
My GPA was fine, but college applications needed more than stats and highlight reels.
One of the recruiters from GSU told my coach that well-roundedness mattered, especially for scholarship interviews.
I already had leadership credits from being team captain, but I needed one more extracurricular to round out my recommendations.
My coach told me to pick something that wouldn’t mess with game prep. No debate team, no mock trial. Something easy and quiet. Background.
The set design sounded harmless enough. I would paint a flat, move a few platforms, and hammer a couple nails. There were no lines to memorize, no spotlight to face, just enough work to tick a box on a form.
But that’s where Adrian was, and nothing about it ended up being simple.
Adrian painted storms with quick, confident strokes, swirls of blue and violet that felt like real weather, like movement frozen mid-breath.
I measured plywood and cut boards in straight lines, doing my best not to stare too long when he’d stretch to reach the top corner of a backdrop or tuck a pencil behind his ear.
It didn’t happen all at once. At first, we worked in comfortable silence.
Adrian hummed while he painted, off-key, low, like he didn’t even notice he was doing it.
One day it was “Take Me to Church” by Hozier, the next it was something a bit older, like “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones.
It was always soulful and aching, the kind of songs that stuck to your ribs.
After a while, we started swapping tools without asking, him sliding a ruler across the worktable, me handing him a staple gun just as he reached for it.
We started having small talks. He would tell me about his plans to go to a prestigious art school after graduation, how he planned to change the world with his art.
I could tell he talked like this to convince himself he could actually do something like that.
By the third week, we were talking like we’d always known each other.
He’d sit beside me during breaks, our knees bumping, him handing me one of his protein bars even though I never asked.
I told him about the time I ran the wrong route during practice and crashed straight into the water cooler.
He told me about the gallery his mom loved in Santa Barbara and how he’d once spent a whole weekend painting the ocean just to make her smile.
He asked me if I ever got tired of being that guy, the one everyone expected to win.
I didn’t know how to answer that. No one had ever asked me that before.
It wasn’t romantic, not then. It was just easy, comfortable in a way nothing else in my life was.
And I didn’t question it, because why would I?
We were friends. Friends could laugh, could lean close while mixing paint, could spend half an hour adjusting lights until one of them said, “It’s still too hot, man,” and the other grinned anyway.