Chapter 9
Telling him again to forget it sat in my throat, but I wouldn’t deny I really wanted to watch the game. Maybe if I did, maybe if I had more chances to watch Jack without him putting his angry face in mine, I could figure out why he got in my head and how to get him out.
I tossed my bag in my truck, then met up with Nick.
Since the start of senior year, I’d inadvertently learned more about soccer than I had in my life leading up to that point.
Football clubs, aka soccer, had seasons during multiple times in the year.
Youth leagues for teenagers held a fall season that a lot of kids participated in since it didn’t interfere with their school’s season.
Made sense.
Their games were all over, using whatever field they could get their hands on, and with Hickory Bend updating its soccer field, they’d planned a few games here. Today was one of those.
“Is that Cara?” Nick leaned closer and pointed in front of us.
“Yeah,” I grumbled and headed her way, scanning the crowds for Sasha, who I didn’t want to deal with right now. The more I thought that very thing, the more it told me I should break up with her, but God, I already had my fair share of drama going on.
Cara’s little group of friends blushed and whispered behind their hands to each other as we neared. Only Cara seemed slightly annoyed as I pulled her away from them. Nick took Cara’s place and had the girls giggling in seconds.
“Thought you were getting a ride home with Kitty after practice. Daddy know you’re hangin’ around longer?”
“Yeah, he knows,” she said. “You come out here lookin’ for me, or were you gonna watch the soccer game?”
Now, that would’ve been an excellent excuse for all this, but in my doom and gloom, I’d not thought of it. Daddy hadn’t mentioned me being grounded since I saw him last week at dinner. I hadn’t thought about checking in with him or Cara before I landed on this idea.
I glanced at the field, then shook my head. Shit, I needed to get it together.
“Thought about it. Why’re you watchin’?” I asked.
“Uh, ’cause it’s guys, and I like guys, duh.”
“Cara.”
“Cal. Don’t be a downer. Come on.” She looped her arm in mine and rejoined the group. “The more, the merrier.”
Her friends didn’t seem to mind one bit, and Nick only shrugged.
We took seats in the bleachers, Nick and me sitting behind Cara and her friends. Before my butt had settled on the metal bench, I’d honed in on one particular player warming up before the game.
Jack was an athlete, through and through.
I didn’t know everything about soccer, but he and Ty were leaders.
No wonder Hayes had gone with them as captains for this year.
The other players constantly looked to them for direction on the field.
Well, all but Blaine. The little shit shoulder-checked Jack more than once.
Jack never gave in to the gesture, though, only glared at him a few times.
Jack and Ty were front and center of nearly every play. And they were so fucking quick. Their legs were a blur as they jetted this way and that. Maybe they were play fakes, I didn’t know, but they ran the other team ragged as they kept the ball away and set up goals.
Their kits had long and loose shorts. Whenever Jack stopped, he hiked them high and rested his hands just over his knees.
His quads were thick and cut, not surprisingly.
Even when stationary, as he watched and calculated a play, his muscles flexed and bunched to run at any second.
He barked one word here or there. The only time he said more was when Ty was right next to him.
“Kind of stupid this town is more about football than anything else. Our soccer team is gonna be better than we are,” Nick said.
I grunted in agreement. We could lose every game and still turn out more of a crowd than the soccer team. Thankfully, we didn’t lose every game, but we weren’t making state either.
The crowd of mostly parents and a few students cheered with every good play, which was often. I got into it more as time went on, feeling less and less self-conscious when I cheered for Jack. Errr, the team, when I cheered for the team.
The score remained low, which was normal for soccer, but we won. Jack and his teammates met the opposition in the middle with a round of good games between them. Claps, shouts, and whistles faded slowly, and then all of us in the stands stood and funneled to the exit.
For a moment, I was stuck on a higher step from the bottlenecked crowd. Jack walked off the field, lifting his head as he went, then froze. I froze. Our eyes locked, and my gut clenched in reflex.
Nick babbled to entertain himself as we waited, but I didn’t hear a word of it.
For seconds—maybe minutes, I wasn’t sure—Jack and I stared at each other across the thirty-five or so yards.
A player bumped his shoulder as they ran past, and Jack lifted his shirt to wipe sweat off his face, eyes reconnecting with mine when he dropped it.
This wasn’t the few seconds in class with students laughing around us. This wasn’t us toe-to-toe, ready to blow up at any moment. I didn’t know what this was, but it was different. The unaffected expression he usually held wasn’t there, but what was didn’t make a lick of sense.
Jack tucked his lips between his teeth, then adjusted from one foot to the other.
Surprised. Nervous. Shy?
Or maybe I needed my eyes checked.
“Finally.”
I jolted and glanced at Nick as he stepped into the flow of moving traffic.
It seemed my daze hadn’t lasted long, and no one was the wiser about the stare down with Jack.
Before I lost the vantage point, I glanced toward the field.
Jack wasn’t in the same spot, and he wasn’t among the few players left gathering gear.
Whatever I’d wanted to make clearer with this experiment had backfired.
I needed to get out of here.
Cara said bye to her friends and then happily filled the silence between us with the antics of her classmates as we left. When we got home, I called Momma and handed the phone to Cara so she could get her in a better mood before she handed the phone back to me.
Momma was too busy to say much and didn’t have anything bad to say about Daddy for a change.
She’d been the prom queen, and Daddy had been the older med student when they’d met. Neither had come out and said it, but I’d figured they’d married for all the wrong reasons. They looked like the happy couple and found out later it took more than that to make it work.
I wouldn’t make that mistake.
And on the subject of mistakes, I called Sasha. We made as much sense as Momma and Daddy, and she probably expected me to marry her one day.
“Hey, babe,” she purred into the phone. “I was just thinkin’ ’bout you.”
“Yeah? What about?”
At moments like this, I understood what my parents probably thought at one point. This was easy. I gave her an opening, and she went with it. It took little effort on my part. Sasha had forgiven me for brushing her off during my punishment and was now onto more important things in life: Homecoming.
“I’m wearing white with these tiny pink flowers. You’ll have to wear white too.”
“I’ll be in my uniform,” I said.
“They’ll give you time to change into a suit.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but if they did, the thought of putting on a suit fresh out of sweaty pads was just—no. I groaned, wondering if I could opt out of the whole thing.
“You have to wear a suit, baaabe. You’ll be king, and I’ll be queen. It’s perfect.”
It definitely was not perfect. It was very, very far from perfect, but telling her that now, telling her I wanted to break up, would be worse before Homecoming, right?
“You’re still taking me to the party at the Beach this Saturday, right?”
“Yeah,” I said automatically but couldn’t remember when we ever discussed it.
Sasha squealed and rambled on about gossip from the cheerleaders before getting off the phone to eat dinner with her folks. Thank fuck her daddy was a stickler for family meal times.
With no more need to talk or pretend, I grabbed Romeo for a run around the backyard while I searched the twinkling stars for a fraction of the peace I felt while fighting with Jack.
No, not peace, exactly, but focus. The constant churning of my mind with this or that silenced around him.
I didn’t know what it meant or why I liked it.
I didn’t know how to recreate it or use it outside of being around him.
Whenever his eyes were on me, it was different than with other people.
Jack saw me tonight.
He. Saw. Me.
Those shared glances that hadn’t been furious were confusing, but I didn’t hate them. I didn’t want to avoid them as I did with other things that bothered me.
This was a confusion I really wanted to explore and figure out.
This was … I grinned. This was interesting.
Yeah. In all the shit, I’d found something I actually wanted to be doing.
Fighting, stalking, staring, didn’t seem to matter.
Easy to read or puzzling as fuck, didn’t matter then either.
If Jack was involved, I was intrigued. A little fascinated by it all.
I slept better that night and blamed it on Jack too. I’d given in. He was determined to get under my skin, so I’d let him.
At lunch on Friday, the team sat together as we usually did on game days but spouted off shit in hushed voices about vengeance on the soccer team.
“Guys, look, it’s over. Just stop, okay? I don’t want to get my ass expelled, and if you keep doing this, that’s gonna happen.”
A few of them nodded, but more grumbled about it.
“I appreciate everyone taking up with this—” I floundered for a moment, searching for the right word. “—well, whatever it is, but it’s gotta stop. I’m already in forced counseling sessions with the soccer captain. Enough is enough.”
“For real, man?” Raul’s booming voice rose over the din of mumbles.
“Yeah. It’s a disaster, but it’s between me and him, all right? Cut the shit. No one needs to get in trouble over something this stupid, and I certainly don’t need them to keep looking at me as if I’m the biggest troublemaker in school.”
A few of them laughed at that. I’d never even been near trouble, and everyone knew it. I’d always been well-liked, the happy-go-lucky guy. For a year now, I’d been growing more and more exhausted keeping up the front, but I’d never let them see that. I wouldn’t let my team down.
“Okay, boss,” Raul said.
I wasn’t sure it was settled, but no one else said anything about it for the rest of the period.
After lunch, I caught a glimpse of Jack and Ty.
Ty, of course, was running his mouth. Jack listened and nodded along.
The low-burning excitement that’d been a little chill in my veins reignited.
When the fuck had I ever been so hyped to see Jack Rutledge?
I supposed it didn’t matter ’cause here it was anyway.
The need for his gaze on me, like a comforting hand at my neck, grounding me, even for a second, was real.
I wanted that confusing moment like yesterday, or in class.
The spot of time where all else stopped mattering and this silent conversation pinged between us.
I didn’t know what that was, but I wanted it.
Like, almost fucking craved it. More than I wanted to talk to my girlfriend, or my parents, even my friends, I just wanted his eyes to silently talk to mine.
Right before Jack turned the corner with his brother, he darted his attention toward me as if he’d known all along I’d been watching him, waiting for him. His dark lashes fluttered down, one corner of his mouth twitched, and then he was gone.
What were these tingles that wouldn’t stop vibrating? I would not call them butterflies, but I got the symbolism all the same.
We hated each other, right? We’d never said a single word to each other that wasn’t out of loathing or snark. Why didn’t that matter anymore? Why was one glance suddenly more important than months of fighting?