Chapter 20
January 2007
Zach
Sweat and dirt linger heavily in the air in the locker room as Coach spits out all the reasons we fucking suck and are ruining our chances at the championship title. I tune him out. My focus is solidly on my pad-covered leg as it bounces repeatedly. The motion causes my cleats to make a song of distinct taps along the cement floor.
We did fucking suck, though. We partied last night. We knew it was against the rules, but we thought we had this in the bag. So we played like shit tonight and only narrowly came away with the W, and Coach ain’t gonna let us forget it anytime soon.
I’m just ready to get the hell out of here. My whole body aches. I need a cold beer and a hot bath.
Once he feels we are thoroughly dressed down, Coach dismisses us, and I head to the showers.
Walking out of the locker room, Morgs stands against the wall with my gear bag, and as soon as I’m within spitting distance, she hurls it at my face. “What the fuck, Morgs?” I holler.
She rolls her eyes at me and looks down at her manicure, unbothered by my response. “Your damn phone is blowing the hell up. It must’ve gone off a thousand times during your game.” She complains.
Confused about why anyone would be trying to get a hold of me so badly, I pull the zipper back and grab the phone, pressing the button on the side. When it turns on, my eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. There are forty-seven missed calls and only one text. All from the same person. Fuck .
Little Bit: Alabama, Zach? Nice. Real fucking nice.
My gear bag drops to the ground, startling Morgan. “Hey, Zee, what is it? Is it your mom?” she asks, clearly concerned with my reaction to the contents of my phone.
I shake my head no and hand her the phone. I’ve told her about Little Bit. I wish I had known exactly when she was getting out so I could’ve called her before she found out some other way. How did she find out?
I started texting her many times to tell her, but I always deleted them. That’s a fucked up way to find out that someone just up and left you. No matter how you church it up, that’s what I did. I put myself and my career ahead of her. Fuck, I’m such an asshole. I should be there. She shouldn’t have come home to me not being there.
“Damn, Zee. What are you going to do?” she asks as she hands me back the phone. I reach out and take it with shaky hands. I tighten my grip around the metal and look towards the ceiling, “I’m gonna fix it.” I say in a more convincing tone than I feel. I have to fix it.
“Let’s get on back to the dorms so I can beg for my fuckin’ life.”
Morgs nods, and we head to her car, bypassing all the folks trying to get my attention. Either they want to congratulate me and shake my hand, sometimes offer to shake other parts of my body– which I always decline – or they want to get on my case for whatever play they think I coulda done better at. Either way, I want no part of any of it. All I want is to get to a quiet, private place and call my girl.
I want her to know I’m not ignoring her, so I shoot a quick text.
Me : I’m gonna call you in thirty minutes. Answer the phone, Little Bit.
I plop down on my bed and attach the charger cord to my phone. Ain’t no way in hell I’m letting the fucking thing die during this conversation. I told Tuck I needed the room for the night. He’s lucky he’s quick because when he said it was about time I took some chick to pound town, I damn near took his head off.
The trill of the ringtone grates on my already frayed nerves.
Pick up.
Pick up.
Pick up.
The ringing stops, but dead air greets me on the other end. I pull my phone away to make sure the call didn’t disconnect—it didn’t. The stifling silence is almost too much to bear. Then I hear it, a muffled sniffle. Oh no. I can take her anger. I love her fire. I can’t handle her tears, especially knowing I’ve caused them.
“Aw, honey, please don’t cry,” I plead softly, delicately gripping the phone as if she can feel my soothing touch through the line.
“How could you?” she demands, voice hoarse. No doubt from crying for God knows how long.
I blow out a breath. That’s a great question. How could I? I’ve asked myself the same question repeatedly, and every possible answer I’ve come up with sounds like a lame excuse.
“I am so sorry, Little Bit. You got no idea how badly I want–” Her sobs increase as she interrupts me. “Y-you told me you fucking loved me, Zach! And you left me!”
My eyes burn with the tears gathering in them. “Baby, please forgive me. I do love you. I didn’t leave you. I left Alaska. Not you. Never you.”
Apparently, I’m just dumb enough to ask the wrong questions at the wrong time, “Who told you?”
“That’s what you have to say for yourself right now? Not a fucking explanation, but all you want to know is who told me?”
Okay, slow down, man. I need to tread lightly here. I’m not getting my point across very well. “I just mean, I woulda rather told you on my own, Little Bit. I didn’t want it comin’ from anyone else. I figured you would get in touch with me when you were ready since you returned all of my letters. ”
“What letters?” she asks, confusion lacing her words.
Now I’m confused. What does she mean by “what letters”? Did she never see them? I just assumed she didn’t want to hear from me while she was there, and I wanted to respect that.
But, fuck, she didn’t even know I sent them?
“Sweetheart, I sent you a letter every week that you were in that place up until three weeks ago when I got here. Every one of them was returned to me, unopened.”
“I don’t understand. I never got any letters, Zach. From you or anyone. My therapist was in charge of all incoming and outgoing correspondence. We weren’t allowed anything outside of a pre-approved list of recipients/senders. I didn’t know.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Little Bit. I sent them, and they got sent back. But it’s all water off a duck’s back at this point. I didn’t have a choice but to come here when I did. My parents went behind my back and enrolled me in spring semester. I woulda lost my scholarship if I didn’t come. But baby, I fought them as best as I could. Please believe me. I lost my shit when my momma told me I had three days to pack my shit and be on a plane.”
“She made it seem like this is what you want, that I was kinda… holding you back.” She murmurs, ashamed.
My eyes snap to an imaginary adversary on the wall, and I thrust myself into a standing position, ready to lash out at the invisible foe. “Who?” I demand.
“Your mom. When I got back to Savvy’s earlier, all I wanted was to see you. I was so hurried I didn’t even grab my phone. I just got in the car and headed straight to your house. Your mom let me in and told me you left for school,” she lets the words dangle in the air. There has to be more to it than that.
“What else did she tell you?” I ask, trying with all my might to keep anger from seeping into my voice.
I can just picture my Little Bit sitting on the floor of Savvy’s room, her back pressed against the bed, staring blankly at the wall, same as me, picking nervously at her nails. Just imagining her actions and knowing she’s home and safe deflates most of my anger .
“She basically said that you needed to focus on school and football and that distractions would just make things harder on you. She said that if I cared for you that, maybe it was best if I just let you be and that if we were meant to be, things would work out eventually.”
Mama said what, now? It takes a moment for her words to settle in and my mind to make sense of them. My jaw clenches, and I tighten my hand into a fist, “Motherfucker!” I shout as I slam my fist into the drywall. Not giving two fucks about the dent now present in it. “Listen to me, darlin’. Listen up real good. I love you. I want to be with you. Not in a year. Not in two years or four. Right fuckin’now. You ain’t a distraction… you’re my reason, don’t you get that, Little Bit?”
Her weeping is so intense that it fills the space between us, enveloping me in waves of her emotion. I wish I could reach right through the phone and take my girl in my arms. Take away her pain. She’s had enough pain for several lifetimes. I never wanted to be the cause of any.
“We can make this work, Little Bit. I promise you. You are all I want. I’ll do whatever it takes. God invented phone sex for a reason, ya know?” I joke, hoping to lighten the heaviness just a tad.
The sweet sound of her giggle sets my heart afloat. “Yeah, okay, Zach. Like I’m supposed to believe you’ve been the picture of abstinence with all those college girls strutting around.” She chides, but I can hear a hint of jealousy in her words.
I laugh at her statement. “Oh, darlin’, you ain’t got no idea, do you?”
“No idea about what?” she questions.
I smile, my most heart-stopping, panty-dropping, play-boy smile that she can’t even see, “That even though we ain’t never made things official– which is your fault, by the way– you own me, baby. Mind, body, soul. Every piece of me belongs to you and you alone. I haven’t so much as touched another woman since meeting you.”
Crickets may as well start chirping in her stunned silence. I never thought I’d see a day when Charlotte Johnson was speechless.
“Nothing to say with that sassy mouth of yours, Little Bit?” I tease.
She stutters out some unintelligible words before making a string of them work together. “First of all, I don’t remember you ever complaining about my mouth,” I groan at the reminder of just how good her warm mouth feels wrapped around my cock. Just the memory has the fucker perking up, ready to feel it. “Secondly, I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for, baby?” I ask her, perplexed by why in the world she would be sorry. I’m the sorry one.
“I haven’t been deserving of you. I’ve been through… some shit. Zach, my head isn’t a pretty place to be. But I want to be better. I want to be someone who deserves you. I want to be with you, too. I need you to be patient with me,” her voice drops to a low, husky tone, “But I suppose I can keep my legs closed until your head is able to be between them again.”
“Oh, girl. You got me sittin’ over here with a rock-hard cock from them dirty words comin’ out of your pretty mouth.” I inform her, my voice dripping with sex. My hand reaches down to palm my aching dick over my sweatpants.
“And what do you plan on doing with it? Hm?”
“Why don’t you lose your pants and panties, and I tell you exactly what I plan to do with it.”
I hear the rustle on the other end of the phone as she does what she is told. A little out of breath, she comes back on the line, “Okay, I’m bare-assed. Now what?”
“Now, you’re gonna lay back and put those fingers where I tell you. We got some time to make up for, Little Bit.”
She huffs out a breath of impatience. My girl is ever the greedy one. “Zach?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I love you.”
“And I love you. Now put your phone down to my pussy, and lemme tell her how much I’ve missed her.”