18. The Magazine
EIGHTEEN
Avery’s trayclattered to the table in the dining hall. She didn’t know what random items she grabbed to eat, but inspected Isaac’s laden tray for something to snitch.
“He knows the truth,” she said, nearly out of breath. “He knows you and I are not together.”
“Does he think we were?”
“I said we gave it a shot but realized pretty quickly that we didn’t feel anything romantic for one another, and we agreed we’re awesome friends.”
Isaac stroked his jaw. “I guess we did give it a shot for about ten minutes.”
“Technicality. And I didn’t mean to tell him just yet, but he asked me outright.”
“It’s about time. I dropped enough hints.”
“You what? When?”
“I may have told him I thought things weren’t really happening for us, but ‘who knows,’ or something. Last week, I guess.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” she said drily.
“So, then what happened? Did he sweep you off your feet?”
Avery scoffed. “Hardly. And I didn’t expect him to. That would be a little pushy.” She leaned closer. “But oh my God, I could tell he was really anxious to ask, and happy with the answer.”
“I like this for you. And for him. I like that you two bond over carving flowers and drawing football helmets.”
“Me too. I’m optimistic. And antsy.”
“Antsy?” Isaac laughed. “You look downright thirsty. Do I have to act all sad when I see you two together?” He pouted his lips in a dramatic puppy-dog face.
“Ugh, please don’t. I told him how happy I am to have gotten a good friend out of a failed setup, and that is also the truth.”
“Does Justin know?”
Avery sipped her water. “He doesn’t. I’m going to text him just so he knows the objective has been achieved without falsehood and all is well. But I’m not sure what to say besides that.”
“I think the truth is working out okay for you.” He nudged his basket of fries at her. “Eat these. I don’t know why I got them. But for Justin, if you hope he’s doing well?—”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, just say that.”
She slouched and pressed her hands to her cheeks. The condensation from the water glass chilled her flushed face. “Do you ever fight with your brothers? Like really, really fight? Justin and I have never gone this long without speaking.”
“We bicker all the time, but it’s usually dumb stuff,” Isaac said. “Nobody just stops speaking for a week.”
“Two weeks. Have you talked to your brothers since they told you about UM?”
“A little, but nothing about that. We’ve found it works all right to put some subjects aside until we’ve cleared our minds enough to have a rational conversation, but other than those things, we carry on.”
“You’ll have to teach me and Justin that trick.”
“Is it really just Mindy?”
She shrugged. “Do you have a better idea? This all blew up when I was trying to talk with him about her. I realize I need to chill about some things and be more respectful of his choices, and I want to tell him that, but not in a text. We’ve had misunderstandings before. I feel like there has to be something more going on in his head, because me objecting to a girlfriend doesn’t feel big enough for this.”
“Better ideas…” Isaac trailed off as he drummed his fingers on the table. “Obviously, he’s busy because it’s football season, and if he’s taking hard classes, he’s under extra stress with midterms. And he’s not living on campus, so it’s harder to get together. You and I live about fifty yards from each other, so dinner always works.”
“Those would be easy, rational excuses for not talking or hanging out,” Avery countered. “But why not say that, if it was the truth?”
“Point taken.” He shoved the apples on his tray into his jacket pockets. “I have to get to weights. You’re on the way. I’ll walk with you.”
Avery pouted as they dropped off their trays. “He would not just dump me for her.”
“Of course he wouldn’t. That cannot be what’s going on. Just give him some time.”
“I’m terrible at that.”
Isaac snorted. “Don’t I know it.”
Avery
I hope you’re doing okay. I miss you. And I want to let you know, Cam knows Isaac and I aren’t dating. He asked me flat-out, and I told the truth. Can we get lunch soon?
Justin
I’m okay. Maybe next week.
Avery
Any day. I’ll make it work.
I hope you and Mindy are doing okay.
Justin
We’re good, thanks.
Natasha nearly slammed the door to the dorm room and rushed to shake Avery in her chair. “Stop the homework,” she demanded. “Is your orange-hat-Cam the quarterback Cameron Porter?”
“Yes. So?”
“So, he’s gorgeous. Have you seen the school magazine this month?” She tossed her a thin, glossy magazine, crumpled at the edges from their tiny shared mailbox. “They go to the alumni, and to all of us. There’s a big football spread, and he’s in there. I cannot believe you didn’t tell me.”
Avery hadn’t told her roommate half of what went on with Cam, and for that exact reason. Natasha was still angling for an invite to a party at The Farm, preferably with a single friend of Justin’s—preferably Isaac. Avery had taken her to a handful of their weeknight dinners, and the resulting swoons led her to feign missing a lot of text messages.
Avery flipped idly through the wrinkled pages of the magazine and stopped.
In uniform aside from his helmet, Cameron faced her with the ball in his hands as if reading the field. Gone were the shy smile and studious gaze. The intensity in his eyes bore into hers, and for a moment she barely recognized the person she knew behind the model athlete with the sculpted forearms and beautiful curls.
She choked back a laugh.
“What?” Natasha asked.
“This hardly looks like him. He’s not wearing his glasses. Who’s he throwing the ball to, his right guard? It’s no wonder he hates this.”
“He hates that? Because I sure don’t.” Natasha sidled next to her and tapped the lower portion of the page, grinning. Avery gulped. She’d grown up around boys and men in football pants, and thought they were no different from gymnasts’ leotards. Bodies were bodies, and clothes were made for those bodies in sports.
Except Cam’s pants looked tight enough that her cheeks flushed, sending her mind spiraling. Maybe they were uncomfortable. Maybe he’d like to get out of them.
“Turn the page.”
Avery flipped past photos of two other players and found a page where the camera caught Cameron turned in quarter-profile, with a backward school cap and the familiar gunmetal-gray frames of his glasses. He held a football and pondered it like Rodin’s The Thinker, his right arm flexed. A banner across the bottom of the photo called him “Lucky Thirteen.”
He was her artist friend, amplified to mouth-watering gorgeousness with blue light and high contrast.
He would loathe it. He’d pull his hat over his face and yank at his hair in frustration when he saw the first photo, and make retching noises at the “Lucky Thirteen” gimmick.
“Oh, no,” Avery whispered. “Did you read the article?”
“Not his. Turn the page again. It’s all three of them. They look good.”
Avery shushed her and read. “Blah blah blah, listen…’After the sudden, unexplained departure of former quarterback Jordan Ackerman, the team scrambled at training camp to name his successor. Sophomore Cameron Porter led the team to a Star Bowl win last season as a red-shirt freshman and parlayed his lucky break this summer into a starting role under center. A former three-star prospect from central Tennessee, Porter is making a name for himself with his pass completion ratings, in addition to his unshakeable calm under pressure.’ Ugh.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“A lucky break? He hates that Jordan left. Everyone does. That wasn’t lucky at all for Cam, or anyone.”
Natasha, a public relations major, shook her head. “It’s just to have a little theme throughout the piece,” she said. “Look, they use it in the thing about Will Bennett, too.”
“He’s called Benny. He’s been one of my unofficial big brothers since Justin got here.”
“Show-off. I bet there’s something about luck in the blurb about the other guy. It’s not implying Cam didn’t earn his spot.”
“He won’t like it.”
“Then I guess he doesn’t have to read it.”
Avery flipped to a page where all three players, in warm-ups and with casual smiles, gazed at the camera from various shades of blue light. Arranged in black-banded panels instead of a single group photo, Benny and Trevon stood at Cam’s left and right, lit in pale blue. Cam smiled from the center panel, under barely different lights. It was, no doubt, one of Shelby’s solutions to the fact that Jordan would have been in all the group photos shot months ago, and Cam had to be pieced in at the last minute.
“If it’s in everyone’s mailboxes today, it’s in his. He definitely won’t like the photos, but he didn’t expect to.” She tapped the one in warm-ups. “This isn’t too bad.”
“Are you kidding? If you didn’t already have your claws in him, I’d hang those over my bed. Like, over it.”
“He’s wearing a hat he doesn’t like and not the one he wears every day, and any photo without his glasses is just not him.”
“No hat and no glasses is how he’s going to look in bed,” Natasha said with a wicked grin. “The tight pants, well. I won’t fight you for those pictures.”
“I don’t want them.” With jittering hands, Avery closed the magazine and tossed it on Natasha’s desk. “Photography is a bunch of lighting tricks. I know what he looks like, and I don’t need some modeling photos every girl on campus is going to see in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Every girl on campus. Maybe you should get moving before someone else does.”
“Cam could sniff out a girl like that a mile away.”
“I’m just saying it might not hurt to lock that down,” Natasha said, flipping through the magazine again. “In the meantime, I’ll keep the pictures of the other two.”
She held up the magazine open to Trevon Stevenson’s article. Grabbing it, Avery squinted at the photo and inspected one section. “Cam likes this guy’s tattoos. I’ve never seen them before.”
“He’d look good with one. He looks good without one, but those arms.”
“Oh, I know.”
The afternoon in the sculpture studio gave her a perfect chance to stare. He couldn’t see her eyes while he was working, and if they darted from the stone to his arms and shoulders, he didn’t know. He didn’t know she watched his profile, the angle of his nose and the curve of his lips as he concentrated. She turned back to the photo of him ready to throw the ball. That wasn’t the face he made when he thought as hard and fast as he did on the field.
The pants were just pants, and Avery’s head spun between wondering whether the photo was just lit to show him off, and wondering why. She couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t as though he was straining the seams, but something about the photo composition caught her attention more than she wanted to admit. The shadows and angles drew her eyes from his beautiful face and set an ache rising in her body.
No wonder Shelby from P.R. set off a string of curses every time her number appeared on his phone. The heavy sighs and juvenile stomping made more sense.
“Why can’t they let these guys just play football?” she wondered aloud. “No one bothers my brother. He’s pretty and has nice cheekbones.” She raised a hand. “And don’t say anything about him in tight pants. Please.”
“Brothers aside, alumni want stars and a winning season, and the university wants the alumni to donate obscene sums of money,” Natasha said. “This is less about journalism and more about P.R., but there’s a lot of overlap.”
Avery narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to end up on one of these P.R. crews he hates so much?”
“By the time I’m a junior, if I’m lucky. The athletics crew is the hottest ticket in my program.”
She wanted to throw her body over Cam and protect him. She wanted to throw her body over him for plenty of selfish reasons, but the driving force was as much from sheer physical need as the compulsion to keep girls like Natasha and Shelby far away. No wonder the loss of Jordan—this Jordan—ached so much. He lost his friend and his insulation from a role he never wanted to play.
“I’ll keep the magazine over here if you want to look again,” Natasha said, brandishing it like a flag. “I promise to keep my eyes on the other two and leave your guy alone.”
“He’s not my guy.”
“You might want to get on that.”