Chapter 7
“TAKE A SLICE” BY GLASS ANIMALS
The bleachers had become my home away from home. It wasn’t the estate, and nothing close to the beds of my friends, but it was a moment of relief.
It started after I found out I was pregnant.
I’d sneak under the metal stands and cry my eyes out where no one could see me.
I hid there during the numb days when I missed the Ghouls after being kicked off for lying to the coach.
It had left me in a daze on the cold cement.
Most days, I laid on my stomach until it became impossible with my pregnant belly.
I wanted to see my friends prepare for nationals.
I was jealous for a while. I think that was why I hate Erica merely enough to call us frenemies. I loved her too much and hated her too often for rapidly moving into my captain position.
Erica was my best friend. I loved Olivia and D’arcy and all the other girls on the team, but Erica and I were best friends.
It hurt to see her become heart-eyed over her chance to move up on the pyramid.
Truthfully, I only wanted to be on top because it made me popular.
Erica wanted to be on top out of a sense of purpose. We were the same, yet very different.
When the perfect world I worked hard to paint crashed down, I took it out on Erica first. We argued, we physically got into it, and more often than not, those angry words turned into messy, emotional sex.
The first time we ever fucked, I had accused her of stealing my life from me—Chris, captain, our friends.
It felt like she took everything, but really, I was the one who destroyed it all.
I was the one who got pregnant. Erica was just my best friend. She always did her part to keep me out of my head, even if it meant a slap across the face from time to time.
If she wasn’t so in love with—I considered for a time what my relationship with Erica meant.
She proclaimed her straightness like flashing her Costco card out in Indianapolis.
I liked having sex, and sex with her was great.
But at the end of the day, I only kissed her for a glimpse of someone seeing me as more than whoever I’d became.
I had kissed girls before I slept with Erica, but she was the first girl I ever slept with.
She had no idea what she was doing, and I was just as clueless.
Erica hated me for luring Duke away from her, and I hated her for always catching Christian’s eye during the obnoxiously common times we’d go on double dates.
I felt bad for Olivia that year. She had to break up multiple arguments. I was hormonal, and Erica had lost her grandfather. We both struggled with our love and hate—if we could even call it that—for each other, and still, not a damn thing had changed.
I hated her. I loved her. I wanted to be her. A normal feeling for an underappreciated, and under-fucked, queer teenager.
“I thought we talked about checking guys out here?” I placed my sunglasses over my eyes and teased my friends.
The shadows dripped off me when I stepped out from under the bleachers into the September sun. With my head held high, I gathered my thoughts and stopped just before the chain-link fencing protecting the stadium’s abnormally green grass.
“No one is that hot,” I reminded them.
“Think again. Quinntessa.” Olivia giggled. “Her dad’s hot.”
She leaned back against the fence and spared me a quick flash of her teeth. Her mischievous smile disappeared as her eyes trained on a man across the football field.
“Hot,” Erica echoed with a lack of interest.
Her monotone voice tickled my brain just right. I would have laughed if bile didn’t rise into the back of my throat from seeing Sebastian Dawson at our school.
I tried to focus elsewhere to save myself from the dangerously taunting beat of my heart. It screamed in my ears. Thump. Thump. He’s here. Thump. Thump. He’s coming. Thump. Thump. Thump. Seeing him here made the borders that usually held my two lives apart slowly shuffle in.
I turned my eyes away from the field. Erica was still in her cheer uniform. Her eyes hovered downward on her bright red nails as she picked at her cuticles.
Erica. Focus on Erica.
My fingers slipped through the chain-link for hers, but she was too far away.
I needed physical touch to aid some of these little attacks on my nervous system.
As embarrassing as it was to confess, Erica usually understood enough not to say a thing when I needed to hold her hand, besides when Erica opted to slap me across the face.
When I couldn’t reach her, I focused on taking even breaths and pushing the thoughts of Sebastian holding a gun out of my head. I thought about him holding a gun to my head. I’d even thought about killing him. He overwhelmed my thoughts almost as much as his daughter.
Something I can see.
Erica and Olivia both wore their uniforms. The Ghouls’ signature color was a black base uniform that complimented their bodies but still showed an acceptable amount of skin that wouldn’t get them staked in the time we lived in.
I loved the way Coach Kylie changed it up this year to get a rise out of Mayor Miller.
I know he hated seeing his daughter’s stomach where it might be sexualized most Friday Nights.
Personally, I really didn’t see the issue with my friends showing a little skin. I’d seen most of them naked or had my tongue down their throat, so we were past sexualizing their stomachs.
If he wanted to blame someone, maybe he should blame the older men who showed up to the games and lingered over the squad a mere second too long.
Something I can hear.
A distant whistle from my past blared through my ears until it was replaced with a soft giggle. I blew a breath through my parted lips and locked my eyes on the girl.
Quinntessa.
The heaviness of my combat boot lifted, and I took a step forward. My fingers mesh with the chain-link above my head, the weight of my elbow swinging near my face as I observe her on the field.
“She’s really playing football.” I gasped for air, sucking it in as fast as it left me. I couldn’t believe it was true.
There, on the football field, was the Barbie-pink bath bomb infecting Styxton High School in her bright pink cleats with her equally pink gloves. The boys were going to throw a hissy fit.
“Yup.” Erica snorted. “She’s setting a bad example.”
“Eri!” Olivia pouted, nearly blocking my view of the curly headed new girl approaching her father as she turned to face our friend. “She’s a good example.”
“Brainwashed,” Erica groaned dramatically.
“Stop!” Olivia whined, shoving Erica lightly with her bottom lip pushed out. “I mean, how many girls out here even try for what they want? This is super exciting for her—and us! We could have a woman president and a girl football player all in one year!”
“No one would be caught dead on that football field in less than a soccer or cheer uniform.” Erica pursed her lips and joined me in watching Quinntessa. “She can’t even catch the ball!”
“Then you have nothing to worry about. If she can’t catch, she won’t make the team. You don’t have to be insecure?—”
I snorted when Erica’s neck snapped violently to her right. She glared at the blonde, an annoyed hiss seeping from her lips. Leave it to Olivia to giggle at Erica’s short temper.
She was the only one I’d ever seen take Erica’s attitude, hand it back to her with a smile, and not get punched in the face. Miss Sassy Pants Kane couldn’t push Olivia Webster away that easily.
“Who the fuck is insecure? It sure as hell is not me,” Erica spat.
“Well—” Olivia bit back a smile the best she could, but it wobbled over her face.
“Webster, I swear to God.”
“Well, that’s not very Christian of you.”
“I’m not Christian.”
“Well, you are sleeping with him.” Olivia raised her brows as Erica rolled her eyes. “I thought that’s why you couldn’t sleep over last week. You’ve been sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
Erica’s face flushed as she opened her mouth and quickly closed it. When her eyes met mine, a storm of autumn shades threatened to end it all if I didn’t jump in and I quickly changed the subject.
“Ollie, babes, how’s Princess Toyota Corolla?” I asked, my eyes lazily returning to the field.
Olivia spun around as if I offered her a bazillion color coded Skittles.
I almost felt bad for offering up a half-assed conversation about her beloved cat, Princess Sirichai Tonya-Cordelia Diamond, also known as Toyota Corolla to the Ghouls and me.
Her smile became so wide, her eyes turned to little slits, crinkling under the strength of her grin.
“I’m teaching her with that clicky thing you gave me, and it’s working!” Olivia squealed. “So far, I’ve taught her how to sit, but she won’t do it without food yet. I’m still working on that part. She’s not as motivated as the dogs you work with, I guess.”
“Well, she is a cat, babe,” I gently reminded her with a soft curl to the corner of my lip. “You’ll get it. When did you practice last?”
“Yesterday!” Olivia blushed. “She loves Eri.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed Erica fighting back a smile. Sometimes, I wanted to steal a Subaru and plow her down. Maybe then, she’d get some sense knocked into her.
“STDs usually do.” I chuckled at my play on the cat’s initials.
“Bitch, I swear to fuck!”
Erica spun around and punched the chain-link without warning. Her first hit the fence where my stomach hovered, both of us groaning as the metal wiggled rapidly in protest.
“Drive!”
Our attention diverted to Sebastian again as he forcefully yelled at his daughter. I rubbed my abdomen and stepped back up to the fence to grab a good view of Quinntessa’s reaction.
My teeth ground together in annoyance when the girl followed his orders without question. If not for Quinntessa soaring past us, I might have glared bullet holes into Sebastian’s head.
“Holy fuck.” I pressed myself against the fence and shoved my sunglasses back up my face in pure disbelief.