SULLIVAN
Chapter Twenty-Six
The shape of a football game is triangular, and it’s also linear.
There’s a roundness to it, too. It’s a full symphony of varying vibes and notes.
Depending on what time of day it is, the shape changes.
At night there are cones of light and spiky sparkles threaded into the cacophony.
During a day game there’s a pulse shaped like the spikes on an EKG monitor.
Percussion and jolts from a lull. There’s also the shape of pride, which is a swollen, bloated, heart-shaped thing that’s probably coming from me as I watch Knight Winters get better and better every single week.
Knight himself is a solo piece. Sleek and bold and vibrant. Sharp, but not staccato. Smooth but not safe. He’s a golden bullet, piercing the other shapes with his precision and pure gamesmanship. He’s so fucking beautiful to watch.
The games are the only time I get to stare at him openly, when I don’t have to look away or pretend he’s not crowding out all my other senses. When I don’t have to deadpan my reaction to him or act like he’s not the only good thing in my life.
Have we figured out the friends thing four months in? More or less. It helps that we’re both busy and most of the time we see each other, Deandre is there to demonstrate how friends actually talk to each other.
When I’m not studying, writing music, or sucking dick for money, I’m at the gym or at their house, getting fed, listening to the twins’ barrage of workout and bulking tips, or playing video games that mostly involve sports—hockey and football usually.
Knight says I’m annoyingly good at the hockey one, and he and I have gotten into it one-on-one on multiple occasions this semester, not stopping until someone’s ass gets kicked or he has to go to bed.
For college football players, I was surprised at first how wholesome their home life is.
I expected something more like fraternity parties with women coming and going at all hours and beer cans and pizza boxes everywhere, but I came to realize quickly these are all elite athletes with big goals in mind, and they don’t fuck around during the season.
Compared to my house, theirs is like a Disney movie.
The only thing not innocent about it is the way Knight and I sometimes wind up looking at each other—like either one of us might start tearing the other person’s clothes off at any given moment.
Too many times he’s excused himself to the bathroom and given me a look before getting up that felt like an invitation.
And when he says it’s time for him to go to bed?
It feels like he’s patting the mattress and asking me to join him.
That’s mostly projection, though. He’s been so well-behaved this semester, it actually hurts. Knowing I’ll be spending three weeks with Adrian soon over the break makes the pain of not having Knight even worse.
But it’s not like I see Knight all the time.
He and the team travel a ton, but we text, FaceTime, and keep in touch.
We talk about football. He tells me about going to games with his dad or uncles when he was younger.
He told me about the moment the game clicked for him when he was in middle school—a moment where he was going to pass the ball, but he found an opening to run it and scored a touchdown.
He says after that, the noise fell away, and all the angles and openings made sense.
It sounds a lot like the way I picked up music, but he swears it’s different than that. I tell him about what I’m working on, often sending him snippets of works in progress.
This weekend I need to write the piece I intend to give Adrian.
I’ve put it off—even considered using a computer program to write it so I didn’t have to sink one more piece of myself into this miserable relationship, but I’ve decided to do something else.
I’ve decided to write something he’ll hate.
That might make his skin crawl, but even he won’t be able to deny how good it is.
The shape of what he’s done to me is a blunt knife, covered in static and tiny pops of shock. It’s cold, but it’s also bloody. Dripping, slow and viscous. I want this piece to give him nightmares like I still have.
The piece is complete in my head, ready to be transcribed.
I just need the time to write it down and play it through to the end.
Once on the violin, the cello, and the oboe respectively.
It shouldn’t take long to mix, and for once, I don’t care if it sounds perfect.
It shouldn’t sound perfect. It only needs to sound like a violation of his ears and whatever he has inside him that passes for a soul.
Knight completes a perfect pass to Deandre who runs it three more yards into the end zone. Knight’s mom, two seats away, leaps up and cheers. His father also stands up to clap and holler “That’s my boy!”
When she sits, as she usually does, his mom sends a huge smile my way.
I return it, thinking of all the ways she’s different from my own mom who always looks tired.
Who always looks like she’s just this side of picking up her car keys and driving off forever.
Knight’s mom is vibrant and seems happy to be wherever she is.
She’s a flute tune, rising up above the other wind instruments and making the whole piece sound a hell of a lot less serious. The shape of a treble clef.
It’s a night game, so I’m here with my friend Paulina who also plays violin and is on a performance track for her music degree.
She and I get grouped up often in our Violin III class, and she’s single and shy so she’s usually available when Chelsea isn’t.
It’s not like I’m going to come to these games by myself.
Not when it’s so fucking obvious I’m using Knight’s tickets.
I’m polite with his parents, but I’m also very good at pretending like I don’t want to get to know them by focusing on either who I’m with or the game.
The semester is over for me, all my finals are done, but the team has to hang around to play more games in preparation for the post season.
We have the best team this year, and this has made Knight extremely happy especially because he won the Heisman trophy, beating out Blake Woolsey from Tallahassee for the top spot.
This is still a particular obsession of his, and once he surpassed Blake in passing yards, Knight became unstoppable on the field.
There’s a party at the guys’ house tonight they invited me to since finals are over to celebrate their winning season, but I’m not sure I have the required willpower to go.
I’m nervous to leave Monday, and the last time I had to part with Knight, I remember being a total headcase about it, crying and wanting him so much it twisted my insides into a series of complicated knots that have yet to unwind themselves.
If anything, I love him more now. I want him more now.
He still hasn’t followed my advice and gotten a girlfriend, but his excuses are valid.
He’s busy. He’s focused. He wants straight As.
In his down time, he’s been teaching himself via hundreds of YouTube videos how to flip houses, which I can guarantee will come up with his mom this summer.
I won’t even be surprised if I get to the dilapidated lake house in August—which seems like a thousand years from now—to find it fully renovated and on the market.
He’s sketched out plans for it and everything.
It’s something he does during the Health and Fitness lecture, and probably during his other classes, too, even though I know he’s listening.
He’s drawing interior and exterior blueprints, and it’s hard not to recognize the place with its steep drop-off to the lake.
Yes, even Knight can admit that football isn’t a year-round game, and I guess if he’s gonna go ahead and be celibate forever, he needs a good hobby.
Just the thought of Knight going for the rest of his life without sex or a romantic relationship gives me a headache and a heartache.
But at least he knows what he wants and how to get it.
I’m still trapped in a mistake I made when I was sixteen with no more of a clue how to get out of it now than I had back then.
I’m not sure I want to go to this party.
There’s no way to know who else from the team will be there.
Will it only be the starters? If not, Braden Cope or Tyler Norway could be there.
Both guys who have visited my room with relative frequency over the past year.
Would it make them question who the fuck I know on the football team and why I’m there?
Would they be nervous seeing me? Afraid I’d share their secret with someone and ruin their lives?
I’m only known in small circles at this massive school—fine arts, of course, and the gay-leaning men who know about Chelsea’s “services.” Oh, and half the starting offensive line for the best college football team in America including the star quarterback who never dates.
No, my presence at the party wouldn’t look suspicious at all.
All that plus the fact that I’m bordering on desperate for something more than a passing conversation from said quarterback.
Something to hold on to over the next few weeks because the memory of the last time we had sex and kissed is fading more than I want it to, dissolving into all the days I’ve spent as his friend, all the conversations we’ve had and competitive bickering over just about everything we attempt to do together.
Even the fact that I can now run faster than he can on the treadmill sparks his competitive streak.
He’s so annoyed by it even though he’s packing on muscle like it’s as easy as getting dressed.