All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (28 page)

And somehow it’s there on the field with that ball speeding toward me and all the fears crammed into my skull that I realize . . . Nell wanted me to be realistic about the concussion. I’m such an idiot. I wasn’t fighting with Lina; this wasn’t about me giving up football completely for something she deemed smarter or more worthy. Nell’s last words before I cut her off and started to yell were “You have to take care of yourself, if you want to—”

What would she have said if I hadn’t cut her off?
If you want to keep playing? If you want to stay healthy?

The whole fight had started because she thought
this game
wasn’t worth the risk, not because me and my dreams weren’t worth the risk to her.

For too long I connected her with Lina, but by that night, I knew just how different they were. How much more caring and kind and joyful Nell is. And yet when push came to shove, I lumped her right in with my ex, and I assumed that they were the same. That they felt the same way about me.

God, I couldn’t have been more stupid.

But I’m done with that. No more stupid mistakes. Not even for football.

As soon as the football falls into my hands, I grip it tight, and instead of chancing the run, instead of worrying about what it will mean for my spot on the team or my future in the game, I worry about how I’ll ever be able to convince Nell that I love her if I don’t even listen to her.

Then I take a knee instead of running it.

I toss the ball to the ref and sprint to Coach Cole on the sideline. I pull off my helmet and say, “I have a concussion.”

“What?”

“I got a concussion in practice Monday, but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to chance not playing, but that was stupid. I’m sorry.”

His brow furrows and his mouth pulls into a straight line, but he doesn’t answer me right away. Instead, he pulls up one of the backup wide receivers to take my place on the field, and grabs McClain to fill him in. Then he starts barking orders to the other coaches and players, and I know he’s pissed.

He yells for the trainer and gestures me toward him, and I turn to go, swallowing down my unease, but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder pad.

“I’m mad as hell right now, Torres. You should have told me as soon as it happened. You never should have been practicing. You sure as hell shouldn’t have been on my field. But I’m glad you came to your senses. You did the right thing. I want you on this team, but I want you healthy. You come first. Always. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you ever lie to me again, you’ll learn just how scary I can be, got it?”

Oh, I got it.

Chapter 27

Nell’s To-Do List

T
ell me honestly . . . was it seriously the best orgasm of your life? I need to know because . . . some reasons.”

Stella becomes the first person besides me to see the list in its entirety.

“It really was,” I say with a sigh as Stella and I walk aimlessly through section after section of the stadium parking lot. “Well, at that point anyway. The ones that came later were pretty fantastic too.”

NORMAL COLLEGE THINGS

  1.  Hook up with a jock.

  2.  Make New friends.

  3.  Go to a party (and actually stay more than half an hour).

  4.  Do something Wild.

  5.  Lose my virginity.

  6.  Drink alcohol (And not at church).

  7.  Get Drunk.

  8.  Do a Keg stand.

  9.  Play Beer Pong.

10.  Go to a football game.

11.  Go on a date.

12.  Go skinny-dipping.

13.  Pull an all-nighter.

14.  Sing Karaoke.

15.  Flash someone.

16.  Cuss someone out (and mean it).

17.  Kiss a stranger.

18.  Invent an alcoholic beverage.

19.  Explore the underground tunnels.

20.  Take a picture with the Thomas Jefferson Rusk “Big Daddy Rusk” statue.

21.  Have the best orgasm of my life.

22.  Skip a class.

23.  Fall in love.

24.  Get my heart broken.

“Okay,” Stella says. “Well, first things first. We’re marking out this whole ‘Make New Friends’ thing. You’ve
made
them. Past tense. I officially declare us all friends.” I hand her a pen, and she draws a line through the words. “And I vote that tonight counts as going to a football game. You tailgated. You had tickets. You went inside. The game is currently happening, and we are close-ish to the action. That one gets marked off, too.”

She scans the list from beginning to end again and says, “Okay. It looks like all you have left is keg stand, beer pong, all-nighter, and karaoke. That’s pretty awesome, Nell. Look at this list. Look at all the stuff you’ve done. I guess I can’t claim to know you super well, but I still feel qualified enough to say, ‘Damn, you go, girl.’ ”

I laugh. “Thanks. It is kind of crazy. To be honest, I don’t think I ever really expected to finish it.”

“Oh, you’re gonna finish it, honey. In fact, you’re gonna finish it tonight. You and me. Karoake first. Then we’ll hit up a party and get your keg stand and beer pong out of the way. Then we’ll come up with a few more crazy things to do since we’re not going to bed until the sun is up.”

I laugh, but she’s serious. “I don’t know.”

I’m proud of the list. Silly and vapid though most of it is, it’s a testament to my determination. Proof that I am more than just my ability to study. More than just the things I’ve memorized and learned. I’m a person capable of fun and adventure and risk and . . . mistakes.

I can make mistakes, and they won’t break me. Not completely anyway.

“Okay,” I concede. “I’m in. Let’s do it.”

T
HE KARAOKE BAR
Stella takes me to is largely empty. I don’t know whether that’s because most people don’t care to go to a bar that’s all karaoke all the time, or if it’s just because it’s still early. Either way, I’m glad for the relative emptiness of the bar when she drags me up to sing.

I’m not a singer.

Not at all.

I sound like I swallowed a frog and it had babies in my throat. (Honestly . . . that frog might even sound better than I do.) But karaoke is on my list, and I’m
going
to do it.

We start with a breakup song that I’m only vaguely familiar with. But it repeats the words “forget you,” oh, about a thousand times. So I let Stella handle the verses, and I chime in on the chorus.

After that we start singing older stuff. Spice Girls. TLC. Boy bands galore. We sing so long, so loud, and so badly that I’m surprised no one kicks us out. But the longer we sing, the less I care about how I sound. I’m having fun.

I’m having fun doing something I’m not good at. And I
never
thought I’d say that.

Eventually, my throat starts to hurt, and the frog with babies lodged somewhere near my vocal cords starts to sound like it’s been joined by a plague of locusts, so Stella and I vacate the stage in favor of greasy bar food and a corner booth where we can stretch out our legs.

“So wait . . . the cop followed you guys all the way into the library?”

“Yes! I thought for sure we were going to get caught. And then we ended up hiding back in the stacks and—”

“And let me guess . . .
bow chicka wow wow.
”

I blush, and lean my elbows onto the table to get closer to her. “I have a question. And it’s embarrassing, but honestly, I think I’m past embarrassment with you. Have you heard of a thing called the Sweet Six?”

“OH MY GOD, YOU DID THE SWEET SIX WITH TORRES?!”

I slap my hand over her mouth as her words echo around the deserted bar. “Shhh! Keep your voice down, would you?”

When she nods frantically, I remove my hand. Then in a whisper, she says again,
“Oh my God, you did the Sweet Six with Torres?”

“No, I didn’t. But he mentioned it. And we might have messed around a
little
back in the library, but that was it. I honestly wasn’t even sure if it was a real thing. I thought he might be teasing me.”

“Oh no. It’s a real thing. Trust me. I’ve still only knocked off one myself, but I always planned . . .” She trails off. “Never mind. It’s—that was something—not really in the game plan anymore.”

I have a feeling her sudden silence connects with all that stupid talk from back at the game. I shouldn’t push. I pride myself on not being a pushy person, actually. But I can’t help asking, “Why?”

She shrugs. “It’s complicated. Everything is so fucking complicated.”

I nod, and eat another mozzarella stick while she fiddles with her silverware.

“I wish I could make a list,” she says. “I wish my brain worked that way, and I could just decide what I needed and wanted, and I could write it all up in one place. But I don’t work that way. Because for everything I want, there’s part of me that doesn’t want it. For everything I think, something in me disagrees. I’m like a pair of magnets in one body, and . . . I’m a mess, Nell. A god-awful mess.”

“To messes,” I say, holding up the vodka cranberry Stella ordered me. “May they always get cleaned up.”

“To messes,” she agrees. “And karaoke and keg stands and beer pong and all-nighters.”

I
DON
’
T LIKE
it, but under Stella’s direction we end up at Torres’s house. I guess technically, it’s not only his house, but that’s the only way I can think of it.

“It’s going to be fine,” she tells me. “I’d take you to a different party, but the only ones I know of are frat things, and Dallas and I have a deal that we don’t go to that kind of thing alone. This is the only place I knew of to get you your keg stand and beer pong. And trust me, the guys will be so busy celebrating their win that we won’t have any trouble dodging Teo. I got your back. I promise.”

“Okay, but we do the beer pong and the keg stand, and then we go do something else. I don’t want to hang out any longer than necessary.”

“Deal.”

The party is about the same size as the one on Halloween, but it doesn’t feel quite as intimidating. On Halloween, I’d only stayed in the kitchen for a little while before retreating outside, and I spent the rest of the time . . . well.

Anyway, it’s crowded as we move through the living room, and I don’t see Torres anywhere. It’s dim and loud, and he might not even notice me if he walked right past me. Slowly, I begin to relax.

“I think we should do the beer pong first,” I say. “Unlike the keg stand, it requires a certain degree of skill. I’d rather be fresh for it.”

Stella laughs. “You’re competitive, aren’t you?”

“Incredibly.”

“I guess it’s good for you then that I am a master at beer pong.” She mimics throwing a Ping-Pong ball and says, “I’ve got a light touch.”

We find the beer-pong setup in a room toward the back of the house just off the living room. Stella hesitates at the door, shooting me a look. “Oh, come on,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Okay. If you’re fine with it, I got you.”

I don’t know why she’s so tentative all of a sudden, but I’m just eager to play the game, finish my list, and get out of here. The two of us call dibs on the next game and wait our turn. I survey the room while the current game wraps up. There’s a bed pushed into a far corner, and a few girls are piled on top of it talking.

The Ping-Pong table is situated in middle of the room, and there’s a group of about seven people hanging around it. A small enough group to manage most of the nervousness I’m feeling about playing. I already knew all the rules (thank you, Internet research). Logically, it seemed like a piece of cake. But since I’ve never played, it was impossible to know the weight of the ball and how much force I’d have to put behind it.

When it’s Stella’s and my turn, we’re up against two guys. Stella knows one of them. He’s tall and lanky with a beanie pulled over a mop of longish hair. He smiles at Stella and lifts his chin in a hello to me.

“Ladies first,” Beanie Boy says.

Stella looks at me and holds out a white Ping-Pong ball. I take it, weighing the thing in my hand. It’s light. So light the air circulating from the ceiling fan overhead would be enough to blow it off course. I miss the first time out, but luckily the other team misses, too, so we’re safe from having to drink anything yet.

Stella sinks her first shot on the next round and winks at me. “Told you. I’m a pro.”

When the guys again fail to sink the ball in one of our cups, the one in the beanie picks up the cup Stella’s ball had landed in, and he downs it in a few long swallows.

On my next turn, I take a breath, analyzing my last throw and adjusting my technique in my head. It’s all physics really. Force. Gravity. Arc. I shake out my shoulders, let out that breath, and send the ball flying. It plops into the cup right at the top of the other team’s pyramid.

Stella cheers, and we high-five, and even though the guys sink their shot, too, so neither of us has to drink, I still feel good.

We don’t miss a single shot for the rest of the game, and by the time I sink the ball into the other team’s last cup, the small group in the room has grown to a crowd, and the cheer they let out makes me jump in surprise.

Stella squeezes me into a hug and cries, “Oh my God. You have to be my beer-pong partner forever. No one will ever beat us.” She pulls away.

The guys we beat have come around the table, and they congratulate us. The one in the beanie gives me a hug. “Impressive game,” he says.

Stella claps and yells, “Who’s next? We’ll take on anybody!”

“I’ll take that challenge!”

My back locks up one vertebra at a time. I can’t see him. But I know that voice. I can’t forget it.

“Nell, do you wanna?” Stella gestures toward the bedroom door at the same time that Torres steps into view.