“Please go.” My throat is tight. I can’t believe he’s saying these things to me.
“I’m telling you this because you’re too soft for Matty Iverson. If you have any doubts about what I’m saying, Google his fucking name. There are a helluva lot more pictures out there than what I showed you.”
I try swallowing, but there’s a huge lump in my throat. “What Matty did before me makes no difference.”
Ace looks at me like I’m the dumbest fucking girl on the planet.
“Have fun fucking him tonight.” And with that, he’s gone.
At the computer, I hesitate. I slam the laptop lid shut and then pace. I pace back to my desk and open it again.
I type in his name. Most of the pictures are of him in uniform, him on the field. There’s one link on the second page of him bending over, his broad shoulders between another girl’s legs. She’s wearing jeans but her shirt is off. His shirt is off. I don’t know what he’s doing there.
There are other pictures of him and another girl. Him and Hammer and two girls. They were all taken the same night.
My heart twists as I look them over. The dates of the pictures inform me that they were taken the night after the championship game. Just a few weeks before he came to the Brew House. Just a few weeks before I had my own personal, up-close picture of Matty between my legs.
I knew exactly how it felt for him to be there, licking and sucking and fingering me in ways that made my sex clench just to think about it. It kills me to know there are other women out there who have experienced that same pleasure.
Not a rational feeling, but it’s there and I can’t make it go away.
Can he change? Ace says no.
But then Ace has his own issues, his own demons that Matty doesn’t struggle with. I shut my laptop firmly and push it away.
So Matty had sex in the past. Big whooping deal. I repeat that to myself a hundred times, but Ace has stirred up the fear I thought I’d put behind me.
28
Matty
I tuck my phone away and try to curb my impatience. Wishing Ace and Luce weren’t friends is a fruitless exercise. They are, and I’m going to have to deal with it. I still think Ace is the snake in my garden because there’s no way he hangs Luce’s picture in his locker without having stronger feelings than friendship for her. But…there’s no point in bringing that up with Luce.
She thinks they’re friends, treats him like a friend. They’ve had plenty of time to knock boots in the past and haven’t done it. So I just have to trust that whatever feelings are involved, they aren’t on Lucy’s end.
“Where’s everyone else?” I ask Hammer as I wander into the living room. Earlier in the day we had half the defense in here watching ESPN’s Signing Day special, and now it’s just Hammer.
“Most of the guys went to the Gas Station. A few went to work out.”
Probably the guys who play the same positions as the blue chip recruits announcing today.
“You think about the guys you were replacing on Signing Day?” I ask. I know I hadn’t. I was too jacked up to get here and show everyone I was the man.
“Fuck no. I was thinking how I couldn’t wait until the fall was here and how I could strut my stuff on national television. I was practicing my hammer move.” He brings his arm down in an abrupt chop.
“Yeah, me, too. I wanted to replace those guys. Fuck, I was a terrible shit. I didn’t even care that they hazed me. I felt invincible, even when I was running around the stadium with just my jock on.”
“Good times.” Hammer reaches his fist out and I knock mine against it. “You talk to Lucy about Ace?”
“Yeah, last week. It didn’t go well. She’s not going to talk to him.”
“Ah hell,” Hammer sighs. “What’re you going to do now? Maybe if you bring it up with her later? After sex maybe, when you’ve softened her up.”
And maybe someone will knife me in the gut because that’s how I felt when I went up there and saw her, nude, crouched over on the floor weeping like she’d just seen her dad killed in front of her.
“No.”
He rears back in the harshness in my voice. “Bro, it’s not like I asked you to fuck her in the quad.”
“Hammer, man, I love you, but Luce is my girlfriend, and I’d like you to start treating her with respect.” I stare at him. Hard.
He blinks a couple times and nods in acknowledgment. “That’s cool. What about Ace, though?”
I grind my teeth together at hearing his name.
“What about him?”
“If Lucy isn’t going to talk to him, then are you going to him again?”
I run an agitated hand through my hair. “It’ll straighten out by itself. Coach will work the two guys out during summer camp. Let the chips fall where they may. On the field, like how it’s always supposed to happen.”
Hammer snorts.
“What?” I ask with exasperation.
“We both know that if Coach don’t like you, all the talent in the world isn’t going to keep you on the field. And if you aren’t on the field, there’s nowhere to prove yourself. Your skills atrophy and die.”
My answer? To pick up the remote and turn the volume up. It’s juvenile, but I’m fucking done with this conversation. Mostly because Hammer’s right and I don’t have a good goddamned response.
A little while later, my phone beeps but it’s not Lucy. She’s still dealing with the drama queen. It’s Stella Lowe, telling me that Coach wants me in his office in the next ten minutes.