Beautiful Illusion (15 page)

M
y head was pounding
, and my eyes were heavy when I woke up. I felt like shit, and the bottle of Jack Daniels that was sitting on the nightstand was probably a good indication why. I turned my head to the side, and there was a naked blonde lying face down on the bed—some freshman that I had picked up after last night’s game.

They called me ‘The Wrecker’, and wrecking is exactly what I did, on the field and inside of the bedroom. I was pretty sure I showed whatever-her-name-was that I lived up to my nickname last night.

“Hey you!” I slapped the girl’s ass to snap her out of sleep. It was a nice ass. Tight and perky, and I’m pretty sure I had fun pounding against it the prior night. It’s too bad all the dirty bits were a blur.

She groaned and turned her head towards me, beaming a groggy smile. “Good morning, baby…” she groaned. Pretty face and big, fake tits also—reminded me of a young Pamela Anderson. If it weren’t for my throbbing headache, I’d have half the urge to show her another round.

“You need to get dressed. I’ll call a taxi for you.”

“What time is it?” she asked.

I turned to the clock on my nightstand. “10am.”

“You want me to leave already? We’ve barely slept.”

“Sorry, I’ve got a lot of errands to run.”

She sighed and rolled off the bed, scouring my massive bedroom in search of her clothes. Her panties were lying on the floor nearby. “You ripped my underwear off?” When she noticed they were torn to shreds, she also noticed the red mark around her thigh.

I shrugged. “It was the quickest way to get them off you.”

She tossed the panties aside and rolled her eyes before sliding on her jeans, commando style. When she was fully dressed and a taxi was called, I walked her to the door wearing nothing but my boxers.

She threw her arms around me, and I gave her a half-assed hug in return. Then she kissed me on the lips. “Call me, okay?” She bit her bottom lip while pressing her index finger on my mouth, then trailed it down to my chest and circled one of my many tattoos.

“Yeah, of course,” I lied. They all said the same thing the morning after I fucked them. It was always ‘Call me’ or ‘Text me’ or ‘Add me on Facebook.’ I never called or texted, and I hired an assistant to run my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

After my senior year, I got a full scholarship to UCLA to play football—not that I needed a scholarship; I had plenty of money, and since I had taken up investing, my pool was growing larger each and every day. I was the starter running back in my freshman year at the university, got rookie of the year, and carried the team to the championships. Pretty much unprecedented for a first year college footballer.

I had become a little bit of a celebrity, and now at the beginning of my second year, things were only going better. There were websites about me and YouTube pages. People even made internet memes about me. “Want a touchdown? Just hand the ball to The Wrecker.” They’d type shit like that over top of my pictures and share them on the internet. And needless to say, with the success came women… lots and lots of them.

After girly left, I got a call from my agent. “Wrecker,” I answered.

“What? You’re answering your phone with that name now?”

I laughed. “I’m just fucking with you, Brian. What’s the latest?”

“Well, I’ve got two teams that are interested in you, the Steelers and the Jets, but they both want to pick you up after the college season is over.”

“I said Seahawks, Brian,” I scolded him, “and I said this year.”

“Look, I know college ball feels easy for you, but if you leave UCLA mid-year it’s not a good look. Just finish up the year, and I’m sure the Seahawks will want to draft you.”

“Okay, well just get in contact with them, and see what they say.”

“Alright, I will. And one other thing,” he added. “The drinking and the partying. Can you try to tone it down a little bit? If you want the Seahawks to take you seriously, we can’t have new pictures showing up online of you and a different whore every night.”

I rolled my eyes as I listened to his lecture. “Yeah, whatever Brian. I’ll take it easy.” My second lie of the day.

I clicked my phone off, fetched the Jack from my nightstand, and took a swig straight out of the bottle. The warm liquid burned as it went down, but it made me more relaxed. I rubbed my hands through my short, dark hair and exhaled the strong fumes.

It had been over two years that I dealt with the side effects of the accident. I was more energetic and motivated than I had ever been before, but I was also raging for a new piece of ass all the time. It was like I didn’t know where to put my bottled up energy other than depositing it all between some lucky girl’s legs. At first I controlled it by working out constantly, practicing football, but lately I had been giving in more and more to temptation.

A lot of times I really liked the girls that I met, but I had to keep them somewhat distant. The moment that either one of us developed feelings that crossed the border of casual dating,
he
stepped in to make sure it didn’t go any further.

I suppose I was thankful. I would’ve been dead if it wasn’t for him.

My eyes scanned the master bedroom of the 3-story mansion that I had bought just a few weeks prior. It was even better than the penthouse that I had rented when I first moved out of the rent’s house after the accident. The floors of the mansion were marble throughout, and the chandeliers dangling from the ceiling screamed expensive beyond the means of most men. Every room was fitted with hand-painted art and the finest furniture that money could buy.

Yeah, I had to be thankful. Even if hadn’t got in that accident that night, I would’ve never gotten as far as I did without that intravenous moment.

But the cost of having everything that men dreamed of was high. I didn’t want to be alone, but worse, I hated to break the heart of whatever poor girl was doomed to fall for me. Perhaps even more troubling was breaking my own heart over and over again. It was one thing when the girls developed feelings for me, but sometimes I started liking them too.

I never fell hard. Oh no… I wouldn’t allow that to happen. But I fell for them enough that when I told them to fuck off, it felt like I was ripping a bandaid off of my heart. After doing it so many times, the old blood pumper was starting to get numb. Couple my inability to love with the incessant need for pussy, and “The Wrecker” took on a whole new meaning.

I carried the bottle of whiskey into my office, a 100 square meter room with floor to ceiling bookshelves on each wall and a large ebony desk in the center. I sat the bottle down beside my Mac, powered it on, and logged into my brokerage account.

$18,000 earned just that day.

I had been investing in stocks, or rather “shorting the market” for the last year and had incredible success. When you short the market, you bet against any sort of market gains, so when stocks crash, you profit wildly. It’s a little riskier than standard stock investing since you lose when stocks go up and can actually lose more than you put in, but after I had basically sold my soul, I was rather fearless about shorting heaps of stocks, confident that I’d come out on top.

I felt my iPhone buzzing in my pocket and pulled it out of my pants. “Hey, Mom,” I answered.

“Where are you, honey?”

“I’m at home, why?”

“You’re at home? Don’t tell me you forgot your sister’s graduation…”

I cursed under my breath. “Umm, no I didn’t forget. I’m just about to leave.” Lying was becoming a pretty common thing for me those days.

“Well, hurry up. The ceremony is going to start in an hour.”

“Yeah, mom. I’ll be there.”

The truth is, I had totally forgotten, and her ceremony was conflicting with the other plans I had for the day. I had intended to get drunk and laze around the house until I had football practice in the afternoon. Instead, it looked like I’d be arriving to my sister’s ceremony inebriated, and I wouldn’t have time to make it to practice that day.

I sent a text to my coach:

M
e
: Hey Coach. Sorry, I won’t be able to make practice today.

He messaged me back almost immediately.

Coach: Hope everything is okay. See you during next practice.

I
guess most
players get a lot of hell when they miss practice, but I had already taught Coach to accept that I was going to be absent half the time. Even if I didn’t practice with the team, we always had the same results. What is there to go over when you just hand me the fucking ball and watch me score again and again?

I took another swig of whiskey before rushing, or rather stumbling quickly, for the shower. After cleaning myself off, I dressed in a pair of a nice jeans and a button-up. I topped it off with some dark Ray Bans to hide the red that was lingering in my eyes.

Before long, I was speeding down the highway in my Ferrari California, heading for my sister’s school. Thankfully, I made it there without incident, and after parking, I followed the other droves of parents and relatives that had come to see their loved ones graduate. I was late, of course, but the principle of the school was still blabbing about good deeds and happy futures of the graduating class.

Mom and Dad were sitting near the front row with a seat saved for me beside them. Dad shook his head from side to side at my tardiness, but Mom just looked happy that I actually arrived. “Hey, baby. They’re going to call the graduates up any minute now,” Mom muttered. Her favorite pearl earrings dangled underneath her poofy, brown hair—the ones she only brought out for special events.

Technically, Kim wasn’t my real Mom, but she was all I really knew. My biological mother had got caught up in drug addiction and left Dad and I when I was little to find whatever new fix she had to get, never to be seen or heard from again. The idea might have bothered me if it weren’t for that fact that Kim was the best stepmom that I could’ve ever asked for. As far as I was concerned, she was the rock of the family and the only mother I’d ever need.

“Awesome,” I moaned and put both of my hands behind my neck, leaning my head back over the edge of the chair.

“Have you been drinking?” Dad squawked. I could almost sense the grey patches on the side of his charcoal haircut add a few new recruits as he spoke.

“Do you want me to lie?” I replied with a sarcastic smile.

“Jesus, Mitch… I hope you’re not drunk. Did you drive here yourself?”

“Relax, Frank. Let’s not ruin Annie’s day,” Mom intervened.

“Yeah, Dad. Relax.” I smiled at him again, and he shook his head in disapproval. I knew the old man just cared about me too much, and I loved pushing his buttons. Dad was a serious guy with a short fuse, but family meant everything to him.

Before long, both the principle and the counselor of the school had finished their speeches, and the students were being called up on stage one by one. Graduation music added a victorious theme to the whole ceremony, and by the time the first graduate had accepted their diploma, Mom was already in tears.

“My other baby is growing up,” she whimpered.

“It’s okay Kim.” Dad consoled. “She’s not leaving us yet. And look how good Mitch turned out.”

I wondered if he was being sarcastic with this comment. Surely he had seen me on the Daily News being escorted out of BarBar nightclub the other night after getting into a fight with a guy who was mouthing off a bit too much, and surely he hadn’t forgotten that I had shown up wasted for the most important day of Annie’s life.

“Patricia Sizemore,” The principle called out, and a smoking-hot redhead took the stage and began speaking into the mic. Even in my inebriated state, the never-ending rage was burning in my loins, and I made a mental note to sneak away and talk to the girl if I had a chance.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around.

“Excuse me,” an older, relatively attractive lady whispered. Her lips were thick with dark red lipstick, and I caught a nice glimpse of cleavage poking out of her silk blouse as she leaned over, “Are you The Wrecker from UCLA?”

I tilted my sunglasses down to get a better look of the woman and the man that was sitting beside her. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh my god,” she wailed a little too loudly. “My husband and I are your biggest fans.” She began digging in her purse and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil. “Can I get your autograph?”

“Oh c’mon now,” another woman nearby said. “You can’t be doing all that during the ceremony.”

I chuckled and took the pen and paper, scribbling my name before handing it back to her. I considered writing my number on the paper, knowing that chubby, bald guy she was with was probably not giving her the dick she deserved. She might have been older, but she looked like a firecracker, and I’ve found that overzealous fans are the best when you get them in the sack. But I told myself that I was at Annie’s ceremony and kept my better judgment. I still had a little bit of self-control.

“Annie Crimson,” the principle called out, and my head snapped back to the stage. Strutting proudly to the podium was my little sister, and my eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw her. Gone was the long, golden hair that she had sported since elementary school. She had apparently dyed it jet black and cut it a little shorter, accentuating the perfect tone of her soft, porcelain skin and lightest of blue eyes. Even though she was wearing a graduation gown, the curves underneath the cloth were clearly showing that she had grown out quite a bit.

My heart was pounding. It had been a couple months since I had seen Annie, with all the training and traveling around to away games. Perhaps it was the change of hair, or maybe it was the rage that was boiling inside of me, but for a moment I saw her in a different light.

We all stood and clapped for Annie as she grabbed her diploma from the principle, shook his hand, and left the stage silently. I felt proud for her and couldn’t wait to give her a proper congratulation.

The ceremony continued on for another hour, and I almost fell asleep through the thing. Watching student after student do the same thing over and over again had a borderline hypnotic effect. After the official events were finished, and I was officially over it all, most of the students mingled with their peers while their parents were standing by.