Draw Play: A Sports Romance

* * *

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Published by Salted Pen Publications, Minnesota.

Draw Play: A Sports Romance

Edited by: Lawrence Editing, Dawn Thompson & Donna Rich

* * *

I
couldn’t believe
what a nightmare it was, getting back from summer break. Had I actually looked forward to being with my team again?

“Come on, fellas!” I could have strangled Zack for being such an obnoxious prick. He was barely tolerable the year before when we were juniors on our way to the national championship. Now that we were seniors and it was “all on the line,” he’d kicked it up a notch. I could tell from the looks on the other guys’ faces that I wasn’t the only one wishing I could punch him. But I knew it was impossible to get away with hitting University of Michigan’s star quarterback. They’d bring the burning torches and pitchforks to my room at the frat house.

“Zack, give us a break,” I muttered. When I glanced up from my position on the rowing machine, I saw Preston grinning at me. He was the only one who heard, or that was the way it looked.

I wasn’t the only one who took it easier than I should have over the break. I did my conditioning work and kept myself running and lifting weights. Still, I’d slacked off. It seemed like just about everybody had, except Zack and Max. It made sense. They were the two with the most hope in the upcoming draft, being the team’s best football players. I was a decent center, but not in their league. Besides, I’d had other things to keep me busy all summer.

The first hard workout after getting back to campus was painful. Zack wasn’t making it easier. I took off my soaked yellow Michigan Wolverines T-shirt to mop the sweat off of my face. The whole weight room reeked of pungent sweat and frustration as we worked off months of taking it easy.

“Uh-oh,” Zack laughed, pointing. “Jake’s showin’ off that six-pack again.”

“It’s an eight-pack, dick.” Everyone laughed, including Zack. At least he had a sense of humor—still, I worked hard on my body, just as hard as anybody else. He acted like he’d never taken his shirt off to impress chicks while we played a pick-up game on campus.

I tuned him out and put my heart into rowing, working the stiffness out of my muscular legs. I’d been playing center since I first learned to hold a football. It wasn’t the most glamorous position. I didn’t get all the easy tail Max did, being the top running back. But I gave full effort to everything I did. And I still got more than enough tail when I wasn’t playing or training.

“How was your vacation?” Preston asked. He was beside me, on another rowing machine. As a running back, working his legs was always a top priority. He was one of the fastest guys on the team and one of my closest friends. I spent most of my time with him and Brad Cramer, another running back.

“It was the usual. A culture shock, after being around you guys.” Playing ball with the rich kids sometimes made me forget the world I came from. I doubted any of my teammates knew how it felt to get nothing for Christmas, but that was my reality. Football was my only ticket out.

Preston laughed. “Yeah, I hear you.” No, he didn’t. His family was almost upper-middle-class and even had a pool in their lavish backyard. I had visited him over the summer and swum in it myself. I grew up in a run-down rowhome in what used to be a nicer part of Detroit but fell apart when the factories shut down long before I was born. I never even saw the “good old days.” If I wanted to cool off growing up, I had to turn on the fire hydrant with the other kids on the block.

“Ready to get fucked up tonight, Wolverines?” Brad shouted, walking past me. “Gonna be some fresh pussy there, fellas!” That was how he always talked about women. They were fresh meat to him. I wasn’t a hypocrite—I had my share of one-night stands. That was all I had, generally. I’d decided when I hit college after my only girlfriend had broken up with me, that I wouldn’t tie myself down. It had worked for me so far.

“Hell, yeah,” I said, rowing harder, pushing myself to the limit. “It’s been too long.”

“No girls where you come from, Charming?” Brad snickered, using the nickname the senior players gave me in freshman year thanks to my looks—“like Prince Charming,” they used to say. How they knew what the hell he looked like, I could never tell. I guessed he had blond hair and a strong jaw, like me. Max and Zack walked past, chuckling at Brad’s joke. I didn’t pay attention to them, or the sounds of grunting from my friends as they lifted weights and ran races on the treadmills. It all faded into the background.

“Yo, man. Where are you?” I jumped when Preston’s voice fought its way through my memories of Hannah, our relationship, and how she broke up with me shortly after high school graduation. I’d run into her family a few times over the summer. They were friendly people, and they’d told me Hannah was in Punta Cana with her med school boyfriend. She’d always wanted better than what we grew up with in Detroit. I couldn’t blame her.

“What?”

“I asked if you wanted to come on a beer run with me later on. It’s my turn to pick it up.”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, count me in.” I was glad he interrupted my thoughts since I was starting to go down a dark road.

I took a shower after my vigorous workout, washing off the smell of the weight room. Even after months of emptiness, we managed to quickly stink up the weight room again. It was a scent I’d always associate with football, the sweat, and discipline that went into it.

While I washed, I told myself to chill out. I was back at the university, with my team. Life was good. It was where I belonged. By the time I dried and dressed, I was whistling to myself and looking forward to a night of partying and probably getting laid for the first time in weeks. I had a lot of excess energy to burn off—there was nobody back home worth sticking my dick in unless I felt like losing it.

* * *

I
was
in a good mood until Coach called me into his office when he saw me walking by.

A lot of things changed with time, but our coach’s black ball cap and navy polo never would. I was pretty sure he wore them to bed. “Sup, Coach? I just got done working out. How was your break?”

“Good, good. Have a seat, Jake.” I took a seat, surrounded by plaques and trophies. For a tiny room, he managed to fit a lot of hardware inside. I folded my six-foot-four sturdy frame into one of the molded plastic chairs in front of his desk.

“What’s up, Coach?”

He pointed to a manila file folder on his crowded desk. “Know whose file this is?”

I didn’t like what I heard in his voice. The only time he ever sounded like that was when he got ready to tell us bad news. He took off his hat, running a hand over his gray buzz cut. That was another thing that would never change.

“I’m going to guess it’s mine?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Good guess. What do you think is in it? I mean, why am I calling you in my office to talk about it?”

I sighed and shifted under his stare. “It’s because I didn’t do well last semester.”

“That’s an understatement, Jennings, and you know it.”

I winced when he called me by my last name. Everybody on the team knew when he did that, it meant trouble.

“Listen, Coach. I could have done better. But you know better than anybody else how hard we worked last year. You don’t win the championship by burying your head in textbooks. Come on.”

“Excuse me, Jennings? Then explain how my second-string quarterback maintained straight A’s? Or when last year’s starter pulled a three-point-four GPA? Don’t give me that shit.”

I winced again. “But I’m not like them. I need more work to get good grades.”

“You’ve got smarts too, Jake. You and I both know this. Don’t tell me you don’t have it in you to pull down the grades and perform on the field. I’ve been coaching here at University of Michigan for a long time—I can tell the idiots from the rest. You’re not one of them.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

He smirked, and his sun-wrinkled faced became even more lined. “You’re welcome, smartass.”

“I’m still over a two-point-O, so I’m in good shape for this season.” I never let myself dip below the base average for football players on scholarship.

“You’re just making it, Jake. I’m only hard on you because I don’t want to take any chances this year.”

“Coach, you don’t have to worry,” I insisted. “Look at the rest of my transcripts. The proof’s right there. I always end up pulling through.”

“You’re right. But like I said, I don’t feel like taking any chances. We’ll be coming off a championship this year, so you know the rest of the conference will be on us. I need my best players out there. Besides,” Coach added, eyeing me up, “the last thing you need is to sit out your final season. You saw the scouts running around after the guys last year. That’ll be you, this season. You can’t fuck it up. We’re the Michigan Wolverines!”

“Okay! I got you, Coach. I won’t,” I said, standing.

“Damn right, you won’t. So, that’s why I’m assigning you a tutor, who’s going to keep up with all your classes and report your grades directly to me. Every paper, every exam. Everything.”

“Whoa! What?” Stunned, I had to sit back down. “You can’t be serious. I’m telling you, I’m not playing around. I got this!”

“I’m not playing around, either. If I had it my way, you’d move out of that frat house and into your own apartment. I’d lock your ass up every night so you could focus and study. I hear about the stories that go on in that house. Girls, partying, and drinking. Just straight foolishness.”

“Coach,” I interrupted.

“Since I can’t do that, this is the next best thing. A tutor, Jennings.”

Speechless, I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Don’t act like I’m cutting your balls off. You’ll see it’s for the best by the end of the semester when you’re pulling better grades. Then you don’t have to worry about finals making or breaking you.”

I shook my head. “Is there any other way? I don’t have time to meet with a tutor. We have practice, games, and workouts—”

“Make the time. Besides, you should be making time to study, anyway. This way, you won’t be alone. You’ll be held accountable.” He winked. “It could be fun.”

“Man, fuck this,” I mumbled.

I wasn’t in the mood for bullshit jokes. The way I felt, it was a challenge not to take his latest trophy off his cluttered desk and throw it against the wall.

I couldn’t look him in the eye as I picked up my black gym bag and left the office. I walked down the long corridor, listening to the sounds of my friends’ laughter still coming from the weight room. I was glad none of them had seen or heard what went down just then. Zack, of all people, would never let me live it down.

I reached the empty parking lot of the Athletics building and got behind the wheel of my shining, freshly-washed red SUV. Of course, it looked like it might rain at any minute, so the car wash before heading to campus had been a waste of time. It was the way my luck was starting to run.

I heard Coach’s words echoing in my head. He would find the perfect tutor for me before Monday morning, and we’d meet each other then. Knowing him, I’d end up with some geek reject that had nothing better to do than study their life away.

I revved my engine before peeling out of the parking lot, cranking up the volume on my stereo as I did. Def Leppard poured out of the speakers, and it matched the mood I was in. Fucking grades. Fucking Coach. I wished he were standing in front of me so I could run him down. Maybe I would back up and go over him again.