Draw Play: A Sports Romance (2 page)

“
I
swear
, Claire, you’re the only person I know who looks forward to getting back to school every semester.”

I turned away from the dresser to frown at my roommate. “So? What’s that supposed to mean?”

She rolled her blue eyes as she worked on her makeup. “I’m just saying that you’re so uptight. You’re always trying to get a jump on the semester.”

“What’s so bad about that? Besides, you’re here, too. You didn’t have to come until tomorrow.”

“Not true. I have a meeting with my department head tomorrow morning, first thing. It was either this or make the drive before dawn. But you didn’t have any reason to.”

“Whatever.” I liked Jess enough to renew our roommate arrangement for a fifth semester, but she knew how to push my buttons. “I like to have everything in order before classes start. You know I have OCD when it comes to organization and getting everything ready.”

“I already know,” she chuckled. “So, are you meeting up with your friends tonight?”

I knew who she meant, and I couldn’t miss the teasing in her voice. She wasn’t making fun, per se, but she was having fun with me. I knew she thought my friends were total losers. I wondered what she would think if she knew they felt the same way about her.

“I don’t know. It depends on how many of your friends are around.” I smirked. “Looking for something to do?”

“Hang out with the mouth breathers you call friends? Uh no, thanks.”

I couldn’t help but take offense. “Once again, only Thomas is a mouth breather, and it’s because of his asthma.”

“It’s because of his asthma and because he’s around a hundred pounds overweight.”

“Really, Jess?”

“Just kidding. You know I’m just joking.” She grinned, finishing up her makeup.

Jess, since I’ve known her, has always kept herself slim to ensure she kept getting cast in leading roles. She wasn’t a character actress, she’d told me once, so she couldn’t afford to blow up.

I turned away, feeling self-conscious about my curves as always. Jess had a way of making me feel like a cow without meaning to. I knew she thought I looked good—she was always trying to get me to hang out with her friends so she could hook me up with one of them. If she’d thought I was unattractive, she wouldn’t bother. That was what I told myself.

I caught a quick glimpse of myself in the mirror sitting on top of my dresser. Poker-straight, thin brown hair hung in front of my face as I bent over my drawers to put away fresh laundry. I wasn’t overweight—far from it. But I didn’t fit the ideal, either, and every time I saw Jess running around in her tiny tank tops and short shorts, I felt that much more insecure.

Yet, hanging with my friends was the only time I felt confident with myself. They accepted me for who I was. In fact, the sort of thing that got me tormented in high school, my brains, earned respect in my circle. We even competed to see who could do the best each semester. That was my definition of fun.

I looked over at my desk, where my new law books sat in a stack. My wallet had wept tears of blood when I paid for them earlier that day.

Jess saw them, too. Missing them was hard. “I don’t know how you do it,” she announced, flopping back on her tiny twin bed—which was common to those of us who lived in the dorms. Just like the painted cinderblock walls, the gray tile floors, overhead fluorescent lights. Jess and I did our best to make the place homier with flowered curtains, floor lamps—we never turned on the overhead light if we could help it—a pink throw rug that covered most of the floor between our beds. Girls who visited generally commented on how much nicer our room was than theirs.

I looked at her, shaking her head at my course load. “I don’t know how you do, either,” I admitted.

“Do what?”

“You work hard in a different way. You shop hours for class credits and rehearsals. Working on sets at the last minute to make sure they’re ready. Putting costumes together. Don’t get me started on how you memorize lines for a show.” What I couldn’t say, but sat in the front of my mind, was the way she put herself out there during auditions. I didn’t know how she lived with rejection, either—then again she wasn’t rejected all that often. If she had my curves, my average medium height, or my total lack of style when it came to clothes or makeup or hair, she wouldn’t be so lucky.

Once I finished straightening up my side of our dorm room, I texted my friends to see who was around to have dinner together at the campus cafeteria. “You sure you don’t want to join us?” I teased Jess.

She wrinkled her nose. “Cafeteria food is so disgusting. How can you eat that crap?” Jess usually went for takeout with her theater friends.

“Well, it’s cheap. So it works.” I shrugged then waved before leaving. I wished I could afford to throw money around on takeout. Who would pick cafeteria food if they had a choice of something better? My job at the campus bookstore barely kept my head above water as it was.

* * *

B
y the time
I got to the cafeteria, Thomas, Marcie, and Adam were already there. The campus was still quiet, and most tables were empty.

“How was summer?” Marcie gave me a warm, inviting hug. She’d traveled across Europe and Asia with her family throughout the break, so we hadn’t kept in touch. I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have college professors for parents, always studying new places and cultures. It seemed so exotic and exciting.

“Same old. Mom trying to feed me, Dad watching too much baseball.”

Thomas rolled his eyes when he overheard. “Same here. It’s Dad’s religion. He made me sit through a game with him—I think we were supposed to be bonding.”

“I guess it didn’t go well,” I joked, choosing a cup of chicken noodle soup and fresh salad. I’d eaten way too much junk over break thanks to my mom’s insistence on spending her time feeding me, and the slight tightness around my waistband told the grim truth.

“You could say that. My dad got pissed when I didn’t understand the game any better when it was over than I did before it started.”

“You could just pretend, you know. It’s really not that difficult of a game to follow.”

“Why would I do that? He knows I don’t care about sports.” Yes, and that lack of interest drove his father crazy. He’d always wanted a son who would follow in his athletic footsteps. Thomas cared too much about physics, food, and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.

I turned to Adam. “You’re the only person I know who could look stressed out two days before classes even start.”

“You try studying for the MCAT,” he said. He sounded exhausted.

“Did you take any time to relax over break?”

“Yes, Mom.” He grinned.

I couldn’t help blushing—he was the only guy in my circle of friends who I was ever vaguely interested in. His hazel eyes gleamed above dark circles.

“You don’t look it. You look like you haven’t been sleeping at all.”

Marcie nudged me under the table, and I kicked her. She was telling me to chill.

“I do what I can.”

I left it at that before she opened her big mouth.

When the boys got up to get dessert, Marcie turned to me. “Why don’t you just make the move and get it over with? I see how you look at him.”

“Oh, please,” I said, waving dismissively. “Adam is not interested in me.”

“I think you need to give him a chance.”

“He looks at me like a sister.”

“Then he and his sister have some gross
Game of Thrones
-level stuff going on because I know my brother never looked at me like that.”

I glanced across the cafeteria at where the boys stood at the soft serve machine. Adam was cute in a goofy kind of way. He always seemed a little too tall, a little too clumsy. It was like he hadn’t grown into his body yet.

“Nah.” I shook my head. “And I’m not going to lead myself into believing he likes me.”

Marcie sighed. When she shook her head too, bright red curls bounced around her shoulders. “Do me a favor, Claire.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t talk yourself out of what could be good for you, okay?” She managed to get her advice in just under the wire, as the boys sat down a moment later. My cheeks burned warm—did he like me, really? It didn’t matter that I felt tongue-tied since a distraction entered the cafeteria.

“Oh, here we go,” Thomas muttered. “Here come the meatheads, y’all.”

I half-way turned in my seat in time to see four jocks walk in. They each took two trays, which they proceeded to load with food. Sandwiches, Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, pasta, fruit, milk, and even cereal. My stomach turned at the thought of eating all that food at once.

“Greedy assholes. I can’t stand those fuckers,” Thomas remarked as he took a heaping spoonful of ice cream. “They think just because they can hit a ball or carry a ball or whatever, the world stops and starts around them like they’re celebrities on campus.”

“If they’re in training, they need the calories,” Adam said distractedly. “Especially if they’re wrestlers, which I think they are, judging from the shape they’re in.”

“So all they do is grapple and sweat. Big deal.”

If I were a psych major, I could write a graduate dissertation on Thomas. He was obviously jealous of anybody with a shred of athletic ability—the one thing his father wished he had.

“And they probably take remedial reading,” I added.

“They’re only eating all that food so they’ll have the energy to rape a girl later on.”

Marcie and I winced, glaring at Thomas.

He averted his eyes. “Too much?”

“Uh, yeah, dumbass!” I scowled. Fun was fun, but he took it too far. “You really need to fix your relationship with your dad.”

“My relationship with my dad is fine.”

“Which is why you see red whenever you’re around sports players? Yeah, okay,” I added.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, continuing to eat his ice cream.

“You got issues kid,” Marcie replied as we cleaned up our trays. “Anyway, is Jess still dating that basketball player?”

“I don’t think so. Jess hasn’t mentioned him in a long time. I believe she decided to stick to theater guys. They’re in a class of their own. Nobody else understands their schedule.”

“Please,” Adam muttered. “What do they do? Play pretend all day?”

I bristled, knowing how hard my roommate worked on every show. “Hardly,” I snapped. “We can’t all be pre-med, Adam.” That quickly killed our conversation, and we left the cafeteria in awkward silence. Marcie turned right, toward her dorm room. Thomas walked straight ahead to his. I went left, while Adam lived in an off-campus apartment.

“Hey, Claire! Can I walk you to your room?” Adam shouted.

Usually, I would have liked the idea, but I was still irritated with him. “That’s okay. It’s not far.” I put on a fake smile to avoid a fight.

His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry for what I said about your friend. I didn’t know it would piss you off like that. We were all making fun.”

I frowned, hating my hypocrisy. “Yeah, I know. I said some things, too. I don’t know why it made me mad. I guess because I know Jess, and I know what she does isn’t as easy as just playing pretend all day.”

“You’re right. I mean, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a school play before.”

“Wait. You didn’t take Intro to Theatre?”

We grinned at each other. Intro to Theatre was a “dumb” elective for people looking for an easy A. One of the requirements was seeing all plays in a single semester and writing a paper on them. The sort of class a jock took to sail through.

“I must have missed it.”

We both chuckled then silence fell between us. I wondered again whether Marcie was right about him liking me. I didn’t dare to get my hopes up.

“Well, I’m going to head back to my room. I have my first shift at the bookstore bright and early. I can only imagine what the rush will be like.” Most people waited until the day before class started to get their textbooks since they didn’t typically arrive on campus until then. Others waited until the end of the week, in case they decided to drop a class—everybody knew you got the merest fraction of the cost back when you returned a book. For people in majors like Adam’s and mine, though, there was no dropping courses.

“Sure, I’ll see you later, then. Have a good night, Claire.” There was the slightest hesitation on his part as he turned to leave, and I felt the same. Maybe Marcie was right, and I had been missing something so obvious for so long. After all, Adam lived off-campus. He didn’t have to eat at the cafeteria with us, as busy as he was.
Could it be…?

I was smiling to myself with a racing heart as I returned to my dorm room. Jess was on her way out. “Hey, Claire! The Wi-Fi is
finally
working,” she mentioned. “I was able to get access to my email a little while ago.”

“Okay, great.” I sat down at my tidy desk, hoping to find Marcie on Skype so we could analyze the awkward moment with Adam. Before I could look for her, an email from the financial aid office caught my eye.

“What?” I shrieked.

Jess rushed to my side. “What happened?”

“It says my work-study has been reassigned because they accidentally overstaffed the fucking bookstore!”