“As I said, that’s how he is now. Self-destructive. He parties all night and doesn’t care about much else.”
“He cares about soccer,” I blurt out.
He does.
He’s always cared about it.
About getting picked in the drafts, going pro.
About me following him wherever he goes to play.
It would actually make me feel slightly uncomfortable talking about it. Because I always wanted to end up at NYU and study creative writing, and Lucas knew that. But he’d always tell me that that you could study creative writing anywhere and us staying together was more important. And since it wasn’t something super urgent, I’d simply choose not to argue.
That’s not the point though.
The point is that Lucas has soccer and he loves it. And he won’t do anything to risk his chances of getting picked this coming January and going pro.
“Well, if he keeps on this path, there’s not going to be much left to care about.”
“But that’s… He wouldn’t…” I have to pause, will my heart to stop beating so loudly so I can at least hear my own words. “Why? I don’t… I’m…”
“Why do you think?” he tells me, his eyes intense and penetrating.
For a few seconds, I refuse to believe it.
I refuse to hear what he’s telling me. I tell myself that he’s lying.
That this isn’t true.
It can’t be.
Soccer is Lucas’s life. Soccer is everything to him.
But then I was too, wasn’t I?
He’d tell me that. He’dshowme that.
He showed it to me on that night too. On my sixteenth birthday.
When I broke his heart.
I betrayed his trust. I hurt him in the worst way possible.
With his best friend.
Hisbest.Friend.
With heaving breaths, I look at him. I look at his arched cheekbones, his arrogant brows. His heated eyes, his plush mouth.
That bruise on his jaw.
And I want to…
I want to bite it. I want to scratch it, scratch his ever beautiful and ever sexy face.
I want to pull at his dark, spiky hair. Punch his wildly breathing chest.
“Why aren’t you doing something then?” I voice my question but I don’t give him a chance to answer. “Why aren’t you stopping him? Whydidn’tyou stop him before he got drunk and stoned out of his mind? What are you doing here with me? Why aren’t you out there, looking out for him?”