you always wanted. I could have brought him to you, if only. He made a noise, something between a grunt and a hiccup. Not a yes. Not a no.
“I hope you never see him again.”
Justin neck cracked, he looked up so fast, staring at his dad with wide eyes.
“I hope you never see him again, because I don’t want him to hurt you any more.” Justin’s dad shook his head. “I hope he’s gone forever. I hope he takes his bullshit and gets lost for good, because you deserve better than that. You do. Understand?”
They’d never spoken like this. His dad had never talked to him about the birds and the bees, or boyfriends, or who he liked and who liked him. His parents had never asked if he was going to prom in high school, much less who with. His mom hadn’t wanted to hear about dances after he came out. She’d made a comment, once, about why he’d even go to homecoming if he wasn’t going with a girl. For prom, he’d simply taken his suit over to his friend’s and dressed there, then stumbled home before dawn, hungover and well fucked.
But when he got back, the porch light had been on for him. Would his dad, at least, have wanted to see him off to prom if Justin had given him the opportunity?
He chugged more beer, let it slide down his throat, let the bubbles pop like the memories inside him. Gone forever… until every Saturday, when number 87, the fifth-best player in the nation, took the field.
Gone forever, except for how Wes Van de Hoek was all over the school’s website, the emails, the newsletters. His awards, his ranking, the NFL speculation. His position as team captain. SportsCenter highlights, ESPN reels. Replays, for fuck’s sake, of Wes’s games, analysis of Colton and Wes and their Brady-Gronkowski magic.
Gone forever, except for how he was everywhere.
Justin sat back and stared at the rain.
Chapter Nine
August
After hauling ten loads from his car to his new room, Justin was done. Most of his stuff was clothes, then sheets and towels, and finally the two boxes of decor he and his mom had bought together, their one mom-and-son date before he drove back to campus. She’d wanted a beach theme for his room after he told her, in no uncertain terms, he wouldn’t be putting up anything that had to do with cowboys. Or any mementos from Paris.
He drove down the block and around the corner from his new home, an old Victorian renovated into single-room apartments rented out to students. He’d moved to West Campus, a quaint enclave off the university grounds, full of old homes and narrow, twisty streets. The neighborhood had been the city’s original suburb, 150 years ago, and now it was an urban retreat. He parallel parked on a side street beneath the leafy branches of a thick cottonwood. His sedan would be covered in bird shit by morning, but it wouldn’t be ten thousand degrees when he got inside, and that was worth more to him than the paint job was.
Justin hauled himself out of the car and sighed. Even here, buried in West Campus, he could still see the stadium. There was no escaping the double-decker, hundred-thousand-seat monstrosity. It was visible from every corner of campus, every building, as if the stadium were the university’s crown jewel. Who was he kidding? It was. How could anyone ever forget that they went to a football school?
And that Wes Van de Hoek was the star footballer on campus.
Wes—a close-up of his focused expression behind his face mask, him running downfield with the ball in his arms, him leaping to catch a pass one-handed—was splashed on every building, every banner that fluttered from the campus light posts, and screamed from every billboard advertising student tickets to the games.
Gone forever, but everywhere.
Justin turned his back on the stadium and locked his car, hitching his backpack on his shoulder. West Campus was a hive of activity, students moving in for fall semester. Cars and trucks jockeyed for position on the narrow streets, loitering outside houses as they dumped students and their belongings on the sidewalks. Justin had never lived in this neighborhood before. He’d lived in the dorms on Southside, the cheap apartment complexes that racked and stacked freshmen and sophomores four and six to a unit. Over the summer, he’d asked if his parents would be willing to chip in to help him live somewhere nicer, somewhere he could