Page 173 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
“Alton?” she asked, her pretentious expression typical of the sorority types at Athens. Blake shook his head in annoyance. He’d received that same look, that same condescending tone from half the girls on campus. Most tried to hide their disgust. After all, he didn’t just play for Georgia, he was the quarterback. But some couldn’t keep their judgment from seeping out.
His mind drifted to the small town where he’d grown up.
Alton, Georgia, was the smallest town he’d ever been in. Maybe the smallest town in America. There were a thousand people, max, and the only source of employment was the textile plant, which took up most of the town, and Ace Hardware. Most everyone lived in a trailer, but few lived in a trailer as run-down as his grandmother’s. Well, besides Summer Earnhardt, his next-door neighbor and best friend. Summer’s trailer made his look like a great-American single-family home. Her mother left when she was six and her dad worked third shift at the plant, so most nights Summer was left alone to make her own dinner and get herself up and ready for school the next morning. Some might complain, but she never did. She respected her father too much and didn’t want him feeling guilty when he did the best he could by her.
That was the problem with people, with life. Just like the blonde in front of him now, people assumed that if you grew up poor your parents were pieces of shit that beat you or molested you or did some other unthinkable thing. But the truth was that the poor people of Alton, Georgia, were some of the best people Blake had ever known.
Blake had met plenty of rich people since joining the Dawgs at the University of Georgia. He was the top recruit in his class. The best quarterback they’d seen since Johnny Football, and suddenly, every school in the country was sucking his dick trying to get him to join their team. He told himself he chose Georgia because his grandfather had been a hard-core Georgia fan, but really it was because Summer couldn’t afford to go out of state, and he couldn’t afford to spend four years without her. Summer was his rock.
A rock that clearly forgot her promise to swing by his place after the game.
Blake looked past the blonde, who was rambling on about his game-winning touchdown pass, and into the sea of people who’d invited themselves to his apartment. The front door sat ajar and people were forcing their way inside.
“Come one, come all!” Jamison, Blake’s roommate, waved from the coffee table, where he stood shirtless and already shitfaced drunk. He yelled for someone to turn up the music, and suddenly the walls and floor vibrated all around Blake, sending his headache into a full-out migraine. How the fuck had he let Jamison talk him into this shit? That’s what he got for agreeing to have a roommate, when he wanted to live alone.
Jamison, a tight end, was Blake’s only roommate, though he used the term loosely. He spent most nights in the bed of some girl who would hate him later. Blake didn’t understand how Jamison could screw around so freely, but maybe that was how people without responsibility behaved. Blake had never known what it was like to not have responsibility.
His grandmother counted on him for money. She had since his grandfather passed away three years ago. And she had ingrained in him from a young age that fucking around would do nothing but land him at the Winn-Dixie asking, “Paper or plastic?” At least, that was what happened to his dad. He, too, was a superstar on the field, but then he knocked up Blake’s mom, and the rest was a nightmare. Blake’s mom died during childbirth, and his dad, who couldn’t handle the ticket God had dealt him, shot himself in the head.
Blake felt like his grandmother blamed Blake’s mother, even Blake himself. If she’d never gotten pregnant, Blake’s dad would’ve still been alive, playing for the NFL. As it was, she spent every waking moment reminding Blake that he was blessed with a gift . . . but God could yank it out from under him if he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. She’d spiked so much fear in him that first Blake decided to wait to have sex until he secured his scholarship to college. Then that day came and went, and suddenly, he no longer wanted to lose it to just anyone. He wanted to lose it to a certain someone—Summer.
Someone cranked up the music louder, and the headache that had been splitting Blake’s head in two since that hit he took in the third quarter pulsed harder in his temples, across his forehead, down his neck. He pushed through the crowd, ducked into his bedroom, and shut the door, locking it before he’d even turned on the light.
Blake reached for the light and immediately heard a scream from his bed. He jerked around to see a couple half dressed. Rage radiated through him. “Get the f
uck out of my bedroom.” He opened the door and pointed. Blake sighed as he slammed the door behind them and rested his forehead against the smooth wood grain.
“Another headache?” a familiar voice called from the corner.
He spun around, unable to keep a smile from spreading across his face. Summer sat in the chair at his desk, her legs pulled up close to her and her arms wrapped around them to keep them secure. Her strawberry-blond hair was sectioned into two braids that flowed over her right and left shoulders, and she was wearing a tank top and those yoga pants girls wore, like she planned to work out, but they both knew she’d never actually go.
“You know there was a couple going at it here?”
She shrugged. “I know. I thought I’d watch for pointers, but their chemistry seemed in question or perhaps the guy lacked confidence. And the moaning from the girl? Was that pain or passion? I couldn’t be sure. It was dark, after all.” She said all of this with only the tiniest of smiles, so you couldn’t be sure if she was serious or not, which made her intimidating as hell to anybody with even a speck of self-doubt. Being a near genius had that effect, but add to it her unbelievable face—ivory skin, crazy blue eyes, and the sort of eyelashes that made guys want to take a cold shower—and suddenly, she became a complex puzzle that too many guys to count had tried to crack.
Blake still wasn’t sure if she was a virgin. He was too afraid to ask, partially because he didn’t want to know and partially because he was afraid she’d ask him and then he’d have to confess the most embarrassing thing possible to the very girl he wanted to seduce into taking the humiliation away.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and contemplated just asking her. So, Summer, I had an idea and there’s a bed here and . . . Fuck! Instead he hit his dock station and Imagine Dragons filled the room. He let the smooth song drown out the rap shit hitting against his walls and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and glanced over at Summer, all words gone for just a moment as he let her face, her simple, beautiful face, ease the tension in his head and heart. If only this were simpler . . .
Two
SUMMER EARNHARDT WATCHED as Blake stared at her, wondering if he wanted her to leave. He’d won the game, single-handedly, though he would never say or admit that. To Blake, there was only a team, never an I. He spent much of high school telling her that he was the dumb athletic one and she was the smart nerd; how had they become best friends? But the truth was Blake was as far from dumb as a guy could get. Sure, she was the valedictorian, the honor student, but she had no choice. She had no skill, no talent, nothing to fall back on. Either she killed herself with her grades and scored a scholarship, or she spent the rest of her life in the trailer park where she grew up. She couldn’t do that, no matter how much she loved her father.
So she spent her days studying, while Blake went to practice, and then they would coop up together at night like an old couple in his bedroom and watch TV on the scrambled set, Blake banging on it to get a clear reception, Summer trying not to spew her Coke laughing. Summer hated staying alone, so Blake would let her pretend that she was too tired to walk home and would cover her up in his bed, him asleep on the other aside. Life had felt so easy then. She knew he would one day be what he was now—a superstar—but she never imagined feeling so left behind.
Of course, Blake would never push her out, but she knew there must be a line of girls outside, waiting to get in his bed. How many had she seen him with already this year, and it was only a few months into classes?
The truth was Summer had always envisioned herself ending up with Blake. Not while they were young and foolish, but once they graduated college. They would run into each other and realize that behind their friendship had been something more. Which was why she had saved herself all these years. Sure, there had been a few close encounters—EJ Long and Finley Anderson—but in the end, she stopped just before the final push from dry hump to real hump. Each time, one face appeared to her, and she couldn’t do it.
Summer swiveled the chair she was sitting in and rested her chin on her knees. “Want to contemplate the possibility of your brain hemorrhaging from one of those hits? I think it’s like a one in—”
Blake ran his hands over his face and closed his eyes. “Let’s not go into how likely I am to break something, become a paraplegic, or die every time I finish a game. You know I’m fine. I’m always fine.”
Summer considered him, the squint in his eyes from the headache. “What can I do?”
“You know.”
Summer cleared her throat and nodded. Ever since his grandmother’s arthritis turned her fingers into knobby twigs, Blake had asked Summer to massage his scalp when he got one of his headaches. She had never minded. It was relaxing, in a way, to help someone else relax, but she hadn’t given him a massage since before they came to Georgia. Since before his already toned body became a force to be reckoned with, a steel structure of hard, cut lines. Since before he became the Blake Banks, or as everyone on ESPN called him, The Great BB.
