Hard Facts by Penny Clarke
26
Summer
Natalie completely freezes me out after that.
And I let her.
Her secret keeps me reeling. I find my thoughts drifting to it at the most inopportune times. In the middle of a chapter meeting. During bake sales. Trying to track volunteer hours. At the nursing home, the elementary school, the rescue kennel. Late at night, when I can’t sleep, so I stare at my bare white ceiling, where instead of stars, I see scars. And I have to roll over and wake Gray, my mouth open, my mind ready, secrets right there, until he sleepily asks what’s wrong, and I say nothing before kissing him. Distract my own thoughts with his lips and tender whispers and the tight clasp of our bodies in the dark.
I don’t tell Grayson.
I don’t know how.
Because every other secret I’ve shared with him… Somehow, those don’t feel as real as this one.
And the way Natalie reacted because I found out—how will she feel if I tell him?
A scream tears through my mind. Natalie herself. Jumping to her feet in the stands, cheering on Spencer as he passes the ball downfield. At the sound of jingling metal, my gaze falls to her bracelets. All those bracelets. So many of them. Covering each wrist and—
Natalie catches me staring. Blatantly, she switches spots with Rylie, who then rolls her eyes at me and excuses herself to get snacks from concessions. Leaving Natalie and I, once again, sitting right next to each other. A strong draft settles over us, and I shiver in my coat.
A finger tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Cold?”
Not from the night. Turning to Gray, I find warmth in his smile, and my thoughts turn to the other thing trying my mind. “Are you ready for your interview?”
Because he flies out for it soon. Just a couple of days.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Yet another reason why I hadn’t wanted to tell him anything about Natalie. He’d been focusing so much. Prepping late into the night, on top of work and classes and school projects and coming out to games with his friends, spending every spare moment with me.
“You’ll do great,” I assure him. A chill rakes over me, and then I do tell him, “It is a little brisk.”
He grins, and I lean into the arm he wraps around me. The kiss he presses to my temple.
Ignoring Natalie’s presence beside us—as difficult as it is, when she jumps every two minutes to cheer on her team—I watch the game, curled into my boyfriend’s side. I don’t need to see the notebook under Grayson’s leg to know the Leopards have had a remarkable run this season. The word around campus is that they’ll go to playoffs. Maybe win the whole thing. Certainly, that’s why the roar of the crowd is so loud tonight. The energy so electric, so intoxicating with hope.
Gray and I share a blanket on this cool night. I reach under it to pull out my phone. Turning on an app, I give it to him, “Here.”
He takes it, eyes scrunching in confusion, until… he smiles, wide and beaming. “You sure?”
I nod, laying my head on his shoulder. Pressing as close as I can to him as he raises it above our heads. “Smile, Summer.”
I can’t stop smiling. Not when he grins back like that.
After he takes the picture, we stare at it together, all the while still smiling. In the photo. At the photo. At each other. Under the blanket, his hand settles on my thigh. Squeezing and rubbing. Lifting further up, high under my skirt. The heat of his hand burns through my fleece leggings, and when I look at him from under my eyelashes, his smile is full of that same heat. Suddenly, I can’t wait for the game to be over. For us to go back to my place after Kellermann’s. To be alone with him again.
“He’s got the ball!” Natalie jumps up again, screaming as though hers is the only voice in the whole crowd. The only one that matters. “He’s got it and—Go, go! Theo, go!”
And maybe this time, I’ll tell him.
Not one of Natalie’s secrets. Or even Morris’s. But one of mine. One I’ve kept back for far too long.
I don’t want this to be fake anymore. What I feel for you isn’t just chemistry. It’s real. It’s so, so real.
For now, though, I kiss Gray. A kiss full of promises and secrets. So soft and gentle and loving that it makes the whole world quiet in one united gasp. For a moment, we are the only two people alive. Under all the stars. In the whole galaxy. The universe.
But we’re not.
And that collective gasp.
It wasn’t in our heads.
Gray and I pull back at the same time. He looks at the rest of the stadium, and I look at Natalie. Her arms, her hands, those bracelets. Hanging limply at her sides. Her face, white as snow, fixated on the field.
I follow that gaze. Over the deathly, resounding quiet of football fans. Hundreds of eyes focus on a single point. On a pile of players disentangling themselves from a nasty tackle. On one in particular, flat on his back. On a medic, pulling the navy helmet from his golden head.
The blanket falls to the bleachers as Gray and I rise to our feet. And the quarterback—he, also, slowly rises. And the crowd breathes another collective breath. A sigh of relief. He’s getting up again. He’s standing. He’s—
I grab Natalie’s hand. She grips back, hard. Choking my fingers in hers, as Theo Morris…
Goes crashing right back down.
* * *“It’s just a strain,” Morris says when, for the fifth time, Natalie asks if she can get him anything. “Stop. Fussing.”
“I’m not,” she grits through her teeth, even as her eyes fall, not for the first time since we arrived at Kellermann’s, to the leg he has propped up on chair. A brace covers its knee. “I am simply asking if you want some pretzels.”
Or another drink. Or more pain meds. Or, even, the blanket we’d used in the stands.
“If you’re taking orders,” Grayson pushes his empty glass stein on the table. “I could use another beer. Anything for you, Summer?”
“A kinky orgasm, please,” I smile at him. Then, with a straight face, “Wait, you meant a drink. In that case, a slow comfortable screw.”
As we grin at each other, Natalie gives us an irritated pout. She scoots her chair even closer to Morris’s. Barely an inch of space exists between them already, and Morris hangs back his head with a sigh.
Before he can complain, though, a football player sidles up to our table. I try to run through my internal catalog, but nothing comes to mind. He’s a new player. A freshman. And I have no clue what his name is. My mental catalog has been woefully neglected in recent weeks. Months, even.
Clapping Morris on the back, he asks, “Cap, that was some game.”
Morris agrees, because it had been. After he’d been benched for his injury, the rest of the team kicked into high gear. Fighting fierce with cleats and claws for their win. To show that though their quarterback was down, the Leopards weren’t out. Victory came swift and surely, and Levi had dedicated his final touchdown dance to their fallen leader.
They chat for a bit, with Natalie and Gray adding input, and then the kid asks Morris, “Can I get you anything? Beer? Food?”
This isn’t the first offer, nor the first person, to come to our table tonight. Because every few minutes it seems, someone new drops by. A member of the team. Casual fans. Cheerleaders. Groupies. All with a comment on the game, or an attempt to attend to him. The worst, though, are the ones curious about his injury.
You have to rest? Will it be okay in time for the next game? There’s only a few left. We need you out there. Are you sidelined for the rest of the season? Do you think we can still make the playoffs?
There’s a pained look on Morris’s face. Not from his knee. And a small part of me gloats that he finds no comfort in any of this attention, either.
“He’s fine, thanks, Hofstadler,” Natalie shoos him away, before turning to Morris herself. “Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
Worst of all, however, is Natalie. Shielding Morris from most of those questions, while smothering him with her own.
“Nat,” he turns to her. When his leg shifts and he grunts through an ache, she sets a hand on his shoulder to stop him, but Morris waves it off. “Go dance with Rylie. Have. Fun.”
He instructs this, like he is the sole pioneer of how to have a good time. Him, what with his water bottle and all those turned down offers of free booze.
Gray notices the tight look on Morris’s face, so he stands. “Come on, Natalie. I am hungry. And I do need another beer.” Leaning over me, he kisses my cheek and asks if I want anything.
“Kinky orgasm still on the menu?” I quietly tease.
One of his eyebrows raises with that smug grin. “Could be.”
“Whatever you two are whispering, I know it’s gross,” Natalie interrupts. “So stop. Come on, Gray.”
Laughing, he kisses me and follows her to the bar.
I’m alone then.
With Theodore Morris.
Heavy, unpleasant silence weighs over us.
“So,” Morris attempts to lift it. It falls, even harder than before, and he clears his throat. “Gray says you’ve been helping him. With the interview.”
“Yep,” is all I reply.
“Summer.” The quarterback leans forward on the table. Even though it makes him wince, and fuck. I just want to tell him to sit back. Relax. Stop pushing himself, even for that small effort. “I know Gray likes you.”
I know you and Grayson have a bet about how long we can stay together. I know you scare off Natalie’s dates.
It pisses me off, how easily he can act like everything’s fine between them. How he can be so friendly and tell her to dance and to stop worrying about him. That she has no idea. No idea at all what he’s done.
Meanwhile, people keep coming to our table. Keep offering him help. Keep congratulating him on such a good game. Keep gazing upon him in wonder, like Theodore Morris is some kind of impenetrable, infallible god.
If anything, his fall tonight should have shown them. He’s mere mortal. Pure flesh and bone and blood.
He can break, just as easily as anyone else.
And you and I, weboth know—
“I think, before it gets too far, we should—”
I don’t get to hear what Theodore Morris thinks. Because at that moment, yet another wave of well-wishers—a whole group of football players—distract him from what he’d been about to say.
It’s the last straw. I grab my coat. Yank it on. And I leave the table. The bar. Striding out onto the sidewalk, the bitter cold night making my fingers shake as I button my jacket.
Not halfway down the street towards my apartment, I hear Grayson. Calling my name. So I turn and wait for him to catch up, his breath coming out in small clouds and his glasses misting over. He’s barely pulled his coat on, and fuck, my fingers itch to touch him and zip it shut against the cold. To keep him warm and safe and always smiling, always for me.
“Morris said you just up and left,” those honey-brown eyes scrunch in worry. “You okay?”
No. Because I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t watch all these people fawn and fret over his roommate. I couldn’t wait for them to leave, to hear the rest of what Theo Morris had to tell me.
Because I already know what he was going to say.
Because it’s what I’ve been thinking for a long time.
But first, I have to know. I have to make sure he knows. So I ask him, point-blank, “Do you know about Natalie? All her bracelets?”
Gray’s shoulders fall. “You saw them. The scars.”
“So you do,” my voice breaks. With relief. That I hadn’t had to be the one to tell him this secret.
To rip out his heart any more than I’m about to.
He steps up to me. Sets his hands on my waist and pulls me closer. Presses his forehead against mine. “For the longest time, I didn’t. Natalie, she—she hides them so well. But you can only be around someone, be friends with them, before you start noticing. The bracelets. The long sleeves. Sweaters. Even in the summer.”
“I don’t know the whole story,” he says before I can ask, holding my face in his hands. His thumbs caress my skin, and though his fingers are cool, I feel warm all over. “Just that they’re there, and she keeps it a secret that they’re there.”
“And Morris?”
“I tried asking him once. He completely shut me down. So…yeah, I’m pretty certain he knows. And it makes me not worry, because Morris… he looks after her, you know. She’ll be okay with him around. She’ll be okay, Summer.”
When I look into his eyes, they’re calm. Smiling. Reassuring as he wraps me in a tight hug. “Come on, it’s freezing. Let’s go back inside—”
“He’s not a hero, Gray,” I say before I can let this moment drop. When he stares down at me, puzzled, I repeat, “Morris. He’s not a hero.”
His hands instantly leave me. “What do you mean?”
I clench my nails into my palms, bulking up my courage. “He threatened Hunt. Warned him to stay away from Natalie.”
Gray’s quiet. Processing. That wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. Then, “He what?”
Two steps. He takes two steps back when I nod. Running a hand through his hair and shaking his head, that wrinkle cutting deeper and deeper. “Morris wouldn’t—He’s never done anything like—Why?”
“I told you,” I say quietly. It’s cold out, and people are hurrying along to the bars, but a few stop to stare at Gray and me. I glance around us. Above us. At the apartments along this street, overhead. All those dark windows. How many people are watching us now, just as I’d watched so many others from mine? “He’s not a—”
“I never said he was.” Gray finally notices his heated breath in the air, and he jerkily zips up his coat. In a stubborn voice, he says, “But that’s not like Morris. In all the years I’ve watched those two—”
“He’s just a man, Gray,” and now it’s my voice rising. Higher and higher. “He’s not a statistic. Just like you’re not. You’re just people. And people—they’re not numbers. Not facts. You can’t always know their behavior. What they’ll do. People can surprise you. Or they can hurt you. Because they’re flesh and feelings and mistakes—”
“Summer.” One step forward. He reaches for me, but his hands stall in the air. “Summer. What is wrong?”
“I slept with him.”
I bury my face in my hands as the secret comes out. Because I can’t do it. Not with those honey-brown eyes—so intent, so caring, and always, always on mine. I can’t tell him while he watches me with those eyes.
But I have to know, have to see, his reaction. So I lower my hands and hold myself in my arms, because his are at his side. As he blinks, staring, back at my face.
“You… and—and Morris,” he says. “You slept with Morris. You—When?”
“Not now,” I hurry to tell him. Now that the secret’s out, the truth comes with it. “Years ago, Gray. When we were freshman. And I—I didn’t even know his name. Who he was. He wasn’t this big time football star. He was just a hot guy, at a party. I didn’t know you. And it didn’t mean anything. We hooked up in a closet, for—”
“Stop.” Gray pinches his nose. “Just—Stop.”
So I purse my mouth shut. Blinking rapidly, I lift my head to the cold night. Clouds blanket the dark sky. Not a star in sight. Not even the moon. I choke back a sob.
“You—You kept this from me, Summer,” he finally says in a hush. “The one thing I asked you. Not keep secrets. Not from me. And you never told me. You’ve been keeping this secret, the whole fucking time.”
I nod. Because my confession tonight’s proved it. It’s no longer secret. It’s fact. It’s truth.
I think, before it gets too far, we should tell him.
That’s what Morris was about to say to me, back in Kellermann’s. Trying to do the right thing. What we should have done at the very beginning. Yet, instead, we kept it secret. Kept away from each other. Tried to ignore it ever happened. Never told. Because we knew it was the kind of secret that, when it’s told, stings.
But Morris didn’t know. It’s already gone way farther than I ever could have imagined.
“Please, Gray, can we…” I gesture down the sidewalk. “Let’s go back to my apartment. And we can talk.”
He shakes his head. Feet carrying him back. Further and further away. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Summer. I need…”
To think, we both silently finish for him.
I don’t point out that thinking’s never done any good for him. That he thinks too much and he does stupid things. That I don’t want him to think this doesn’t mean that I don’t care about him.
Instead, I watch him walk away. Down the sidewalk. Not back to the bar, but into the night. A cold, cloudy night, without any stars to lead his way back home.
A breeze rolls over me. Bringing that cold, cloudy, starless night washing over me. Until it sinks its shadows deep through my coat, my clothes, my skin. Steadily slowing down that aching beat in my heart.