On a Wednesday by Whitney G.
Kyle: Then
Senior Year
Pittsburgh
Iwalked into the private gym that was a few blocks off campus and unlocked the doors.
Coach Whitten would never admit it—since he’d lose everything, but he’d had this place built just for me when I first agreed to play for Pitt.
Since members of the college football-obsessed media were now stalking our team facility every night (and I hadn’t had sex in what felt like a fucking decade), I came here to release all of my stress in private.
As I was setting up weights, my phone buzzed with a phone call.
Courtney.
“Yeah, Court?” I answered.
“Um, hey.” Her raspy voice came over the line. “Sorry to call you so late.”
“Don’t be. What’s up?”
“I have a few follow-up questions to some things you wrote,” she said. “I promise this will only take a minute.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, one, you said that sometimes you wish that the older fans would be more respectful of the team. What do you mean?”
“I think they tend to forget that the players that they’re criticizing are only a few years removed from high school,” I said. “That, and we’re not getting paid, so some of the rude comments aren’t warranted.”
“Do you wish your parents would show up to your games?”
“I wish you would.”
She let out a breath, and I knew that her cheeks were flushed red. “I’ve shown up to enough, I think …”
“Fair enough, Court,” I said, getting back on track. “I don’t wish that my parents would come to my games. I’m not ten anymore, and they have some heavier stuff to deal with these days.”
“Okay, thank you. If I think of something else, I’ll call back.”
“Don’t,” I said. “You could just come for me.”
“What?”
“Come up here and talk.” I smiled. “It’d probably be better that way.”
“Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re talking normally or insinuating something sexually …”
“It’s both when it comes to you.” I laughed and put her on speakerphone. “What else are you doing tonight?”
“Picking up the slack from my staff and trying to hold back on murdering my roommate,” I said. “Would you like to hear a rant?”
“Absolutely.” I leaned back on the bench and started lifting weights.
Over the next couple of hours, I listened as she told me the ins-and-outs of the university paper, how she took it far more seriously than anyone else.
I asked her questions like I was the journalist in the relationship, and by the time she’d laid out her last grievance, it was two in the morning.
“You want to know what I think, Court?” I said.
“Only if it’s not about sex.”
Silence.
She laughed louder than she had all night.
“It’s not about sex.” I laughed, too. “I just think that you need to spend your final semesters doing stuff for you instead of for other people. Otherwise, you’ll look back and regret all the time you wasted.”
“At this point, I’m just hoping that my upcoming time in London will erase all of my bad times in college.”
“London? What the hell is there?”
“One of the most prestigious writing programs in the world.” There was a smile in her voice. “They have a two percent acceptance rate and yours truly made the final round this morning.”
“So, even more years of school for something that you’re already good at? When does all of that learning turn into money?”
“Eventually,” she said. “We can’t all be superstar athletes.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t waste any more of my life in a classroom, if I was as good at writing as you.” I admitted. “I’m not just saying that to be saying that either.”
“Thank you, Kyle.”
“You’re welcome.” I paused, honestly not wanting to get off the phone. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I called her back when I made it home.
I couldn’t help it.
“Yes?” she answered on the first ring.
“Can I ask you something?”
“I was about to go to sleep.”
“Liar.” I smiled. “You stay up on Thursdays for some reason. The Facebook ‘online now’ thing never lies.”
Her laughter came over the line. “Thursdays are the romance movie marathon days on The Pitt Movies channel. They always end the night with my favorite one.”
“There’s a Pitt Movies channel?”
“It’s on seventeen.”
I picked up my remote and turned on the television, flipping through the stations. I stopped when I saw Julia Roberts in a bright red dress, looking at Richard Gere.
“What the hell is this?”
“Pretty Woman,” she said. “One of the best romance movies of all time.”
“Wait …” I sat in my chair. “Isn’t this the prostitute falls for her customer storyline?”
“It’s a lot deeper than that, Kyle.”
“Is it?” I waited for her to explain, but she only laughed. “I’ll talk to you later so you can finish.”
“Or you can stay on the phone and watch it with me until I see you tomorrow.” Her voice was faint. “I mean, only if you want to, though.”
I turned up the volume. “Feel free to tell me the deeper part of their love story that I’m missing …”