Don't Hate the Player...Hate the Game(4)

Jake?

Come on, Jake! Answer me you sorry f**ker!

Tell me you being dead is just a joke you’re pulling to keep from getting in trouble for skipping out today.

Please Jake…

When no reply came, I sank to my knees on the grass. Oh God, it was really true. Jake was dead. He was gone and never, ever coming back again. Before I realized it, I was crying. Not just silent tears streaking down my cheek, but sobbing hysterically. Gut wrenching sobs that caused my body to spasm. The harder I tried to stop, the harder the sobs came. It was a crazy, manic feeling not to be able to control my emotions. I hadn’t cried in years—at least not when I was sober. When I was drunk, I usually cried about old girlfriends. The last time I’d cried like this was when I was fifteen and my grandfather, who had been a father to me, died.

Suck it up, dickweed! A voice repeated over and over in my head. In a snot-filled finish, I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and shook my head. Quickly, I threw a panicked glance over my shoulder, hoping I was safe where no one could see me.

I was wrong.

Cold fear washed over me as Avery came striding out the double doors. Dammit, I couldn’t let her see me like this—a blubbering pansy with tear streaked cheeks down on his knees in the grass. Men were supposed to control their emotions—be strong and comfort chicks when they were upset.

In a fluid movement, I pulled myself to my feet and sprinted around the side of the building. I could hear Avery calling my voice, but once again, I ignored her. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I knew it was Alex or one of the other guys asking where the f**k I was. But I didn’t care. I had to get away. I was no good to myself or anyone else at that moment.

Unless I was with Jake, I usually played by all the rules. But now that he was gone, I just didn’t give a shit, so I bypassed the front office and headed straight for the parking lot. When I slid across the scorching seats of my Jeep, I tried stilling my erratic breaths.

Jake is dead. Jake is dead. Jake is dead. Jake is dead….

As that thought played over and over in my mind, I brought a shaky hand to the steering ignition and cranked up. Squealing out of my parking spot, all I could think of was getting away. Where I was going, I didn’t know or where I could go to let go of the suffocating pain, I didn’t know.

I just knew I had to try.

***

Chapter Two

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking in the thicket of woods behind my house. I didn’t want anyone seeing me in my manic state. I cried, I screamed, I kicked down a dead tree, and I laughed as old random memories flickered through my mind. I don’t know why I thought I could escape to the woods and leave my grief behind as easily as stripping off my clothes of something like that. Suffocating and somber, it hung around me—a silent specter taunting and goading me. It draped over me like a heavy coat, weighing me down. The usually easy trek up the small hills felt like trudging through thick mud. My chest constricted so tightly every breath was agonizing. While over and over in my mind, the words echoed Jake is dead. Jake is dead. Jake is dead.

When I finally swept through the back door shortly before six, I found my mom pacing around in the kitchen. She was out of her usual blue or green scrubs along with her pristine white doctor’s coat. Instead, she wore one of her dark and somber “funeral dresses”. With her long, dark hair swept back in a twist, it made her blue eyes, which were sparkling with tears, stand out. I’d barely made it two more steps before she leapt at me, wrapping her arms around me. Her wet cheeks dampened my shirt, and I knew then she had been crying for a long time. “Oh Noah, when I heard, all I could think about was what if it had been you. Just the thought of losing you…” her voice choked off with her sobs.

“I know,” I croaked, although I wasn’t sure I did. Patting her back absentmindedly, I tried in my own fumbling way to comfort her.

“Thank God, you’re all right.” She then began rubbing comforting circles over my back just like she had done my entire life when I was hurt physically or emotionally. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she murmured over and over in my ear.

I pushed myself away from her, giving her skeptical look. “Oh, come on, Mom. You know you hated Jake.”

“That’s not true!” she protested.

I cocked one eyebrow at her. “Really?”

“Okay, maybe I disliked what he became later in life, but I never hated him,” she admitted.

I knew that was probably closer to the truth. She hated that Jake was a manwhoring player because it hit too close to home with her when it came to my father.

Mom exhaled a sad, defeated sigh. “I like to think of Jake when he was younger—that mischievous little boy with the crooked grin.” A hesitant smile played on the corners of her lips. “Remember when you guys were little how he always acted like Eddie Haskell from those old Leave it to Beaver reruns whenever he was around me?”

I couldn’t help laughing. Before he hit puberty, Jake was forever helping her carry in groceries, straightening up the kitchen, or telling her she looked pretty or smelled nice. Basically, he hung on to her every word like a lovesick puppy.

But then the way my mother felt about Jake began to change when we got to high school. It was then that that Jake informed me my mom was a MILF. I was well acquainted with the term from the movie American Pie. The moment the words left his lips I almost punched his face in. So what if it’s a well-known fact my mother is beautiful? She’s a dead ringer for the late Elizabeth Taylor. So much so, that all her friends nicknamed her Liz, which wasn’t too far off since her middle name was Elizabeth. Growing up, I never got the analogy since my only frame of reference was the old chick in the really airbrushed White Diamonds perfume commercials. My mom’s mom, or Grammy as I call her, swears when I was three, I saw one of Elizabeth’s earliest movies, National Velvet, on TV and cried, “Mommy!”