Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(5)
Every last one of them thought I was a freak. Including the love of my life.
CHAPTER TWO
Peter
“Welcome to the team, man.”
I walked up behind Orion and slapped him on the shoulder, so hard half the water in his cup sloshed over the rim. My best friend, Gavin Dunnellon, laughed, but Orion took it well. He turned to shake hands with us, then dumped the rest of his water over his sweaty head. Thank God this kid had transferred here. Without a solid running game, the offense was going to be totally focused on me, and I wasn’t sure I could carry the whole team this season. Impressing the scouts meant running a well-rounded game plan. Now I at least had a shot at going to college. If any good schools actually came out to see me.
I was supposed to meet with my guidance counselor, Mr. Garvey, and the coach tomorrow to talk about it, a thought that kind of made me want to hurl.
“Thanks, guys,” Orion said.
“We were just gonna walk the track,” Gavin told him, his voice a low rumble. “Come on.”
“Walk the track?” Orion asked, squinting one eye against the sun. The other members of the team were busy shoving their stuff into their duffel bags, rehashing the better plays of the session and shuffling back toward the locker room.
“Gavin needs to loosen up after practice,” I explained, cocking a thumb at my massive linebacker friend. “It’s his thing.”
“Don’t mock it, man.”
Gavin cracked his knuckles, then his neck. His short brown hair stuck to his forehead like a second skin, and his freckles looked darker on his red cheeks. We used to call him freckle-fart-face in grade school. Until he got bigger than the rest of us. Now the guy was like a tank—thick neck, shoulders like boulders, fists like bowling balls. I even knew some adults who were intimidated by him. No one messed with him anymore.
Orion shrugged. “Cool.”
He launched his cup into the garbage can and we started walking. At the top of the hill next to the bleachers, the JV cheerleading squad practiced their chants. Farther down the slope, Claudia and the other members of the Boosters Club were working on spirit signs for this week’s pep rally and the game on Saturday while Greg Howell, one of the guys from yearbook, snapped pictures. I saw Claude bent over a long white roll of paper with a glitter gun, her lips pressed together as she concentrated.
“That your girlfriend over there?” Orion asked, shading his eyes.
I felt myself blush and was glad I was already red from exertion. “Yep.”
“What’s she up to?”
“That’s the boosters,” Gavin replied, rolling his shoulders forward and back, then stretching out his triceps. “Basically the hottest chicks in school who aren’t cheerleaders are boosters.”
“Oh.” Orion looked them over as if he was shopping for arm candy. “Are any of them cool?”
“Who cares? They’re hot,” Gavin joked.
I laughed. “I can’t really say. If Claudia hears I been talking, I’ll get in trouble.”
They both chuckled. “How long’ve you guys been together?” Orion asked.
“Almost a year and a half.” I stooped to pick up a crushed cup someone had tossed on the blue running track. “She’s awesome. She’s not into this shallow crap like a lot of girls. Like, it’s not only about her hair and her clothes and stuff like that. She cares about stuff that matters.”
“Plus, she’s obviously into football if she’s on the boosters,” Orion said. “That’s gotta be good.”
“Yeah, she likes to support her man,” I replied with a grin, tossing the cup back and forth between my hands. “She’s actually into ballet, so she knows what it’s like to be on a regimen like I am. She just gets it.”
“Plus, they’re sickening together, so that’s fun,” Gavin joked, holding one arm across his chest to stretch his shoulder out. “They’re, like, never not touching each other.”
“Nice,” Orion said with a grin.
“Shut up, dude!” I said, shoving Gavin as hard as I could.
He barely moved. Just took a tiny sidestep.
“I had a girlfriend back in Boston, but she dumped me as soon as I told her I was moving.” Orion stared out across the trees as the wind rustled through them.
“That sucks.” I said it lightly, but inside my heart did this awful spin-around-and-die maneuver. Me and Claudia were both seniors. In exactly nine months we’d be graduating, and in eleven months she’d be going to college and who knew where the hell I’d be. Sometimes I lay up nights just thinking about her off at Princeton—her number one choice—or Harvard or some other smart place like that next year, flirting with a brainiac in a corduroy jacket or some shit, forgetting I ever existed. I tried to tell myself it would never happen, that we would never break up, but who was I kidding? At least here I was good enough for her. I wasn’t in the honors classes with her, but I was the star of the football team, the most popular guy in the senior class, and everyone at our church loved me because of the time I spent volunteering. I had other things to make up for the fact that I was never going Ivy League. But once she was out of this lame-ass town and meeting guys who were as smart as her? Guys with dreams and ambitions and the possibility of actually achieving them? Forget about it.