Third and Long: A Sports Romance (3 page)

We take our seats in the student section which takes up more than half the stadium. A sea of red erupts in endless applause when the Lions take the field. I had to dig a ratty old red Lions shirt out of my closet that I bought when I was a wide-eyed, eager freshman. I hadn’t become quite so cynical yet.

Back then I assumed that everyone else at college had the same drive and expectations as me. Gwen set me straight on that right away.

“Did you see the news this morning?” Gwen asks.

I shake my head. Legitimately did not. Too busy.

“Oh my God you nerd! Logan was caught drunk with a couple of bimbos. Apparently Coach Ainsworth is pissed. They say he might not play today.”

The name strikes me as familiar, but I have no idea who she’s talking about. At any rate as the teams line up for kick off, I’m going through emails hoping that at least some of my idiot group members got their shit together this morning. Of course not. It’s the week we play Auburn. The school may as well be closed given how big a deal this is to everyone except me.

Football is a luxury I wish I had. But I don’t. One false step, one bad grade, and I lose my scholarship. If that happens, then I end up back where I started in Eden, Texas. The most Podunk miserable little excuse for a town that I’ve ever seen. There were about ten kids in my graduating class. Most of them went on to get jobs at the local prison or the oil wells. That is not the life for me.

“You have no idea who I’m talking about do you?” Gwen asks.

“Sorry babe. Like you said, I’m a nerd,” I say.

“Oh my God. Logan Oliver the third. Billionaire party boy? Our school’s quarterback? The guy every girl wants to fuck, and the guy every other guy wants to be?”

I think about it for a minute. No way could it be
that
Logan. There’s no possible way the quarterback of our team was hitting on me yesterday morning.

“Billionaire?” I ask in disbelief that an honest-to-god billionaire is our university’s quarterback. That seems like something I should know. I’m sort of out of the loop if you couldn’t tell already.

“He doesn’t have the money yet. His dad’s a billionaire. How do you not know this?” she asks.

I shrug, so Gwen points to our offense as they take the field. Actually, I was vaguely aware that we had a rich-as-fuck playboy for our quarterback. It’s a fact that’s essentially impossible to ignore when you live near campus although I do my best.

Gwen and I were freshman dorm buddies, and we’ve been besties ever since. She knows the basics of my life although there’s some details I won’t tell anyone even her. She knows my parents aren’t exactly rich, but she doesn’t know the whole story, the reasons why I have a complete and utter fear of failure.

A lot of that is rooted in my mom. She had all the talent in the world, all the promise, all the goals. She threw it all away for a boy, my dad. By the time she realized my dad was not who she thought he was, she already had two kids with me on the way. In the end she wound up stuck in Eden with three girls and a worthless husband.

That’s never going to be me. I’m never going to end up in a backwater town like that, and I’m never going to give it all away for a boy, no matter who he is. My life is my own.

“I’ll be damned. He is playing. Number 3, see?” She grabs my head and points it toward the mass of bodies that all pile up after the Lions run a play.

It’s impossible to tell if it’s the same Logan, but the quarterback is certainly tall enough to be the Logan I met out on the track. Not that it matters. I have work to do. Two seconds after I go back to my email, Gwen snatches my phone away.

“Hey I need that!”

“Girl, you can take one break. You can have one afternoon where you aren’t working. It’s gonna kill you some day,” Gwen says.

“What is?”

“Your workaholicism.”

“My workaholicism,” I say imitating her voice, “is the only thing keeping my scholarship.”

“If the rest of the campus worked half as hard as you, we’d all be national scholars,” Gwen says.

“You can go out partying every night and still get decent enough grades to keep your parents paying for you. That doesn’t mean I can do the same,” I say.

“True, but it also doesn’t mean that you have to be a dateless, ice queen that hasn’t felt the joys of a nice hard cock in years.”

“Not sure what cocks have to do with anything.”

“I’m saying a good, hard fuck would help you in so many ways,” she says, pointing at the email app on my phone.

Gwen constantly tries to psychoanalyze me. I’m about to respond to her when Logan Oliver III completes a huge pass down the field. She grabs my hand, and we jump up and down in our seats. Uncharacteristic of me but Gwen’s enthusiasm is absolutely infectious.

It occurs to me that I didn’t even get Logan’s last name. I guess in between talking about his cock and my ass it never came up. I’m also fairly certain I never gave him my last name, Long. He would have an awfully difficult time figuring out my phone number without it. Seems like I’m going to win that bet.

From my phone Gwen starts reading the story from The South Texas Dirty about our quarterback’s late night. Apparently, he racked up quite a large bar tab that he expected someone else to pay. Typical jackass, billionaire behavior. They don’t get that rich by spending their own money.

“He has to be hungover. How is this possible?” I ask as he completes another perfect pas. Really and truly, I can’t believe it. The last time I drank until the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t even get out of bed the next day.

“Anything is possible with that guy. If it was any other guy Coach Ainsworth would have benched his ass. But Logan? You do not bench the number 1 draft pick. Especially not when his dad owns half the state.”

“He’s that good?”

“Sure. He’s going to be a name you hear for a long time.”

“Not if he keeps getting caught out late on game night,” I say.

“You are such a stiff! People don’t really care about that. It’s just good gossip. Not everyone is as cautious as you.”

“Caution is good. Fail to plan, plan to fail,” I say. The only wise words my father ever said. Shame he couldn’t follow them himself.

Gwen gives me a hard look. She’s ready to call me out on my pessimism when the student section goes berserk. Somehow Logan rushes right up the guts of the defensive line. He bursts into the end zone carrying two guys on his back. A more impressive display of manliness, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. That’s not the kind of athleticism I would expect from someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

The Lions offense takes the bench, and the special teams handle the point after and the subsequent kick off. Then the defense takes the field. Gwen loses interest at that point. She asks me how the project is going. I tell her all the dirty details, and she promises for the third time to kick the asses of The Party Girls.

It’s the product. We need the perfect product. The last time I actually got together with The Party Girls the only thing they could come up with was a sturdier version of the red Solo cup. When I told them that already existed, they summarily gave up and went back to browsing Instagram.

“How about you guys market a douche for men,” Gwen says.

“Uh what?”

“You know they keep making gender-specific products. How about a douche for men?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” I say, trying to picture how such a thing would even work.

“I’m just saying I have too many fuckboys in my life, and a few of them could stand to take a douche.”

“Sure Gwen. I’ll run it by the group.”

When we met as freshmen, Gwen was undeclared. That’s how she lives her life: undeclared. At all times she waits for someone to notice that she’s twisting in the wind, but she’s so gorgeous and fun that some charitable person takes her under their wing.

I was that charitable person freshman year. My path to an MBA had been set since my junior year of high school. I turned her on to dentistry. I can’t remember the exact series of events, but by the end of our first semester, she jumped right into pre-med.

“See the things that a nice hard cock can do for both your pussy and mind are fucking incredible. Specifically a football player’s cock,” Gwen says, completely changing the subject. Her mind typically goes in eight different directions. I’ve never met anyone with a dirtier mouth. That’s why she’ll make a great dentist I suppose.

“Remember when I dated that football player?” she asks.

I do.

“He’s the wide receiver out there. Cam Phelps. He’s like this with Logan.” Gwen crosses her fingers.

“So what happened?”

Gwen thinks about it for a moment. She jumps from one guy to the next so frequently that there probably isn’t a specific reason. We’re complete opposites which is why we like each other even though her laissez-faire attitude gives me the hives most days.

“It doesn’t matter what happened. What matters is what went
down.”

“Do go on,” I say, knowing that she’s going to tell me all the dirty details anyway.

“In bed, athletes are a totally different species. Sure, you can fuck a musclehead at the gym if you want to feel those big biceps and huge pecs, but athletes have
drive
. It didn’t matter what time of day, what day of the week, Cam was always willing to give it to me raw and dirty. In the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom, in the shower.”

“Shut up, shut up, I remember.” In fact Cam is the reason that I bought noise-canceling headphones. While they were dating, I took to spending a lot more time at the library.

“He’d never settle for one position, and you know I’m so indecisive, I loved that. He could fuck me standing up! He could flip me over and we could sixty-nine like that with me in mid-air!”

“Sounds like the perfect guy so…”

“So what? They act that way all the time. It’s so intense. They come off the field sweaty and jacked up on adrenaline, ready to rock someone’s world. You can only take that for so long. I’m talking like the fear of getting ripped in two when they’re really horny. I’m not endorsing marrying an athlete, but I am absolutely saying you should date one. Change your life. This whole no men thing is unsustainable babe. Gonna make yourself crazy. If you haven’t already.”

The Lions offense takes the field again. It’s almost half time. This time Logan Oliver III rolls out from under center. He rushes to the sidelines. Right before the cornerback tackles him, he dips back toward center and then sends a strike right over the middle to Cam. Gwen can’t help but cheer. She’s the kind of girl that never really breaks up with someone. I couldn’t live that life. The anxiety of running into exes would kill me.

Logan soaks in the cheers before returning to the huddle, and I get curious. The way he’s working the crowd, even in the huddle, calling attention to himself. It can’t be the same guy can it?

“Look Tamber, I’m setting you up on a blind date. I’m not sure with who yet, but you are obviously so, so sexually frustrated,” Gwen says. “Do you know why The Party Girls piss you off so much?”

“No why?”

“Because they are out there getting
laid
, working out their frustrations. Meanwhile, you’re sitting at home with your broke-ass pussy getting all mad and shit about everything when you really just need one wild ass night to calm down.”

She still has my phone. I want to look up Logan, but she still has my phone. Logan throws a quick strike over the middle to Cam, and the Lions score again. I suddenly desperately need to know if he’s the same Logan. Memories of the pecs and biceps of the guy I met out on the track come rushing back to me. He had the body of an athlete and the cocky attitude to boot. But there’s no way a billionaire was hitting on me, right?

I ask her for my phone back, and she tells me to shut my whore mouth. If my mouth was a whore, we wouldn’t be having this whole conversation about sexual frustration.

“I want to see a picture of Logan Oliver,” I say.

“The third,” she says.

“Yea.”

“As in, gimme a third of his cock,” she says.

“Jesus Gwen.”

“No seriously, just enough to get me pregnant, so I can live off all that oil money for the rest of my life. Shit. Have you seen his parent’s mansion?”

“I haven’t seen anything, which is why I’m asking.”

Gwen nods, and thumbs through my phone. No idea what she’s getting into. When her face lights up, it’s like she’s struck gold. She hands my phone back. The only thing on the screen is a naked torso with incredibly ripped abs and very familiar biceps.

Gwen leans over me, nudging me to flip through a couple of pictures. When we find a picture of his face, I can hardly believe it. I’d know those gorgeous blue eyes anywhere.

“Oh shit. I met this guy yesterday. He asked for my number,” I say, explaining the whole story to Gwen.

“So you gave it to him?”

I shake my head and try to explain. The whole “he thought I was a lesbian” part has Gwen rolling in the stands.

“Oh my god, I’d have fucked him right there on the track. He is a billionaire, Tam. Have you learned nothing in our five years of friendship, you incorrigible twat!”