“I'm good, babe,” I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss my sister on her rough cheek. Carson closed her eyes at the contact.

“Don't think I've forgotten that someone's got a big birthday coming up soon!” she hollered to my retreating back. I pretended to hunch with shame inside my needless black hoodie, and heard Carson laugh as her screen door slammed. If anything, the sounds of her beautiful home seemed to grow louder as soon as they were closed to me. I pictured her roommates dancing, ashing their cigarettes along the linoleum, playing games, making crafts. Carson had told me—many times before—that being an adult was in fact no picnic. But she sure had a way of making it look fun. A lot more fun, at least, than the miserable purgatory of one's junior year of high school, in a brand new town.

I picked my way through the city streets, following a Google Map until I reached the one part of the city I'd come to recognize as mine. Even though I'd been visiting Carson in Austin on short trips as soon as I was old enough to ride a bus alone (eleven, in my mother's estimate), this town had yet to feel like a cozy place to me. Besides, our mother couldn't be left alone for too long. All my life, I'd had to focus most of my energy on knowing where she was. And if she was feeding herself, and working, and going to the bathroom, etc.

As I walked the few blocks to our condo in Coppertree, more party sounds seemed to peek out from behind fences. Whole worlds, each of them locked to the outsider. It made me mad. It all made me mad. I was a tough fucking cookie, and Mr. Mystery was just some cagey college jock who couldn't handle an edge...why was I still giving him real estate in my brain? What had I even been doing, following him to that gas station in the middle of the night? So what to his brown eyes and rugged hands, that freaky speech. Though it could still make me wet, just hearing the words in my head: I will suck you dry...

I wasn't about to admit that I was lonely. But then, there was no one to admit this to.

Chapter Five

Landon

June 2^nd

“Yes!” she cried, caramel skin and curves twisting up my sheets. The previous requests to keep it down had been useless. At this rate, Yvette was sure to wake Coach Wells, but all that mattered to me in the moment was that this evening's lady love ride the wave until it crashed on the beach. I slammed against her shapely thighs harder, watching my cock plunge in and out of the beautiful girl. Yvette grinned at me coquettishly, over one perfectly freckled shoulder. She winked, and I squeezed my eyes tight.

We were bunked up two to a cabin at training camp, and across the room, Denny snored through our fucking, unfazed. I tried to concentrate again on the task at hand. Beautiful Yvette. She was the waitress at Dee's, the diner that had quickly become a team favorite after five days of training camp. Dee served burgers as big as my hand, and wouldn't judge a football player for requesting a PBR before noon on a break day. With the schedule Coach had us on, all of us were eating thousands of calories for bulk anyways—so we were bound to spend a lot of time at the trough. Two guys had already passed out, doing wind-sprints during the morning work-out.

Denny had drawn my attention to Yvette, after not-so-patiently indulging yet another one of my Zora spiels. The girl had been blowing up my phone since we landed, demanding second and third opinions on fabric and song selection despite the fact that I very clearly didn't give a rat's ass about a sixteen year old girl's deb ball. Zora's sister Betsy had mousy brown hair, and she reminded me of the girls in my high school who liked to kick around with the stage crew kids. The planning of her big day was about as unsexy a subject as I could think of. But the whole text assault had made me wonder, secretly, who Doll hung out with at her high school. What kind of girl was she? Who were her friends? This was filed away under: questions I wasn't supposed to be asking.

With a practiced swoop of her left leg (for Yvette had informed the whole team that she hoped to be a dancer someday, if she could ever get the fuck out of Dodge), my conquest rolled over on her back again, affording me vantage of her neat, round tits as they shook on her thick frame. She was a pretty girl. A kind girl. Denny had basically ruined her with his eyes after our first lunch at the diner, before leaning across the table to halt my rant and say, “Dude. Forget Zora. Somebody needs to tear that up, and I'm already hunting the Southwest flight attendant.”

Did it bother me that my best friend had a way of talking about women like they were actual pieces of meat, swinging in a butcher shop window? Sure it did. But I realized this opinion made me the minority in a sea of testosterone-charged linebackers on a sanctioned spring break. We got released from training around 4pm each afternoon, and if one could rally after a nap, there was plenty of fun to be found in Galveston. It hadn't taken three days before most of the team had imprinted themselves on a “scene.” The whole matter reminded me of a New York tradition called “Fleet Week” that Zora had told me about, during one of our many, unfortunate Sex and the City marathons. Fleet Week's apparently when all the Navy sailors on shore leave hit the town to get their D's wet. Walking around in our practice jerseys and basketball shorts, I felt of this kind of mass. Better put: women in Galveston seemed especially interested in “getting to know” the UT football team.

But Yvette wasn't quite like the others, which was why I dug her so much. She had a big curly coiled mess of hair, and after hooking me up with a milkshake one slow night, she took off her apron and kept me company till the end of her shift. She was a runaway, I'd been informed then. Didn't like to say why. But she seemed awful proud of the life she'd begun to carve out for herself, speaking confidently about the money she'd managed to squirrel away, and the five year plan that would lead her to Birmingham. “They've got a great ballet in Birmingham,” she'd said sweetly, drawing me in with a passionate flicker in her greenish eyes. “People don't know, but they do.” Can you sue a quarterback for wanting to see what a dancer could teach him?

This was our second fuck. The first had been fast and desperate, in the bed of her pick-up truck behind Dee's. “Don't go falling in love now,” she'd said, while scrolling the condom across my tip with her tongue. “That's not at all part of this cowgirl's five year plan.”

We were on the same page there.

“Look at me when you come!” Yvette was saying now, sweat collecting in the hollows of her lovely dancer bones. I gripped her shoulders. I rammed into her supple cave, reveling in the smile that kept unfurling across her face with each thrust, like a flag rippling in the wind. I leaned back and put a discreet thumb on the mound of her clit, enjoying the view of her lovely naked body. Her big green eyes widened, and she reached up to grab my shoulders. Pulling me towards her and straining upward simultaneously, her mouth rounded, and her breath came harder. I rubbed her in circles, faster and faster. She let out a soft cry and her muscular legs tensed around me, creating a pulse around my cock. Her eyelids fluttered, and she collapsed sweetly against the pillows.

“You, my friend...” she began, but didn't bother to finish the sentence. She just let out a callow kind of laugh. I took the opportunity to ease out.

“Come back here, Larkin,” she said through a yawn. I smiled, but didn't bother to correct the name fumble. “I never leave a man with blue balls. I'm a polite ambassador of my city.”