“Get some sleep. I don't believe in blue balls. I was brought up well enough to know that the lady comes first.” She opened her pretty eyes and cocked her head, extending a finger to nestle in the hollow of my chin. Girls say they're crazy for what they call my “superhero chin,” but it's always made me a little self-conscious, truth be told. I'm convinced that the little dimple looks like a butt. Just an extra butt, hanging out on my face.

“They sure don't make 'em like you anymore,” Yvette smiled. Her teeth were white and rounded—slightly babyish. I bent low to kiss her on the forehead, then wrapped her up in the threadbare quilt I'd brought from home. She laughed her hard laugh again, and in a manner of seconds seemed to be as asleep as Denny in the next bunk.

I eased myself slowly out of the bed, and took pains to prevent my feet from creaking along the ancient wooden slats of our cabin. It wasn't strictly true about the blue balls. While I'd never experienced the physical pain that some men seemed to encounter when deprived of a happy ending, whenever I fucked and didn't come I'd get this weird wave of sadness. It entered every pore and clung to me until I fell asleep, usually. I took ecstasy one time (with Zora, at a rave), and the next day's come-down was like an amplified version of my blue balls. It's like it's hard to remember what's good in the world, for a few crucial seconds. I know that sounds poncy, but it's the truth.

I took a heavy seat on the porch, drawing the string tight around my loose sweat pants. Galveston was humid as hell. From the fog of the surrounding cabins, through a haze of buzzing mosquitoes and fluorescent lanterns, I thought I could hear a few other couples going at it. That, or some of my teammates were trying to pack in extra reps before dawn's practice. It struck me that this whole tiny corner of America must smell like dude. Even Zora's uppity perfume that cost two hundred dollars a bottle was better than this air.

I was limp in my pants by then, bound up in reflection—when she came ambling through my mind. With her ratty Amy Winehouse hair, and her even stare. Seventeen. I'd been afraid of girls altogether when I was seventeen, and I'd been Homecoming King and Class President. I'd been mean to the kids you were supposed to be mean to, which I thought about now with a shameful heart. If I'd met Doll when I was in high school, there was no doubt about it—I wouldn't have been able to handle that much woman.

In my recurring dream, she wears a dress. It’s pinkish red, and it suits her curves. She laughs at me, throws her head back to giggle. I hunt for her behind trees. When I find her, she laughs some more. I hold her up and spin her around, and our mouths collide in the air, and then a rain of ice cubes start to fall out of the sky, slipping down her dress and my shirt. We get all cold and shivery. We cling to one another. Sometimes she'd grin and suddenly transform into Zora or Yvette, naked and splayed and lovely—but wrong, somehow. She'd beg me to look at her when I came.

When I looked down, the hard-on was back. With a vengeance.

“Landon Sterling!” hollered the special teams coach, his voice bellowing across the green. “Landon Sterling, we've got a call for you, son!”

No sooner had I heard the words than Denny's blonde crew cut bobbed across my field of vision, and I tumbled over my pal and onto the ground. Lord knew what new drill this was supposed to be—I sure hadn't been paying attention to the play call. I'd been ruthlessly distracted all week, and wasn't exactly setting a shining example for a championship Longhorn season.

Coach Yeardley moved his hands back and forth above his head from the sidelines, like he was signaling at an airplane. As a result, Coach Wells blew his whistle, then came up behind his assistant and clocked him on the back of the head with a clipboard.

“Better go. It's probs your fiancée,” Denny grunted in my ear, extending a hand so I could peel myself off the green.

“Fuck you, asshole.”

“You're taking her last name, right? Like someone who's really pussy-whipped?” Clay Hoskins—massive fullback, exemplary bio student—jogged up to our little time-out, as the coaches conferred on the sidelines. His dreadlocks looked especially heavy in this muggy Texas air.

“Leave Landy alone, Dee. Jay-Z took Beyonce's name.”

“That's the kind of thing only a pussy-whipped brother knows.”

Denny ducked, expecting a slug to the face, but Clay just rolled his eyes and thumped me on the back. It was common knowledge that Clay had long been engaged to one of the hottest girls at UT—Victoria Jenkins, formerly known as Miss Texas 2013. We could make fun of that dude all we wanted, but the fact was that he'd always have the supreme upper hand in the lady department. Didn't hurt that he was a decent guy. Wouldn't hurt a fly, off the football field.

I saluted Clay, then trudged off in the direction of the sidelines. Wells gave me the stink-eye (rightly so, given the day's performance), while Yeardley turned to guide me toward the locker room. When we reached the door to his office, he gestured at a dangling pay phone in the corridor.

“Hope it's not an emergency, kid.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

“I'm serious. Emergency would be one more reason for you to keep your head up your ass, as 'posed to on the ball.”

I smiled tensely, then pulled my practice padding over my head. I watched the phone swing back and forth on its ancient cord for a second, mind racing with possibilities. There was only one person I could think of who wouldn't know to contact me on my cell phone.

“Landon? That you?” croaked a voice. Pop's question immediately replaced itself with a coughing fit. I held the phone away from my ear.

“Pop, is everything okay?”

“Oh, sure, son. Everything's peachy.”

I pushed my hair back from my face, irritated by its falling into my eyes. I never knew how Clay could play the game with all that hair weighing him down—didn't it make it harder to run? From the doorway to his office, Yeardley was indiscreetly peering at me over the lip of a playbook. His eyes were narrowed with curiosity. He no doubt suspected a rat.

“Well, I'm in the middle of drills, Pop. Can I call you back maybe?”

“It's actually a mite urgent, son. Everything's peachy, but it's a mite urgent.” I could practically hear the geyser kicking back in his recliner, angling to keep a TV dinner on his lap. A wall clock revealed that it was one p.m. on a Thursday. There wouldn't be any services today, so Pastor Sterling would be spending his day at home.

“I do believe I've finally found someone to care for me, into my old age.”

“...like a nurse?”

He croaked out a laugh, which turned into a cough again. I sighed, away from the receiver. Across the hall, Yeardley ruffled his papers like a fussy bird fixing up its nest.

“A man of God will take what's his, Landon! No, no...I've found you a pretty little stepmother.”

From nowhere, I felt bile beginning to rise in my throat. Perhaps it was the pancakes from Dee's—Denny and I had kinda overdone it on the carbo-loading that morning, plus Yvette had sent over a plate of bacon the size of the state.

“Son? What do you make of all this, now?” Even through the phone, I could sense his voice hardening. It was like when I was a kid and he'd walk into the house twirling a switch between his fingers. The choice is yours, Landon, he'd always start. You do stuff to getcha hit, it's my 'sponsibility to hitcha.

“Well, I want you to be happy. Sir.”

“That's nice to hear.”

“And you've always said we were meant to go two by two in this life.”