He watched as I walked all the way to the stairway door, and then he closed his. I may have not had much dating experience, and I may have only been with Reed, but I was pretty sure Gavin was hitting on me, ever so slightly. And I didn’t hate it. But the guilt it left behind as I made my way back into my room and dumped my pile of papers and computer on my desk was certainly not worth the small little rush of being found attractive by someone who wasn’t Reed. And when I forced my mind back to Reed, I started to cry. Hard.
Reed had sent me a couple of texts while I was working on my project with Gavin: one apologizing for missing my call, and the second one—a longer one that came a few hours later—explaining that he’d slept most of the day away, hung-over from a really rough night.
I cringed a little thinking about a pissed off Reed doing shots at some bar in Tucson, cursing my name. I knew I had driven him to it, and I knew what he was like when he was drunk. The fact that he had slept an entire day away in recovery led me to believe he’d probably had a lot to drink, and that made me nervous. His texts were very formal, almost as if he was apologizing for missing some tutoring appointment we’d had. And they were without any mention of love or X or O. I was probably reading into things, but with the vague way I’d left things with him in front of my parents’ house, I couldn’t block my imagination from pairing him with some strange woman.
I knew it was late, nearly 1 a.m. But I took a chance and sent him a text back.
Sorry, I was upstairs working on a project all night. It was a mess and it’s worth most of our grade. I miss you.
I put that last bit in hoping he’d bite, and when my phone rang seconds later, my eyes teared up again, this time with relief. I answered almost immediately.
“You’re awake!” I was a little too excited.
“Yeah, Noles. I’m awake,” Reed’s tone was less happy to hear me. We both sat there listening to silence for more than a few seconds when finally he spoke, first letting out a huge sigh that put my mind on edge. “Nolan, I did something stupid.”
Oh my god. This is the second time my body went into shock in less than two weeks. I shut my eyes tightly, trying to battle the images of Reed and some girl he met at the bar last night rolling around with one another. It was impossible, though, since in the nanoseconds after he uttered that single sentence I had already visualized his hands touching someone else’s face, his lips biting at some stranger’s shoulder and his bare chest pressed up against hers, whoever she was—hoping she wasn’t Dylan. Unable to speak, I let my mouth fall open and somehow squeaked out a pained “Oh.”
“Shit, no,” Reed yelled into the phone, almost angry and frustrated. “God, Nolan, no! Not that…shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything that you’re thinking. I swear…I would never. Ever!”
I was still frozen. I was having a hard time bringing my mind back from the dark place it was. I was able to muster an “Okay,” just so he could continue.
“Noles, it’s the draft. I made a verbal commitment to work with Dylan and her dad,” he waited a minute, letting me take this much in.
“Can you even do that, Reed?” I was new to a lot of this draft business, but I was pretty sure committing to an agent took away Reed’s amateur status.
He just let out another huge sigh. “Noles, I f**ked up. Thankfully the Nichols are family friends, and they are keeping a tight lid on everything.”
“How did you get to this?” I asked, a little taken aback from his instant decision and the fact that he did something he knew better than to do.
“I was f**king drunk, Nolan,” he exasperated. “I was so pissed after I dropped you off. I know, I know. But I haven’t done anything like that in a really long time, so spare me the lecture, okay?”
He sounded pissed, and I was still trying to sort through everything in my mind, so I just kept an even tone. “I’m not lecturing, Reed. Just trying to understand what this all means,” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry,” he continued. “I was drinking with Trig and got worked up about not being able to make a decision, not understanding our fight and then everything just got all crossed and messed up. I called Brent, and Dylan answered the line. She put me on speaker, and then the next thing I know I was making a verbal commitment to work with them. They told me some shit about me missing out on important opportunities, tying their hands when every other quarterback looking at the market was already working with someone. It was all a little fuzzy, but Dylan brought over a file with paperwork tonight, which made it all way too real. She saw the panic in my eyes and talked me down. She said she and her dad work with a lot of people under the radar and that they will be very discrete and will work with me on a press conference as soon as our last game is finished.”