Don't Hate the Player...Hate the Game (3 page)

Please Jake…

When no reply came, I sank to my knees on the grass.
Oh God, it was really true. Jake was dead. He was gone and never,
ever coming back again. Before I realized it, I was crying. Not
just silent tears streaking down my cheek, but sobbing
hysterically. Gut wrenching sobs that caused my body to spasm. The
harder I tried to stop, the harder the sobs came. It was a crazy,
manic feeling not to be able to control my emotions. I hadn’t cried
in years—at least not when I was sober. When I was drunk, I usually
cried about old girlfriends. The last time I’d cried like this was
when I was fifteen and my grandfather, who had been a father to me,
died.

Suck it up, dickweed
! A voice repeated over
and over in my head. In a snot-filled finish, I wiped my nose on
the back of my hand and shook my head. Quickly, I threw a panicked
glance over my shoulder, hoping I was safe where no one could see
me.

I was wrong.

Cold fear washed over me as Avery came striding out
the double doors. Dammit, I couldn’t let her see me like this—a
blubbering pansy with tear streaked cheeks down on his knees in the
grass. Men were supposed to control their emotions—be strong and
comfort chicks when they were upset.

In a fluid movement, I pulled myself to my feet and
sprinted around the side of the building. I could hear Avery
calling my voice, but once again, I ignored her. My phone buzzed in
my pocket. I knew it was Alex or one of the other guys asking where
the fuck I was. But I didn’t care. I had to get away. I was no good
to myself or anyone else at that moment.

Unless I was with Jake, I usually played by all the
rules. But now that he was gone, I just didn’t give a shit, so I
bypassed the front office and headed straight for the parking lot.
When I slid across the scorching seats of my Jeep, I tried stilling
my erratic breaths.

Jake is dead. Jake is dead. Jake is dead. Jake is
dead….

As that thought played over and over in my mind, I
brought a shaky hand to the steering ignition and cranked up.
Squealing out of my parking spot, all I could think of was getting
away. Where I was going, I didn’t know or where I could go to let
go of the suffocating pain, I didn’t know.

I just knew I had to try.

***

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking in
the thicket of woods behind my house. I didn’t want anyone seeing
me in my manic state. I cried, I screamed, I kicked down a dead
tree, and I laughed as old random memories flickered through my
mind. I don’t know why I thought I could escape to the woods and
leave my grief behind as easily as stripping off my clothes of
something like that. Suffocating and somber, it hung around me—a
silent specter taunting and goading me. It draped over me like a
heavy coat, weighing me down. The usually easy trek up the small
hills felt like trudging through thick mud. My chest constricted so
tightly every breath was agonizing. While over and over in my mind,
the words echoed
Jake is dead. Jake is dead. Jake is
dead.

When I finally swept through the back door shortly
before six, I found my mom pacing around in the kitchen. She was
out of her usual blue or green scrubs along with her pristine white
doctor’s coat. Instead, she wore one of her dark and somber
“funeral dresses”. With her long, dark hair swept back in a twist,
it made her blue eyes, which were sparkling with tears, stand out.
I’d barely made it two more steps before she leapt at me, wrapping
her arms around me. Her wet cheeks dampened my shirt, and I knew
then she had been crying for a long time. “Oh Noah, when I heard,
all I could think about was what if it had been you. Just the
thought of losing you…” her voice choked off with her sobs.

“I know,” I croaked, although I wasn’t sure I did.
Patting her back absentmindedly, I tried in my own fumbling way to
comfort her.

“Thank God, you’re all right.” She then began rubbing
comforting circles over my back just like she had done my entire
life when I was hurt physically or emotionally. “I’m so sorry,
sweetie,” she murmured over and over in my ear.

I pushed myself away from her, giving her skeptical
look. “Oh, come on, Mom. You know you hated Jake.”

“That’s not true!” she protested.

I cocked one eyebrow at her. “Really?”

“Okay, maybe I disliked what he became later in life,
but I never hated him,” she admitted.

I knew that was probably closer to the truth. She
hated that Jake was a manwhoring player because it hit too close to
home with her when it came to my father.

Mom exhaled a sad, defeated sigh. “I like to think of
Jake when he was younger—that mischievous little boy with the
crooked grin.” A hesitant smile played on the corners of her lips.
“Remember when you guys were little how he always acted like Eddie
Haskell from those old
Leave it to Beaver
reruns whenever he
was around me?”

I couldn’t help laughing. Before he hit puberty, Jake
was forever helping her carry in groceries, straightening up the
kitchen, or telling her she looked pretty or smelled nice.
Basically, he hung on to her every word like a lovesick puppy.

But then the way my mother felt about Jake began to
change when we got to high school. It was then that that Jake
informed me my mom was a MILF. I was well acquainted with the term
from the movie
American Pie
. The moment the words left his
lips I almost punched his face in. So what if it’s a well-known
fact my mother is beautiful? She’s a dead ringer for the late
Elizabeth Taylor. So much so, that all her friends nicknamed her
Liz, which wasn’t too far off since her middle name was Elizabeth.
Growing up, I never got the analogy since my only frame of
reference was the old chick in the really airbrushed White Diamonds
perfume commercials. My mom’s mom, or Grammy as I call her, swears
when I was three, I saw one of Elizabeth’s earliest movies,
National Velvet,
on TV and cried, “Mommy!”

It wouldn’t have mattered to me if she looked just
like Angelina Jolie cause no self-respecting male wants to
acknowledge the fact their mom is hot. It’s freakin’ sick and
warped.

Mom snapped me out of my thoughts. “Did you hear me,
Noah?”

“Huh?”

“I spoke with Jake’s mom earlier while you were gone
to the woods. She wanted you to come over tonight.”

Shit. That explained Mom’s mourning attire. Damn, the
last thing on earth I wanted to do was go over to Jake’s house and
face his parents.

Mom noticed my hesitation. She ran her hand over my
cheek. “It would mean a lot to Mrs. Nelson, Noah.”

I nodded. “I’ll go change.”

“When you get done, come help me load the car, okay?”
She motioned towards the table that was loaded down with food for
the Nelson’s.

“Whatever,” I replied, and then pounded up the
stairs.

I knew that deep down my mom hated Jake because he
reminded her too much of my father. Though I guess sperm donor
would be a better way of describing my dear old dad. You see, my
mom got pregnant with me when she was seventeen. It was a major
shock to everyone considering my mom was the angel of the family.
As the only girl with five brothers what the hell could you
possibly get away with anyway?

My uncles were legendary at Creekview High School.
They were known as the Mighty M Sullivan’s because of their
athletic ability. There wasn’t a sport there they didn’t dominate,
and surprisingly, they each had one that was their specialty. Mark
was a Golden Glove in baseball, Mike was the quarterback of the
football team, Matt was an all-state guard in basketball, Mitch was
a wrestler, and Mason was lighting in track.

By the time my mom entered high school, their
reputation was enough to steer every horny asshole away from her.
Once any panty chaser found out she was Maggie
Sullivan
,
they ran the other way with their tail between their legs. But it
really didn’t matter to my mom because she was the ultimate goody
girl, Straight A’s, National Honors Society, Academic Team—any
brainiac thing, she did it because she had her eye set on medical
school and becoming a doctor.

Like Jake, Joe Preston was a major player A real
smooth operator who weaseled himself into the good graces of all my
uncles and my grandparents and made the entire family believe he
walked on water. He was my Uncle Mark’s best friend all through
high school, and then they both ended up at the University of
Georgia with a full ride in baseball.

By senior year, Joe and my Uncle Mike were both being
scouted by major league teams. Because his family wasn’t the lovey
dovey type that my mom’s was, Joe spent occasional holidays at the
house—a Thanksgiving, an Easter, an odd weekend here or there. But
this time, he spent the entire month of August at my grandparents’
cabin in the mountains.

Now my mother’s never told me any of this. All my
information has come from my uncles or older cousins over the
years. The way they told the story read like some NC-17 rated fairy
tale: oversexed wolf charms innocent lamb resulting in an
unexpected pregnancy.

I guess it goes without saying that at twenty-one
with a major league career ahead of him filled with money, fast
cars, parties and women my dad wasn’t ready to settle down. He
bolted, and basically he’s never looked back.

Sometimes I personally think it’s easier for some
kids to have a dead-beat dad. Yeah, the pain is there, but you can
push it to the backburner cause you don’t see the asshole much. For
me, my douchebag dad was shoved in my face constantly. The worst
was April through October—the months of the major league baseball
season. I had to see and hear my father’s stats constantly. Even
now at thirty-eight, he’s still one of the most sought after
pitchers in the National League. He’s currently playing for the San
Diego Padres, but he’s been with some of the biggies all over the
country.

So for a while my mom was the black sheep of the
family. A kind of conspicuous black sheep who had been the
Salutatorian of her graduating class and was slated to start
medical school. But she didn’t remain that way for long for two
reasons. One was that my Uncle Matt went on a mission trip to
Brazil, met a girl, and got married all within eight weeks. To my
very Southern, old-school family, marrying a foreigner was some
pretty heavy shit. But just like my mom, they got over it. That’s
where my cousin, Alex, comes in, or I guess I should say Alejandro
Matthew Sullivan. Seriously, there’s nothing like a Brazilian
Irishman! Of course, Alex has always been more of a brother to me
than just a cousin. We didn’t go to the same elementary or middle
schools, but luckily by the time high school rolled around, we were
back together. Jake took an instant liking to Alex, and during the
summers, we were a lot like the Three Musketeers hanging out
together.

The other reason was my mom worked her ass off to
make her dream of becoming a doctor a reality. Fortunately for her,
one of the best medical schools in the country, Emory University,
was practically in her backyard. Because of her love of babies, she
became an OB/GYN, and she was now part of one of the biggest
practices in town.

My eyes rolled towards the ceiling as I thought about
how Jake always found Mom’s profession fascinating. Whenever I
would shrug my shoulders and be like, “So?”

“Dude,” he’d say. “Don’t you get the beauty of it?
She looks at tits and ass all day long!”

Yeah, that was Jake.

At the thought of him, the burning ache I was growing
accustomed to seared its way through my chest like bad heartburn
after an all-night beer and pizza binge. He wouldn’t be making any
more pervy comments about my mom being a MILF or that she
specialized in looking at vaginas.

Because he was dead.

I shook my head wildly back and forth so fast I
thought I might get whiplash. No, I couldn’t start with the
bullshit emotions again. I had to keep it together, especially now
that Mom was dragging me over to Jake’s house. Just the thought of
being over there without Jake sent a shiver down my spine. There
hadn’t been a single time in my life that I’d been there without
him.