Pass Interference (23 page)

Kevin was quiet as they stood outside the classroom. “But you’re right about one thing, Kevin. It’s wrong to ignore my old friends just because I have new ones. So”—she smiled warmly—“wanna hang out later?”

»»•««

After class, Sara brought Kevin back to Philip’s dorm. She was kind of hoping Philip would be back from physical therapy by now. She really wanted Kevin to meet Philip and see what a great guy he was, and hopefully change his opinion.

When they entered the room, Kevin made a predictable snarky remark about privileged athletes getting much more luxurious quarters than regular students. Sara was about to pounce, but she held her tongue. She didn’t feel like giving Kevin yet another lecture, and she was certain he didn’t want one. Changing someone’s dyed-in-the-wool perceptions wasn’t something that happened overnight, even for Sara, and Kevin didn’t have the added incentive of being in love with a star athlete. She hoped in time he’d learn to temper his prejudice, especially if he intended to remain friends with her.

Sara and Kevin sat down on the bed and looked at his tablet. He wanted her opinion of a lesson plan he was preparing for one of his Special Ed courses.

From the doorway, a voice said, “What’s going on?”

Sara looked up. “Philip!” She bounced off the bed and went to give him a kiss, but he held her at arm’s length.

Eying Kevin, he asked, “Who’s this?”

“This is my friend Kevin,” Sara said brightly. “Kevin, this is Philip.”

Kevin got up and hesitantly extended his hand. Philip just as hesitantly shook it.

“Kevin was almost your tutor instead of me,” she told Philip. When she looked at him, she was surprised to see the less-than-welcoming stare he was giving Kevin. This wasn’t how Sara had imagined the meeting would go. What she really wanted was for Kevin to see what a nice guy Philip was. She tried to think of something else to say to break the tension, when Philip finally responded.

“Well Kevin, if you had been my tutor, I would never have met Sara.” He turned from Kevin toward Sara and looked at her when he said, “And that would have been a tragedy.” Sara locked eyes with Philip. His words were lovely, but his eyes were without warmth, and his expression revealed anger.

“Well, I’d better get going,” Kevin said. He obviously felt the tension in the air.

Sara walked him out to the door. “It was good seeing you again, Kevin. We’ll have to do this more often.” Kevin merely nodded and left.

Sara returned to the bedroom. “Philip?” He was facing away from her, so she approached him gingerly. Touching his arm, she said, “Honey, you seem upset. Is everything okay? Did something happen in physical therapy?”

He pulled his arm out of her grasp and took a step away from her. “I don’t think you ever mentioned Kevin.”

“Well, maybe not by name, but I’m sure I—”

Cutting her off, he asked, “Did the two of you ever date?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’d classify it as dating.”

“Is he the one other guy you told me you slept with?”

Sara’s eyes flashed. Now she saw where this line of questioning was heading.

He finally turned to face her. “Answer me, Sara!” His tone was about as sharp as she’d ever heard him. “It’s a yes or no question.”

She looked at him for a long moment before slowly nodding.

He placed his tongue in his cheek and thought for a minute. “And you brought him back to my room?”

“I thought this was
our
room,” she protested. “Philip! He’s just a friend. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and I ran into him on campus today.”

“I repeat. And you brought him back to my bedroom?”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Am I on the witness stand or something?” Sara had used up her patience on Kevin, and now her defensiveness was surfacing. “Yes! I obviously brought him back to the room. Like I said, he’s a friend.”

“He’s more than a friend, Sara.”

“No! He’s not.”

“He’s your ex-boyfriend.”

She rolled her eyes. “He was never my boyfriend.” He was just a means to an end—the end of her virginity—but she didn’t admit that out loud. Instead, she said, “Well, not really. We just…we were um…involved for a short time. A very short time. Honey, you can’t possibly be jealous of Kevin.”

“Damn right I am,” he snapped. “I walk into my room and find my girlfriend on the bed with her ex, when there’s a perfectly good sofa out there!” He gestured toward the outer room. “Why would you bring him in here? Get real, Sara. Who wouldn’t be jealous?”

“You’re making it sound like you walked in on us having sex. We were just sitting!” she shouted. “I can’t believe you’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“I don’t want you seeing him again. Is that understood?”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re going to dictate to me who I can and can’t be friends with?”

“Just who you can’t be friends with. And there’s only one person on that list so far.”

“Kevin isn’t someone you need to be jealous of.”

“Oh? Let me ask you something. Suppose you came home from…wherever. A class. You walk in”—he gestured toward the door, then the bed—“and there I am, sitting on this bed right here with an old girlfriend. Or any girl for that matter. How would you feel?”

Sara looked downward and nodded. “I wouldn’t like it,” she murmured quietly. She looked back up at him. “I was never in love with Kevin.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

No, it didn’t matter. The truth was, she could see Philip’s point. She didn’t like it, but she understood. “It never occurred to me that I could do anything to make you jealous, Philip. I never think of myself as someone who could make
anyone
jealous.” Tears blurred her eyes as she looked at him. “I guess my inexperience is showing. You're the first real boyfriend I've ever had and I can be a little naive sometimes.”

“I don't buy it,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. His tone was still cold. “You're too smart to be naive.”

“But it's true. You know it is.”

He remained expressionless, his jaw still set. This incident brought to mind the way she felt on New Year’s Eve when she saw him kissing another girl. And now here he was, his surgery just a couple of days away, and she didn’t want to fight with him. She wanted him to be upbeat and optimistic. His attitude was very important to the outcome of his procedure. She needed to defuse the situation. “I’m sorry Philip. You’re right. That was thoughtless of me. I didn’t mean to upset you. You know that, right?”

Philip nodded and sat down on the bed. “You’re not the only one who has insecurities,” he said quietly.

Sara sat down beside him and ran her hand up and down his back. When he leaned into her, she put her arms around him and whispered, “I love you. You’re the only guy I’ve ever loved.”

Relaxing in her arms, he inhaled deeply and returned the hug.

“Are we okay now?” She held her breath, waiting for the answer.

He leaned away and touched her cheek, wiping a tear with his thumb. “Yeah. We’re okay.” He leaned closer and kissed her softly. When he broke the kiss, he stroked her hair and smiled. “I was planning to ask if you wanted to go out to DeLuca’s tonight. Just pizza, but I think we both can use a change of scenery.”

Sara squeezed his hand on top of her cheek and exhaled. “Pizza would be awesome.”

After returning home from the pizzeria, Philip got into bed and scanned the online sports news sites on his tablet while Sara showered and changed. By the time she came to bed, he had already fallen asleep, holding his tablet. Not wanting to wake him, she gently removed the tablet from his hands and set it on the nightstand. She climbed into bed as quietly as she could, hoping she wouldn’t disturb him. Poor guy hardly slept through the night these days.

In the middle of the night, Sara woke up to find Philip holding her tightly, his hand gripping her bare upper arm in his sleep.

She took the time to just look at his sleeping face. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see he looked troubled, even in sleep. His brow was knit, his jaw was clenched, and his breathing was irregular. He was worried, and so was she. She wiped away a teardrop from her cheek before it dripped on Philip’s skin.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, touching her chin with the index finger on his free hand.

Sara looked up and forced a smile. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I wasn’t really sleeping.” He shook his head. “Tell me, sweetheart. Why are you crying?”

His tenderness brought her emotions to the surface. She had planned to keep her feelings to herself, but she was tired and emotional, so she decided to come clean. Between sobs, she said, “I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want your football career to end, but—”

“But what?” he asked, searching her face in the dark. He caressed her cheek.

“I didn’t want it to continue either.”

He leaned away. “What?”

“If you went pro, I’d lose you. I’d lose you forever.”

Philip pushed himself up on the pillow into a sitting position, so Sara sat up too. “Why would you say that?” he asked.

Sniffling, she rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “Because you’d end up in a different city and you’d be on the road half the year, and I wouldn’t be following you,” she admitted. “I told you, I’m not the groupie type.”

Chuckling, Philip said, “Trust me, I know you’re not.”

“So that means we’d be over. And the best days of my life would be behind me.” She looked down at the sheets, not wanting him to see her face, not wanting him to know how pathetic she was. “I know that’s an awful thing to say and I’m a horrible girlfriend. I know it’s selfish and I hate myself for being like this but…”

“Sara stop it,” he scolded. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not.” She looked him in the eye. “Philip, I…I secretly wished you wouldn’t leave me, and that’s the same as wishing you’d fail.”

He looked upward and rolled his eyes. “It is not the same, Sara. Besides, if wishing was all it took, I wouldn’t have had a potentially career-ending injury in the first place.” He leveled his eyes at her. “So stop crying sweetheart. This isn’t your fault, it’s mine.”

“Yours?” She blinked back her tears. “How is it yours?”

Philip sighed and closed his eyes. “I was in pain. I’ve been in pain for a long time, but instead of telling the doctor, I avoided my checkups. I canceled appointments. I pretended I was doing better than I really was.”

“Philip! You never told me that. Why?”

He opened his eyes again. “Because I didn’t want to show any weakness. I didn’t want to complain because I figured the doctor wouldn’t sign off on letting me get back in the game. If I told him I was in pain, he’d have done more tests, more MRIs.” Agitated, he threw the covers back and dangled his legs over the side of the bed. He rubbed the top of his thigh. “I pushed it, Sara. I pushed them to sign off on my return. If I was honest with the doctors, if I kept my appointments, they’d have seen my knee wasn’t healing right and could have treated it earlier. Instead, I said nothing. And now I might have permanent damage.”

“Oh God, Philip, I wish you told me.” She put her arms around him from behind and leaned her cheek on the back of his shoulder. “I’d have encouraged you to go to your appointments.”

“You mean nag?”

Before she had a chance to get insulted, Philip closed his fingers around her forearm and squeezed it affectionately. “If I wanted you to know, I would have told you. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

Sara rested her forehead on his back and started to cry again. She hurt for him and didn’t know what to say or do, so instead of her comforting him, he ended up comforting her. He turned to face her and took her in his arms. “
Shhhh
.” Stroking her hair, he whispered, “Don’t cry babe. It’s my own damn fault.” He swallowed hard and let out a wry laugh. “I used to know exactly what I’d be doing every year for the next ten or fifteen years. Now I have no idea what the future holds. Definitely not what I originally planned, but hey, sometimes the best things are unplanned.”

With her eyes closed and her cheek pressed into his chest, she asked, “Like what?”

“Like, well, I didn’t plan on falling in love with someone like you, for example.”

“Someone like me?” Sara leaned away a little, not sure she liked the way that sounded. “What does
that
mean?”

Taking her hand and placing it on his chest, he said, “I mean, someone who challenges me. Someone who excites me and gives me a reason to wake up every day. Someone who won’t let me give up and who makes me a better man.” Lifting her chin, he kissed her lips softly. “Someone who makes my heart beat.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, but it sounded more like she said “aw.” She exhaled and touched his cheek. “That’s funny, because I never planned on falling in love with someone like you either.”

“Someone like me?” he asked, pretending to be offended. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Smiling, she cupped his cheek. “It means I didn’t expect to fall for someone who plays sports and is gorgeous and has the soul of a poet and brings out my wild side and doesn’t let me take myself too seriously and someone who…someone who makes
my
heart beat.”

Sara’s explanation was answered with another tender kiss.

He drew a deep breath as he looked into her eyes. “As long as we’re making confessions,” he said, “I have another one. Remember when you asked me to write an essay about that life-changing moment? Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but I do now. It was meeting you, Sara, same as you said it was for you. And if I never got injured, we wouldn’t have met. So you know what? It was worth it.”

Sara was stunned by that confession. “Philip, you don’t mean that! Nothing is worth losing your football career.”

“You don’t understand, sweetheart. It can’t have happened for nothing. It can’t,” he maintained. “My parents always say everything happens for a reason, and it’s true. The reason was you. We were meant to be, Sara. I believe that with my whole heart.”

“Philip, I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t talk,” he urged. Before she could utter another protest, Philip kissed her, pressing her back down on the pillow. Breaking the kiss, he whispered, “And you’re not going to lose me, Sara. Not ever.”