07 | All's Fair in Love and Football

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The setting sun burned the sky a vivid shade of orange, but even as dusk began to settle in, the summer heat lingered. I had to peel myself off of the leather seats of Chris's Jeep as he slid into a parking spot beside a soccer mom Lexus SUV, complete with the stick figure family decal on the back window.

We popped the trunk and sat up against the bumper, drinking Red Bull vodkas from old water bottles and gazing out at the open field of dirt and dead grass in front of. 362 days out of the year, this field was empty, but on the last official weekend of summer, it came to life in an explosion of lights, rides, and inebriated decision making. Above all, it was the catalyst to the incoming school year's drama. Who hooked up with who, who broke up with who, who yakked on who's shoes on the tilt-a-whirl, it all only transpired under the heat and the lights. One last weekend of bullshit.

Chris chucked an empty water bottle into his backseat and checked his watch. "He's late...as usual."

"By five minutes," I groaned. I fished around in my backpack for another pre-mixed Vodka Red Bull concoction and shoved the bottle in Chris's hands. "You need to loosen up, your stress is stressing me out."

I kicked around a clump of stringy grass with the toe of my sneaker, and in the dark of the oncoming night, the colorful lights of the fair in the distance seemed to flutter to life. With Jordyn still in the Hamptons, I had free reign to do virtually whatever (and whoever) I wanted, but the thought of stirring up more drama than I could swallow before the school year started made me jittery. I slugged down more alcohol.

Bass-thumping rap music filled the air, shortly followed by Anthony's blacked out Mercedes C300 swerving into the open spot next to Chris. He rolled up his overly-tinted windows as he and Cal jumped out of the car.

"About damn time," Chris moaned.

Anthony hit him on the chest in response. "You'll change your tune when you see what took me so long."

"Oh look, sir Calvin has risen from the dead." I tauntingly pulled on the strings of Cal's neon yellow Under Armor hoodie, and he immediately swatted me away with a grimace.

"You really still don't believe me?" he asked. "I had fucking mono."

"Doesn't matter if I believe you," I shrugged. "You still owe Coach Knox like...fifty laps on Monday."

Cal rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, like a little kid we just put in the time out corner.

Calvin Ryder fluttered on the outside of our circle, but he was still on the football team, Cal might have only been a kicker, but in true New Livingston Day School football fashion, he was the best kicker in the state of Connecticut and had already signed his intent for some FCS school out in the midwest.

"Can you all just shut it?" Anthony stood on his toes and glanced around the lot for any lingering people before pulling a plastic bag out of the pocket of his jeans. He spilled a couple of white pills out into his palm, and we all took one.

"As fresh as they come," he said proudly, and I couldn't hold back a snicker.

Chris gave me a sideways glance. "You wanna split one?"

"Don't be such a little bitch, Thompson," Anthony jabbed.

Maybe it was residual bitterness from my spat with Anthony over the week, but whatever he wanted, I wanted the opposite, no matter what it was. I cracked my pill in half right down the middle.

"Yeah, let's split one," I gave Chris a nod, then dropped the other half and stomped it into the dirt with my heel.

Anthony held up his Vodka Red Bull water bottle in a toast. "Rest in fucking peace Summer 2020. You've been good to us."

We all swallowed back our pills and resigned ourselves to the heat of the night.

For us, the summer fair was an exercise in control (don't puke), restraint (don't hook up with the wrong person), and deception (don't act drunk when parents came up to us and asked us about football).

For me, it was just another way to lose myself. Faceless people came up to me for high fives and pictures even though there were streaks of sweat painted my shirt like tiger stripes. We bounced around from booth to booth, cackling like hyenas and sucking down as much junk and carbs as we could so we could keep drinking, and people were just handing us free shit left and right. I got shooed away from the football toss booth because even in my inebriated state, it was still "unfair" for me to play. Somehow I ended up with a giant teddy bear I didn't want and handed it off to some blonde sophomore girl I recognized from the soccer team, who gave me twinkling, lovestruck eyes as I walked away.

"I just want fucking funnel cake," Chris groaned. "Why is there no fucking funnel cake?"

I continued to slug back my drink, and at this point in the night I was sure if someone cut me open, Red Bull and vodka would come spilling out of my veins instead of blood.

"You had funnel cake an hour ago you dipshit," Anthony shoved Chris in the arm. "It's still all over your sweatshirt."

Chris looked down and brushed at the specks of powdered sugar dotted on his hoodie above the New Livingston Football logo.

"Oh..." he frowned. "That's sad."

I slung my arm around his shoulder. "Come on buddy, let's get some more. I need a hot dog anyway."

"Dallas!"

My name soared over all the noise and music, but I couldn't place the source. A hand grabbed my arm and pulled me away. I nearly tripped over my own feet, and I came face to face with Kaia. Colorful lights dotted her cheeks, and the white of her teeth was bright against her summer sunkissed tan as she offered me a small smile.

"H-hey..." It felt like I had peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth when I tried to speak. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to say thanks for the other day." She twisted the gold locket that hung around her neck. "You really helped me out."

Before I could muster up a half-hearted response, Anthony and Chris appeared beside me, pulling on my shirt and jostling me a little too hard. My head spun, and all the colors from all the lights blurred together.

"Oh I'm sure Dallas helped you plenty." I recognized the haughtiness in Anthony's voice even though I was seeing double of everything.

Kaia scoffed. "What the hell does that even mean?"

She gave me a glare, but I just chuckled and shrugged.

"It means what you think it means," Anthony chimed in again.

Kaia kept her gaze locked in on me, and thankfully I only saw one of her. "Wow, and here I am actually making an attempt to be nice to you."

Laugher came spilling out of me, along with a mess of words that I probably didn't mean, but I said them anyway. "Well don't think being nice and kissing my ass is getting you anywhere in the near future."

Anthony, Chris, and Cal erupted into laughter and continued to jostle me like a god damn punching bag. I felt sick.

Without another word Kaia grit her teeth and stalked away, her dark hair whipping wildly behind her.

It felt like I had momentarily left my body and watched some guy who looked like me act like a total dick, and then suddenly I was thrust back into my body, realizing what I had said and done far too late.

I groaned and turned to Chris. "That was so fucking stupid, why'd you let me do that?"

Chris shrugged. "Since when do you care? I thought she came over here to play dumb mind games, isn't that like her whole thing with you?"

"If you ask me, I think she's in love with you," Cal chimed in and jabbed me in the side. "All that unresolved sexual tension makes her angry."

I snorted. "Yeah, right. The only thing she's in love with is the idea of seeing me in a ditch."

Anthony ignored us and pulled at my arm. "Come on assholes, we're doing the Gravitron."

The Gravitron was exactly what it sounded like - a giant spinning mechanism designed to fuck with people. As kids we all thought it was some magic alien trick, but then we all grew up and took AP Physics and found out it was just a combination of pressure and centrifugal force. The ride still played up on the sci-fi aspect of it, as we were loaded into a UFO-looking thing with blinking lights. There was nothing to it on the inside, just dark and dingy with vertical mats lining all around the slanted walls. It smelled like sweaty socks.

I could handle being spun around. I'd been flipped on my head, chop blocked, stomped into the turf. Motion didn't phase me. But as the ride came to life and spun us around, something in me came undone. We were spinning around so fast I wasn't even dizzy, but something - maybe gravity, or maybe something more malevolent - pressed down hard on my chest.

As the ride slowed to a stop, a wave of nausea washed over me, and just as quickly, I was drowning in it. I shoved myself off the wall and bolted to the exit. The air outside was hot - too hot for that late in the night, and the stars in my vision weren't the good kind. Before I had any sense of direction, I was dry heaving into the dirt. The blur of the lights from the rides and booths made up feel like down and down feel like up, and the swirl of voices only kept my head spinning. Stale Red Bull and vodka burned the back of my throat so badly, I was surprised it wasn't scorching the ground.

"Holy shit." Chris seemed to materialize beside me, pulling me away from all the lights and all the noise until it seemed like we'd been dropped into a fish bowl. "What the actual fuck? You sound like you're having an exorcism."

I made an attempt to answer, but as soon as I opened my mouth I heaved again. Chris pressed his hands into my shoulders and lowered me to the ground.

"Just...stay here. I'm gonna go get you some water."

I watched Chris's retreating figure through bleary eyes until he disappeared into a sea of lights and bodies. I wasn't sure how long I sat there, dodging curious eyes from people as they passed me in my little corner.

"Well, it's about time that Lucifer fell from grace."

I looked up to see Kaia standing over me, arms crossed over her neon orange Nike jacket and hair wildly billowing in the warm night breeze.

"Are you implying that I'm an angel?" I mustered up a grin.

"Guess falling didn't knock any sense into you," she retorted.

She lowered herself beside me, and normally the scent of clean laundry that wafted off of her would have been kind of nice, but a smell of any kind only aggravated my sensory overload more, and it churned the sea of nausea in me even more.

"What do you want?" I grumbled. "Come to revel in my misery and embarrassment?"

"I won't lie, you look pretty pathetic sitting over here." She grinned as she pulled her hair back. "But...you also just don't look so good."

"Did the vomit on my shirt give it away?" I grimmaced.

Kaia let out a dry chuckle. "You know, people say a lot of things about you, Dallas..."

I scoffed.

"I know we don't frequent the same parties all that often, but I hear rumors. You tend to keep your shit together." She paused and looked out into the lights dancing across faceless people in the crowd. "Are you okay?"

I sighed and leaned back on my hands, feeling little bits of gravel dig into my skin. "I don't know. We all took a couple Xanax before...like, before...before."

I knew how much of a fucking idiot I sounded like, but the wires from my brain to my mouth were all criss crossed and cut up.

"Why?"

"I uh...I don't know. It was stupid," I admitted. "I shouldn't have done it."

Kaia responded with a wary glance. In a twisted side-effect of our overcompetitiveness, we'd certainly learned when the other was bullshitting. Normally that only worked in my favor, but not tonight.

I sighed and rubbed my sweat-soaked forehead. "I guess I'm just expected to act a certain way and do certain things and just...be cool. Be the man. If my teammate just hands me a pill to loosen up, I'm gonna take it."

"For someone who's generally pretty smart, that was definitely stupid." Kaia flipped her hair over her shoulder as she spoke. I was used to venom in her voice when she spoke to me, but it all seemed to melt away in the hot August air. "You don't have to be the man you know. You can be whatever you want."

I scoffed. "You don't get it. At this point, I basically have the man tattooed on my god damn forehead. I don't...I don't have a choice."

I didn't know what time it was, but through the thinning crowd I spotted Chris's head of red hair. He gestured to someone beside him wildly with his hands, and I couldn't hold back a groan.

"You okay?" Kaia asked.

"Peachy fucking keen," I muttered, keeping my eyes on the back of Nina Castillo's head as Chris pleaded with wild, drunken hand gestures. I felt like I was watching a bad horror movie on repeat with the two of them. The effects were bad, and I knew the ending before it came.

Kaia elbowed me in the side, effectively ending the movie. "You should probably get home. Where's your ride?"

I looked back at Chris one last time before letting out a heavy sigh. "He's uh...tied up."

"Okay then." Kaia's ankles popped and cracked as she stood up. "Let's go."

"Go where?" I huffed out.

"Home."

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I definitely didn't see my night ending half-asleep in the passenger seat of Kaia Greene's little Audi coup. As she pulled up to the curb in front of my house, I was still coming down from my sour high with my head practically sticking out the open window. I didn't know the song playing on her Spotify through the car speakers, but I liked it. It might have just been the liquor, but all her hard edges were soft, and the glow from the dashboard lit up little gold flecks in her hazel eyes.

The other thing about liquor was that it crumbled walls. Walls between your brain and your mouth. Walls between you and a person you shouldn't get close to.

"Thanks for tonight," I managed to mumble out.

"No problem." Her voice was soft as it danced with the music.

I knew I should, but I couldn't bring myself to get out of the car. The hot night air from the open windows washed over me, and when I looked over at her, I realized it was the first time I'd ever taken the time to appreciate the way she looked. We were at each other's throats 99% of the time, so it was easy to just see red when we looked at each other and nothing more.

I knew she was beautiful. Everyone did. But as a dim glow from the streetlight washed over her, I found myself counting the freckles on her cheeks, trying to drink in every drip and every curve like I'd never look at her like this again. Maybe I never would.

"Are you alright?" I knew she was talking to me, but she sounded far away.

"I uh...I like this song," I blurted out, liquor still dripping from my lips.

"It's Julien Baker," she replied. "People say her music is always so sad, but I prefer to think of it as...raw emotion. It always makes you feel something."

The only thing I felt was sick. Whether that was from the bad mix of pills and alcohol or something else fluttering around in my stomach was yet to be determined.

"I'm uh...I'm gonna go." I fumbled with the seatbelt, but even in the dark I was seeing double. The song played softly in the background, and it was the only thing that kept me tethered to the moment. A moment I wasn't sure I wanted to end.

"Think you can make it to the door?"

I shrugged. "Eh, it's not like I haven't slept on my front lawn before."

Before my liquor-soaked brain could process what my body was already doing, I leaned over the center console and gently kissed Kaia's cheek. By the time I realized what I had done, I had already pulled away, meeting the shocked, confused, and somewhat disgusted look in her hazel eyes.

"Oh..." was all I could manage. The song ended, and suddenly the silence was overwhelming.

"Okay," Kaia finally said, her tone shockingly mellow. "You're even more drunk than I thought."

Embarrassment welled up in me, and now I was absolutely certain I was going to be sick. I pushed the door open and slid off the leather seats like I was a puddle melting into the street, then slammed the door behind me. I was ready to make a run for my front door, but another breeze blew through me and dried the sweat on the back of my neck. For the first time all night, I felt cold.

I leaned down into her open window. "Hey uh...we're...we're even now, okay?"

She forced a chuckle. "Was that before or after you kissed my cheek?"

"Uh..." I started to back away and stumbled back into the garbage can at the curb. She laughed at me as an unfamiliar feeling of discomposure burned through me. "Before. Obviously."

"Goodnight, Dallas." A ghost of a grin played on her lips before she rolled the window up and drove away.

I laid on my front lawn and counted stars until I fell asleep, trying to figure out why the hell I felt so small.



considering everything
me leaving with regretsonly makes sense
i'll see you when we're both not so emotional

i'll see you when we're both not so emotional / american football

END PART I

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I really forgot how much I love writing enemies to lovers, and I LOVE MY CHILDREN. Especially my soft boy Chris, I live for his and Dallas's friendship.

What's your favorite trope to write or read about? Don't forget to let me know what you thought of this chapter! SUMMER'S IS OFFICIALLY OVER. FOOTBALL SEASON IS HERE (not me going through actual football withdrawal, nope)

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