I was sitting in the back and only belatedly noticed Chase on my bus, sitting at the very front and leaning his forehead against the window to watch the dun forest bordering the highway. I picked my way through my raucous teammates and took the empty seat next to him. When he saw it was me, he handed over his cell phone.
Fuck off. Never contact me again.
The shock I felt wasn’t from the text’s expletive so much as from seeing Sadie’s words on the screen. Anything I’d ever heard from or about her had been secondhand, and because of that she had come to feel as silent and one-dimensional as the photographs I’d seen on Chase’s fridge. But here were words straight from the source, blunt, harsh, slightly formal, indubitably final.
I was electrified by the idea of getting Private Chase all to myself. But I kept my excitement hidden, just as I knew better than to ask him what happened while we were in front of teammates. I lent him my presence for the rest of the ride, dressed with him in the cube, and rode with him to his apartment, where we sat on the couch while he explained:
After our dinner at the King Club, Chase had taken his father’s words about indomitable McGerrin men to heart and gone on a campaign to bombard Sadie—expensive flowers and chocolates delivered to her Georgetown dorm, phone calls five, ten times a day, an impassioned handwritten note he sent via Priority Mail. He knew it was risky to be so overbearing, but he had already tried the giving-her-space thing to no avail, so he figured he might as well spill everything that was in his heart, leaving it to her to sort through the detritus and decide whether there was enough to make a second relationship.
It had seemed like the strategy was working. Sadie acknowledged his gestures with short, grateful texts, and more often than not replied with an “I love you, too” at the end of their phone calls. Then, last night in the Marriott, Chase made the leap he’d been working toward all this time, texting to ask if he could fly to D.C. after today’s game. No pressure, he said, she wouldn’t have to meet him at the airport or put him up in her dorm room; everything would be on his dime and her terms. She hadn’t replied before he fell asleep, nor this morning, and by pregame his anticipation had gotten so distracting he forced himself to turn off his phone—which had left him to return from our miraculous victory and find waiting the most damningly definitive text she’d ever sent him.
Tears were streaming down his face by the end of the story, and I helped in the only way I knew how—getting him drunk. I raided his refrigerator for the four beers in it and found an eighth of a handle of vodka buried in the freezer under a stack of DiGiorno pizzas. When we finished the vodka, Chase walked to a liquor store down the road to buy a twelve-pack of Natty Light while I turned on the oven to make us two of the pizzas. We’d finished another three beers each by the time the food was ready, and I felt so exceedingly adult, sitting there across from him at the dining table, eating off nice Crate and Barrel plates, sipping beer with dinner like my mom and dad sometimes did. Chase’s face was bright with all the booze, and he seemed to be feeling better. Things were perfect, and I saw no reason why we’d need to leave this apartment—not tonight, not ever.
Then Fade texted, saying some vets were meeting at Stefan Knows. I was disappointed to abandon our domestic idyll, fast-stepping with Chase down the building’s zigzagging outdoor staircase and walking through the clear, chilly night to the bar. A long line had formed outside Stefan Knows, with ten of our teammates standing in the middle of the line. We joined them, ignoring the angry sighs and eye rolls of the regular students we’d cut in front of.
—You faggots wearing lipstick? Chase asked.
I’d noticed it, too: our teammates’ lips were stained red.
—Devonté said Jell-O shots.
—Motherfucker, don’t blame me!
—So he runs out, buys Everclear and Jell-O boxes, makes that shit and puts it in the fridge. He was too damn drunk to think how it needed like twelve hours to set. When we ran outta beer, we just started drinkin’ this shit. It ain’t half bad.
They’d brought a water bottle filled with the stuff and passed it to us. Chase drank first, which meant I got to place my lips on the same part of the rim his had touched. I chugged until I reached the sweet silt of undissolved Jell-O powder floating at the bottom.
The bouncer was checking IDs, and I started to get nervous. The players ahead of me were all veterans, either twenty-one or so much bigger than the bouncer they were getting waved in.
—Fuckin’ kiddin’ me? the bouncer said at the sight of my ID. You ain’t even eighteen.
—What?! Chase said as he was waved into the bar. Y’all hear that? Furling can’t vote!
The bouncer laid his forearm across my chest. I called for Chase to wait, but he was talking to Jimbo and didn’t look back as he disappeared inside. The King students we’d cut in front of smirked.
I hurried away, telling myself to keep it together until I passed the last person in line.
—Whoa whoa whoa.
Devonté grabbed the back of my jacket. He saw I was on the verge of tears and put his arm around me, leading me back to the door.
—You gotta learn to speak up, rookie.
He convinced the bouncer to let
