“Si, mi hija,” Carmelita said, “Love among family.”
23
“I appreciate you coming with me,” Sin said as Troy pulled his truck out of her driveway.
“No problem. I’ve wanted to see Heap in action. This gives me an excuse to go.”
Sin was a little surprised at his response. “You have never been to Heap’s church—never heard him preach?”
Troy shook his head as he pulled the truck onto the ferry.
Sin waited until he had pulled the truck into the proper spot and put it into park. “Why not?”
“I felt it would be an affront to your father. He’s the one person I still respect in this town and I didn’t want to do anything that I knew he wouldn’t like.”
Sin sat back and stared out the windshield. “What is it with the relationship between you and my dad that I don’t know?”
“I already told you how he took care of my mom when she became ill.”
“That’s bullshit, Stubbs. There is more to it, and we both know it. If you don’t want to tell me, just say so but don’t lie to me.”
Troy opened the console between the seats and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He grabbed one and handed one to Sin.
Sin cocked her head to the side. “You smoke?”
“Only when it’s appropriate, like when I’m about to spill my guts to someone.”
Troy flipped open an old Zippo and lit both cigarettes. “Hold that thought,” he said as the ferry docked on the mainland. He quickly backed the truck off the ferry and turned onto the Overseas Highway.
He took a deep drag and blew the smoke out the window. “You’re right,” he said, “there’s more to my relationship with Thomas than just what I’ve told you.”
Sin brought her cigarette to her lips and inhaled. She didn’t move, fearing that any change might affect what Troy was about to say.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Breathe.”
She exhaled. “Didn’t realize I hadn’t,” she grinned. “So you were saying.”
“It’s complicated,” Troy said.
Sin looked about the cabin of the truck. “You have a captive audience. I’m all ears.”
“When we had that drink in Key West, you asked me why I left the University of Miami.”
“Yeah,” Sin interjected.
“You probably think I left because I couldn’t hack the academics or because I sucked on the field, but neither of those is true.”
Sin thought back to what Charlie had shown her at his house. She wondered if Troy would come clean and tell her the full truth. She stared at her lit cigarette and in her silence, watched the paper burn down.
“Believe it or not,” Troy said, “I got my act together when I left Tumbleboat. I know I was an asshole while I was here, especially to you, but things changed when I got to U.M.”
“How so? People don’t change overnight,” Sin said. “I mean, asshole was pretty engrained in your personality.”
Troy chuckled as he took one last hit of his cigarette before tossing the butt out the window. “It didn’t happen right away. I left here shortly after you did for summer practice. I was the same dickhead I had been in high school. I quickly garnered a reputation with the coaches and the older players.”
“What kind of rep?”
“Not a good one,” Troy said. “I was known as a smart-mouthed jerk who could out drink anyone and, who could bang any chick he wanted.”
“Sounds like the old Troy I used to know.”
Troy smirked. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
“When does the change part come?”
“I don’t know if you followed college ball at all, but I was touted as the next big thing at the U. I was the backup quarterback my freshman year and I even got to start three games when Shawn Millen went down with a shoulder sprain. We won all three games.”
Sin turned toward him and brushed her hair away from her face.
“Anyway,” Troy continued, “the press coverage only made me a bigger jerk. At the end of the season there was a huge party for the team on Star Island.”
Sin’s eyes opened wide as she stared at Troy with gaping mouth. “Star Island, I’m impressed—not.”
Sin expected her sarcasm to lighten the mood, but it seemed to have the opposite effect—she could sense Troy’s demeanor change. His aura seemed to darken. She perceived a heaviness in the air. “Sorry,” she swallowed, “please continue.”
“There was a girl there that had quite a reputation. The word was that if you were a jock, you knew you could bed her whenever you wanted.”
Sin rolled her eyes.
“As the night went on, I noticed that she wasn’t drinking. When I asked her why, she told me that she never drank. That surprised me. She then told me that the rumors about her weren’t true. I decided to play dumb and I asked her what rumors. She told me I was a terrible actor and that she hadn’t slept with any of the players. She said she only came to the parties as a designated driver for her younger sister.”
Sin pulled another cigarette from the pack and lit it. This story was starting to sound like her own.
“Throughout the night, I kept an eye on her. She was true to her word—stone-cold sober. I left around two a.m. The next morning there were cops all over the campus.”
Even though Sin knew where this story was going, her pulse still quickened.
“Two of my teammates came barging into my room and started babbling about the whore at the party and how she went to the cops after sleeping with a bunch of the players saying she had been drugged and raped. They asked me to back up their story, that they left the party with me.”
Troy pulled into the church parking lot and was directed by a parking attendant to a spot. He put the truck in park and slumped over the wheel, his head in his hands.
“I found out that the girl they were talking about was the
