Give Me You Read online

  After two weeks of Maniac O’Brien, I’m ready to lock him and Layla in a room together. He’s been insane on the soccer field and in the weight room. We’ve both been put in as starters but his drive isn’t based on the desire to go pro like mine is. Layla won’t see him and Corin won’t talk to me much about it because she doesn’t want to betray her friend’s confidence.

  Understandable but it still sucks.

  I decide to stage an intervention because something has to fucking give. I walk into the weight room after practice. One of the trainers is removing the stiches from Landen’s forearm.

  I hang out while he begins maxing out at the weight bench.

  “Killing yourself won’t make her want you back,” I say, moving over to spot him.

  “I thought I was alone.”

  I groan under the weight as I replace it on the bar. It’s twice what he normally benches. “You will be if you don’t get your shit together.”

  Landen lets out an angry snorting sound. “Worry about your own shit, Martin. Isn’t that what you always tell me to do?”

  I move to stand in front of him and he legit looks like he’s ready to bash my face in. Anyone’s face, really. I just happen to be the one standing here.

  “I would,” I tell him. “But your shit’s affecting my shit. Fuck, I shouldn’t call her shit.” I rubs the back of my neck and try to phrase my concerns a little more articularely. “Corin’s upset. More than upset. Layla’s barely even speaking. Cor said she goes to class, she smiles like a goddamn robot, and then she just sleeps all the time.”

  “Cor needs to get a fucking life of her own. Or wait, she doesn’t have a fucking life, does she?” He sneers at me and now I’m the one seeing red. What Corin does or doesn’t do is none of his goddamn business.

  “I’m gonna give you a pass this once, because I know you’re dealing with a…whatever the hell it is you’re dealing with. But I won’t comment about your freaky chick and you don’t comment about mine.” I know the instant the words are out, that I shouldn’t have insulted Layla. She’s a sweet girl and not really freaky at all.

  I don’t get time to apologize though, because Landen’s fist connects hard with my jaw.

  I bull-rush him to try and settle him down and something falls, clanking loud and hard beside us. Probably not the safest location for a brawl.

  “Goddammit, O’Brien,” I growl, trying to pin the raging bastard after he sucker punches me in the gut.

  He gets the jump on me, taking advantage of the fact that I lost my breath, and I’m the one on bottom when I hear footsteps coming toward us.

  The team pulls us apart and Coach Wicks gives us both the evil eye.

  “What the hell happened here?” Coach asks, looking back and forth between us.

  “My fault, Coach,” Landen says, because it’s true.

  “Girl problems,” I mutter, hoping this won’t get either of us suspended or worse. I should’ve known better than to confront him.

  “Won’t happen again,” Landen says, looking guilty as hell.

  “You’re damn right it won’t. O’Brien, you’re off the team. Get your shit and go. Martin, get your ass in my office, now.”

  My head spins. This is my fault. I should’ve just left him be or talked to him at the dorm.

  “Yes, sir,” O’Brien says, grabbing his bag and storming out.

  “Wait,” I call out but he doesn’t turn around. I follow Coach into his office and do my best to explain. “That wasn’t all on him. It was stupid but I knew he was dealing with some—”

  “You want to join him?” Coach nods toward the door.

  “No sir,” I say, slumping in a chair and preparing to hear my punishment.

  “Then shut it.” Coach shakes his head. “There are rules here, rules some of you boys think don’t apply to you. I’ve had calls about you, Skylar. Professional teams calling to check on your behavior, your stats. O’Brien has been a hot head from day one, but you have a real shot at going pro. Do you still want that?”

  I didn’t know anyone had called about me. “Yes sir,” I tell him.

  “You’re suspended for the next game but we’ll keep it between us unless this happens again. Is this going to happen again?”

  I shake my head. “No sir.”

  “Good. Go on then.”

  I walk back to the dorm and try to figure out how to fix this for O’Brien. When I get there, he’s packing and I haven’t come up with a single solution.

  “Where are you going?”

  He looks at me like he’s on a different planet. “What?”

  “I asked where you were going, dude. It’s not like you have to vacate the dorms tonight. Being off the team doesn’t mean you have to leave school.” I nod at his bag.

  “It does for me. Back to Colorado, I guess. Till I figure something else out.”

  He’s a walk on that was just now put on scholarship. I forgot. Without the team and the scholarship, he probably can’t keep attending SoCal.

  “Shit, Landen, I’m sorry. Seriously. Why don’t you stay at my friend’s loft tonight? He’s still out of town. Sleep on it. Then maybe we can go talk to Coach tomorrow together and work something out.”

  “Naw, no worries. It was probably time to go anyways. Shouldn’t have come here to begin with.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Dude, seriously. Here’s the key to my friend’s place. It’s on 16th and Lane, above the pizza place. Unit D.” I hand over the key. “Just go and get some rest and we’ll grab some food in the morning or something.”

  When he leaves, I call coach and beg for an opportunity to explain. I tell him about Layla’s condition—what I know of it. About how Landen is a good guy and is trying look out for her but how they’ve had problems and it’s been affecting him. I even admit to insulting her and making Landen go off the hinges.

  “He’s a good guy, Coach. Just dealing with complicated women like the rest of us. He’s the best damn player on the team and you know it. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  He listens and then he sighs loudly. “I can make some calls, Martin. But that’s all I can do.”

  My phone is ringing off the hook that Saturday morning. No one calls me this early. I make a smacking sort of grab for it and mumble a hello before looking to see who it is.

  “Red, you awake? We need to talk.” Skylar’s voice is urgent, panicked.

  Landen and Layla ended things for good, and I’ve been teasing him about what I want for winning the bet. Truthfully, Layla has been so miserable, I don’t even feel the least bit good about being right.

  “I’m half awake,” I say, stumbling into the common room so as not to disturb my roommate. “What’s wrong?”

  I hear him take a breath. “You really think Layla and Landen are done? Like, she’s totally moving on with life and will be fine without him?”

  I having seen Layla looking remotely like a human being in weeks. She hasn’t even been going to class. “Uh, not necessarily. Why? If this is about you trying to get out of losing our bet, Skylar Martin—”

  “Forget the bet for a second,” he says in a huff. “Landen and I got into a sort of scuffle in the weight room. Coach cut Landen loose because he’s just a walk on. But I told him what happened so he made some calls.”

  I can tell by his tone this is going somewhere bad.

  “He’s leaving in less than three hours,” Skylar says quietly. “For Spain, where he’s joining a semi-professional soccer league. And from the sounds of it, he has no plans to ever come back.”

  My stomach plummets to the floor. “Spain? Jesus.”

  This is going to kill Layla. Since she’s only been half alive lately, it won’t take much.

  “So what do we do?”

  Skylar is quiet for a long moment. “Talk to her. See if she wants to go with him. He told me about her, um, condition. It’s bad, Corin. Bad enough that I don’t know why she’s even in college considering she might not live long enough to gradu
ate.”

  A lump of emotion constricts my airway. “Seriously? She hasn’t said much more about it.” I want to run in her room and wrap my arms around her but my blubbering all over her won’t help anything.

  “Yeah. Just talk to her—do what you can do. I’ll be on standby if she needs anything. I’ll head towards your dorm now. Landen is already on his way to the airport.”

  We hang up and I do a few quick searches online about school curriculum. Then I step into the hall and make a necessary phone call to Layla’s aunt Kate. When I’m finished, I walk into the bedroom where Layla is now sitting up on her bed and staring into space.

  “Layla, can we talk?”

  “Sure,” she says without any emotion behind it.

  I lower myself onto my bed across from her. “It’s about Landen.”

  “Then no, we can’t.”

  I huff out my annoyance. “Well, I’m going to talk. You can listen.” She looks so delicate and fragile that I’m afraid this news might break her. But she needs to know and there’s no time to tell her gently. “What I’m going to say is harsh, and I’m sorry. But Landen handles you with kid gloves, and I can see how much you don’t like it. So I’m going to treat you like a big girl.”

  She raises her eyebrows but says nothing.

  “You’re scared of living,” I tell her.

  “Excuse me?”

  I stand and stare her down. “I don’t know why or what the hell happened to you exactly, but you’re hiding from life.”

  “My parents were gunned down in front of me when I was thirteen,” she says evenly.

  My knees go weak and I sit back down. Holy fuck, why is this girl cursed? “Oh.”

  “I was going to tell you eventually,” she informs me. And about the seizures. How I moved in with my Aunt Kate after the funeral and then had my very first seizure on my third day at my new school when something exploded in Chemistry class. Pissed myself in front of everyone. I had some other…problems. Ended up hospitalized for a long time. Was homeschooled by private tutors until my senior year, when I finally decided to suck it up and go back. But no one had forgotten. They avoided me. And then Landen came and…”

  I nod and realize my eyes are threatening to tear up. “He told Skylar a little bit about how things happened back then. But Layla, I’m going to tell you how things are now.”

  “Please don’t, Corin. Just…I can’t do this anymore. Every time I think he wants me for me, it turns out everything he does is out of pity. He gave up his dream, for God’s sakes, to babysit a grown woman. He even got paid to do it.” God, I wish she’d just leave me alone so I can go back to wallowing in my pain.

  I nod again, feeling like a bobble head. Everything she says is true but she’s looking at it all wrong. Landen cares about her, more than I’ve ever cared about anyone or anyone has ever cared about me in my entire life. It’s a bigger deal than she realizes. Love. Being loved. It’s not as common as some people think. “Yeah, I can see how it looks that way. But you’re wrong.”

  “Fine. Spit it out. No more kid gloves, like you said.”

  I tell her about the fight with Skylar and about Landen getting cut from the team.

  “Well, maybe it’s for the best. Now he can go play overseas like he always wanted.”

  She’s so full of it but clearly she isn’t ready to admit it. “Um, yeah. There’s more. Skylar felt like shit about the whole thing, so he went and told the coach exactly what happened. Their coach made some calls and got Landen a tryout for a team based in Spain.”

  “Good,” she practically has to choke out.

  “His flight leaves in two hours.” I look at my phone where Skylar has sent the updated flight information for Landen. “Um, an hour and a half.”

  I tell her about some international studies information I looked up weeks ago. “There’s a shit-ton of paperwork we’ll have to do to get you admitted by next fall, if you want to still do the whole college thing even though your condition is complicated. I can help with whatever needs to be done here. So, um, you have about fifteen seconds to get your stuff together.”

  She looks at me like I’ve lost all my marbles. “He’s leaving, Corin. I’m letting him leave.”

  “Okay, see this?” I hold up both of her hands and mimic pulling gloves off. “Kid gloves gone. Now get your ass up and Pack. Your. Shit. Skylar’s going to drive like a maniac to get us to the airport in time. It’s a twenty minute drive to the airport, but Skylar says we can make it in ten if we hurry.”

  I reach down and pull her suitcase out from under her bed. She’s clearly in shock so I start emptying her drawers into it.

  “Corin, stop!”

  “No, Layla. You stop. Stop hiding from your life. If someone told me right now that I had a blood-filled tumor pressing on my brain, and I could die at any second, I’d get my ass out there and live. I’d be skydiving and deep sea diving and whatever other kinds of dangerous-ass diving they have. And if some crazy-hot guy wanted to reroute his life to spend whatever of mine was left with me, then you can damn sure bet I’d let him. If I’ve only got a few more minutes to live, I’m tying that fine piece of ass up in my bed and making the most of it.”

  “I’ll hurt him,” she says barely loud enough to be heard. “When I’m gone, he’ll be hurting.”

  Is she high? Hello, if anything happens to this girl, we are all going to be hurting.

  “We all will be, Layla. And he has us—we’ll be there for each other. You can’t push us away because you’re scared that we’ll be sad when you’re gone. You doing that is as bad as your aunt trying to run your life. You don’t get to decide for us whether we love you or not. I do. Your aunt does. Landen sure as hell does.”

  “W-what if he doesn’t want me to come to Spain with him? And what about you? What will you do for a roommate?”

  I roll my eyes because I don’t know but now is not the time to debate it. “Layla, I can almost guarantee he does. But even if he doesn’t, you need to risk it, like he risked everything coming here for you. To be honest, I’m not sure I can handle looking into your eyes for the rest of the year if you don’t at least try to work things out with him. And as for me, I’ll figure something out. Maybe get a small apartment or see if Skylar’s friend wants to sublet his. I’m pretty sure I got the waitressing job in the bag, so it’d be close.”

  “My aunt is going to flip out.”

  “Yeah, I called her. She did. Serves her right.” I resume packing her stuff because I’m pretty sure she’s on board. This is what Skylar meant—these two—there’s so much more to their relationship than I saw at first. It’s not infatuation or a bad boy phase. It’s all-consuming, unconditional love. And I’m losing the bet by encouraging her to go, but I don’t care. I just hope I’m not doing too much encouraging. “Wait. Shit. I’m doing exactly what everyone else does. Telling you what to do. What do you want to do, Layla? Where do you want to be when you wake up tomorrow? Here? Georgia? With Landen?”

  She doesn’t answer in words. She practically jumps off the bed and starts cramming her belongings into the nearly full suitcase.

  Skylar drives us to the airport like a man escaping Hell. Layla and I hop out and I have the urge to kiss the ground.

  “I packed the Blu-ray copy of Pitch Perfect for you,” I tell her with a hug.

  “I love you.”

  I laugh but my stomach tingles a little. She means it. And I feel the same way. “Love you too, crazy girl. Now go get your fine piece of soccer ass.”

  She’s nearly crying when she leaves us to run inside.

  I climb back into the car with Skylar who pulls up to a place where we can park. “Just in case things go sideways and one or both of them ends up needing a ride back to campus,” he says.

  “And here I thought I was the cynical one.”

  “You are,” he says. “Speaking of which—”

  “I know. I know. I lost the damn bet.” I smile to myself at the thought of Layla’s bold, brave choice. Good
for her for going after what she wants. “So what did you win?”

  Skylar turns to face me, propping himself so that he’s taking up every inch of space possible. “A trip to New York.”

  My insides clench and churn. Good thing I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. “A what?”

  Please tell me I heard him wrong.

  “That’s what I want,” he tells me. “Valentine’s Day weekend I’m off. No games. No practice. I’ll buy the plane tickets and whatever else I need to.”

  “Why New York?” I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.

  “Because I want to see where you come from. What makes you, you.”

  “Why?” My voice is practically a whisper.

  “Because I’m trying to figure you out.” He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my left ear.

  “Stop,” I say and he jerks his hand back like I’ve burned him. “Trying to figure me out, I mean. There’s nothing to figure out. I’m just boring old me and there is nothing in New York that matters.”

  “I disagree,” he says.

  Before we can argue any further about the God-awful terms of this bet, Skylar’s phone buzzes in the center console.

  He retrieves it and smiles. “She made it in time. They’re boarding now.”

  I am a swirling mess of conflicting emotions inside.

  I’m happy for Layla.

  But I’m terrified for myself.

  It takes a while to process the fact that Layla’s really gone. Our dorm room seems unfinished without her stuff in it. Lonely.

  She called last night to let me know everything was going well and I wanted to tell her everything. I almost spilled my guts about the bet, New York, and how much I was dreading letting Skylar see where I come from and why. It’s like I’m going to pull back the curtain and show him the broken girl behind the façade Wizard of Oz style. But I couldn’t. She’s happy. And I’m happy for her. I just wish I hadn’t bet against her and Landen. I got what I deserved I guess.