It got to me— far, far more than it should have. It made me feel crushed by the need for him, the want to call or text or show up at his apartment undressed and let him pull me against his body. It’d gotten to the point that when I touched myself, I barely had to do anything but picture Jacob to make myself come. And it was never the earth-shattering orgasm that Jacob gave me.
“I’m guessing you’re not going to the game, seeing as how you’re still in your pajamas?” Kiersten asked me.
“I have a paper to write. And I don’t really want to go anyway. Football’s not my thing,” I said firmly.
“Football’s barely Jacob’s thing anymore,” Piper snorted. “I can’t believe they’re going to let him play again.”
“Hey now! Don’t be a fair-weather friend. Jacob Everett did right by the team for years,” Kiersten said, sticking her tongue out.
“Yeah, well, Adams has been doing right by them ever since Jacob brushed his arm or whatever,” Piper said. “If Jacob gets out there and fucks up this game like he did that last one he played in…let’s just say I’d hate to be him.”
Kiersten and Piper finally muddled their way out the door in a cloud of styling spray and setting powder. I eagerly locked it behind them and sat down to my laptop to work on my paper…and to watch the game.
It was no big deal to watch the game, I told myself. So I got the tiniest, littlest bit into football while dating Jacob. That wasn’t a problem. Plenty of people got into new stuff in college. Really, it was a good thing— I could have gotten into drugs or shitty music or bad tattoos.
The game hadn’t started when I turned the television on— first muted, then at an ever inching-up volume— but the announcers were in a frenzy over Jacob’s return to the field. They showed clip after clip of him at practice, had a sports medicine guy in to explain the injury (complete with a creepy muscle hologram), and of course, did the side-by-side comparison to Adams. When Jacob led the team out of the stadium tunnel to thunderous applause, I caught myself grinning. Maybe Jacob would be all right— maybe he really was fine to play. I wanted him to be fine. I wanted him to be more than fine. I wanted him to make Adams look like a rec league player, to get his NFL contract, to be the Harton hero again. Part of my brain laughed at myself, cheering for my ex like this— wasn’t I supposed to be wishing that his kneecaps fell off or something?
Whatever. You’ve got this, Jacob, I thought, staring at the television for the starting kick.
The game moved quickly, the sportscasters shouting and cheering along with the fans. Someone was tailgating in the apartment’s parking lot, and the smell of beer and burned hamburgers wafted up to my nose; I opened the doors and let the fall air and smoke encircle me. The Rams were up seven to zero, but Clemson had heart— each yard Harton gained hard won. Jacob was spectacular, according to the sportscasters. “He’s not just his old self again, he’s better!” one exclaimed after an impressive pass.
I kept my eye on Jacob throughout the game, trying to spot a hint of pain or hesitation in him. I saw neither— though, granted, the cameras weren’t especially interested in capturing glints in his eyes. They rolled into the fourth quarter with Harton still in the lead. Adams was pacing on the sidelines; the cameras panned to him during down time, speculating on how it felt to be relegated to the second string once again.
“And with that in mind, you’ve got to wonder what it’s like to be Jacob Everett right now,” one of the way-too-cheerful sportscasters said during a long shot of the marching band. “He’s more or less got to pack a season’s worth of amazing plays into the next few games if he’s still hoping to be a top NFL draft pick.”
“That’s right, Dan,” the other sportscaster— who I thought might also be named Dan?— said. “And you know, this is when we start to really talk about the difference between scoring the most points and really winning a game. Jacob Everett has made a truly amazing comeback here, and that’s no small thing given the measure of his injury…but he’s going to have to be more than just the Harton Hero if he wants to gain back the attention he lost while he was out.”
I decided that all men named Dan could go fuck themselves. What more did they want from Jacob? They said he was better than before, he was winning the game, he was spectacular— that was the word they’d used! Spectacular.