My Muted Love (Muted Hoplessness Book 1) Read online

  “I’m sorry for…everything, Ash.” She sucked in a breath. “I hated every moment of this summer. Hated we weren’t together.”

  “How was Europe?” I asked, curbing the apologies.

  Her smile returned, but reserved. “It was sweet. Oh, my god! The French ice cream is to die for! I didn’t remember it from the last time I was there—I mean, I was only four—but I’ll never forget it again. I told my Dad I want him to send you and me back for my graduation gift. We must go to this cute little parlor named Pozzetto.” She sucked in another excited breath. “Wow! What if we can fly in their ice cream for the engagement party or the wedding?” She turned to me with her mouth open. “Oh, my god, Ash! That would be amazing! French ice cream at our engagement party? We can hire a photographer to take pix of us at Pozzetto this summer and we can use those for the engagement party invitations—”

  My hand shot up in the air, killing the noise she wistfully dreamt up that quickly. “First, it’s called glace over there; not ice cream. I’m not a fan of it. Second, I don’t need your father paying for me to go anywhere. I can foot my own bill. You know that.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “And I’m not done.” I tried to measure my tone. The plan wasn’t to hurt Aivery. She needed honesty, not my anger. My head shook as I found her eyes through the dark lenses. “I think it’s fair to say there won’t be an engagement party, much less a damn wedding.”

  “Ash—”

  “I’ve had plenty of time to think over the summer, and I’m sure you have, too,” I needed to make clear. “I think it’s best we go into our senior year clear on the terms of our relationship.”

  “Which is?”

  “We’re best off as friends.” Aivery gasped. I nodded, looking directly into the eyes she couldn’t hide with Chloé’s. “Our senior year of undergrad starts this week. There’s no need for us to go into it with the baggage we have. This summer was a great demonstration of how we’re better off apart.” During the week of finals last spring, I discovered Aivery lost her virginity to an alumnus of Blakewood, who so happened to have made me his nemesis since the first day I stepped foot on campus my freshman year when he was a senior.

  Yeah.

  They fucked before she and I became official, but after we’d started dating. So, while I was waiting on the pussy, settling just for her heart, she gave the pussy to an upperclassman who wanted me dead—or to disappear in the most dreadful way. She knew of my history with the guy when she and I agreed to being boyfriend and girlfriend, and purposely kept it from me. That was until I ran into him at a party last spring and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that he was the first to have the pussy of the girl I thought I was going to marry one day. “I’ve got a lot riding on this year. We owe it to each other to not create this…farce about who we are to each other.”

  “Why would it be a farce?”

  “Because it ain’t true. We’re not together...haven’t been since the spring.” I made sure to catch her fleeting eyes again. “And I’m okay with that.”

  Tears spilled from beneath the frames of the sunglasses. “I didn’t think me announcing who I gave my virginity to—well before you and I made it official—was important to our relationship.”

  “But after we’d started dating. After we’d kissed is when said virginity was given!” I shouted then quickly whipped my head away, regretting my fucking tone. “I’m a fuckin’ fool,” I grumbled, body vibrating with violent energy. He’d set out to humiliate me and the fucker did it. “I can’t go another year—my senior year—with the League over my head and you on my arm. I won’t live a lie. I’ve taken the summer to recharge and figure this shit out.” Her small shoulders vibrated from her quiet sobs. I had to make this clear to her. “I could never go back to what we were after learning that.”

  Aivery’s frame whipped toward me. “Well, I’m not giving up. I love you. My heart and life belong to you. I’m supposed to be Mrs. Spencer in two years. My parents and family are expecting it. I’ve wanted it since the day I agreed to be your girlfriend, Ashton Spencer! Now, I may have made the biggest mistake of my life that I’ll forever regret, but I’ll be damn if I’ll make an even bigger one. I’m not letting go of the love of my life without a fight! I’m not doing the last year of my college career not having everyone on this campus know who I am to you.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The woman who will support you from the transition of college graduate to the next QB or wide receiver of the Connecticut Kings!” She gave a strong nod of confident finality. “Transitioning will be a difficult task, but I’ll be there making sure you’re taking something solid and dependable into the new life with no certainties, and I will remain by your side from then on.” She pushed the glasses up from over her eyes to her forehead. “My heart is still the same. It belongs to you, Ashton. Now, I hear yours isn’t with me, but I’ll take what I can get to buy the time needed to earn your trust again.”

  “And what if that day doesn’t come, Aivery?”

  “It will because it has to.” Her lips quivered. “I’m begging you.” Her eyes rolled. “Okay. To the two of us, we’re just working it out. To the campus, we’re the same Ashton and Aivery we used to be: solid. I don’t think I could finish this year with the stress of the campus knowing we weren’t together anymore. I barely lasted the summer, trying to keep up the façade that we were fine to my friends and family.”

  I shook my head, not able to roll with the lies. “I don’t know about that, Aivery.”

  “Your coaches will tell you the same. You can’t go this last year with the scrutiny of a breakup. Not one of our magnitude. We’re the king and queen of Blakewood! Let’s just get through these next two semesters with minimal damage.” She shoulder-bumped me, making me realize how close she’d scooted over since I sat down. “It’ll give me a chance to convince you to forget that reckless ass mistake I made.”

  My eyes closed, irritated from how this turned around. It was so different from how I planned it. The sunglasses were a ploy to ease the blow. I knew she liked her assuages by way of top designer names. Maybe they gave her the impression of hope.

  Fuck!

  This was so not how I planned this. I thought it would be easy compared to the blow-up that discovery caused last spring. It was so bad, Aivery left for the airport with swollen eyes from crying all night. She called me days later, swearing a commitment of celibacy to help clear her head. As if I gave a shit. The last thing I was concerned about was fucking her again.

  “And your celibacy pledge?”

  She nodded fast and hard, fighting to assure me. “It’s still in effect.” She bit her bottom lip. “It’ll give us that fresh start I’ve been telling you we need.” Her arms folded around my shoulder. She tugged me, eyes turning puppy dog the way they did when she’d begged to have her way on yet another mindless issue. “Can I hug you again?”

  I didn’t answer, but she pulled me into her chest anyway. Aivery was used to my temper. Whether she was the cause or football, she was good at deflecting my mood. It was one of many things about the girl I liked.

  “I gotta go,” I murmured to break the embrace. “I told coach I’d meet with him before practice.”

  When she released me, I stood to my feet and started down the hill. Aivery was on my heels the whole way down. “Looks like you did your summer slimdown well this year,” she observed out loud. I had. I’d trained since the first of July to be field-ready this season. It’s what I’d always done. “You look damn amazing.”

  When we neared the walkway, scarce bodies came into view. Some girl called Aivery’s name from a distance, and thankfully. I caught the thickness in her cords in that last sentence.

  “Hey, girl!” Aivery returned. “You know we’re meeting on the Wilma Rudolph track instead of the Joyner-Kersee one. Right?”

  “Yeah. I was just getting a new key for my dorm,” the girl, Tameka Holden from Bridgeport, Connecticut, replied unnecessarily.

/>   “And I was just greeting my man properly!” Aivery shouted back just as unnecessarily, peppering it with a pitchy giggle. She flipped her weave over her shoulder. “You know I don’t play about my Ashton Spencer!”

  To avoid reacting to that bullshit, I decided on the target of my frustration. A leggy brown-skinned girl with the worst fucking weave job I’ve ever seen in my twenty-one years of living amongst Black women was intersecting our path. She kept her eyes low and lips touted while gripping the strap of her tattered red book bag. Her walk was stiff, shoulders high, and sneakers hardly had soles.

  “Arrrrrrrrr!” I stopped and barked. “Arr-ru-ruuuuuuu!” I repeated.

  Aivery, while clawed to my waist, howled, cracking the fuck up. “Ewwwwww! Who the fuck let that one onto our campus, babe?”

  I continued my bark. “Arrrrr-arrrrr! Arr-ru-ruuuuuu!”

  The girl never looked back. Her pace away from us increased, but other than that, she didn’t react at all.

  When she was out of sight, I pulled away from Aivery. “Gotta go.”

  My movement was swift to avoid the expectation of a kiss. But fuck, was I too slow. Aivery caught me at the sleeve of my shirt, pulling me into deep, pink-pouted lips.

  “The fuck is you gone do then, huhn?” he screamed into the phone. My lips curled painfully into my teeth. “Fuck is you gone do then?”

  “I’m gonna use one of them four plane tickets, fly home, and give the other three back to them.” My knees bounced from the balls of my feet, anger boiling through me.

  “You sound stupid as hell, young girl! Stupid as all fuck,” Uppercut yelled. “The hell you gone do when you get back here? Fuck you gone do? Run back to that lil’ white trash town and pull up a chair in the damn trailer park?”

  Since the first time Uppercut took me home to Millville, when he saw the white people on the ride in, he’s called my town white trash. If I didn’t hate the place so much for unrelated reasons, I would’ve called him out on it. Right now wasn’t the time: Cut was on one, and I had a point to prove.

  Trisha shifted over me, likely uncomfortable while I sat behind her desk, speaking to my trainer from back home. Collin was across the small office pretending to not hear us. Shit. Everybody on this side of the building could.

  “No. I’m coming back to North Jersey to train.”

  “Train for what?”

  “To fight!”

  “Fight for pennies, foolish girl? For pennies?” Cut croaked. “That’s all I’ll be able to get you now. We talked about this. Until I can get us some opportunities out this way to make some type of money you can live off of, you need to be doing something productive.”

  “Training is productive, Cut!”

  “No the fuck it ain’t if you can’t pay to stitch the cuts in ya face you get from the occupation! What about food? Where the fuck you gone stay? You think about that, bright girl?”

  “I can stay with Raj—”

  “And don’t you say you’ll stay with that muthafucka! Where you gone be? In his grandmother’s basement? That fuckin’ house got more people than damn roaches! You don’t belong there! You need to be around other fighters, athletes, or kids ya age doing something positive, girl!”

  But Raj was a fighter. He was Uppercut’s son who he used to half ass train. Raj was my best friend, the only person I could tell anything to…once I got over that stupid ass crush I called myself having on him. The one he now told people he had on me to soothe my embarrassment as an insider between the two of us. He used to come to the gym for work a lot, and was really good! He came every once in a while nowadays, preferring to train with someone else instead of his father. It confused me why Uppercut never acknowledged his skills. Raj was knocking out professional fighters—and he didn’t take competing seriously like me. When he started out, he just wanted to be under his father, I knew. But Cut rejected Raj. It wasn’t until recently Raj had given up, opting to pursue his music career, and only came through sparingly.

  Just like he was rejecting me now.

  Tears pooled in my eyes, but no fucking way would I let them out here. I wouldn’t crumble no matter how fucked up Cut was being. I decided last night I’d tell Trisha never mind and hop on a plane tonight. Students started moving in over the past two days and they were mean humans. When I came into her office today to deliver the news about leaving, she tried to talk me out of it again. She even tried telling me to wait until after my workout with my new gym trainer, and maybe I’d feel better. Feel better my ass. Fuck the gym trainer, and the boxing trainer, and the nutritionist. Fuck BSU. This time, I didn’t let her convince me to stay. Fuck that. When she realized she had no wins, she picked up the phone and called my real trainer.

  “I can figure it out,” I tried. “I’ll make it work. I just need to get the hell out of here so I can think of my next move. This place is suffocating me, Cut.”

  And yesterday, just as I was walking here to the sports complex, some guy and his skinny ass, pretty ass girlfriend barked at me like I was a dog!

  For a while, Uppercut didn’t say shit. The line hadn’t gone quiet since we started the call. Finally, I’d gotten through to him. He’d heard the pain and suffering in my voice. These past few weeks had been hell for me. I wasn’t built to move out of state. This shit was for the birds.

  “Then fuckin’ suffocate, but try not to die before you get that piece of paper,” he advised. “That way, they’ll ship ya body back to ya momma with your diploma in the fuckin’ casket. You stay your ass out there, girl. And don’t call me ‘less you need something I can send or somebody put they fuckin’ hands on you. Grow the fuck up and smell the clean air, chile!”

  He slammed the phone in my ear; being on speaker made its harshness clear. That shit hurt. It was beyond having it done in front of strangers. I’d just been abandoned by the only adult who, for years, I thought gave a real fuck about me. My knees bounced so high, they began hitting the bottom of the desk. Shaking all over, my lips trembled and fists balled. All movement in the office stopped, but I could feel Trisha’s panicky energy looming over me. I didn’t want her comfort or pity.

  “Tori—”

  I jumped to my feet, rejecting her touch, words—her everything. “I’m gonna work out with the new, stupid ass trainer.”

  I was out the door without another word from anyone when a realization hit. Cut never referred to me by my name. He called me everything but Tori or Banger.

  This must be how Raj feels, being invisible to his father…

  As we came inside the gym from off the practice field, I studied the playbook. The guys were hyped, as usual, to be done with the repetitive plays and gruesome drills that went along with practice. Coach Green switched shit up on us, and I had to commit as much of it as possible to memory and help my team out with it, too. But, as always, I went first in the effort.

  They were raucous. The horseplay, the singing, the cracking of the jokes, the bragging, and even the lying on their dicks…we did it all. Even me, from time to time—except lying on my dick. I hadn’t done that shit since I was eleven years old to my old head ass cousins when they asked why I hadn’t been getting pussy. But the sound of the Panthers as a collective was one I was so accustomed to, I could sleep through for hours. It was when their roistering ceased that I became distracted from the task at hand.

  I glanced up to see we were at the two-way window of the main gym. The guys were gaping intently inside.

  “Goddamn.” Willy, a cornerback, whistled.

  “I know. Right?” Josh followed up with.

  “That bitch is a fucking robot!” When I heard Rudy assert that shit, my head swung wildly, praying no women were around to hear that. We’d gotten a lot of shit about the lack of respect shown to women on the compound. It would be me at the face of getting disciplined, even if it didn’t come from my mouth.

  Tony, a fullback, asked while scratching his sac. “She the boxer. Right?”

  “Fuckin’ robo-dog!” Al’s laughing sparked m
y curiosity.

  “I ain’t never seen no four-legged bitch with them headlights, bro!” Josh croaked.

  I pushed through the beefy, shitty ass-smelling, sweaty bodies to gain a view. There were a few people working out, but several still, observant bodies surrounded one. She was in the middle of a drill. Busted weave tied into a ponytail at the back of her head, sports bra—loose sports bra—cropped leggings, and dingy-looking sneakers all held tight to her agile form.

  She was performing hyper-extended, static holds while tossing a medicine ball back and forth to a trainer I wasn’t familiar with. I’d seen her around the sports complex a few times over the past week. I wondered if she might have been the weird girl I’d seen on the main campus yesterday when I was with Aivery. She held still and steady, using her abs and thigh muscles while receiving and throwing the big ass sand-filled ball. When the built girl was done, she breezed over to a bench and performed bench-hops, never breaking her stride. Each drop down, she landed on her ass to make contact with the pad in a manner of squats. Next, without a break, she moved on to weights and did push-presses without faltering. Her expression was a warrior’s wall. She didn’t pout, complain, moan, or speak. She only blinked and breathed.

  The girl ended the drill with a pushup and power jumping jack combination until the trainer yelled time. She was handed a bottle of water as the people around her wrote on their writing pads and conferred with one another. Then she was cued to start at the top, and began without hesitation.

  “I’ll still fuck her,” Al’s country accent trilled amongst the small crowd. “In the dark.”

  They all hooted, slapping palms.

  “Her name is Tori McNabb. Add that to your fantasy that wouldn’t likely last more than five seconds,” Collin, Trisha Gaskin’s assistant, appeared out of nowhere. “Why don’t you try out-working her instead. Bet nobody hi-fives to that.” He shook his head.