Page 31 of Free Fall

Hours go by without me noticing. By the time I finish, I have a splitting headache and the guys are nowhere to be seen. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and head out onto the back deck. They’re all there, shirts drenched in sweat as they pour over game footage from the previous day. Coach must have sent it to them.

“Is that Winthrop?” Lex asks, pointing to the screen.

Reid grunts in agreement.

“I hate that fucker.”

Reid glares over at him, but he catches me in his peripheral. He shuts the laptop, and I continue fully outside, his shirt still swimming halfway down my legs.

“You finished?” he asks.

“Yes.” I sound ungrateful because I’m trying to sound that way, but in reality, I’m relieved to have all that work done. It was sitting like a weight on my shoulder. Despite my actions lately, I really do care about school. It’s hard to just turn one-eighty and think something completely different no matter how hard I try. “Everything’s done. I’m caught up.”

“Was that so bad?” Cade asks.

I roll my eyes. “Don’t fuck with me right now, Farmer. I have a headache.”

Lex’s chair scrapes across the concrete, and he slips past me through the back door. Reid watches him go and then turns toward me. “You actually did it? No fake answers? No writing anything down just to get it done?”

“You think it would’ve taken me that long if I just wrote random shit down?”

His gaze narrows like he’s trying to tell if I’m being honest or not.

“You want to check it over?”

Lex comes back out on to the deck. “Here,” he says. He holds out his palm. There are two white capsules there. “For your headache.”

“Ugh, you’re a lifesaver,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

I take both pills with the water bottle in my hand and then look up at all of them. Reid is still eyeing Lex suspiciously as he stands near me. “Can I go home now?”

Cade scratches his jaw. “Everyone’s at the lake…” He’s not looking at me. He’s staring at Reid.

Reid shrugs. “Just keep Sasha away from me. I’ve had enough shit for today.”

I look between the two of them. “Can you drop me off on the way at least?”

Reid shakes his head. “You’re coming with us.”

My whole body sags. “I don’t want to be anywhere Sasha is.”Or you for that matter.

“You’re in luck.” He stands and walks past me. When he gets to me, he leans down. “Neither do I.”

I know what happens at the lake. A lot of drinking and swimming. “I don’t have a suit,” I tell them, trying to think of any excuse.

“We’ll figure something out,” Cade says, patting me on the head. He’s grinning from ear-to-ear. The lake is the place to be for someone like Cade Farmer. Half-naked girls everywhere. Wait, correct that. Half-naked, intoxicated girls everywhere.

Joy.

13

“The Lake” as everyone calls it is actually Lake Neavarro. It’s about a quarter of an hour outside of Spring Hill. In the summer, it’s filled with families and teenagers, everyone looking for relief from the summer heat. Now that school is back on, there’s barely anyone here. When we pull into the public parking lot, there are more cars than normal, but I know it’s probably just other students from SHH who heard that other people were going to be here today.

Brady loved it here.

He wanted a lake house when he grew up. Not here, of course, but somewhere else. A place he could escape to during the off-season of the NFL. A place he could fish, bring the family, just a place to relax from the rest of the world.

I had a stomachache all the way here because I wasn’t sure how I would react being at the lake again, knowing it was one of Brady’s favorite places and that he’d never be able to see it again. When we get out of the car, though, only the best of Brady’s memories hit me in the chest. He and I as little kids playing frisbee by the water’s edge. Coming here with these three knuckleheads as we got older. They started liking girls before I liked guys, so I didn’t understand why they’d stop playing a game of volleyball right in the middle just because another cluster of girls walked by.

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