I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 73: Logan

Not being with Ellie for over two years was a nightmare, but being in the same physical proximity and not being with her since she purposely ignored and avoided me hurt too. Ellie's silent treatment felt more like someone punched me repeatedly in the stomach, over and over until a dull pain resided in my gut.

For two days, she breezed by me in all four-hundred and ninety square feet of the apartment as if I didn't exist. Her eyes looked anywhere but at me, but by her purposeful, evasive body movements, she knew exactly where I was.

While her facial expressions were generally neutral, she'd also stopped smiling. Ellie not smiling cast a fog of gray clouds of uncertainty over me, like she was the only sunshine that parted them, and left me pissed off at the entire world.

Fuck, now I sound hormonal. It is contagious.

Emmitt's goofy, lovesick grins at Ellie during Anatomy class and our group project meet-up only magnified my bad mood, which I funneled into a week of intense, borderline punishing practices and workouts. Like he was supposed to, Emmitt traveled with us to Ann Arbor but I largely avoided him. With my earbuds wedged in place even when I left the music off, I opted for an 'I need space' vibe.

My elevated practice level was definitely noticed by a few of the guys but thankfully no one asked other than Coach Vaughn the quarterbacks coach. Yet, in the results-now world of college football, our hardened preparation paid off in the form of a complete ass-kicking over the University of Michigan.

"Fuck yeah!" In an unusual celebration moment, Wes ran up to me and crashed his helmet into mine.

Guess two TDs will do that to the guy.

"Told you." Once my brain felt less rattled, I grinned around my mouth guard at him.

In addition to the blow-out lead in the game's score, the most satisfying aspect of the game was the crowd's reaction. We'd taken the Wolverine fans out of the game within the first possession, when we took the lead, then control of both sides of the game.

While any football player will say a win is a win, any game where you have a scoring explosion blowout always eases some of the tension, or pressure, to perform. Some guys thought this type of game was fun, reassured their egos, or got them excited about the padded stats. I was satisfied because of the statement we'd made as a cohesive team - we came, we dominated, and never looked back.

Once I was benched in the fourth quarter along with most of the starters, I watched my backup Andrew Castle for a few plays, then used the opportunity and took in the stadium around me. A quiet sense of awe and humility filled me as I took in the more than one hundred and nine thousand fans, the biggest college football stadium, most of whom I'd silenced tonight but almost all of them stayed despite the blowout against their team.

Like in every game, the foundations that reversed time and reverted all of us men back into our childhood selves were all here. Overhead, lights illuminated the night sky with bright, white blankets that filtered through the near-black night sky. The green turf crumpled under the weight of my cleats, slightly stiff from the threatened upcoming Michigan winter. A crisp, chill air numbed my cheeks and the tip of my nose, neither of which I'd unnoticed until the cold metal bench pressed similar sensations into the back of my thighs.

I assumed from the bench lineup on either side of me that rolls of steam lifted off my head once I removed my helmet. The faint smell of greasy, processed concession stand foods lingered longer than the white puffs of recovered breaths I pumped into the sky between the hum of subdued conversations.

For all the similarities, the scale and magnitude of the game, even counted by the number of black-lensed sports photographers that lined up along the sidelines and endzone, made one distinction obvious.