The Beautiful Truth

// 24

Talyn was having a career game. I could hear the murmurs all around me in the stands—"Parrish is on fire!" or "What's gotten into him?" and "That's 200 yards!" But I knew something was off. It seemed to me like he was playing...mad.

This had happened once before. That's how I recognized it. It was back in the fall of our senior year, only a month or so after Jason Mandrino and I had hooked up in the back of his truck.

The night it happened—Jason Mandrino and I, that is, Talyn had been out of town, visiting schools, of course, and I was bored. Jason Mandrino, my prom date from a few months prior to this night, and the guy I occasionally made out with for no real reason (besides he was hot and available), caught me at the gas station and, as luck would have it, he was bored, too.

He had a bottle of Mandrino shine-wine under the seat of his truck, so we headed out to Airport Road. We passed it back and forth until we started making out, which wasn't unusual. But then we decided to take it further—neither of us had ever been there before, so we, in our drunken state, figured 'why not?'

As soon as it was over, and we were laying there in the bed of the truck, looking up at the stars and trying to figure out what we had just done, the first thing Jason Mandrino said was "You're not gonna tell Talyn about this, are you?"

I immediately wished I could take it all back. "You're not gonna tell Talyn about this...are you?"

I couldn't imagine anything more mortifying than the possibility of my best friend finding out about this...situation. So, we'd vowed to keep it a secret. But, one Friday at school, I saw Jason talking to Talyn...and Talyn slammed his locker in the middle of Jason's sentence before storming off.

I immediately went to ask Jason what he said. He wouldn't tell me. Talyn, though, had an amazing game that night. Eventually, I found out that Jason hadn't told Talyn about us. But I never did find out what he really did say.

Regardless, Talyn was playing angry then, too. He put up the numbers, sure, but it wasn't his regular, effortless brand of football that he was playing that night. No one who hadn't watched him as long, or as carefully as I had would ever know. They'd just be impressed by the stats. I knew better. Something was eating at him.

For the first time this season, Cal lost: 30-24. Talyn Parrish was NCAA player of the week.