SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

Day 4 Wednesday, November 22, 2017

I woke up on the floor beside my couch at around 5:30am when my phone started buzzing full blast. All the lights were still on and my homework and English textbook were lying in a crumpled heap underneath my neck. (Ow.) I snatched my roaring phone and found the beautiful name Jacob aka the Handsome One. I smiled and instantly brought the phone to my ear and whispered, "Hello, my love. What gives me the pleasure of hearing your voice so early?"

But the voice that answered was not Jacob's at all. It was a deeper, more husky kind of voice that I recognized instantly. The young man on the other line was none other than the quarterback of our school football team, Brett Stevens. "Get outside. Hurry." Brett immediately hung up the phone and I was left leaning on the couch feeling awkward and confused. So, I texted.

WHAT?

. . .

JUST GET YOUR GOODIE TWO-SHOES PATOOTIE OUTSIDE. HURRY.

Brett was really an awful communicator. He came from a family of machoism. Seven brothers and a dad who was for four years a pro football player, for nine years a pro baseball player, and for two months a fake wrestler upon invitation at WrestleMania to fake throw Dwayne The Rock Johnson off the ring. Chauvinism also ran in his family, and I don't know how his mom handled all the family's impossible men but she sure seemed to love her role as a mother. She was your stereotypical soccer mom except with the twist of going to up to sixteen sports events per week for her sons and of running school functions so she could schmooze with the right people who could put her athletics-oriented sons into the best colleges with full sports scholarships. I could never be like her, raising an animal house like that. I hope I have two girls. If that's what Jacob wants.

I heard a honk outside and then hurried to check my face in the mirror to inspect that my make-up from yesterday was on. I looked good as ever I must admit, just had to put my hair up in a bun. I grabbed two jackets (it was freezing outside this late in November) and I saw Brett Steven's white mustang sitting out by the circular fountain in our front driveway. I crossed the cobblestone in my Steve Maddens and then hopped in his car. It smelled heavily of Axe cologne. Axe was always a hit or miss for me. This time I wasn't sure.

"What's up?" huffed Brett, the alpha-male quarterback. His right arm was crossed over the head of the steering wheel like a cool, tough dude, and as I caught sight of his bulging bicep I considered whether my fingers would reach each other If I gripped his arm with both hands. Probably not, because I also had small hands.

"Why do you have Jacob's phone?" I said. It was odd that I answered to my boyfriend Jacob's phone and ended up in Brett Steven's car instead. This mustang was more-or-less running on a full tank of testosterone. Why did Brett have Jack's phone?

Brett never answered why he had my boyfriend's phone. He just threw on the jams and raced his car out of the driveway with a screeching exit that seemed like his attempt to scribble his signature onto the concrete by way of the burning rubber.

He zoomed through the suburbs with incredible disregard for police authority and eventually I took his silence as an insult. I tried making conversation where I could.

"So, Brett, how are you and Brenda?" Brenda was his current girlfriend. I think.

"Who's Brenda?" He said, turning his eyes over the peak of his bicep between us.

"What do you mean who's Brenda?"

"Oh, you mean my girlfriend?" He said.

"Yeah, I mean your girrlfriend."

"My bad," he said, shrugging. "I didn't know which one you were talking about."

"Which Brenda?" I asked. Was there another Brenda I wasn't aware of?