Chapter 6: Lapful of Regret
The digital clock on the cable box glowed 2:17 AM. Chad hadn’t moved from the window. The street had been empty for an hour, just the rhythmic sweep of a street cleaner’s brushes and the distant wail of a siren that faded into nothing. His body was a column of stiff muscle and dormant rage.
Then a key scraped in the lock. Missed. Scraped again.
The door swung open and hit the wall with a dull thud. K stumbled over the threshold, catching herself on the doorframe. The neon from the bar sign outside threw her silhouette into sharp relief for a second before she pushed the door shut, plunging the apartment into near-darkness.
She didn’t turn on the light. She stood there, swaying slightly, a dense shadow in the middle of the room. The smell hit him first—sharp, acrid tequila, cloying vanilla perfume, and underneath it, the sour hint of vomit.
“Lights are a thing, you know,” Chad said, his voice rough from disuse.
She jumped, a small, startled motion. “Jesus, Chad.” She fumbled along the wall, her hand slapping the switch. The sudden overhead light was brutal. It showed everything.
Her makeup was smeared, black streaks under her eyes where mascara had run. Her lips were pale, the lipstick gone. The cute top she’d left in was twisted sideways, one strap dangling off her shoulder. She blinked against the glare, her eyes glassy and unfocused.
“Have fun?” The words came out harsher than he meant them to.
She let out a snort that was almost a laugh. “A blast.” She took two unsteady steps towards the kitchen, her heels clacking unevenly on the laminate. She stopped, her body listing to the left. She seemed to realize the kitchen wasn’t her destination. She turned, her gaze landing on him by the window, and something in her expression crumpled.
“He left,” she said, the words slurred and thick. “Mid-fuckin’-shot. Tequila. My idea. ‘S my idea.” She emphasized this as if it was critically important. “Said he had a better offer. Some Kappa slut. He just… walked out.”
She took another step, lost her balance, and stumbled forward. Chad moved instinctively, crossing the room in two long strides. He didn’t catch her so much as become the thing she collided with. She pitched into him, her face smashing against his chest, her hands gripping the fabric of his t-shirt. A small, choked sound escaped her.
He stood there, arms out at his sides, like a man who’d been handed a live grenade. Her body was a warm, trembling weight against him. The smell of tequila was overpowering. He could feel the stiff wiring of her bra through his shirt.
“K…” he started, helpless.
“Don’t,” she mumbled into his chest. “Just… don’t fucking ‘K’ me right now, Thor.” She pushed back from him, her movements uncoordinated. Her eyes swam as she tried to focus on his face. “You were right. Okay? Is that what you wanna hear? You were right. He’s a piece of shit. They’re all pieces of shit.”
She lurched sideways, towards the recliner. She didn’t sit so much as fall into it, the force tilting it back. She kicked her heels off, sending them skittering under the foosball table. Then, with a grunt of effort, she pushed herself up and out of the chair. She stood wavering for a moment before taking two deliberate, wobbling steps and collapsing sideways onto the couch, her head landing directly in his lap.
Chad froze. Every muscle locked. He could feel the heat of her cheek through his sweatpants. The heavy weight of her hair spilled across his thighs. Her body was curled, knees drawn up, a loose curve of anger and intoxication.
“He said…” she began, her voice a low, venomous slur against his leg. “He said it was biology. That it was simple. That any of you would do the same thing.” She let out a ragged breath. “And you know what? The worst part? He was probably right.”
Chad’s hands, which had been hovering in the air, finally settled. One on the back of the couch. The other, after a tense internal battle, came to rest lightly on her shoulder. He could feel the sharp ridge of her collarbone. She was so small. “He’s an asshole,” Chad said, the simplicity of it the only truth he had.
“I wanted it to be simple,” she whispered. The fight seemed to drain out of her all at once, leaving just a hollow exhaustion. “I wanted to be the hot girl who got the dumb jock. I wanted to walk into that fucking field and be exactly what they all see now. Just… easy. No history. No fucking…” She gestured vaguely, her hand flopping against his knee. “No baggage.”
She turned her head, pressing her face into his thigh. Her next words were muffled. “I wanted to prove I could play their game better than them. That I could win. Even like this.”
“It’s not a game, K.”
“Everything’s a game!” she snapped, lifting her head, her eyes blazing with sudden, drunk intensity. “Football was a game. Being a guy was a game. This is just the new fucking rules. And I’m losing.” She dropped her head back down, a wet spot from her eyes left on his pants. “I’m so tired of losing.”
The room was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator. Chad left his hand on her shoulder, a steady pressure. His mind was a riot of conflicting signals—the familiar need to protect his friend, the shocking, unfamiliar softness of her under his hand, the acidic burn of Derek’s words echoing in his skull. If it was me…
“You shouldn’t have gone out with him,” Chad said quietly. “After what he said on the field.”
“Why?” she challenged, her voice thick. “Because he doesn’t respect me? Newsflash, Chad. Nobody does. Not like that. Not anymore. The Coach sees a problem. The team sees a joke or a target. You…” She trailed off, a long, shaky sigh leaving her body. “You see a problem you have to fix. Derek at least saw something he wanted. It felt… straightforward.”
“It was disrespectful,” Chad insisted, his fingers tightening slightly on her shoulder.
She laughed, a bitter, broken sound. “He called you ‘mom’. Did you know that? When you were walking away. He said, ‘Yeah, okay, mom.’” She mimicked Derek’s tone perfectly, the cavalier cruelty. “That’s what I am now. Something that needs a chaperone. A pet that can’t be left alone.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” he said, but it sounded weak, even to him.
“Then what are you doing, Chad?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. She didn’t move. “Sitting by the window all night? Picking up the pieces when I shatter? What’s the endgame here?”
He had no answer. The truth was a formless, terrifying thing in his gut. He looked down at the crown of her head, the perfect blonde part in her hair. He saw the faint, pale line of a scar just above her hairline from a helmet-to-helmet hit in high school. A relic. Proof that the person in his lap was, and was not, the person he’d known.
Her breathing began to even out, turning slow and deep. The tension seeped from her muscles. The drunk, furious energy had spent itself, leaving behind a profound and vulnerable stillness.
Just as he thought she’d fallen asleep, she spoke, her words so quiet they were almost inaudible.
“He said you were jealous.”
Chad’s breath caught. The air in the apartment vanished.
She didn’t elaborate. She just let the accusation hang there in the dim light, a poisonous bloom in the space between them. Then her body went completely limp, sleep finally pulling her under.
Chad sat motionless, her weight a prison and a solace. He stared straight ahead at the blank, black screen of the television, seeing nothing. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. The word jealous ricocheted inside his skull, breaking things.
Outside, the first grey light of dawn began to bleed into the sky, turning the window from black to a dull, unforgiving slate. He didn’t move. He didn’t dare.
He didn’t dare move, but his body betrayed him, a tremor running through his thighs where her weight rested. The grey dawn light grew, painting the trophies on the wall in dull, accusing shades. Her hair was a golden spill across his lap, each strand holding the memory of her defiant walk onto the field.
She stirred, a low groan escaping her as she shifted. Her eyes fluttered open, blurred and disoriented, finding his face in the half-light. For a moment, there was no performance, no armor—just the raw, hungover aftermath of her own wreckage.
“Still here,” she mumbled, her voice shredded from tequila and shouting.
“Where else would I be?” The words came out rough, strained.
She pushed herself up slowly, wincing, her hand cradling her head. The movement put her face level with his, mere inches apart. The smell of sour alcohol and her vanilla perfume was a dizzying mix. Her gaze focused, sharpening on his eyes, tracing the exhaustion there.
“You heard what I said,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question.
“I heard.” His jaw tightened. “Was it true?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes dropped to his mouth, then back up. The air between them thickened, charged with every unspoken thing—Derek’s leer, the cracked mirror, the way his hands had hovered over her hips all night. Her breath hitched, a tiny, vulnerable sound.
“I don’t know what’s true anymore,” she said, her voice cracking. “Except that you’re the only thing in this room that isn’t a lie.”
He couldn’t breathe. His hand, of its own volition, rose from the couch cushion. It cupped her cheek, his thumb wiping away a smudged streak of mascara. Her skin was fever-warm, incredibly soft. She leaned into the touch, her eyes closing, a single tear escaping.
“Chad,” she breathed, his name a plea and a surrender.
That broke him. All the confused protectiveness, the jealousy he couldn’t name, the memory of Kyle sacking a quarterback and K planting a kiss on Derek—it all fused into a white-hot need. He moved without thinking, closing the last fraction of space between them.
They kissed passionately.
It was not gentle. It was a frantic, clumsy collision of lips and teeth and pent-up anguish. Her mouth opened under his, hot and desperate, tasting of salt and regret. One of his hands tangled in her hair, the other arm wrapping around her back, pulling her fully onto his lap. She clutched at his shoulders, her fingers digging into the muscle there, a soft whimper vibrating against his tongue.
The kiss deepened, turned consuming. It was an argument and an answer, a furious erasure of every boundary left standing. The coarse fabric of his sweatpants, the thin lace of her bra under the twisted top, the first bird chirping outside—all of it faded into a muffled background hum. There was only the heat of her, the way her body curved into his, a perfect, shocking fit.
He kissed her like he was trying to reach the person he’d lost, and found her right there, in the fierce grip of her hands and the desperate sound in her throat. She kissed him back like she was finally, painfully, coming home.
She kissed him back like she was finally, painfully, coming home.
Then she flinched.
It was a full-body recoil, a violent separation that sent her scrambling back across the couch cushions as if burned. Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with Chad. She stared at him, breathing ragged, the taste of him still on her lips. The dawn light cut across the room, illuminating the shocked pallor of her face.
“Oh, god,” she whispered, the words mangled.
“K—” Chad reached for her, his own mind a blank static.
“Don’t.” She shoved his hand away, the movement panicked. She curled into herself, pulling her knees to her chest, making her smaller. The silence that followed was dense and choking, broken only by the ragged sound of her breathing. She wouldn’t look at him.
Instead, her gaze dropped, skating over his chest, his arms. It was a different kind of look than he’d ever gotten from her. There was no camaraderie in it, no competitive assessment of muscle mass for the field. This was slow, deliberate, almost clinical in its focus. Her eyes traced the curve of his bicep where it strained against his t-shirt sleeve, the broad lines of his shoulders, the defined ridges of his abdomen visible through the thin cotton.
It was the same hungry, appraising look the sorority girls gave him at parties—a look that objectified, that wanted. It felt like a violation.
“Your arms are, like, actually insane,” she said, her voice a hollow monotone. She said it the way another girl might, with a dazed, tipsy admiration. “I never… noticed. Not like that.”
Chad felt cold. “Stop it.”
“Why?” Her eyes flicked up to his, glittering with a strange, brittle hysteria. “It’s just biology, right? That’s what Derek said. Simple. Straightforward.” A cracked laugh escaped her. “He was right about that, too. I get it now. I finally get the fucking assignment.”
She hugged her knees tighter, her forehead resting on them. Her next words were muffled against her legs. “I think… I might actually be into dudes now. Like, for real. Not pretending. Not performing. It’s in my wiring or something. My stupid, traitorous wiring.” She looked up, her expression ravaged. “That kiss wasn’t for you. It was for me. To see if it was real.”
The words landed, each one a precise, surgical cut. Chad sat perfectly still, the ghost of her lips still burning on his. The taste of her, salt and tequila and despair, was still on his tongue. He had been an experiment. A test subject for her new reality.
“And?” His voice was a raw scrape.
She just shook her head, fresh tears cutting tracks through the ruined makeup. She had no answer. The admission hung between them, ugly and true. The person who had been Kyle, who had been his brother, was grappling with a attraction that now included him, and the horror of that truth was in her eyes.
Outside, a garbage truck groaned and beeped, starting its morning rounds. The mundane sound shattered the fragile silence in the room. Chad stood up, the motion stiff. The distance between the couch and the window felt like a canyon.
“You should sleep,” he said, not looking at her. “You’re wasted.”
“I’m sober enough,” she whispered to the empty space where he’d been sitting.
He didn’t reply. He just stared at the rising sun, its light now glaring off the windshield of Derek’s stupid, jacked-up truck pulling into a parking spot down below. The driver’s door opened, but no one got out. It just sat there, engine idling, a silent, metal confession.
Chad’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He didn’t know who he was angry at—Derek, for being exactly what he was, K for her brutal honesty, or himself for the part of him that wasn’t horrified by that kiss, but haunted by it.
Behind him, he heard the rustle of fabric as she stood. He didn’t turn. He listened to the unsteady shuffle of her feet, the click of her bedroom door closing, the definitive sound of the lock engaging.
He was alone with the morning light and the idling truck below. His phone buzzed on the coffee table. A text from Derek lit up the screen: Hey man. U up? Need 2 talk.
Chad picked up the phone. His thumb hovered over the screen. He looked at K’s closed door, then back down at the truck. He typed a single word and hit send.
No.