The house was practically vibrating from the inside. Music was blaring so loud you could clearly hear every word to every song. People would burst out the front door every few minutes to smoke or get some air. You stood on the porch and contemplated the reasons it would be best to leave: 1) this party was practically drowning in alcohol and you were not 21, and 2) social anxiety was a real bitch.

The only reason you were here at all was because your roommate dragged you here, then immediately ditched you outside when you got nervous about all of the people. She said it was time to “live the college experience” and “get the hell out of the dorm.” Maybe you liked your dorm. Maybe you liked feeling safe. Your college experience was supposed to be getting an education and then getting a good job so you could support yourself. This felt frivolous.

The door opened again and your roommate came out of the rave sure to be happening inside, alarm registering in her eyes. “Where have you been?! Come inside!”

“Caroline,” you whined, “I really don’t want to be here.” She grabbed your hand and started for the door to the house. You followed, dragging your feet the entire way.

“Will you stop acting like a child? I’m about to introduce you to some people so you’ll maybe make some friends and talk to someone other than your mother!” she screamed at you. You stopped in your tracks, breathing shallow and trying to control the tears threatening to fall. Caroline didn’t understand what it was like. Being at college felt like a thousand people staring at you all the time. A million sets of eyes just waiting to watch you fail. It was exhausting on a level that blowing off steam at a party wasn’t going to just fix.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean that. I just want you to get out and enjoy where we are a little.” She was backtracking, and she really did look like she cared about your well-being. You decided to just go with it. She could lead you around this party and make her introductions,  then you could go back to your dorm and crawl in bed until class on Monday. Caroline’s “college experience” be damned.

Your body slacked and let her lead you through the door. Inside, it was maybe less of a rave than a really smoky, smelly concert. Like an all-ages venue that drew in the under-18 crowd and their friends who were in bad alt-rock bands. Not quite the EDM show you thought you were hearing outside.

There were about a hundred thousand people packed into the two-story house. Caroline pulled you through the crowd, hand wrapped around your wrist like an elementary school buddy system. She jerked you around the corner, leading you both toward the kitchen, when you ran into a wet wall, jostling you out of your own world.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” the wall shouted over the music.

Not a wall. A person. A boy. A very tall boy. A very tall boy with wall-like abs that were pressed against your body. A very tall boy with wall-like abs who had spilled his beer all over your shirt.

You slowly craned your neck upward and almost fell over. This boy had the most gorgeous brown-hazel eyes you had ever seen. They were looking at you, puzzled at your apparent lack of functionality. He swivelled his head then, searching for something or someone, “HEY GEOFF!?! CAN YOU BRING ME A RAG OR SOMETHING??”

He had stepped back from you, assessing the damage, and held you at arm’s length by the shoulders. His hands wrapped seemingly all the way around your upper arms and you could feel his calloused fingertips scratching your skin through the thin cotton shirt you wore. He kept looking into your eyes, pleading with you to say something, but you just couldn’t. His face was mesmerizing—a smooth, square jaw; cherubic, alcohol-flushed cheeks; the straightest, whitest teeth you’d ever seen; and a messy head of thick brown curls, coiffed into a perfect disarray. He’d stunned you into silence and the touching wasn’t helping. He seemed to be transferring body heat through his fingertips and you were starting to sweat.

A stocky guy with long-ish hair and a serious scruff situation ambled over with a rag. Wall Abs took the rag from him and started dabbing it all over the wet pattern on your top. You blushed violently and jerked away from him.

“Oh, here. Sorry, I didn’t think…I’m really sorry…I’ll leave you alone…enjoy the party!” he handed you the rag and then vanished. It didn’t escape your notice that he had turned just as red as you had and was quickly trying to exit the situation.

You held the rag to your chest and searched for Caroline. She was staring at you from ten feet away like an alien had just tore itself out of your body. You walked over to her and snapped your fingers in her face.

“Caroline!” you shouted, “why do you look like I’ve birthed an alien?!”

“Don’t you know who that was?” she asked, totally mystified that you obviously had no idea.

“Uhm, no? A tall boy with wall-like abs?” you mused, humoring no one, especially your roommate who kept flapping her jaw up and down.

“WHO IS HE?!” you roared, getting frustrated with this weird fangirl reaction.

“He’s Shawn Mendes, the captain of the football team. He’s the starting quarterback. He’s in the running for the Heisman Trophy. AS A SOPHOMORE.” She rambled on about stats and measurements and how fast he could run a 40-yard dash for what seemed like ages. It was an impressive, though weird, body of knowledge that she had collected on a guy that seemed overwhelmingly normal, if not shy, based on the interaction you had just had with him. The football god that Caroline was blathering on and on about seemed incongruent with the tall, blushing, albeit Adonis boy that you had just run into.

She finally settled down after living vicariously through your beer shower experience by the Heir Apparent of college football. You thought maybe she had forgotten about introducing you to people but no such luck. Her mission was revived and she grabbed a hold of your wrist again, making her way through the sea of humanity and finally pulling you into the kitchen. The sheer gallons of alcohol that must have been in there made it smell like somewhere between a hospital and a gas station.

“What do you want to drink?” You stared at her with a blank expression, “uhhh, I guess whatever you’re drinking?”

She rolled her eyes and tutted, grabbing a couple of bottles of clear liquor and a carafe of cranberry juice and a can of lemon-lime soda. Stirring together equal parts of everything, Caroline handed you a fizzy pink drink that tickled your nose when you smelled it.

“I call it Bitch Juice because it tastes like non-alcoholic prom punch. Literally not a hint of alcohol,” she nodded, acting like that invalidated the actual presence of alcohol in the drink. You took a sip dubiously.

“Huh, not a hint,” you confirmed, kind of impressed and yet kind of alarmed at the chemistry of it. Armed with red plastic cups, a chainmail-like requirement on this college party battlefield, Caroline led you into the main room of the house, filled wall-to-wall with bodies.

“CAROLINE!” someone shouted from across the room. Caroline frantically waved at them, giving your wrist a fresh jerk in their direction. Before anyone could ask you anything, you took a long pull from the cup in your hand. They called it liquid courage, right? You needed some of that right now.

Caroline introduced you to her friends and you tried to take in all of their introductions, but mostly you focused on the pink concoction in your cup and how it magically kept refilling itself. Caroline must have gone back into the kitchen three times before you realized what was happening, too wrapped up in your own awkward to realize that she had been pouring more Bitch Juice into your cup as you paid attention to engaging with the people around you, a task that had become noticeably easier as the past couple of hours had dragged on. You had even laughed a few times and put your hand on a passing shoulder. You felt free for the first time in a long time. I guess that’s why they called it intoxicating.

“How many of these have you poured for me?” you asked her, starting to feel your fingers, toes, and lips tingle, a slight slur on your tongue.

“Oh, I’m not sure,” she thought, “maybe four? Maybe more?” Your eyes threatened to pop out of your skull. “Caroline!” you shrieked, “what do you mean ‘MAYBE MORE?’”

“I mean I’m not really sure, but it seems like you’re enjoying yourself! This is a good thing!” she encouraged, linking her arm with yours, as if you’d asked her to manually let your inhibitions down for you. It was a betrayal, no matter how freeing it may have felt.

You ripped your arm away from hers and stormed off, out of the crowded room. Having no idea where you were going, you climbed the staircase to at least get out of the thick of people on the first floor.

The second floor was just a long hallway with a bunch of doors. There were a few people up here, mostly making out, and none of them paid any attention to you. You hoped and prayed one of the doors led to a bathroom. A locked door felt necessary for breathing.

The first door was a bust—surprisingly empty bedroom (didn’t people hook up at these things?). The second door revealed a study, lined with bookshelves—intriguing but not a bathroom.

That left door number three. You tried to shove it open, but it only opened to a four-inch crack before halting. The light was on, and you could see a sink, confirming it was, in fact, the bathroom, but there was still something impeding your entry. You looked down at the tile and saw a black chelsea boot flat against the floor attached to a pair of black jean-clad legs. Someone was lying on the floor of the bathroom, and judging from how hard you must have knocked into them with the door, they weren’t conscious.

Flight or flight set in immediately. The hair on the back of your neck stood straight up and you felt more sober than you did two hours ago, let alone two minutes ago. The adrenaline burned through the alcohol like a forest fire. You needed to flee.

But what if they were injured? Or sick? Or…worse? Your mind screamed that you didn’t care, but your heart was compassionate and needed to make sure the person was okay. You used all of your combined body strength to slowly push open the door, sliding the body mass across the tile and onto the rug. You gasped when you finally slipped inside the room and locked the door behind you.

It’s him.

Tall Boy with Wall-Like Abs. Captain of the Football Team. Shawn Mendes.

And he was passed out on the tile floor alone next to an empty bottle of gin.

Had he finished the bottle himself? Was he drinking alone? —How passed out was he? Should I try to wake him up? A million questions ran through your head, none of them answered by the massive human form at your feet.

You reached out and put the back of your hand to his face. He was clammy, far colder than he should have been in a house with so many people in it. You remembered the signs of alcohol poisoning from orientation—clammy skin, inability to stay conscious, inability to walk—all of which he was clearly exhibiting.

You crouched down and patted his cheek. “Shawn, Shawn, can you hear me? You need to try to wake up. Can you hear me?!” you yelled with increasing volume, “You need to get up, Shawn, or I’m going to have to call 911.”

That seemed to make it through his gin-fueled haze. He lazily opened his eyes, looking completely disoriented, clearly not sure how he had gotten to the bathroom floor. Running his hands through his thick, chocolate curls, he finally focused his eyes on you.

“Oh, it’s you,” he whispered in awe, flashing you a blinding smile.

You probably would have fainted if he hadn’t immediately doubled over and thrown up in the bathtub.

“Don’t call 911!” Shawn shouted between fresh waves of dry heaves, “I could….lose….my scholarship.” He was gasping, both from the force of his nausea and from the sheer panic that was evident on his face.

“Okay, okay,” you placated, holding a warm, damp towel to his forehead, “let’s just make sure you get all of the excess alcohol out of your system.”

The room smelled foul. You were barely staving off your own nausea. It was sweltering, sweat pouring down your face, but he was violently shivering. You were running out of ideas on how to soothe him, and were terrified to suggest the hospital again. Instead, you ran the water in the bath to try and flush out some of the sickly sweet smell of gin mixed with stomach acid.

Deciding that maybe some fresh air might help, you rose to your feet and started toward the window. He reached out and caught your ankle in a strong grip, stronger than you thought he was capable of in his current state. “Don’t leave me here,” he pleaded, your anxiety reflected in his eyes, “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’m just going to open a window,” you whispered in the most soothing tone possible, “I promise I won’t leave you.”

He leaned his back against the side of the tub, his nausea seeming to have subsided for now. You opened the small window above the medicine cabinet and let in the crisp October air. Immediately, the room felt less oppressive. The cool night air helped to clear your head and assess the situation more clearly, which as much as you ran it through your head, didn’t make any sense.

You slid down the wall opposite from him and ran through the facts. You were in a bathroom with the starting quarterback of your university’s football team. He had passed out alone on the floor of this bathroom after consuming what appeared to be an entire bottle of gin. You still hadn’t taken a comfortable breath since before entering the bathroom, since before entering this house. The anxiety was ramping back up, forcing you to put your head between your knees and take some focused breaths.

“Uh, are you okay?” he slurred at you. You held one finger up, needing just one more second before collecting yourself and looking at him again. Lifting your head, you met each other with quizzical expressions.

His head was tilted sideways, like keeping it upright was a struggle. In fact, his whole massive frame was leaning slightly, looking more and more like he might collapse. You quickly slid across the small space to sit next to him, doing as much as you could to prop up his body. In all honesty, he was mostly just leaning his body weight onto you. Your body flamed at the contact and he briefly trembled against you.

“Are you still cold?” you asked him, seriously concerned that the vomiting might start back up again.

“Uhm…no…just a chill from the window,” he looked away, not meeting your eyes, “you didn’t answer my question. Are you okay?”

“I just walked in on you passed out on the floor next to an empty bottle of liquor. I thought you might be dead,” you responded, a hint of incredulity in your voice, “I guess since you’re not, I’m fine, all things considered.”

His chest rumbled with a choked laugh. “Ahem, I’m sorry about that,” he dipped his head, still unable to meet your eyes, “I got a little carried away.” He paused, finally turning his head to look at you, “my name is Shawn, by the way.”

“I know. My roommate told me,” you said, “after you spilled your beer on me.” At that, he looked appropriately chagrined, scrubbing his neck, “sorry about that too. Damn, I’m just a royal **** up tonight.”

“I mean, technically I ran into you,” you said, internally cringing at the memory, at the way you went radio silence looking into his eyes. “The force of it just startled me,” you lied; “you’re kind of big, you know?” He nodded, smirking at the memory of your stunned face, remembering your quick blush when he stupidly tried to towel off your shirt.

You couldn’t believe how open you were being with him. Usually, new people, especially men, made you nervous. When Caroline had attacked you about talking to people other than your mom, it hadn’t been a totally baseless accusation. The thought of letting your guard down and letting people in made your skin crawl.

But somehow you weren’t nervous around him. Maybe it was because you had found him completely vulnerable and that levels a person. Maybe it was because underneath that Adonis exterior, he was hiding something that was festering. Maybe it was because he blushed when he looked at you. Whatever it was, it made you brave.

“So, what is a football god doing on a solo date with a bottle of gin?” you asked, deciding to ask the hardest question first—no holding back. You rested your head on your palm and looked sideways at him expectantly.

“Jesus, you’re not pulling any punches are you?” he exhaled a long, slow breath. “I guess…” he paused, deciding how much he was going to tell you and how much of it was going to be truth. He sighed deeply, tension slowly melting from his body.

“Fuck it,” he whispered, steeling himself for his next sentence. “I like the blackout,” he said, matter-of-fact, “it’s the only time that I don’t feel like Shawn Mendes, Heisman-hopeful and ‘football god,’ as you so delicately put it.”

You held yourself very still, not wanting to spook him. He seemed to be consumed in his own thoughts. If you had to guess, he’d never spoken these thoughts aloud before.

“I mean, I love football. Everything about it. The aggression, the skill, the crowd, the energy of it all. When I’m out there on the field, I feel invincible. No one can keep me from getting the ball to the end zone. Whether I’m throwing it to a teammate I can depend on to score or carrying it there myself, I cannot, will not, lose.” His eyes had glazed over, no longer speaking to you, but to himself–the version of himself who needed to hear it, who needed to be reminded why he played the game.

“But when I’m off the field—when coaches attend to my every need, when professors give me preferential treatment, when girls follow me around and then start sobbing when I ask them their names—it’s exhausting,” his shoulders visibly slumped, as if feeling the exhaustion weighing him down, “I feel like my every move is being watched and analyzed all the time.

“It’s a lot of pressure. The team needs me, my coach needs me, my parents need me…do you know how much I stand to make life better for everyone if I continue to do well? Win a Heisman? Get drafted?” he spewed, eyeing you wildly as if you had answers to those rhetorical questions. When you stayed silent, his eyes softened and slowly filled with remorse.

“And so, I drink. I drink to get away from it. To become someone else. Anyone else. A normal college kid who binge drinks on weekends and can’t remember their own name because that’s the kind of stupid shit you do in college,” he stopped then, a humorless smile coloring his face, “but the funny part is, no matter how much I drink, no matter how black the blackness gets, I can still hear them cheering my name.”

He was silent then, a profound silence filling the air.

“I’m sorry for pushing that shit on you. You don’t even know me and I don’t know you.” He picked at the seam of his skinny jeans with his giant hands.

“I think that’s what makes it easier,” your voice croaked from disuse. You folded your hands under your legs pressed against your chest and laid your head on your knees. He smiled down at you, “I think you’re right. Thank you.”

You both settled into a slightly awkward silence, which you took as an opportunity to evaluate your current situation. He was still leaning on you, pressure points burning the memory of his weight into your skin. He smelled like the bottom of a gin bottle, but knowing how he clung to that feeling, the blackness that took him away from all the overwhelming pressure in his life, you understood it.

You wondered if it would ever get better for him. He seemed to stand on opposite sides of a vast ocean, on one side was his obvious passion for football, and on the other his crippling anxiety. He hadn’t called it anxiety, but you saw it for what it was. You chalked it up to that macho athletic bullshit exterior that he must have to maintain to not appear weak.

Suddenly, he jerked his head up and widened his eyes, “oh my God, I just realized. I never asked you your name.”

The tension of the moment fractured and you burst out laughing, a string of giggles so alien to your own ears that you wanted to record it to remind yourself of it later. Your amusement was so infectious that he started laughing too, the both of you holding in your sides and hopelessly trying to stifle the bubbling mirth.

“I hadn’t even thought about it!” you gasped. Wiping a tear from your eye, you introduced yourself. He repeated your name and you tried to ignore the jolt you felt in your stomach hearing it coming from his lips. “It’s nice to meet you,” he smiled in earnest and God it was beautiful, “it’s actually really nice to meet people who don’t already know four hundred things about you, though now you might know the one thing about me that no one else does.”

“Nice to meet you too,” you hiccuped, still getting over your fit of giggles. “This is what people do, right? Tell you their deepest, darkest secrets before you introduce yourself? I’m not very good at making friends so I’m not familiar with the industry standard.”

“Yep,” he agreed, keeping up the farce, “generally people bare their souls and then exchange names. This has been a textbook meeting between two strangers.” He knocked his shoulder with yours, “you did great.”

Your cheeks flamed again, causing you to turn your head and hide your face from him. Cursing your easy blush, you wondered if he knew the effect he had on people. He was charming, a highly effective cover up considering the darkness he had shared with you. You wondered how long he’d been hiding behind that charm, and how long he’d been abusing alcohol to cope.

The silence stretched from seconds into minutes. You still hadn’t looked back at him when you heard a soft snore coming from your shoulder. Slowly, you turned your head back in his direction to find him sleeping, mouth agape and head resting against the side of the bathtub, finally having passed out.

If you moved, you were going to send him sprawling onto the floor, so you adjusted your sitting position on the bathroom rug and took a deep, focused breath. 3…2…1. Some of the tension you were carrying left with an exhale. Trying not to move as little as possible, you turned yourself into the side of his body, still propping him up. You leaned your head on his massive shoulder and closed your eyes, confused and yet comforted by this complicated boy beside you. When sleep finally came, honey-colored eyes and rosy cheeks filled your dreams.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shawn’s head was pounding. His mouth felt like sand had been poured down his throat. He moved his hand across the rug…wait, rug? He opened one eye and was immediately confused. Where was he? Why was he asleep in a bathroom? Why was the window open? At this last question, his teeth involuntarily chattered.

He supported himself against the bathtub and gingerly rose to his feet. He discovered this was a terrible idea, having to use every available surface in the bathroom to brace himself and close the window, putting a barrier between him and the chill outside. Turning around, the tell-tale sound of glass sliding across tile graced his ears as he kicked an empty green bottle across the floor.

Ah, Tanqueray. He had blacked out again. He remembered picking up the mostly-full bottle in the kitchen after beer just wasn’t getting him there fast enough. He remembered nursing it while he made the required rounds at the party. He remembered climbing the stairs, polishing off the bottle just as he reached the bathroom door.

Then nothing.

The sweet blackness that he craved. The stuff that felt like sleep but wasn’t. It would come back in flashes eventually, but it was this moment—when he knew he lived a whole night as himself, his true uninhibited self, but couldn’t be bothered to remember that he loved the most.

He leaned against the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like shit. His skin was splotchy and his eyes were bloodshot. He scrubbed his face, feeling stubble from two days growth, when a flash of black caught his eye in the mirror. He stopped moving and saw that there were words written in black marker on the back of his hand.

Text if you ever want to talk. 202-555-0150.

Feeling an abrupt sense of dread, his stomach roiled with fresh nausea that had nothing to do with his hangover. What the **** happened in this bathroom?

You got back to your room just after daybreak. Trying to open the door as quietly as possible, you cracked it open and slowly pushed. Suddenly, the door flew backward out of your hand, putting you face-to-face with Caroline. Her eyes were crazed, bright and wide with exhaustion mixed with panic.

“Where. Have. You. Been?!” she shouted between deep breaths, exacerbating your pounding headache. “Shhh, Caroline, your voice is reverberating in my skull,” you whispered, holding your hands over your ears and squinting at her.

“No, no, no. No, ma’am. You don’t get to storm off in the middle of a huge party alone and then not show up to our room until the next morning,” she was still shouting, bordering on hysterical, “I thought you were coming back to the room! Needless to say, it was a surprise when I got back and you weren’t here!”

You gave her a moment to collect her breath. You started this conversation already frustrated because you had a hangover and you’d been silently reaching a boiling point while she screamed at you. Gritting your teeth, you gave her a serious death glare.

“Caroline, I respect and appreciate your concern, but if you’ll remember correctly, I wouldn’t have stormed off in the first place if you hadn’t been basically forcing alcohol into my hand.” Your voice was low, more menacing than it had ever been. How dare she be accusatory when she was in the wrong too?

She dipped her head, acknowledging that you had a point. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” she said, remorse hanging on every syllable, “I just wanted you to have a good time…and I really was worried when you weren’t here when I got back. Where did you go?”

You cringed internally. You knew she’d ask eventually but you hadn’t had time to come up with a good enough answer. “Uhm, I walked around campus for awhile and then I went to the library,” you waffled, coming up with the first round-the-clock open place you could think of.

“The library?” she quirked an eyebrow, voice dripping with disbelief, “really?”

You worked up your best fake indignant tone, “yes, Caroline, I happen to feel safe in the library. It’s quiet there and I can think, which is more than I can say about this dorm room with you!” Caroline’s eyes widened and immediately welled with tears. She really did care about you and you’d just hurt her on purpose. It stung harder than you thought it would, but you’d felt betrayed.

And more than that, you had to protect what really happened last night. You had decided that no one needed to know. No one could know. Your future depended on it. Hell, you weren’t even sure if Shawn would know, he’d been so drunk. He said he loved the blackout. Even if he did remember, he wouldn’t want to acknowledge it, right?

You were really starting to regret leaving your number.

It was still dark outside when you woke up drooling, the strong scent of gin filling your nose. Your face was pressed against his firm, expansive chest and you could tell the alcohol was still making its way out of his system, practically oozing out of his pores. His soft exhale tickled the back of your neck. At some point during the few hours you slept, Shawn had draped his arm around your back and curled into you. If anyone had walked in, it would have looked like a couple’s embrace.

Oh God. You needed to get out of here. No one could know about this. Not just because one of the university’s most precious assets had come perilously close to admitting he was an alcoholic, but because you needed to protect yourself. Getting an education. Getting a good job. Involving yourself in a college football scandal was not a part of that plan.

You slowly, carefully wiggled out of his arm and crawled to a sitting position beside him. He slumped slightly, but remained a sleeping giant. You studied him for a moment.

He looked so peaceful, so different from the boy she walked in on, passed out in search of escape. His brow was relaxed, but there was just a hint of that charm he used as a shield even in his sleep, a sign that his demons ran deep. Even though you’d never met him before tonight, you’d seen a glimpse of who he might be underneath all the pressure and the anxiety. That person just wanted to play the game that he loved uninhibited—perhaps not without pressure, but free of overwhelming expectation from every person in his life. You hoped he found that balance.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, you gently pulled yourself off the floor, moving to unlock the door. You stilled at the door knob and looked back at him. A thousand scenarios ran through your head, but the most vivid one stuck out—Shawn keeping everything he told you bottled up alone; Shawn at the next party with the next gin bottle; Shawn passed out in the next bathroom; Shawn submerged in the blackness for longer than a few hours, for longer than a night.

You pulled a pen from your pocket, glad you always kept one on you, and crouched down next to him. Taking his hand in yours, you softly scratched a message onto his skin.

* * * * * * * * ****

“MENDES,” Coach Bradford shouted from across the field, “WHAT THE **** ARE YOU DOING?!”

Shawn had just overthrown his fourth pass in practice. He was still hungover, his head still fuzzy from the night before. Hustling over to his coach, he braced for the ***-kicking he was about to receive. Coach grabbed his facemask and jerked his head down to eye-level.

“GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ***, BOY,” he screamed, mere inches from your face, “YOU THINK I CAN’T SMELL THE ALCOHOL FROM LAST NIGHT ON YOU?” Shawn’s face flamed. Most of the guys at practice had been at the party last night, but their asses weren’t getting chewed. Admittedly, he wasn’t doing such a great job at hiding the fact that he’d been shit-faced. He knew his eyes were practically black from exhaustion and his skin was a little sunken. His head was still pounding, a fact that his coach was clearly exploiting. He closed his eyes against the barrage of sound, Coach still yelling indiscriminate obscenities at him.

“GET YOUR SHIT AND GET OFF MY FIELD,” he finished, pushing Shawn’s facemask away from him in disgust, “I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN UNTIL YOU’RE SOBER.” He called the backup quarterback from the bench, a fifth-year senior who had started before Shawn was recruited. They exchanged death glares as Shawn jogged off the field, hanging his head and feeling all the disappointed eyes of his teammates follow him off the field.

He ripped off his helmet when he entered the locker room, slamming it into the nearest bench. The sound of hard plastic hitting metal reverberated in his skull. He shook out his curls, soaked with sweat, and silently fumed. He’d never been kicked out of practice before. No matter how drunk he’d gotten the night before.

Stripping off his shirt and throwing himself onto a couch in the athlete’s lounge, Shawn roughly scrubbed his face and tried to clear his mind. In truth, it wasn’t the headache or the exhaustion that was distracting him. He’d dealt with those things before every time he drank. This time was different. This time, there was  a cryptic message and a phone number burning in his failed memory. He had never wanted to remember what had happened during those lost hours in his life until now. The neat, loopy handwriting suggested a girl. What would he want to talk about with her? What did he already talk about with her?

Normally, he would write it off to a drunken one-night stand, but he definitely remembered entering that bathroom and he just had a feeling that he hadn’t left it until he woke up this morning. There were no outward signs of sex. His clothes had been exactly as he remembered them the night before. Plus, with the girls he’d dealt with before, there would be scare quotes around “talk,” because talking was always the last thing they had on their minds.

Who was this girl?

He guessed he could just text her. Whatever they did, she could piece it together for him. If she was a jersey chaser, that would likely make itself apparent rather quickly—they usually screamed when they saw him—a signal to make a quick exit. Though he couldn’t remember exactly what happened last night, he knew that he would never say anything remotely genuine to a girl just looking to use him as a trophy.

He took his phone out of his practice bag next to his locker and quickly memorized the number off of the picture he’d taken of his hand that morning. Typing it in, his pulse quickened. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. It was probably nothing. But, the fact that he couldn’t remember had set off panic alarms like he’d never had before. It was almost like his subconscious was trying to tell him what his brain wanted him to forget. Like it wasn’t a hook-up or a superficial encounter. Like he might have told her something real, something he doesn’t tell just anyone.

Hey, it’s Shawn.

* * * * * * * * * *

You stared at your phone for five minutes before putting it face down on your desk. This wasn’t happening. He didn’t actually text you less than six hours after you left him in that bathroom. Didn’t he have practice? Didn’t he have a hangover? Didn’t he shower and not notice your note before it washed off?

You picked it up again, hoping you’d had a hallucination, but the screen lit up and there it was:

Hey, it’s Shawn.

You put it down again and went back to your American Literature essay that was due next week. This Great Gatsby essay was much more important. Getting an education. That was part one of the plan. Remember the plan. The plan didn’t include or accommodate distractions like a drop-dead gorgeous star athlete with substance abuse problems.

Your phone vibrated against the desk, startling you, and you scrambled to pick it up again:

Err, Mendes. It’s Shawn Mendes.

The corner of your mouth quirked up. Like you needed the clarification after last night. That endearing charm was immediately there, and as much as you wished it wasn’t his armor, you had to admit it was cute.

Uhh, you know you have read receipts on, right?

Shit! You put on read receipts for your mom last night and forgot to take them off! Scrambling to your settings, you turned them off. But, you’d been caught. You had to answer now.

You: You caught me.

Shawn: She speaks.

You: She does.

You: How are you feeling?

Shawn: Like shit haha you?

You: Surprisingly well, but I didn’t drink an entire bottle of gin like someone in this conversation ;)

Shawn: Touché.

Shawn: Listen, you said to text you if I wanted to talk.

You: I did.

Shawn: Well, do you think we could talk in person?

You: (…)

A sinking sense of panic filled your lungs. This wasn’t what you meant when you left your number. Texting kept a safe distance between the two of you. You never had to worry about people seeing you—watching you—with him. He talked about the girls that followed him around and you couldn’t imagine the kind of attention he drew on campus, even among people who didn’t want to sleep with him.

Shawn: I’m on pins and needles here.

You: (…)

You: It’s no offense to you, but I just don’t want to be seen with you on campus.

Shawn: Ouch. That felt like offense.

You: No, no. It’s me. I get nervous when I feel like people are watching me.

Shawn: What if there was a place we could talk where I promise no one would be watching?

You: (…)

Was he about to invite you to his apartment?

Shawn: I’m not inviting you over or anything weird.

You breathed a sigh of relief.

You: Okay, then where?

Shawn: The library. I have connections.

The library. You felt the chains around your heart rattle, straining around emotions you’d tried really hard to keep under control for a long time. What was this boy doing to you?

You: Tell me when.