Ashley knocks on the bathroom door again, “Sara, Jesse just stormed down the hall. I don’t know what she’s going to do, but I know what I think she’s capable of. None of it’s good.”
I swing the door open, “What way did she go?” She points and I take off running and calling her name, “Jesse!” I enter the ballroom in time to see Jesse chest bump Sam and draw her fingers into a fist, “Jesse!”
She turns to me angrily, not recognizing my voice, “What?”
I plead with her, “Don’t do this. Please.” I reach out to her and she pulls me against her body, “Please don’t do this. I need you here and if coach finds out you fought he might kick you off the team.”
“Okay,” she gives in, “I won’t fight her.” She holds me for a long moment, and I can hear her heartbeat slow down as she relaxes.
She smells so good and feels so good, I don’t want to move, but I have to end this thing with Sam. I pull away from Jesse and turn to a stunned and very, very mad Sam Woods, “Sam,” she cuts me off.
“I should have known she wouldn’t let you go. Or maybe I should have known you were a slut.”
I can’t stop the gasp, “What?”
Jesse steps between us, a new fire in her eyes and a new purpose in her fist, “What the fuck did you just say?”
“This is between Sara and I.”
Jesse snarls, “Let me explain something to you, you crazy bitch, there is no longer anything between you and Sara.”
“What, she can’t speak for herself?”
“Yes, she can. Just like she spoke earlier when she agreed to dance with me. Clearly you didn’t take that well…must be the sore loser in you.”
This doesn’t rub Sam the right way at all, “Sore loser? Which one of us has had to sneak around in private with her? Sounds to me like you’re scared.”
“Scared? You think I’m scared of you?” Jesse laughs out loud, “Oh my god, you’ve lost your fucking mind! I am not scared of you. But I am scared for you.”
“Are you threatening me, Cooper?” Her eyes narrow and when I step forward to stop the argument, Ashley’s beside me pulling me back.
“No,” Jesse spits, “I am explaining the parameters of the ass kicking you will receive if you don’t bow out gracefully and leave us alone.”
“What, in the entire length of our knowing each other, makes you think that I would bow out of anything gracefully? I don’t give up that easily. You should know that by now. Besides,” she smirks, “I distinctly remember a conversation you and I had about your feelings for Sara. I recall you saying you were not in love with her.”
Shocked that this conversation occurred and I never heard a word about it, I ask Jesse, “You said you didn’t love me?”
“That’s not what happened,” she begins to answer but Sam cuts her off and steps up to me.
“The day she hurt you, she told me that she didn’t love you. She liked you, but she didn’t love you.” She turns to Jesse, “Isn’t that about right?”
“Yes,” she edges past Sam and implores, “but Sara, I wasn’t ready to admit that to myself, much less to her!” She looks down at the floor for just a moment and then back up at me, “Remember at our Freshman Introduction party, I said I got lost in the lobby?” I nod and she blushes, “I didn’t get lost in the lobby! I got caught up staring at the trophy case! Last year’s team MVP trophy was in there. Along with a stunning picture of the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. I said your name over and over to memorize it and didn’t even hear coach call my own name!” She gives me a silly grin, “I got lost in you, baby, not the damn lobby!”
“Oh my god,” Sam sighs and looks at me incredulously, “are you really listening to this?”
Jesse answers before I do, her jaw tense and her words biting, “Woods, stand there like a good girl and shut the fuck up, ok? You brought up my saying I wasn’t in love with her. I’m telling her the story of when I fell in love with her.” Seeing that she’s effectively stopped Sam from speaking, she looks at me with a softer face, “Before you, Sara Mayze, I had game.” The girls around us giggle and I find myself chuckling and blushing, “I did!” She nods and laughs, “I thought I’d walk out,” she puts on a bit of a show, walking around like a “hustla”, “all California fly and shit. I’d use those same tired, worn out lines on you. And you’d be mine by the end of the night, I just knew it!”
Ashley laughs, “And then you woke up!” Everyone but Sam laughs.
“Exactly!” Jesse laughs at herself and points at Ashley, “That’s exactly right!” She turns back to me, “Do you remember the first thing you said to me?”
I search my memory but can’t find anything, “No, what?”
“You looked at me from half way across this very room and had the nerve to say, ‘Bring it, Cooper’!” Everyone laughs and she blushes just a little more, “And then the next words out of your beautiful, kissable mouth were ‘I ain’t scared of you’. And that’s the moment my game said, ‘aw hell naw, she got the playbook, man, we out’!” She lays her hand over her heart, “My game left the room and my heart fell at your feet and that’s where it’s been since that moment, Sara. But you never needed me. The closest I ever got to you needing me was when you approached me with a washcloth and a bar of soap. And even then, that was a cover for you wanting me.”
“She needed me,” Sam interjects. “The day you knocked her over with your ‘game’ and attitude, she need me. And I was there for her. I lay with her in the hospital until she fell asleep. She never needed you, you’re right. But she needed me.”
Jesse shakes her head, “Nope. You’re wrong.” She smiles at me, “She might have wanted you. I’ll give you that much.” She looks back at Sam, “But to be totally honest, you were a substitute. You could have been any one of us. Ashley,” she gestures towards the girl, “could have gone and she’d have snuggled with her. She wanted someone to hold her and comfort her. But it didn’t have to be you. It wasn’t about you.” Looking back at me, she sighs, “And when I saw you there in that bed with her, that’s when I knew I wasn’t in a healthy place. I wanted you to need me. And that’s not right.” Erica’s face flashes in her mind and she smiles, “A great friend told me that the first secret in the secrets to life is ‘Love yourself’. I thought I did that. And if you were just a friend, I’d have told you to do that before you got into a relationship. But see, Sara, I wanted you to forget that rule because you were with me. I wanted you to need me, therefore, you wouldn’t need to love yourself because I’d love you enough for both of us. I had to take me out of it. I told you that day on the sidewalk that I was okay with the way we were because if you were meant to be with me, you would be. And I meant it. Every word. You do what’s right for you. You should love you, baby. And Sam and I will deal with whatever that means.”
Sam spits, “You don’t speak for me! I will kick your ass! You do not speak for me!”
Jesse’s face, now dark and hard, turns slowly away from mine and towards Sam’s. A long moment passes before she says, “Do what you think you need to do, Sam. And I’ll do the same.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see the fist, but it’s too late. Sam delivers a blow to Jesse’s face, knocking her to the floor. I gasp, incredulous, “Sam!”
Quick as lightning, Jesse’s back on her feet and serves a punch of her own to Sam’s gut. She follows it with a blow to the ribs, knocking the girl to the ground. Sam recovers and stands rather quickly and catches Jesse’s jaw with an uppercut from nowhere. Jesse, not to be outdone, delivers a combination to the ribs, gut, and then the face, while ducking Sam’s fist.
Courtney, standing behind me, winces and breathes, “Damn, that’s gonna hurt. I bet Sam doesn’t know Jesse’s boxed before.”
The tears come now and I turn to bury my face in Courtney’s chest, “I can’t watch. I know they need to get it out but I can’t watch.”
She wraps her arms around me and rubs my back, “Let them vent a couple more minutes and we’ll stop them before there’s a lot of blood.”
Sam tries to sweep Jesse’s feet out from under her, but fails. This gives Jesse the green light, though, to use her legs in this fight. She delivers a quick kick to the stomach, doubling Sam over. But the girl uses her low stature to plow into Jesse’s torso and knock her to the floor. She sits atop Jesse and delivers several cracking blows to her face.
I hide my face and Ashley presses against my back, sandwiching me between her and Courtney, “Don’t watch, Sara. It’s okay.”
My crying is uncontrollable and I’m shaking all over, “Please, please make them stop. Please! Someone stop them!”
Using all her energy to pummel Jesse’s face, Sam seems to tire out a bit. Jesse uses that to her advantage by rolling them over and standing to her feet. She reaches down and pulls Sam up, too. Her jaw is aching, she’s going to have a mean black eye or two tomorrow, and she’s bleeding from her lip, nose, and cheek, but she’s never felt better. She addresses her opponent with a sadistic grin, “You are a piece of shit. You’re immature, obsessed, and quite literally nuts.” She pulls the girl up until they’re eye-to-eye, “But if you ever…ever pick a fight with me again, you should know that I will not stop until you’re begging for mercy from me.. or Jesus.”
With blood on her lip and her eye already swelling, Sam growls, “I fucking hate you, Cooper.”
“And I hate you. You will never have your hands on Sara Mayze again because your relationship with her is over as of this very minute. You will never lay your hands on another member of this team the way you did with her. Do you understand me?” The girl nods, “Now get your sorry ass out of here.” She watches as Megan helps Sam through the doors. Then she turns to me, her voice softer than before, “Sara?”
I turn to her and my heart breaks, “Oh, Jesse!” I hug her tight before pulling back a bit to look at her face, “You’re bleeding! And that eye is going to hurt tomorrow.”
“Fuck, it hurts now,” she laughs, her lip splitting open again to bleed fresh blood. She winces when I touch it, “Ow. Kiss it?” Through tear-blurred eyes I pull her head down and kiss her rapidly swelling black eye, “There, see? It’s all better. I might have a constant wink going on, but I promise I don’t mean it for anyone but you.”
“Yeah, you say it’s all better, Coop, but the tears give you away. You got and gave an ass whoopin’,” Courtney laughs.
I look into her least swollen eye and smile, “You got a beating.” Then, to Courtney, I smile, “But she also got the girl,” I look back at Jesse, “if she’ll have me.”
Jesse smirks, “Bring it, Mayze. I ain’t skerrd.”
