Crossing Lines

35. Dark truth

I had never felt more stressed in my life. Well maybe that was a lie but I was very stressed. I hadn't slept at all last night. I was too worked up over playoffs.

Our team was two games away from the end of the season and if we won both of our games we were eligible to make it to play offs and possibly get to the state championships. This would be big and I felt the pressure resting on my shoulders more than usual.

"Drink this." Jake sat a large cup of coffee in front of me.

"I'm fine." I waved him off staring intently at the game film I had set up on my laptop.

I'd been watching film all night and taking notes on the other teams play style. It was boring as shit but I needed to do it if I wanted to lead my team to playoffs.

"You look like you're about to pass out. Please consider taking a break." My boyfriend just frowned at me.

"I don't need to take a break. I need to watch this so I can get my team to playoffs." I snapped.

I shouldn't be taking it out on him but I was stressed and him hovering around trying to take care of me wasn't doing anything. He had come over before his classes today to spend some time with me and do some of his assignments but he took one look at me and now is trying to take care of me. He had tried to get me to take a nap but gave up on that pretty quickly.

"Alright that's enough." Jake walked over shutting my laptop.

"What the hell? I was watching that." I reached to open it back up but he didn't move his hand.

"Why are you doing all this?" He questioned.

"Because my team has a chance to make it to playoffs and you'd be doing the same thing if your team actually had a chance." I argued.

"Don't be an asshole."

And I knew I was being an asshole to him. I knew how frustrated Jake was that his team was struggling without him. We both knew they'd make it to playoffs if he was still on that field but unfortunately he wasn't and they'd fallen into a losing streak.

"Why do you step out on that field?" Jake didn't wait for me to apologize.

"I'm the captain, I have to be out there." I told him.

"You weren't always the captain. Why do you play football?"

I didn't want to admit what I knew in my heart. I didn't love the game, I barely even liked it. But even still I put everything I had into it. I wore myself down into nothing just to be the best. I did all of that for him and not myself.

"I'm good at it." I shrugged not really wanting to have the conversation.

"You don't even like the sport. You totally space out whenever people are talking about it and whenever football is on you either don't pay attention or find some excuse to not be around. Do you know why I play? I love the game. I feel excitement every time I have the ball in my hands. I play because it's fun. So why are you on that field every week?" Jake pushed.

This was the moment. I could avoid the question again and I knew Jake would drop it. He'd probably even let me go back to watching film. I could do that but I could also tell him the truth. I could finally admit the truth out loud.

"You're right I don't like football. I hate it actually. I don't feel excitement when I step out on that field and I don't have fun playing it. I didn't even want to play it in the first place. I played baseball growing up and I loved it. But my father wanted me to play football, said it was a mans sport so I listened. I quit baseball and I've been stepping out on the football field ever since just trying to make my dad proud." I confessed.

"You shouldn't do something you hate just because you want to make someone else happy."

"Too late for that. I've done everything for that man. I live my life for a father that doesn't give a shit about me. I play this stupid sport and majored in fucking marketing just so he'd maybe decide to finally care about me. If that's not pathetic I don't know what is." I let out a humorless laugh.

It was my dark truth. This need to make my father love me even though he hasn't shown an ounce of care for me since I was like six. But still I tried. I followed in his footsteps and listened to every thing he told me to just for the slim hope that things would change. I shaped myself into the perfect son and I didn't even care when I started not to recognize myself in the mirror.

"It's not too late. If you don't want to major in marketing you can change it. You can find something you actually want to do, it's not too late to live your life for yourself."

"I'm a senior, if I changed my major-,"

"You wouldn't graduate at the end of the year. Yeah I know but isn't that better than being miserable for the rest of your life?"

I knew he was right. I was setting myself up to miserable but it felt like I was in too deep. I didn't know how to get myself out of this. I spent my whole life living for someone else and I didn't know how to even begin to put myself first.

"I don't even know what I would want to do." I said.

"You can't expect yourself to know right now but you'll figure it out. I'm right here and I'll help you in every way I can." Jake smiled at me and leaned down pressed his lips against mine.

I sank into the feeling. This was happiness, this is what it felt like to do something for myself. I hadn't even realized I'd started taking my life back bit by bit. But being here with Jake was enough proof that I had the ability to live my life for me again.

I didn't know what would happen next but I felt good about the future for the first time in awhile.

A/n:

My life has been super chaotic lately. I'm almost done with my training for my job and then my phone broke the other day so I had to deal with that. It was a huge pain in the ass. It's like everything has been happening all at once. Also someone close to me passed away two days ago so I'm trying to deal with my chaotic life and process through the emotions I have around losing someone. Honestly things haven't been great. I wanted to do a double update but I haven't been able to really put myself in the head space to write at all with everything going on.

Anyways in good news, Taylor swifts new album came out and we all know Jake would be blasting it the minute it dropped. As he should be.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter!
-Cora Leigh