Sincerely, Carter (7 page)

From the outside looking in, I really looked like I was passionate about it. I spoke to coaches from colleges all over the country, led my already-talented team to a state championship my senior year, but I was only using the attention as a deflection from my pain. Pain I hid all too well.

I spent extra hours every day at practice because I didn’t want to think about anything, not because I wanted to improve my game. I pretended to be crushed and disappointed when we lost or when I missed a critical shot, but I didn’t really give a damn.

I even felt slightly guilty about accepting a full athletic scholarship to South Beach University—knowing that I didn’t want to play, and the media attention I was getting reached an all-time high freshman year.

Yet, four games into the season, I tore my ACL and my coping mechanism was ripped away from me within seconds. The media attention that was sudden and swift when it started, seemed to come to an abrupt stop.

Yes, the doctor had told me that I could play again with extensive rehab, that I could take six to eight months to heal and be just fine, but I asked him to write me a “should probably never play competitively again” diagnosis instead; I couldn’t bear to live the life of a college athlete for another day. I had to force myself to find new ways to cope.

Since I had no family to call anymore—only memories could bring them to life every now and again, I relied on my friends.

Just friends.

There was Josh—my closest male friend, current roommate, and fraternity culture obsessed confidante who had an excuse for almost everything. There was my former teammate Dwayne—soon to be a professional athlete and first round draft pick, who still got me tickets to every campus basketball game. And of course, there was Arizona who’d stuck by me through it all—never letting me read what the papers were saying about the “Questionable Diagnosis,” always there when everyone else had left me behind; she was my best friend—the ultimate person I could count on no matter what. And, for whatever reason, she was the only one who was standing in my kitchen when I finally made it home from the awards ceremony.

“You wanted to have a graduation party with just four people?” she asked as I came inside. “You know you could’ve easily gotten one hundred people here, and that’s just me counting your adoring female flock.”

“It just kills you that I’m sexually attractive, doesn’t it?”

“It kills me that you can actually describe yourself as “sexually attractive” without laughing at how ridiculous that sounds.”

I smiled. “Would you like me better if I was modest?”

“I’d like you better if you were honest.” She laughed, and Josh and Dwayne came inside the house at that moment—arguing about basketball stats as usual.

“You were serious about only inviting the three of us?” Dwayne asked, looking around. “No other girls but Arizona?”

“Is there a problem with that?” I asked.

“No.” Josh shrugged, setting a bag on the counter. “After going to ten parties this week that were far too crowded, I think I’d much rather hang out in a small group tonight. Well, minus Arizona. I’m with Dwayne on that one. We can always do without her being here, and since I live in this place as well, I vote for her to go.”

Arizona threw up her middle finger at him.

“I picked up a cake for you, Carter,” Josh said, taking a six pack of beer out of a bag before handing it to me. “I figured you’d want an official one to celebrate tonight. Plus, I got some new alcohol that I need to use on a few of the slices later. Me and a few of my fraternity brothers want to run an experiment we saw on YouTube.”

“Of course you do.” I flipped the lid off the box, shaking my head once I read the lettering on the light blue cake. “Congratulations, it’s a Boy?”

“They ran out of graduation cakes.” He shrugged. “Better than nothing, right? Should I have gotten, Congratulations, it’s a Girl?”

Arizona and Dwayne burst into loud laughter, and I couldn’t help but laugh, too.

I grabbed my own six pack of beer and motioned for the three of them to follow me outside, past the backyard gate and to the beach. This was our last summer before we all would have to chase our own separate dreams, and I wanted to cling to the carefree life for a little while longer. The life where I could get away with being slightly irresponsible and all would be forgiven with an eye roll and slap on the wrist from the campus cops. The life where spending hours upon hours in a diner with friends and talking about absolutely nothing were the norm and not the exception, and a life where the beach was never more than a few blocks away.

Yet, as Arizona sat down right next to me in the sand— and began arguing with Josh as usual, I realized that something felt different about this summer already. But I couldn’t tell exactly what it was yet…

A few days later…

I locked the door to my bedroom and read over my father’s obituary for what must have been the millionth time—stopping on the words “He leaves behind a son he loved more than anything, his ex-wife (a woman who he always considered his “best friend”) and a fiancée…” The “woman he always considered his best friend” was always the part that jumped out at me.

He’d disappeared somewhere between the sixth and seventh grade—in between one of my birthday parties and the start of puberty. There was no formal notice, no formal talk about why he was leaving; my mom and I woke up one morning—refreshed after our annual family vacation, and realized all of his stuff was gone.

The next time we saw him, he was on TV—heading some huge celebrity divorce case. The next time we saw him after that was in the newspapers—he’d just won one of the biggest class action lawsuits in the country. And the last time we saw him was at his funeral; his new, much younger fiancée had been drinking and lost control at the wheel.

To his credit, he gave my mother everything she
thought
she wanted in the divorce—alimony, child support, timeshares, and two vacation houses they’d bought together. He sent birthday and holiday cards like clockwork and every now and then he sent us flight tickets to visit him; flight tickets that never got redeemed.

For me, he called once a week—going down his normal list of questions. “How are you this week, son?” “How are your grades?” “Your mother says you joined a summer league basketball team. How’s that?” “How is Arizona? Is she still your best friend?”

One day, circa seventh grade and tired of his bullshit, I cut off his checklist of questions and asked. “Why did you leave us?”

“What’s that, son?”

“I said…” My voice didn’t waver. “Why did you leave us?”

There was no immediate answer—only silence. After several minutes, I considered hanging up, but then he began to speak.

“I wasn’t happy. We were only getting along for your sake…We were supposed to stay together until you reached high school, but I honestly…I couldn’t do it, and I told her that, too…I should have been clearer and said that I just didn’t feel the same as I used to, and I guess that’s why we should’ve stayed ‘just friends.’”

“That is the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard…”

“Watch your mouth.” He snapped, his tone now glacial. “You asked me to be honest, so I’m being fucking honest…” He sighed and paused once more. “I never got to meet anyone new or find who I was outside of your mother. That’s the problem. We settled for each other and we, in turn, stifled one another.”

“You’re blaming her for you leaving?”

“I’m blaming us both,” he said. “No way can a man and a woman stay in love from childhood to forties and beyond. It’s unrealistic.”

“So, cheating on her with your secretary was the solution?”

Silence.

“How’s school?” He changed the subject completely. “Arizona? Does she still have those braces?” And that was the last effort I made at attempting to salvage our relationship. Which was why I was quite surprised to learn what he’d left me in his will. In addition to a college fund, a trust fund, and a few of his investment portfolios, he’d left me a condo on the edge of the beach.

I vowed to never use it when it was awarded to me, and even contacted a realtor to put it up for sale. But, once I found out that the house was near South Beach University, I changed my mind and moved into it at the end of my sophomore year.

It was my much needed refuge from the hectic campus life and the beach fire parties, which was why I’d never invited more than three people over at a time. It was why I dreaded the idea of ever throwing a party here, but Josh was slowly wearing me down on the idea for this summer. He’d even begged me to have a business meeting with him about it at the end of my private graduation get-together the other day.

Sighing, I folded my father’s obituary and returned it to the back of my desk drawer.

I stepped outside my room and headed into the kitchen where Josh and five of his fraternity brothers were sitting at the bar.

“You all wore suits?” I looked at all of their complementing grey and black suits.

“This is a business meeting, is it not?” Josh took out a folder.

“You’re my roommate.”

“And for that, I am forever grateful,” he said. “And I think, to the best of my knowledge, we’ve gotten along pretty well for the most part. Right? I’ve never been late with the rent.”

“There is no rent.”

“But if there was, I would’ve never been late with it.”

I rolled my eyes and took out a beer. This was going to be a long one.

“I also think,” he said, continuing, “that I’ve taken great care of the backyard without you even asking. I’ve also made sure that the fridge stays stocked with water and protein shakes whenever we run out, and I make sure my company never overstays their welcome. So, with all of that on the table, I need you to give me three good reasons why you won’t let us throw the party here.”

“I can give you ten.”

“I’m listening.”

“One, we have neighbors on both sides, neighbors that don’t really appreciate loud parties and have previously threatened to call the cops.”

“We’ve already talked to them.” He smiled. “They’ll be away the weekend that we throw the party,”

“
If
you throw the party.” I countered. “Two, I don’t want my things torn apart by drunk strangers.”

“We plan to rent a U-HAUL overnight and place all of your furniture and TVs inside of it. We’ll put it right back the next day.”

“Three, you don’t know how to count. You told me you were thinking about fifty people last week, but I saw the “secret” Facebook event this morning and it says three hundred people are coming.”

“Three hundred seventy five.” The guy next to him coughed.

“Yeah, so…” I took a long swig of my beer. “Hell no.”

“Come on, Carter. Man…” Josh stood up. “It’s not like you don’t have the space, and it’s not like everyone will be inside anyway. We have ideas to keep half of the people inside and outside.”

“It’s a no.”

“You can’t tell me you’re not slightly interested in the thought of Jell-O pools and Slip N Slides. Or a wet T-shirt contest in your own backyard. This might be the last big party we’ll ever have in our youth. We must protect our youth with memories like this, so when we’re married with kids that we can’t stand we can at least say ‘Hey, once upon a time I actually loved my life’ you know?”

“Do you ever think before you speak or do you just let everything come out randomly?”

“A little bit of both, actually,” he said, smiling. “Don’t make me beg you.”

“Why can’t you throw the party at your own fraternity’s house?”

“Yeah…About that….” He cleared his throat. “After certain events that transpired last semester, Epsilon Chi is banned from throwing any parties on campus for the next five years.”

“So you honestly think that shit gives me confidence in you throwing one here?”

“No, but I think if we do everything we said we were going to do a few minutes ago and offer you eight hundred dollars on top of that, you’d agree.”

“You’d be absolutely right.” I tossed my beer bottle into the trash. “Done deal.”

He rolled his eyes and took off his tie while his frat brothers gave each other high fives. “Okay, since we have like two weeks to get everything together, would you mind helping us this weekend? We need to make multiple runs to pick up the tiki torches, some weed, and we have to start loading up on Jell-O and alcohol. It takes four people to hold the torch pieces though. They’re supposedly fragile…and we kind of need to pick them up in a few days…So, unless you want to help us out by driving…”