Creed: Chapter 20

There’s nothing like diligently focusing on a project and having your head taken off with a textbook.

“What the hell, Ollie?” I rub my head and turn to her.

She sits up on her bed, covering her mouth. “Oh my god, I totally didn’t mean to hit you.”

I scowl. “That hurt, you ass.”

“I’m sorry.” She gets up and hugs me, then flops on my bed, her curls bouncing with her body. “But you gotta take a break. That assignment is becoming your obsession.”

“Of course, I’m obsessing over it; it’s worth my entire grade in the class.”

“No, take a break,” she whines, reaching for my hand when I turn back to my laptop. “Tell me about your secret friend and why you aren’t fucking him.”

“Who says I’m not?” I grumble.

I haven’t been successful in keeping it from Ollie or Zac that I have a ‘secret friend.’ They both refer to it as a mystery love, and I downplay it as much as possible while keeping Creed’s identity a secret.

“I say you’re not getting laid. I can tell. It’s like my sixth sense.” She crosses her arms behind her head and staring at the ceiling. “Come to the party tonight. You know it will be epic—a bash right before spring break kicks off.”

“Nope.”

“Well, at least take a break now, and let’s go to the coffee shop across from campus. I know you love their cheesecake, and I can have a pre-game drink there to get me started.”

“I can’t, Ollie.” I rub my forehead, staving off the headache brewing from my neck and shoulders being hunched for so long.

“Dammit,” she groans, long and drawn out, and rolls off my bed. “The school year is almost over, and I failed.”

Her pout makes me laugh. “Because you never succeeded in reforming me into a party animal?”

“You’re not even a party slug, girl.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Sheesh, what’s worse than a slug?”

“Exactly,” she huffs. “See what I’m working with here?”

I shoo her with my hand.

“Fine.” She does a slow, exaggerated stomp toward the door. “I’m going to see Bob, the nerdy guy with the giant cock. At least he parties with me.”

“See, that’s why I’ve resisted all your efforts to party with you. You just want to use me for sex.”

Her eyes widen, and she sputters, realizing what I said, then laughs when I throw her textbook back at her. “Bob would be game if you wanted to join. He really does have more than enough cock to go around. Okay, I’m fucking kidding!” she shrieks as I launch more textbooks at her, and they thud against the door as she jumps out of the way.

“Bye, Killjoy.” She wiggles her fingers at me. “Love you a lot.”

“Bye, Pep-Rally. Like you a little. Have fun and stay safe tonight.”

“I’ll see you before I head out for the weekend tomorrow morning.”

Ollie, like me, isn’t heading anywhere for spring break, but she’s taking the weekend off, at least.

She leaves, and I gather my stuff to head to the library to work. As the evening approaches, the dorm will get livelier with people pre-gaming before they go to the frat party or wherever else they’re heading.

My phone rings, and my heart hammers, thinking—okay, hoping—it’s Creed. We’ve talked daily for the past two months since that night in the hotel suite, keeping things strictly platonic. It’s painful and agonizing trying to ignore that I want him more than just a friend, especially knowing he feels the same. But the alternative—losing him entirely—is too unbearable even to consider.

The call isn’t from Creed, though; it’s Zac on a video call. I connect the call, my brow pinching as I struggle to figure out what I’m looking at.

“Sorry, Soph,” Zac mumbles. The phone shifts and his face fills the screen. He’s wan and his eyes are bloodshot.

“Are you high, Zac?”

“Just some hits off a joint,” he mutters.

I pinch my brow. “What the hell are you doing? If you’re undermining your chances for continuing to play football—”

“Pot is legal in California, and the NFL has loosened up on players using a bit, and they don’t test between April and August.”

I know he’s struggling since his breakup with Russ, but still. He’s been hitting the booze and pot hard lately.

Zac closes his eyes, his face etched with pain. “He’s dating someone, Soph.”

My heart aches for my friend, who’s still mostly a secret friend—I seemed to be collecting those—because he’s still trying to maintain his jock, douche canoe, man-whore persona. My heart also aches in what I suspect is empathetic sympathy, because I know if and when Creed starts dating someone, I’ll be in the same boat.

“Zac.” I swallow the emotions clogging my throat. “When is enough enough? You’re miserable and hurting because you’re denying yourself the truth. It’s not even just the relationship with Russ; it’s you. You deserve to be who and what you are. Love who you love freely and live your life for you.”

He sits up quickly on the bed and glares at me. “Just like you’re doing?”

I jerk like he slapped me. Yes, I know I’m a hypocrite. “I let my guard down one time with you, Zac, and you throw it in my face,” I say to deflect the truth of his words.

In a moment of weakness, he pressed me to talk to him when I felt exceptionally sad one day. I confessed I was in love with a guy, but we could never be together. He jokingly tried to get me to open up to him by peppering me with questions, trying to guess why—the guy was married, looked like a toad, lived in Antarctica, was in prison, and was a criminal. Zac must have seen something on my face when he got to that last one because he stopped the joking badgering.

“Soph… I’m sorry. I’m just so fucked up.” He flops back on the bed, lifting the phone so I can still see him. “It would be easier if you and I were in love with each other, huh?” He closes his eyes, relaxing back against the pillows.

“Yeah, it would be. But kinda gross, too.” He pops one eye open to me, and I smirk. “You’re like the brother I never had, so yeah… Ew.”

“Nah, we can’t be like bro and sis. Not when I’m going to announce at tonight’s party that you’re my girl, so that way, I don’t have to fuck or get sucked off by one of the she-skanks there.”

“Don’t you dare,” I shriek. His hoots of laughter cue me into his joke, and I curl my lip at him. “You can say no, you know.”

He sighs. “It’s all part of the image. I’m too far down the rabbit hole to turn back and dig myself out now.”

“Zac… You gotta know, that’s bullshit.”

“It’s okay, Soph.” He sits up. “How’s your project coming?”

“Zac.”

He shakes his head, a silent plea for me to let him change the subject. “Is it flowing better now that your business proposal is centered around it being a not-for-profit?”

I had resisted the idea of centering my project on a not-for-profit until Creed pointed out—in a lengthy lecture that would have made my professors proud—that a not-for-profit is a business and needs greater recognition. Once I did, the project that had felt like hell flowed easily, especially since I was essentially designing my dream job.

“It is. I’m researching all the wrap-around supports the women and children might need when fleeing domestic abuse.”

My project isn’t only for a shelter or temporary housing for those women and children. It also includes supportive long-term housing they can transition to, counseling, mental health and addiction services, and primary health care, like immunizations, wound care, general health, eye, and dental… It would be comprehensive. But what I’m incredibly proud of was including the things that would help the women and children get out of poverty—whether that’s access to education opportunities, skill training for employment, or childcare while the women got their education or were working. It’s an upstream model to help address the root causes and break the cycle of poverty and domestic violence.

It’s huge. Overwhelming. And I love it because it’s my passion work.

If I could have any job, instead of worrying about one that would help provide for my extended family—and if I had access to funds and start-up capital—it would be to build this not-for-profit. But that isn’t my reality.

It’s nice to dream, and it will be a kickass project when it’s done—maybe one that someone else would take and run with instead of me.

“You have the biggest and best heart, Soph. Plus, coupled with that big brain of yours, you can help change the world. You can’t waste that all on an accounting major.”

“That’s the safest path. There are lots of jobs, good-paying jobs,” I stress. “Plus, there are lots of different things I could specialize in within the accounting field.”

“What a waste.”

“I could say the same thing,” I snap.

“Dayum, girl, you’re feisty.” There’s a pounding on his door, and he scowls, looking away from the phone. “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming, shitheads.”

“Is the almighty Zac Watkins being summoned to preside over his court?”

“Yeah.” He sighs. “You sure you won’t come tonight?”

“One thousand percent sure.”

“I had to try.”

“Zac…” I wait until he looks at me over the screen. “Keep your dick in your pants tonight, yeah?”

He winces. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

My mouth pinches, and I sigh while I end the call. In all the months I’ve been friends with Zac and tried to convince him, he has never listened.

Instead, I watch as he spirals, his outlook, behavior, and mindset becoming more entrenched the more unhappy he becomes. Deep into the rabbit hole, he refuses to try to climb out of it; instead, he burrows deeper down a path leading straight to hell.

“Are you so different?” I mutter to myself.

I’m clinging to Creed, a man I decided there was no future with. Being a glutton for punishment by continually exposing myself to him rather than severing the ties that bind.

I’m deep into my own rabbit hole and giving myself only one path—and like Zac’s, my path is leading straight to hell, too.

But envisioning a future with no Creed causes a weight on my chest so intense that I can hardly breathe.

I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t.