Season 6, Episode 14
The bus rolled to a stop and Brice could already see them through the tinted windows.
Hundreds of students and fans packed the sidewalk outside the football facility, their phones raised, their voices carrying through the glass even before the door opened.
Around him, the bus erupted. Guys were already on their feet, shouting, filming themselves on Instagram Live. Justin had his phone out, panning across the crowd outside, his voice loud over the chaos.
Brice stayed in his seat, watching through the window as students pressed closer to the bus. They were jumping, screaming, their faces lit up with something he couldn't quite match. His body felt heavy, like someone had filled his bones with wet sand.
The upset was real. Number five Oregon, beaten on their home field by three points. Purdue was going to jump in the rankings. National attention. Playoffs now a real possibility. Early draft buzz. All the things that were supposed to matter.
Coach Ford stood at the front of the bus, his voice cutting through the noise. "Alright, gentlemen. Let's show these fans some love. They waited up for us. Make it worth their time."
The door hissed open and the sound hit him like a wave. Screaming. Chanting. "Boil-er-mak-ers! Boil-er-mak-ers!" Someone had a speaker blasting the fight song. The bass rattled in his chest.
Brice stood, grabbed his bag from the overhead compartment, and shuffled toward the aisle. Players ahead of him were already stepping off the bus, their arms raised, soaking in the attention. The crowd's volume doubled with each player that emerged.
His turn. He stepped down onto the pavement and the noise intensified, a wall of sound that pressed against his eardrums. Students surged forward, held back by a thin line of campus security. Phones pointed at him from every direction, recording, capturing, documenting.
"Brice! Brice!"
He raised one hand, forced something like a smile. His face felt stiff, the expression not quite landing right. Someone shoved a poster toward him and a Sharpie appeared in his hand. He signed it without reading what it said.
More posters. More phones. Someone asking him to say something for their Instagram story. He leaned toward the phone, the words coming out automatic.
"Great win. Great team effort. Appreciate the support. Boiler Up, baby."
The person filming thanked him, already turning to get someone else. Brice kept moving, his bag slung over one shoulder, weaving through the crowd toward the facility entrance. Hands reached out to high-five him and he met them, the slaps against his palm sharp and immediate.
Brice pushed through the glass doors and the sound muted slightly, the noise becoming something he could hear around instead of through. A few staff members stood near the locker room entrance, clapping as players filed past. Brice nodded at them, kept walking. The locker room door swung open and he stepped inside.
More noise. Guys were celebrating, music already playing from someone's speaker, the bass thumping. Jaheim was dancing in the middle of the room, his phone out, recording himself. Abdul was on FaceTime with someone, showing them the scenes of the locker room.
Brice dropped his bag by his locker and sat down on the bench. His shoulders ached. His legs felt tight. The flight had been long, and before that, the game, and before that, all the preparation, all the film study, all the mental energy of trying to execute against a defense that good. And yet, that was the least of his worries.
"Five!" Justin's voice cut through the noise. "Yo, five!"
Brice looked up. Justin was standing a few lockers down, his phone in hand, grinning wide.
"What's good?" Brice asked.
Justin crossed the space between them, dropping onto the bench beside him. He turned his phone screen toward Brice.
A picture. Multiple girls, all dressed up, standing in what looked like someone's living room. Red cups in hand, smiles wide, the kind of posed photo that screamed "we're going out tonight." Brice's eyes scanned the faces, recognizing a few from campus, from classes, from parties he'd been to before.
Then his eyes landed on her.
Serena. Standing in the center of the group, wearing a black dress that complemented her well as they usually did. She was looking directly at the camera, one hand on her hip, the other holding her phone.
"They’re getting fucked tonight," Justin sung, his grin widening. "Hurry your ass up, nigga."
Brice stared at the screen. This is what college was about, this is what being Brice Colton was about. Winning a football game and enjoying the spoils of war and yet it was Skylar’s face that flashed through his mind, her rounded belly.
Justin nudged his shoulder. "Yo, you good?"
Brice blinked, pulled his eyes away from the screen. "Yeah. I'm good."
"My boy got CTE already. Nigga, if you coming or what? These bitches is ready, bro."
Brice looked back at the phone, at Serena's smile, at the promise of distraction, of noise, of something that wasn't the weight pressing down on his chest.
"Yeah," he heard himself say. "I'm coming."
…
Connie's phone screen glowed in the darkness of her dorm room, the only light besides the paused laptop across the room. The video thumbnail showed Autzen Stadium in all of it’s glory, moments before disaster struck.
Her thumb moved through her camera roll instead, scrolling backward through time. Pictures from last weekend. Pictures from the tailgate. Pictures from her first week at Notre Dame. The images blurred together until she stopped.
Skylar's face filled half the screen, her arm thrown around Connie's shoulders. They were at someone's party, both of them in crop tops, both of them with red cups in their free hands. Connie remembered that night. Somewhere around junior year.
She stared at the photo for a long moment, her finger hovering over the trash icon.
Her thumb moved to the next photo. Another one with Skylar. Then another. Then another. She scrolled faster now, watching the progression of their friendship play out in reverse. Homecoming. Summer trips. Random selfies in Skylar's bedroom. The camera roll became a catalog of someone else's life, someone she didn't recognize anymore.
Then she stopped.
The photo was blurry, taken at an odd angle like someone had been trying to hide what they were doing. But Connie knew exactly what she was looking at. Her own face stared back at her, younger, rounder, her eyes red and swollen. She was sitting on a bathroom floor, her back against a tub.
Connie's throat closed. She'd thought she deleted all of these. She'd gone through her phone methodically after the adoption, removing every trace, every reminder. But somehow this one had survived.
The bathroom tile in the photo was beige with brown specks. Skylar's bathroom. Skylar's house.
Connie could remember the cold of that floor against her bare legs. Could remember the way her hands shook as she held the test. Could remember Skylar's voice from the other side of the door.
"Connie? What does it say?"
She'd opened the door without answering. Skylar had taken one look at her face and known. Then she'd grabbed two more tests from the box they'd bought at CVS, the kind that came in a three-pack because one was never enough to be sure.
They'd sat on that bathroom floor for an hour, waiting for the other tests to develop, both of them knowing what they'd show but needing the confirmation anyway. When the second one came back positive, Connie had started crying. When the third one confirmed it, she'd stopped making any sound at all.
Skylar had wrapped her arms around her, had pulled her close, had let Connie press her face into her shoulder. The bathroom floor had been hard beneath them, but neither of them had moved. They'd just sat there, Connie's body shaking with silent sobs while Skylar rubbed circles on her back.
"It's going to be okay," Skylar had whispered. "We'll figure it out. I promise. It's going to be okay."
Connie had cried herself to sleep that night in Skylar's bed, still wearing her clothes from school, her face buried in Skylar's chest. Skylar had held her the whole time, had stroked her hair, had whispered reassurances that Connie couldn't quite believe but desperately needed to hear.
She'd woken up the next morning with swollen eyes and the certainty that her life was over. She was fifteen. She was pregnant. And nothing would ever be the same.
Connie blinked, pulling herself back to the present. Her dorm room materialized around her, the laptop still paused with him, there on the screen, the phone still glowing in her hand. She wiped at her eyes with her free hand, surprised to find them wet.
She closed the photo and opened her archive folder, the place where deleted photos went to die for thirty days before disappearing forever. Maybe there were more. Maybe she'd saved some without realizing it.
She scrolled through the archive, past screenshots and accidental photos and blurry images she'd meant to delete. Nothing. No more pregnancy photos. No hospital pictures. No evidence that any of it had happened.
Of course there weren't any hospital pictures. She'd been too terrified, too overwhelmed, too consumed by the physical and emotional agony of labor to think about documenting it. She'd signed the papers and walked out of that hospital with empty arms and an empty phone and the desperate hope that if she didn't look back, she could pretend none of it had happened.
Connie's vision blurred again. She swiped at her eyes, angry at herself for crying, angry at herself for caring, angry at herself for wanting something she'd deliberately chosen to destroy.
Her baby. Their baby. The one she'd given away because she'd been young and scared and convinced she had no other choice.
She opened Google Maps without thinking about it, her fingers moving on autopilot. She typed in the name of the hospital. St. Catherine's Medical Center. Two hours from South Bend, far enough that no one she knew would see her there, close enough that her parents could drive it when the time came.
The map loaded. The hospital appeared as a red pin on a street she'd never been to before or since. She zoomed in, studying the building's shape, the parking lot, the surrounding streets. None of it looked familiar. She'd been in too much pain to notice the outside. She'd only seen the labor and delivery ward, the too-bright lights, the beige walls, the linoleum floor.
She switched to the hospital's website. The homepage loaded with smiling faces, stock photos of happy families holding newborns. She clicked through the pages. About Us. Services. Patient Information. Then she found the photo gallery.
Pictures of the maternity ward. Newly renovated rooms with flatscreen TVs and pull-out couches for partners. The nursery with rows of bassinets. Nurses in colorful scrubs holding tiny bundles. Mothers gazing down at their babies with expressions of pure love.
Connie clicked through each photo, studying them, searching for something she couldn't name. Recognition maybe. Confirmation that she'd been there, that it had been real, that she hadn't imagined the whole thing.
But nothing looked right. The rooms were too nice, too modern. They must have renovated since she'd been there. The nursery was different too, bigger, with better lighting. And the faces were all wrong, all strangers, all people who had nothing to do with her story.
She closed the browser and opened her photos again, scrolling back to that single surviving image. Her face, fifteen and terrified. That was all she had. One accidental photo that had escaped deletion, documenting the moment her life changed forever.
Everything else was gone. The months of hiding in her parents' house once she started showing, telling everyone she'd gone on a mission trip to South America. The elaborate lies about volunteering at an orphanage, about building houses for impoverished families, about finding herself through service. The careful photo selection on social media, all old pictures, nothing current, nothing that would reveal the truth.
Her friends had believed it. Her classmates had believed it. Even people who'd known her for years had accepted the story without question because why would Connie Gardner lie about something like that?
Only Skylar had known. Only Skylar had been there for all of it. The positive tests. The doctor's appointments. The day Connie's parents found out and her mother had cried for three hours straight. The decision to give the baby up for adoption. The contractions. The hospital. The papers.
Only Skylar.
Connie's phone slipped from her hand onto the bed. She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes, trying to physically push the tears back, but they came anyway. Silent at first, then building into sobs that shook her shoulders and made her breath come in gasps.
The memories were gone. Washed away. Erased as deliberately as she'd tried to erase the photos. She'd told herself it was for the best, that moving forward meant letting go, that she couldn't heal if she kept looking back. But now, sitting in her dark dorm room with Brice's frozen image on her laptop and Skylar's betrayal still fresh, Connie realized what she'd really done.
She'd disappeared herself. She'd erased the girl who'd been pregnant at fifteen, who'd given birth in a hospital two hours from home, who'd held her daughter for exactly three minutes before the nurses took her away. That girl didn't exist anymore. She'd made sure of it.
Just like her baby didn't exist anymore. Adopted by a family whose names Connie didn't know, living a life Connie would never be part of, growing up with parents who would never tell her about the fifteen-year-old girl who'd cried herself to sleep in a hospital bed after signing away her rights.
Gone. All of it. As if it never happened.
Connie grabbed her phone again, her vision still blurred, and opened her messages. Eli's name sat at the top of the list. She stared at it, her thumb hovering over his name, wanting to call him, wanting to hear his voice, wanting him to tell her everything would be okay.
How could she explain this to him? How could she tell him that she was crying over a baby that didn't exist, over memories that had been deliberately erased, over a friendship that had been built on lies?
She couldn't. So she locked her phone and set it face-down on her nightstand. Then she curled onto her side, pulled her knees to her chest, and let herself cry until there was nothing left.
…
Brice stood in the corner of the living room, shoulder pressed against the wall. The beer in his hand was warm now, the condensation long dried. He couldn't remember the last time he'd lifted it to his mouth.
Justin was in the center of it all, his shirt off, dancing with two girls. Abdul had his phone out, recording everything, his laugh cutting through the music every few seconds. Other teammates scattered throughout the house, soaking up the attention, feeding off the energy of students who wanted to be close to them tonight.
Brice took a breath and held it, letting it out slowly.
"You know you don't have to be on your best behavior just because I'm here, right?"
He turned his head. Serena stood beside him now, holding a half-filled cup in one hand, her other hand finding his forearm.
"I'm good," he said.
"You don’t look it."
Brice looked back at the crowd, at Justin still performing for everyone. "I am."
"Uh-huh." Serena took a sip from her cup, studying his face. "You're a terrible liar."
He didn't respond.
"Look," Serena said, shifting so she stood more directly in front of him. "I’m not expecting anything from you."
"Okay."
"I mean it. I like what we have. It's fun. It's easy. And I want to keep it that way," she paused, took another sip. "Which means I don't care if you see other people. Actually, I'd prefer if you did."
That got his attention.
"You'd prefer it," he repeated.
"Yeah. Best way to make sure that none of this shit get complicated," her smile was easy, practiced. "If you don’t, it starts to feel like a relationship. A real one. A complicated one. A boring one."
Brice nodded slowly. "That a two-sided coin?"
Serena's smile widened. She lifted her cup to her lips, taking a long, deliberate sip. The music pounded around them. Someone shouted something unintelligible from across the room. She swallowed, lowered the cup, and just looked at him. Didn't answer. Just let the question hang there between them.
Brice studied her face. She was beautiful. Anyone could see that. She was here, present, available. No complications. No history. No weight.
She wasn't Connie. Would never be Connie. Didn't have that intensity, that way of looking at him like she could see straight through to whatever was broken inside. She wasn't even Mel. Didn't have that sharp intelligence, that ability to call him on his shit without making it feel like an attack. Didn't make him want to try harder just to keep up with her.
Serena was just there. Easy. Surface-level. Exactly what she said she was.
And maybe that was enough. Maybe that's all he needed right now. Someone who didn't ask for more than he could give. Someone who wouldn't look at him with disappointment when he inevitably failed to be whatever it was people wanted him to be.
His mind flickered to Skylar. That's how it had started with her too, wasn't it? Easy. Uncomplicated. Just physical, just fun, no strings attached. Look how that turned out.
"As long as you don't give me reason to look elsewhere," Serena finally said, her voice pulling him back, "I got no interest in other niggas."
Brice nodded. The words registered but didn't land. His attention had already drifted back to the party, to Justin doing something that had everyone around him laughing. Abdul was still filming. Someone had turned the music up even louder.
"You should go talk to that blonde over there," Serena said, nudging his shoulder. "The one by the kitchen. She keeps looking over here."
He followed her gaze. He’d seen her before but couldn’t place her.
"Help throw people off the scent," Serena continued, her tone playful. "Can't have everyone thinking you got jungle fever."
Brice let out a short laugh,. "I'm good."
"You sure? She's cute."
"I'm good," he repeated.
Serena shrugged, taking another sip from her cup. "Suit yourself."
…
"Your moms is persistent," Damien said from beside her on the couch, his thigh pressed against hers, his arm stretched along the back cushions behind her head.
"She'll get over it," Nia said. The words came out slower than she intended, her tongue thick in her mouth.
The house party swirled around her in fragments. Music too loud. Bodies moving. Someone laughing. The smell of weed and spilled beer and something else she couldn't place. Everything had that soft-edged quality that meant she was exactly where she wanted to be: floating somewhere above reality, untethered from anything that hurt.
How long had it been? Two days? Three? Time didn't work right anymore. She'd left school yesterday. Or was it the day before? It didn't matter. What mattered was the pill Damien had given her an hour ago, the one that made everything feel distant and manageable and almost okay.
"You want another drink?" Damien asked.
Nia looked at the cup in her hand. It was empty. When had she finished it?
"Sure."
Damien stood, his hand trailing across her shoulders as he moved toward the kitchen. Nia watched him go, her head swimming slightly. Nia's phone buzzed again. She picked it up this time, just to make it stop. Her mother's text filled the screen.
The words blurred together. Nia set the phone face-down on the table and closed her eyes. The room tilted slightly, then righted itself.
"Here you go, baby."
She opened her eyes. Damien stood in front of her, holding out a fresh cup. She took it, brought it to her lips, tasted something sweet and strong. Damien sat back down, closer than before. His hand found her knee, his fingers warm through her jeans.
"You good?" he asked.
"I'm good."
"You look good."
Nia laughed, the sound coming out breathy and disconnected. "Okay."
"I'm serious." his hand moved higher on her thigh, his thumb making small circles. "You always look good."
"Damien," she said, her voice playful, almost teasing. "You're doing a lot."
"Just appreciating what's in front of me."
"Uh-huh."
His hand slid higher. Nia caught his wrist, her fingers loose around it, not really holding on, just acknowledging.
"Nope," she said, still smiling, still playing along because that's what you did at parties when guys got like this.
"Why not?"
"Because."
Damien leaned closer, his mouth near her ear. "You sure about that?"
The room tilted again. Nia blinked, trying to focus on his face, but the edges kept blurring. How much had she taken? The pill. The drinks. Something else earlier, she couldn't remember what. It all mixed together now, a chemical haze that made her body feel like it belonged to someone else.
"I'm sure," she said, but the words came out weak, unconvincing even to her own ears.
Time did something strange. One moment Damien was beside her, his hand on her thigh. The next moment he was even closer, his arm around her waist, his other hand sliding up her side. When had that happened?
"You're so tense," he said, his fingers pressing into her ribs. "Relax."
Nia tried to push his hand away but her arms felt heavy, disconnected from her brain. She managed to move them but they didn't go where she wanted, didn't push hard enough, just kind of flopped against his chest.
"Damien, stop."
"You don't mean that."
The room was spinning now, actually spinning, the walls moving in slow circles around her. She closed her eyes but that made it worse. Opened them again and Damien's face was too close, his breath hot against her neck.
His hand moved to the button of her jeans.
"No," she said, but it came out as barely a whisper.
"Just checking," he said, his fingers working the button open. "Seeing if you really don't want this."
Nia tried to grab his wrist again but her hands wouldn't cooperate. Everything was moving too slow and too fast at the same time. She felt his fingers at her waistband, felt them starting to slide lower, felt—
The weight of him disappeared.
Nia's eyes struggled to focus. Damien was standing now, or being pulled to standing, she couldn't tell which. Brian had him by the collar, his face inches from Damien's face.
"The fuck you doing?" Brian's voice cut through the music, through the fog in Nia's head.
"We were just—"
The slap came fast and sharp. Brian's open palm connected with Damien's face, the sound of it cutting through the party noise. Conversations stopped. The music kept playing but everything else went quiet.
"The fuck is wrong with you?"
Damien stumbled backward, his hand going to his face. "Man, I was just—"
Amber was beside Nia now, her hands on Nia's arms, helping her up from the couch. Nia's legs didn't want to hold her weight. The room spun harder.
"Come on, honey," Amber said, her voice soft. "Let's get you to the bathroom."
Nia let herself be guided, her feet dragging across the carpet. Behind them, Brian's voice rose again.
"Zack!"
Nia turned her head, trying to see what was happening, but Amber kept her moving forward.
"Tune that motherfucker up," Brian said. "Take his ass to the back."
The bathroom door opened. Bright lights. White tile. Amber helped Nia sit on the closed toilet lid, then knelt in front of her.
"You okay? Nia, look at me. What’d you take?"
Nia tried to focus on Amber's face but it kept shifting, kept moving. She opened her mouth to answer but no words came out.
Outside the bathroom, she could hear shouting. The front door slamming. More shouting, farther away now. Zack's voice, then Brian's, then sounds she couldn't identify but understood anyway.
"Stay here," Amber said, standing up. "I'm going to get you some water."
The door closed. Nia sat alone in the too-bright bathroom, staring at the tile between her feet. Her phone was still on the coffee table. Still buzzing, probably. Still lighting up with messages from her mother asking where she was, asking if she was safe, asking her to please just come home.
The tile swam in and out of focus. Nia closed her eyes and let the darkness take her under.
I'm assuming Sox was right and that Skylar did not take Brice's deal and now he's fucked. So fucked, he can't even enjoy the fruits of his labor anymore. Bad bounce.
"As long as you don't give me reason to look elsewhere," Serena finally said, her voice pulling him back, "I got no interest in other niggas."
Brice nodded. The words registered but didn't land. His attention had already drifted back to the party, to Justin doing something that had everyone around him laughing. Abdul was still filming. Someone had turned the music up even louder.
"You should go talk to that blonde over there," Serena said, nudging his shoulder. "The one by the kitchen. She keeps looking over here."
So not only is she being fucked by a deadbeat father Yakub, but she a cuckquean too?????
I'm assuming Sox was right and that Skylar did not take Brice's deal and now he's fucked. So fucked, he can't even enjoy the fruits of his labor anymore. Bad bounce.
"As long as you don't give me reason to look elsewhere," Serena finally said, her voice pulling him back, "I got no interest in other niggas."
Brice nodded. The words registered but didn't land. His attention had already drifted back to the party, to Justin doing something that had everyone around him laughing. Abdul was still filming. Someone had turned the music up even louder.
"You should go talk to that blonde over there," Serena said, nudging his shoulder. "The one by the kitchen. She keeps looking over here."
So not only is she being fucked by a deadbeat father Yakub, but she a cuckquean too?????
