Without Her

Zane

His scholarship was a crock of shit.
The coach who promised it to him had been replaced.
    His thoughts tortured him, denying him the possibility of digesting those two realities. Further denying him from the stages to grieve the loss of football. He was the furthest from acceptance.
    Zane Andrews devoted himself to playing his favorite sport at the collegiate level. He never missed a practice, last to kick off his cleats, and he earned everything he ever got.
    Failure was never aloud, which he himself engrained in his mind at a young age. He was his own hardest critic; only ever relying on himself and himself alone.
    Every achievement he has earned through blood, sweat, and tears- at least that's how Sir Winston Churchill described it.
    He always could rely on how hard he worked, on and off the field. He wasn't just an athlete, he had the brains too, and he knew it. He was proud of who he was; a result of biological inheritance, how he was raised, and his own moral compass.
      He made the move after graduation, leaving his family, friends, and his high school sweetheart Carmi, to continue to work for his dream of playing Division One Football. For the first time in his life, not to mention one of the biggest decisions he ever made, he made relying on the word of somebody other than his own. Nothing else seemed to matter after the fact, nothing else could be so gut-wrenching than the heartbreaking loss of his childhood dream.
     Little did he know, there was. Zane realized this as he sat in shock at an oversized booth at the boisterous bar and grill that him and Shawn frequented weekly.
     It's been roughly four years since the new head coach had cut him. With the devastation that had come with losing football, many great things came with is as well. It opened the door to one of the top ranking Construction Management Programs in the nation, which he capitalized on the loss of his dream for the gain of his future. He met his best friend Shawn the night he got cut at the local bar where he decided to drowned his pain, and he had beefed up his resume with several internships over the last few years.
     Straight A's, a job lined up, and celebrating Senior's Week, he got everything he wanted out of UC Grimson.
      The one thing he didn't have anymore was Carmi, which he had come to realize was, essentially, a bigger loss than football could have ever been.
       Finals were over, and it was just about eleven o'clock in the morning when he swallowed his fifth shot of tequila. Shawn had grown accustomed to Zane's drinking habits, which unknowingly hindered his own enjoyment of a cocktail here and there.
     Shawn watched as his best friend's eyes grew routinely bloodshot and the color drained from his face. His stomach turned in knots as he saw what even hearing her name physically does to his friend after all these years, let alone this news.
      "I'm sorry buddy, couldn't believe it myself when I saw it last week," Mark continued as he slid into the booth and slapped his friend's shoulder, unaware of his intrusion to both lunch and Zane's thoughts. "How ya holdin up with it?"
     Mark Tuft was a cowboy. He came from Texas with a southern drawl and an honest-to-goodness way about him. He befriended the two at the bar their freshman year; he too drowning some pain.
    Zane sat quietly as he watched Mark snag a few fries from his plate that were just delivered. The news made him sick. He was actually thankful someone was going to eat it.
       "Tuft what the hell man? What is wrong with you?" Shawn cautiously sets his ice tea down glaring at the tanned brunette man wearing his ball cap low. Regret filled Mark's caramel colored eyes. He had no idea Zane didn't know.
      Zane's head his spinning and not because of the tequila. Another thing he earned with honors at UCG was an extremely high tolerance. He runs his calloused hands over his long blonde hair that is habitually slicked back, as his sea green colored eyes stained red dart from Mark to Shawn.
      "It wasn't my intention to keep it from you, just to let you get through your finals. It was wrong of me, but you wouldn't have done nearly as great as you have if you knew man. Honest to god."
    His best friend sat across with his hands in the air, crushing him with every word he spoke. Excuses sprinkled in with a defense that he didn't even need. This was on Zane, and he let it get the best of him. He lost her. No one else.     He never believed it was really over, even after the breakup last year. Hell it took him damn near four to finally accept a life without football. How was he to accept a life without Carmi? A life without Carmi? Those words echoed in his mind as he nervously typed in the passcode to his iPhone, preparing himself for the truth.