Every minute that passed as he was driving seemed like an hour. Mike hadn’t been back to the neighborhood in a few years, even before Wes and he had their final falling out. Mike had gotten a scholarship from Ole’Miss for football so he spent all his free time since his sophomore year at the college near the training grounds. He came back for holidays his freshman year but after that football took over and on top of that he had met Jen.
Jen comes from a wealthy family and her parents had actually bought a house right off campus for her to live in while she was going to school. They met his sophomore year, she is a year behind him and during her freshman year he took it upon himself to do the gentlemanly thing and show her around campus. It didn’t hurt that she had flowing bouncy dark brown hair, piercing blue eyes, was six foot tall, and it seemed like three quarters of that was well toned legs and a very nice ass.
Between football, his relationship growing with Jen, and the one falling apart with Wes he didn’t much care to come back to town even on holidays at that point. His parents had no problem coming up to see him on campus. It was about five hours away depending on how you drove and any excuse they had to get away from home they loved to take. They told him it made them feel like they were travelers.
“You can pretend you’re wherever you want just by going in the hotel room popping in a cd and closing the blinds.” His dad had once told him right after he said. “Hell that’s why you have kids, gives you a good excuse to go out of town.” This did make him feel less guilty about not coming around for the holidays.
Mike was surprised at how effortlessly he navigated the streets of his home town. He wished it took a bit more effort that way the memories of when he and Wes were younger didn’t bombard him as he drove. A particularly vivid memory hit him when he was stopped at a stoplight that sat across from the old park that he had spent a lot of time at when he was a kid.
The park was a huge community park. It had two baseball fields, a huge play area with swings a few slides, a large jungle gym, a huge open field with soccer goals at each end, and just across the street sat the community pool. The high school used it for football and soccer practice before they added a new practice field near the stadium. Wes and Mike spent many summer days there playing football or some other sport. Afterwards they would go across the street and have some fun in the cool water of the pool. Wes was never the most athletic person but he enjoyed playing sports none the less and it was actually where and how he and Mike became friends.