Free Seeing Off the Johns by Rene S Perez II

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    Araceli was not, however, mourning the loss of any plans to be with John Mejia after high school. A rift had formed between the couple when John returned from a visit to Austin. He and Robison had toured the campus, had taken a few very unofficial swings at the Longhorn practice facility. Mejia was given what he called—in defense of his stupidity—a “dry and painful” handjob from a drunken coed at a party in the apartment of a red-shirt sophomore pitcher from Brenham. She’d cried tears over their relationship then—they both had. Against her better judgment and in a desperate attempt to hold onto the place she’d forged for herself in Greenton, Araceli took him back. But it was never the same.
    He began talking a lot more about the future, but her role in John’s plans seemed a peripheral one. He would mention being in school and playing ball and hoping for a future in pro ball and, after that, in coaching. The I became more pronounced as the we seemed to shrink on the horizon until Araceli was left behind like all of Greenton would soon be.
    She didn’t mention it, but, after he and Robison signed their commitment letters with UT, the end of their relationship hung on and around every minute they spent together. She told John that ‘commitment letters’ sounded funny to her, like some sort of pre-nuptial agreement he had made with the university. He laughed, but she saw that it was something much more meaningful and romantic to him. Officially joining the ranks of Roger Clemens and Burt Hooton and Spike Owen—cementing it in ink, on 25# paper, with all of Greenton and much of South Texas watching in person and on TV—was the biggest moment of John Mejia’s life. And while she was there, it was a moment not really involving Araceli, as they almost all would be from then on.
    That silently acknowledged inevitability arose every time John mentioned the time they would spend apart during his freshman and her senior year or his probable start in the minors, living out of a bag on the road, in buses, playing to half-filled stadiums inBumfuck, all in hopes of being mined up ahead of the other prospects on the field by a big league team—living the dream. She suffered the obvious with feigned indifference, a cold stoicism that seemed to hurt Mejia more than the fact that soon he would break the heart of the only person he’d ever loved.
    The night before he and Robison left town—the night before they died—John took Araceli as far away from the party lights at the Saenz ranch as its boundaries let him. He drove his father’s truck along a dirt path that led around the perimeter of the property, stopping a few miles away when they reached a locked gate.
    John turned off the engine. He and Araceli got out of the truck and climbed onto a blanket John laid out on its bed. They didn’t say a word. When they finished, she wrapped the blanket around them. John cried silently on her chest, his tears rolling up to her collarbone and down off her back. Araceli lay counting stars, certain that this was the end, determined not to break down with him.
    The next day, on the front lawn of his parents’ house, John Mejia broke up with Araceli Monsevais. Right there in front of everyone. “We have to break up,” he said. A few tears fell, but as soon as Araceli felt them coming, she steeled herself and stopped. He held her and whispered to her that he would always love her and be her friend. He told her he still wanted her to go to UT when she graduated, to be with him. He said he would call her every day and asked her to please look after his mother which, last-minute public breakup or not, she knew wasn’t asking too much.
    All of Greenton watched, oblivious to the fact that their king and queen were a couple no longer. She told herself that she’d known it was coming, but still it hurt like she thought a gunshot might. Araceli was proud