Henry's End by Julie Richman Page B

seven days a week. During what felt like a magical month, deep bonds were formed, and two very significant relationships emerged.
    Schooner and Henry became close and unlikely friends – a tennis star from the all-guys jock dorm and a gay guy from the freak and stoner dorm. Each had never felt more comfortable with another male friend, shedding masks they thought they had to wear for the world, abandoning deep secrets, while learning about who they were to become as men through lessons learned via their friendship.
    The other relationship that formed during Interim was between Schooner and Mia. Schooner had a girlfriend right from the start of freshman year, and they were immediately considered a power couple on campus. Even though they were freshmen, there wasn’t a soul on campus who didn’t know who CJ and Schooner were. CJ MacAllister looked like she belonged with Schooner Moore. Blonde and beautiful, the former prom queen was like a royal at court, always surrounded by her mean-girl minions that often did her bidding. That January, CJ was in Europe studying abroad.
    As unlikely a pairing as Schooner and Henry, Schooner and Mia couldn’t have seemed like an odder coupling on their small, Southern California campus filled with golden boys and flaxen-haired beauties. Schooner was the quintessential California golden boy. A child model from age four, the tall blonde, blue-eyed athlete seemed like an unlikely love for the little, curly- haired brunette intellectual from New York City. Mia was a quirky, free-spirit, while Schooner fell captive to everyone’s expectations of him.
    But this love that formed burned with an incandescent intensity, as each experienced that all-consuming first love. There was no doubt in either of their minds that the other was their one and only true love, the person they wanted to share an entire lifetime, their twin flame.
    But fate would deal Schooner a blow so powerful that while he appeared whole and unscathed after a period of time, nothing could have been further from the truth.
    Schooner Moore died on the last day of their freshman year in college. But only someone as close to him as Henry Clark would actually know his friend’s soul had vacated his handsome shell, as he slipped on a mask for all the world to see, pretending he was the same and had gone on living.
    But he had not.
    Coming back to Henry and Mia’s dorm after his final exam on the last day of school, Schooner’s plan had been to spend some time with Mia before she left for the airport to fly back home to New York for the summer. Greeted by an empty dorm room with no Mia, and no note from Mia saying goodbye, the handsome blonde was crushed, knowing deep in his soul that all his dreams had been ripped from him in an instant. She was gone. Just gone.
    In a moment of frustration, Schooner slammed his fist into a concrete block wall in the dorm’s hallway, smashing several bones and ending his bright tennis career. Every part of what he loved died that day.
    Heartbroken and not knowing why the love of his life left him, never returning to school, Schooner closed himself off to situations he couldn’t control, situations that could hurt him. Love was never going to be his focus, but building a business empire of high-end, state of the art fitness and entertainment complexes would become his life’s passion. That, and his children, became the laser focal points in Schooner Moore’s life.
    Knowing Mia the way he did, Henry knew something very significant had happened on that last night of freshman year to make Mia run and never return. Schooner was so deeply entrenched in Mia’s soul that walking away and never turning back had to have been born of a deep, shattering pain. Henry knew that. And he also knew the only one with any leverage to inflict that kind of pain upon Mia, was Schooner’s ex-girlfriend, CJ.
    He didn’t know what she had done. But he knew she had done something to turn fate on its axis and invoke an