The Big House on the Prairie.

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Five :: Exodus, Part Two

It didn’t take long for Sin City to sink its hooks into me. I was immediately enamored with Las Vegas the moment we stepped off the plane. Slot machines lined the airport, and the massive "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign greeted us as we descended the escalator from our gate. It was exactly the kind of glitz and glamour I needed—a temporary escape from everything back home.

Keiyana’s parents had reluctantly allowed her to spend Thanksgiving away on this impromptu trip. Maybe they knew that if they said no, she’d go anyway.

Thanks to Texas’ Name, Image, and Likeness laws, I was able to make a decent amount of money as a high school athlete. Nothing life-changing, but enough to fund a four-day trip to Vegas. Since I was only seventeen, we used Sara’s sister, Irene, to help us book a suite and get our hands on some fake IDs. They weren’t great, but we figured that as long as we spent money, no one would look too hard.

We landed on Wednesday and spent the day walking the Strip. We didn’t dare go into too many casinos—too nervous about being carded and losing our fake IDs. Still, it was a blast: the people-watching, the fountains, the towering hotels we wandered past. It felt like another world. I’d traveled a lot for recruiting visits, but those trips were mostly campus tours and sleepy college towns. We’d gone to New York once when I was younger, but all I remembered was the crowded sidewalks. This? This was something else.

On Thanksgiving, we drove about thirty minutes off the Strip to Irene’s apartment. She lived there with her boyfriend and a roommate and had invited a few friends over. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties—transplants from all over the country who’d come to Vegas chasing something. As they swapped stories about bartending, failed relationships, and wild nights, I felt like a kid who’d been allowed to sit at the grown-up table. I also admired the makeshift community they’d built—strangers who had found each other and made something that felt like home.

Still, I couldn’t shake the guilt. I’d left Marianne and Evan behind in Prairie View to have what was probably a quiet, sad dinner with my father. It had only been a few weeks since my mother died. She always made sure Thanksgiving was special.

Even before my father took over as the family’s patriarch, my mother had become its matriarch. Cheryl had never been a cook, let alone a host. In the early years of their marriage, my mom would cook Thanksgiving dinner at my grandfather’s house, waving off the staff.

"Let them ladies go be with their own families, Papa Book," she’d say. "This day is about family, and they ain’t family."

Even when the cancer was ravaging her body, she somehow found the strength to get through the day, cooking all the dishes and putting on a brave face. If someone didn’t have a place to go for Thanksgiving, they’d end up at our table. She made them family, if only for the day. As much as I appreciated what Irene and her friends had created, it wasn’t the same. My family was in Prairie View. That’s where I should have been.

But our flight wasn’t until Saturday. I wanted to go home—but I couldn’t yet. And in those two extra days, everything changed.

Sara wanted to spend time with her sister, who was off work that Friday. We dropped her off at Irene’s apartment in the morning, and then it was just me and Keiyana. Left to our own devices, we snuck into pool parties, tested our luck with the fake IDs at the casinos.

We gambled, we drank, we danced at the club where Irene worked—she got us in without paying the ridiculous cover. For the first time since my mom passed, I didn’t think about her. Not once.

When we landed back in Houston two days later, I wasn’t ready to return to real life. Vegas had been too fun. Too freeing.

I called the coaches at Texas and told them I wouldn’t be signing on Early Signing Day, which was just weeks away. What they didn’t know—what no one knew—was that I wouldn’t be signing anywhere. I wasn’t ready. Not for college. Not emotionally.

After everything that had happened, losing my mom had left me unmoored. I wasn’t ready to lose Keiyana too. I wanted to finish my senior year the right way—go to prom, walk across that stage at graduation, do all of it—with her.
Next release: 7/28/2025

[redsox907]

usually you go to Vegas to get over your girl, not fall more in love with her

[djp73]

UNLV is an interesting choice

[The JZA]

Hopefully he don't don't pull an Jozif Farrakhan

[Caesar]

Keiyana was throwing lamps at this man's head and he fell in love with her?

[Soapy]

usually you go to Vegas to get over your girl, not fall more in love with her

Spoken from experience, bro?

UNLV is an interesting choice

hmmm

Hopefully he don't don't pull an Jozif Farrakhan

that can mean a lot of things

Keiyana was throwing lamps at this man's head and he fell in love with her?

love is complicated

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Five :: Exodus, Part Three

I had stopped responding to college coaches that winter of my senior year. Not because I was being difficult, or dramatic, or indecisive — I just didn’t have anything left to say. Every call, every text, every email felt like noise. Their questions about my future felt small in the wake of everything I had just lost. I pushed my commitment date back to National Signing Day in February, not because I thought I’d be ready by then, but because I knew — even back in December — that I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t willing. I wasn’t anything.

And when February came, I still wasn’t ready. I spent that day with my phone on silent, ignoring the barrage of calls from coaches, reporters, even Uncle Sam. My father, to his credit, didn’t press me. He barely said a word about it. He had his own battles to wage, his own grief to swallow.

The article hadn’t cost him the mayor’s office, but it had cost him something. The shine he once had was gone. His name no longer carried the same weight — not without her behind it. My mother wasn’t just his wife. She was his ballast, his direction, the one who kept him steady enough to win a national championship at Texas and then become the mayor of their hometown. Without her, my father might have been nothing more than a line in the obituary of his own father.

After she died, he buried himself in work. Stopped working from home. Stopped making small talk. When he was around, he wasn’t present. He hired a live-in maid — a young Latina woman — to take care of the house and help with my siblings. Gossip about her started immediately. It didn’t matter if anything was true. People were always looking for something to confirm what they already wanted to believe about him. And eventually, that bled onto me too. At some point, folks started whispering that I hadn’t signed with Texas because I was holding out for a better NIL deal. It wasn’t true. The package had already been finalized, and I’d actually lost money by not enrolling early. But the truth didn’t matter once the narrative started spinning.

The second trip to Las Vegas was my idea. That much, I remember clearly.

Spring break was coming up, and I had no interest in returning to South Padre with our friend group. I couldn’t bring myself to pretend to be excited about half-drunk beach bonfires and playlists we’d already overplayed. I wanted something quieter. Something further away. Keiyana understood. She always did. The others couldn’t swing it — they didn’t have a father with a credit card and no questions policy. So just like before, it was me and her. This time for a full week. We stayed at Irene’s place — her roommate had recently moved out — so we had a spare room and some breathing space.

We didn’t hang around the Strip much this time. We booked an ATV tour through the desert. We hiked through winding mountain trails. We visited the Grand Canyon and stood on the edge in awe. I didn’t feel like a tourist anymore. I felt small in a good way — like I could exhale for the first time in months.

The first trip to Vegas had given me joy, in fleeting bursts. A blur of neon and music that drowned out the grief long enough for me to catch my breath. But the second trip? The second trip gave me something different.

It gave me stillness.

As we reached the peak near Rockville, Utah, and looked out over the vast stretch of cliffs and sky, I felt something shift inside me. I wasn’t trying to forget her anymore. I wasn’t pushing the memories away like I had during football games or parties or late nights drinking just enough to dull the edge. I was accepting it. All of it. My mom’s death. My father’s distance. The silence that had taken over my life like fog. I wasn’t at peace despite those things. I was at peace with them.

On the long drive back to Irene’s apartment, I half-joked when I turned to Keiyana and said, “I don’t want to go back home.”

She looked over at me, serious. “I don’t either.”

At the time, I was only half-serious.

But I wouldn’t be for long.
Next release: 7/30/2025

[Caesar]

UNLV huh? Pops gonna be out there back on the prowl after he knock up that maid and send her to New Mexico with $600, too.

[The JZA]

Man essentially loss both parents

[redsox907]

Spoken from experience, bro?

Going to be interesting how his Pops take him going to Vegas. I could see Soap pulling a fast one and sending homie to the Wolf Pack instead