Hammer: What do you think of spa day?
Me: I guess?
Hammer: Ask your panel of experts.
Me: Panel of what?
Hammer: Lucy and her friends. Ask them.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I turn to Lucy. “My roommate Hammer writes a man’s advice column for a women’s magazine. He wants me to consult you on whether his list of euphemisms for sex is any good. Feel free to say no.”
Charity slaps her hands against her face. “Oh my God. Is Harry Wright Jr., your roommate?” At my nod, she turns to Sutton and Lucy. “Harry writes ‘From My Three Eyes’ column in Monologue.”
“‘Three Eyes’? For real?” I had no idea what Hammer’s column was named.
“It’s cheeky. We know what it means.” She rolls her eyes at my shock.
Cheeky? Sounds vulgar. I realize my assumptions of women are all wrong, but that’s my own damn fault for not spending more time with them when they have their clothes on.
“I love ‘Three Eyes,’” Sutton exclaims. “I had no idea he was a football player or that he went to Western!”
“He wants to know if he can come over to hang.” I turn the phone again so Lucy can read his message, knowing she’ll appreciate it. I’m available to meet with my new fan club. Tell me when and where.
“Sure, why not?”
“Tell him to bring us something,” Sutton declares. “What do we want?”
“We’re out of microwave popcorn,”
“On it,” I tell them.
Me: Price of admission is popcorn. There are five of us.
Hammer: Make that six. Masters is bored now that Ellie is at work.
“Okay if my buddy Masters comes over? His wife is working.”
“Sure. The more the merrier, but someone will have to sit on the floor.”
“Hammer can. He’s used to it. He has three sisters.”
I don’t know if he’s used to sitting on the floor, but he’ll do it and he’ll like it because I’m not moving my ass from Lucy’s sofa until she physically hoists me out of here.
I’m part of her life now. She’s not getting rid of me.
21
Lucy
Matty is too damn charming for his own good, I decide the following morning.
And it isn’t his size or body or face that turns me on. It’s him. His easygoing nature, his willingness to answer anything put in front of him, the way he makes fun of himself. It’s so easy to be around him. He brought me sugar-free treats last night, watched four episodes of Say Yes to the Dress, and we laughed ourselves silly over Hammer’s list.
He left with his friends but not before giving me a long hug—one that left me in no doubt whether he’d have liked to stay the night. Both Charity and Sutton gave me a hard time, saying I was a fool not to take what was being offered to me on a silver platter.
I open my can of soup and consider the whole risk assessment thing. Sutton’s right. He doesn’t appear to be much of a risk at all, or no greater risk than any other guy I’ve gone out with before. And the rewards? Holy hell, the rewards are like having a million dollars at the bottom of a bungee jump. My stomach’s in my throat, but it’s totally worth it.
As I dump the can into the bowl, the wall phone rings. I pick it up, hoping it’s Matty. If it is, I know what I’m having right after lunch. I grin to myself.
My happiness fades when I hear the voice.
“It’s me. Let me up,” Ace says impatiently.
He texted a few times since the Tuesday night debacle, but I haven’t completely forgiven him. It was an asshole thing to do, and none of his texts have been apologies. I suppose he thinks I’m going to that movie with him tonight. I’m not. I scheduled a practice with Heather and Randall.
I feel a twinge of guilt that I broke my pact with Ace: he’d stay away from my roommates and I’d stay away from the football team.
It was easy up until I met Matty. After all, I lasted nearly three years unimpressed and unmoved by the entire team. And it’s not like there weren’t opportunities, but none of them interested me. If I’m going to date Matt, I’ll need to tell Ace. He deserves it.
However, Ace acting like an asshole doesn’t really mean we aren’t friends anymore. At some point, we’re going to have to hammer this issue out so we can go on being friends. I press ‘9’ on the phone for a few seconds to release the lobby door and let him in. “Hey, Sutton. Ace is here and I think he wants to talk about something.”
“Want me to disappear into the bedroom?” she asks from the couch where she’s been vegging out the past forty-five minutes.
“Do you mind?”
“Nah, I can work on my Roman history paper. Should I pop out and save you in say, twenty minutes?” She flicks the television off and pushes up off the sofa.
“Hopefully not.”
A knock on the door signals his arrival. Sutton mouths that I should yell if I need her.
I pull the door open to find Ace bracing himself with one hand against the wall. He looks worn and tired.
“Are you still drunk from last week?”
“I wish.” He raises his sunglasses so I get a good look at his bloodshot eyes. “Sorry about the other night.”
Finally, an apology. I forgive him immediately. No point in holding grudges, but hopefully he’ll tell me what’s wrong. Still, I tell him exactly what I thought of his behavior. “It was a shitty thing to do, but you’re forgiven.”
After all, I got to spend the night with Matt, no matter how chaste it was. And since then I’ve had my “spa day” with him. No, spa day does not work. The night spent with Matty was not full of zen moments and tinkling wind chimes but of hot, needy, sweaty excitement. I’ll need to report to Hammer that spa day as a euphemism for sex has to go. “Come on in.”
Ace sort of slumps in, walking heavily as if his joints hurt. He drops into a kitchen chair with a thud and leans back on two legs.
The kitchen set is my favorite piece of furniture in the whole apartment. Charity, Sutton, and I had driven to Chicago over Spring Break because that’s all Sutton and I could afford. Halfway there we stopped for lunch at a small-town diner and discovered they were renovating the place, getting rid of their old metal-rimmed tables and vinyl-covered chairs—the ones with the sparkly fabric underneath the plastic coating. We fell in love with them immediately and Charity’s parents paid to ship them back to our apartment.
The set will be Charity’s when we graduate, and I don’t want Ace breaking a chair leg before then. I hit him on the back of his head on my way to the microwave.
“Ouch! What the hell was that for?” he yelps. The chair, however, is safely back on all four legs.
“You were leaning back on the chair.” I stick my bowl of soup in the microwave and punch in the time. Turning around, I rest my butt against the counter and wait for Ace to tell me why he’s here. Other than to apologize.
He heaves a sigh. “I guess I deserve that.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on? First, you’re a total ass on Tuesday. If you didn’t want me to stay at your place, you should have told me.” I count off his sins on each finger. “Second, you send me lame ‘what’s up’ texts when you know you should be apologizing. If you don’t start talking, I’m calling your mom.”
“You got any more soup?” he asks, ignoring my question.
“Third, you’re ignoring me even though you’re about to eat my food, which is so rude there’s probably a picture of you next to the word in the dictionary right this minute.”
He waves his hands in surrender. “Yes. Fine, I’ll answer whatever you want, just…I need some food.”
The microwave beeps, and I carry the soup over to him. “Start talking.”
He stirs the beef stew around a few times, as if he can find the answer to his problem when the potatoes and carrots are positioned exactly right.
“Is it that your coach wants to replace you with a new player?”
His head jerks up. “Christ, is it
already out?”
My heart squeezes at the pain in his voice “No. No, it isn’t. I guessed based on what you said the other night.” He gulps, and the look on his face reminds me of the time he showed up on my doorstep when we were ten to tell me his daddy was moving out. I say as gently as possible, “Eat your soup, Ace.”
I turn and busy myself with the routine of lunch. All the noises of meal prep—opening the can of soup, dumping it into the bowl, opening the microwave—sound overloud when there’s complete silence behind me.
When Ace does speak, his voice is tight and hard. “The Warriors are signing a five-star recruit, ranked number three in the country. He’s a quarterback.”
“So?” I carry my heated soup over to the table. “You won the National Championship. He can start after you graduate.”
“Coach says that I can either move to safety or play backup.” His mouth twists into a bitter line. He shuts his eyes, likely wanting this to be a bad dream he wakes from.
I reach over and squeeze his hand. “What do you want to do?”
His eyelids flip open. “I’m the quarterback. I want to stay the quarterback.”
“But if you don’t move, then you’ll be benched, is that right?”
He releases a harsh laugh. “You know what’s so ironic? In football, the bench is for starters. You have to earn that place on the bench. No backup, no clipboard Jesus, dares to sit there. Don’t know why they call it benched in football.”
I let him vent. If he’s come here for advice, I don’t know what to tell him, what to say. The only thing I can offer is a sympathetic ear. “What’s the rest of your team say?”
“Like Iverson?” he asks snidely.
I carefully set my spoon by my bowl and remind myself that Ace is like a wolf with his foot in a trap—hurt and angry. “Like Iverson. Like Jack. Like Ahmed. Like all of them, Ace. You’re a team. It’s not golf. You can’t go off on your own, score a bunch of points, and then be hailed as a winner. You have to play with twenty-one other people in order to prevail.”
“Whose side are you on?” His hands fist on the table. He’s not hearing anything I’m saying.
“Yours, of course.”
“Really?” He stares at me as if he somehow can divine all the dirty thoughts I have about Matty in my head. He leans forward, and there’s a look, an expression, that I don’t like.
“Ace—” I say warningly.
He ignores me. The angry part of the wounded animal is taking over. “I’m sure that you think you’re qualified to give me advice about sacrifice and the greater good because you’re too piss-ass scared to step outside your careful little box you’ve constructed for yourself, but I want something bigger for myself.”
I strive for calm. Ace is lashing out, saying something he’ll regret and apologize for tomorrow. This is nothing.
“I know you’re hurting, JR, but—”
“Fuck.” He rises from the table so fast the chair tips over and soup splashes over the rims of the bowls. “I don’t know why I came here. You don’t understand. You’ll never understand.”
He slams the door so hard my jacket falls off the hook.
Sutton pokes her head out as soon as the apartment door slams shut.
“What was that all about?”
“Ace is having a difficult time,” I hedge. At the sink, I grab a sponge and start mopping up the mess. “He and the coach are having a disagreement.”
“Didn’t Ace just win them a championship?” Sutton pitches in without asking. I throw her a grateful look as she holds up the bowls so I can clean underneath them.
“That’s what I said, but I guess the coach is thinking about a new direction. Already. And Ace isn’t taking it well.”
“I bet he’s mad about the Matty Iverson thing, too.”
“I didn’t even get into that,” I admit. “Ace was too angry, and he stomped out of here before I could even bring it up.”
“I don’t know why you put up with him,” Sutton mutters.
“Right now? I don’t either.” My friendship with Ace started so long ago I can barely remember a time that he wasn’t part of my life, but even childhood bonds can get so strained that they break.
“At least tell me that you’re still thinking about Matty.”
I raise rueful eyes to hers. “I can’t stop.”
22
Matty
Two days later, I’ve added a second workout to my routine in order to sweat off some of the tension that not fucking is creating. Jerking it at home while I fantasize about Lucy isn’t working for me. I know what it’s like to be inside her, and my dick is treating my hand like I’m betraying it. I remind myself to be patient. She’ll come around.
After watching a wedding show one night, I got invited back for a second round of shows—this time a cooking competition. It didn’t matter what was on television. We could have been watching Sesame Street and I would’ve been happy.
Lucy’s eyes hardly ever stray far from me. I sense she’s on the verge of making a decision, and based on the number of times she’s invited me over, my guess is that fortune will fall on my side of the scale. Until then, I plan to tire my body out as much as I can.
Judging by the crowded room, it appears quite a few members of the team are feeling a little anxious about the upcoming Signing Day. There are twelve scholarships being offered, and the quality of recruits we’re getting at Western is better every year. This year? After we just won the National Championship? After Masters was on the cover of Sports Illustrated? The national media is watching us, and for a guy who wants to play at the next level, that is influential shit. Everyone wants to be a Warrior.
“Goddammit, Fozzy, watch where you’re going,” Hammer chides when Fozworth Royce, our three-hundred-pound carrot-topped center, brushes by him as Hammer’s setting down his weight bar.
“Why don’t you get out of the fucking aisle,” Fozzy mutters.
“I’m standing in the middle of the pad, Foz.” Hammer points to his feet, which are, to his credit, planted in the center of one of the large mats lining the floor in front of the wall of mirrors.
“You are now,” Fozzy replies sullenly as he walks away.
The sound of Jeezy’s “Seen It All” rocks in the background, punctuated by the grunts of about forty guys. We’ve got a week until Signing Day and then our asses have to be back in practice.
I spot Ace and Jack over in the corner, throwing a weighted medicine ball at each other. Bishop and a couple of his boys are doing box jumps. I turn back to Hammer, who’s still glaring at Fozzy’s back.
“Taylor Swift it, man,” I order.
“What the hell does that mean?”
I shake both my hands. “Shake it off.”
“You’re spending too much time with the girl squad.” Hammer leans over to start another rep of squats.
I lie back on the bench and continue my fly exercises. “Gee, sit around in the stench of passed gas and sour beer or watch television with three babes who smell like a candy store and look better than a Vicky’s Secret runway show. Can’t imagine why I’m hanging out with Luce and her roommates. Admit it, bro. You’re sour because they haven’t invited you back.”
“I think you’re being selfish, keeping them to yourself,” he whines. “I’ve got another list I want to run by them. This time I’m working on the top ten foods that look like dildos.”
“No. Not happening.”
“Okay. How about a list about the euphemisms for a girl’s cooch? I’m guessing sausage casing would be out. I can already see the brunette screwing up her little nose at me. Say, she dating anyone?”
“Charity? Nah, I don’t think so.”
“You oughta hook me up.”
“Who’s hooking who up?” Darryl asks.
“Matty’s girlfriend has two hot roommates. I think one of them should be doing me.” Hammer takes a break and swallows a half gallon of water.
“Matty, bruh, I didn’t know you were dating anyon
e,” Darryl says. He leans against the bar above the bench while I glare at Hammer. He’s going to jinx the whole deal.
“It’s early stages yet.”
“Is Masters contagious or something?” Darryl asks warily. “I never thought I’d see the day that you’d be dating someone. I guess that means more at the Gas Station for me.”
Stung, I bark back, “I’m not a poon hound. I haven’t dated anyone lately because I hadn’t met anyone worth dating.”
“Then introduce us.”
“No way.” I wipe my forehead with a towel. I’m trying to convince Lucy that I’m a decent guy worth risking her time and energy on. I bring these yahoos to the party and even though they mean it out of love, I’m already cringing at the types of embarrassing and unsavory stories they’ll trot out in an effort to impress her with their not-so-great wit.
“What the fuck, Foz? I have water up my fucking nose,” Hammer yelps. When I look up, the rest of Hammer’s water jug has been emptied over his face and chest. “Watch where you’re fucking going!”
I deduce by the water and the position of Foz at Hammer’s elbow that Fozzy must have bumped Hammer while he was drinking and the water splashed everywhere.
I wait for Fozzy to apologize but he doesn’t. Instead he takes the nearly empty jug, walks calmly over to me and dumps the rest of the contents over my head. I rip the plastic jug out of his hand and wipe myself off, counting silently to ten, before snapping. “What is your problem today? Your jock a little tight after one too many of momma’s cookies at Christmas?”
“You fucking defensive players. You think you’re so hot. That you won the Championship last year.” Fozzy leans closer, so close I can smell the meat he had for lunch and it’s not good. I shift away. He follows like a dank stalker. “That game that we lost last year. That was you guys fucking up. The offense scored thirty-five points. All you guys had to do was make one stop but instead, you allowed the team to score. A team that we embarrassed the year before. If anyone needs replacing on this team, it ain’t Ace.”
I look past him to Ace, who’s standing over in his corner looking smug as fuck. Doesn’t he get that this is bad for the team? No matter what happens, we can’t be fighting like this.
Jockblocked (Gridiron Book 2) Page 18
