Hate the Game

by Renshaw, Winter

  “Get a fucking room,” I say before storming off.

  I’m losing it.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  “Dude, what was that about?” Vin asks, chuckling. “You okay, man?”

  No. I’m not okay.

  “Yeah. Just going to grab some air for a sec.” I point to the front door. If they’re lucky, I’ll come back. I have half a mind to call it an early night before I make a jackass out of myself again—not that I honestly give a fuck what people think about me at the end of the day. But those two were having themselves a time and the last thing they needed was some drunk bastard interrupting them.

  I head out the front door and tug it closed, stepping outside to let the brisk air slap some sense into me. I exhale a clouded breath and head to the porch swing to my left—only it’s occupied.

  “Irie,” I say when I see the unmistakable outline of her face in the dim night. She’s illuminated by street lights and the glow of the garage lights, but it’s her.

  This time I’m fucking certain.

  “How long have you been out here?” I ask. It feels like forever ago we were sitting out back, having a talk before going our separate ways, but for all I know that was ten minutes ago. My concept of time always gets glitchy when I’ve been drinking.

  “Not long,” she says, nodding toward the street. “Just waiting for the bus.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yep.”

  I check the time on my phone. “It’s only ten.”

  “And your point?” She half laughs through her nose before scooting over and making room for me on the porch. “Why aren’t you inside? I saw they were passing out tequila shots a little bit ago.”

  How I missed her walking past the main room, I’m not sure.

  “Looked like you were having a good time,” she says. “Taking selfies and whatnot …”

  I roll my eyes as I take the spot beside her. The chair swings back with my weight and I lean my arm over her lap, grabbing the arm rest to brace myself while also making sure she doesn’t topple out. Not that she would. She isn’t shitfaced like me.

  “What are you going to do the rest of the night?” I ask.

  “Going to bed,” she says. “Nothing that would excite you.”

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Going to bed excites you?”

  “You plus a bed excites me,” I say, accidentally slurring.

  Irie tilts her head. “If you’re trying to be smooth, I have to be honest, Talon, it’s not going well for you.”

  I drag in a long, icy breath and let it go before smirking. “Appreciate the honesty. Liquid confidence is a hell of a thing.”

  “How much have you had to drink tonight? Besides the tequila shot, I mean. You weren’t this drunk twenty minutes ago when we were out back.”

  It’s only been twenty minutes?

  I was way off.

  “A couple of beers,” I say. The can of Miller Lite in my hand is still full, verging on room temperature now. I might as well dump it. The only thing worse than warm alcohol is … being rejected by Irie Davenport. “What is it about me that repulses you?”

  Irie’s gaze snaps to mine and she begins to cough, choking on her spit. “What? I never said I was repulsed by you.”

  “What is it about me that sends you running?”

  “Everything,” she answers without hesitation. “What is it about me that makes you so relentless?”

  “Everything.”

  Irie shakes her head, turning away so I can’t see her expression. I don’t know if she’s flattered or frustrated. I also don’t know if I’m sober enough to tell the difference.

  “My entire life, I’ve never been allowed to accept failure,” I tell her. “It’s not an option. You try or you die trying. Those are the only options.”

  “So you’re going to die trying to hook up with me?” she asks, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “I’m not good at giving up, Irie,” I say. “I’ve never worked my ass off for something and then walked way without it. I’m not a quitter. I literally don’t know how to quit.”

  “Then you should try,” she says, matter of fact. “Try to learn how to quit.”

  It takes everything I have not to kiss that smart mouth of hers, but I know what she’s saying. She has a point—one that I’m not ready to acknowledge.

  “This isn’t a game to me,” she tells me.

  “It isn’t a game to me either.”

  “Then why does it feel that way? Why does it feel like I’m being hunted for sport?” Her eyes rest deep on mine.

  “First time I saw you, we were at a house party. Freshman year. Second weekend in October. You were wearing this white sleeveless dress with buttons down the front,” I say. “It stopped a few inches above your knees. And you had these strappy sandals—tan leather, I think they were. Your hair was all the way down your back, stick straight. Bounced when you walked. And you had this wet, glossy pout that just …” I bite my lower lip, my mouth watering just thinking about the archived image in my head.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’m just saying, the first time I saw you, I literally stopped in my tracks. It was like a scene in a movie where everything fades into the background. All I saw was you.”

  “Okay. You were a horny nineteen-year-old and you saw a pretty girl at a party and decided you wanted to screw her,” she summarizes.

  “Yes,” I say. “And when I tried talking to you and you wanted nothing to do with me, I couldn’t get you out of my head.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “And then I saw you again,” I say. “Later that week. On campus. You were filling your water bottle at a fountain in Cherney Hall. Only it wasn’t your water bottle. I watched as you turned and handed it to some girl sitting on a bench. The girl was crying and you crouched down beside her. You put your hand on her shoulder and told her she was going to be okay.”

  Irie licks her lips, staring ahead, quiet for a moment. “She was in my English class. She’d just found out a close friend passed away back home.”

  “Next time I saw you, you were sitting outside Briar Hall on a white blanket and you were meditating. Of all things. Meditation. Right there in the open. The sun was shining. The wind was blowing your hair around your shoulders. All around you people were moving, walking, biking by, whatever. And there you were. Completely in the moment and not giving a flying fuck what anyone thought,” I say.

  “A lot of people meditate.”

  “Not like that. And not here. Not at a school where worrying about what people think of you is pretty much a graduation requirement.”

  “Do you meditate?” she asks.

  I pause. No one’s ever asked me that. “Before games. Yeah.”

  Always in private. Always behind closed doors.

  “The last thing I need before a big game is to get shit from one of my teammates,” I say. “It’s all about getting all that shit out of your head before, not carrying it out onto the field with you.”

  “I … I didn’t think you were into that,” she says.

  “There are a lot of things that would surprise you about me,” I say, voice low and soft as I turn to her. “I think you and I … we’re more alike than different.”

  Her chest rises and falls and her fingertips twitch, dancing slightly against her thighs. I’d give the whole fucking world to know what she’s thinking.

  “The first time I saw you,” she says a moment later. “You were heading to class. It was the first week actually. I had no idea who you were—I mean, that you played football here. Some guy came up and tried to talk to you and you literally ignored him. I think he wanted a picture? And you laughed at him and kept walking.”

  I swallow the hard lodge in the center of my throat.

  I remember that moment. I was late for class on the other side of campus, I’d just had my ass chewed by my coach about some play I didn’t study up on, and the last th
ing I wanted was to be bothered for a picture. The twerp even jumped out in front of me—almost made me trip over him, not so much as an “Excuse me.”

  “The second time I saw you,” Irie continues, “was at the party. When you were hitting on me. You walked over to me like I was this sure thing, that you were supposed to smile a bit and say a few charming things and I was supposed to let you throw me over your shoulder caveman-style and carry me off to some bedroom upstairs. I think you even told me you were a psychology major and you wanted to try to figure me out.”

  I laugh.

  She isn’t wrong.

  I was also drunk as fuck.

  “But the third time, Talon,” she says, “you were getting up in some guy’s face—one of your teammates I think because he looked like a linebacker. And you were telling him what a worthless piece of shit he was, that he should give up his spot on the team to someone who actually deserves it.”

  It’s true.

  I remember that day.

  His name was Matt Greene and he ended up dropping out that semester.

  I was going off on him because we were roommates and I caught him coming home one day with a brown paper bag filled with syringes and vials of steroids.

  If you can’t play with integrity, then don’t fucking play.

  “The fourth time—” she begins to say.

  “—Irie, I get it. You can stop now.”

  “I’m just saying, the guy that I’ve seen and the guy sitting next to me right now are two different people,” she says.

  “You’re right. They are,” I say. “I can be an asshole, Irie. I know that. But I swear to God, this? You and me? It’s genuine.”

  The rumble of a bus sounds in the distance.

  It’s almost time for her to go.

  “I wish I could believe you,” she says. “But at the end of the day, I know deep down it’s not me you want. It’s that victory you’ve been chasing all these years.”

  “It started out that way,” I say.

  She scoffs. “You realize there’s nothing you can say that’s going to convince me otherwise, right?”

  “Then why don’t I show you?” I ask. “Let me prove it to you.”

  “How?” She tucks a strand of silky hair behind one ear, brows raising as she studies me.

  The rumble of the bus grows louder. I feel it in my chest, reverberating in time with the hammer of my heart against my ribcage. In my head, there’s a countdown clock.

  5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 …

  This is it.

  This is my time to shine.

  I lift my hand to her face, cupping her soft cheek. She’s still as a statue, our eyes holding. I’m not even certain she’s breathing. She has every chance to protest, every chance to push me away, but she doesn’t.

  She knows what’s about to happen—and she’s starving for it as much as I am.

  I move in, taking my time, and her eyes flutter shut.

  Dragging the pad of my thumb against her full bottom lip, she shivers. Leaning in closer, closer still, I angle her mouth in the perfect position before grazing it with a tease of a kiss. While every part of me wants to claim her, punish her for playing hard to get all these years, I want her to enjoy this.

  I want to enjoy this.

  I bring my other hand to the side of her face and guide her closer, our lips pressing together harder as our kiss becomes less restrained. Within seconds, our tongues caress and her body softens with my touch. I breathe her in—icy air and exotic flowers—and just as I’m about to pull her into my lap, the rumble of the bus turns into the screeching of brakes.

  Irie pulls away, eyes wide and lips beginning to swell. “I have to go.”

  I reach for her arm to ask her to stay, but it’s too late.

  She’s already trotting down the sidewalk to catch her ride home.

  I watch her board and find a seat halfway down the middle before the bus drones away.

  Leaning, I stretch my arms over the back of the porch swing and gather in a generous lungful of January night, every part of me electrified as I replay that moment in my head again and again.

  I kissed Irie Davenport.

  I kissed Irie Davenport.

  And I’m going to kiss her again.

  Chapter 9

  Irie

  My lips are still on fire the second I walk into Aunt Bette’s. The bus ride was a blink-and-it’s-over eleven minutes, but I must have replayed that kiss a hundred times already. I swear I can still taste his cinnamon tongue, still feel the soft tease of his mouth grazing mine, and something tells me I’ll be feeling it still come tomorrow morning.

  “Irie, is that you?” Aunt Bette calls from the living room.

  I peer through the doorway, toward the dark void that flickers with the flash of late-night TV commercials.

  “No, it’s Clark Gable,” I tease back, hanging my purse on the back of a kitchen chair.

  Bette makes her way from the next room. “Smart ass.”

  I pour myself a glass of ice water.

  “Thought you were going to a party. Why are you home so early?” she asks.

  “Early? It’s almost eleven.” I take a quick drink.

  My mind replays the kiss—again, complete with the bus brakes screeching behind us. I took them as a warning sign to get the hell out of there, to pump the brakes before I let myself get carried away.

  “I’d ask if you met any cute guys, but obviously you wouldn’t be here if you did,” Aunt Bette says, one hand on her robe-covered hip. Her hair is in curlers and her red-framed glasses almost hide the ornery grin in her eyes.

  “Right. Not a one,” I say. I take another sip of ice water but I still feel him, still taste him.

  She squints, coming closer as she studies me. “Wait a minute. I know that look. You’re lying.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about …”

  “Your cheeks are all flushed and you’re all fidgety,” she says, examining me from head to toe. “What are you not telling me? Did something happen at that party? You met someone, didn’t you?”

  I can’t lie to Bette. She’s far too seasoned, far too versed in dealing with young women to know when someone’s not giving her the entire scoop, so I exhale. “I didn’t meet someone. I ran into someone.”

  She lifts a skinny brow. “Someone who’s evidently made you all hot and bothered.”

  Bette points to the kitchen table before taking a seat. I take the one beside her, knowing there’s no getting out of this.

  “What’s his name?” she asks.

  “Talon.”

  “Is he handsome?”

  I furrow my brow. “Yeah, but—”

  “Does he have nice breath?” she asks.

  I chuckle. “Yes.”

  “Is he nice?”

  “Only when he wants to be …” I roll my eyes.

  “Is he nice to you?”

  I bite my lip. “Yeah.”

  “Does he want to date you?” she asks.

  “More than anything in the world.”

  Aunt Bette slaps her wrinkled, elfin hand on the table, shocking the life into me for a moment. “Then what on God’s green earth are you doing at home? With me? Right now? You should be out with him! Having the time of your life!”

  She yanks her glasses off her face, her hands flailing as she talks. I’ve never seen her this worked up about anything, ever.

  “What’s this about, Aunt Bette?”

  “Would it kill you to live a little, Irie? My God. It’s not like I’m going to run back and tell your aunt and uncle you went out and had yourself some fun.” She buries her face in her hands.

  I don’t bother telling her that I’m pretty sure they don’t give a rat’s ass what I’m up to these days anyway. When Bette made her offer, they couldn’t ship me out here fast enough. After high school, I was no longer their problem.

  “You’re almost twenty-three years old,” Bette says, pointing her glasses at me. “You have no husband. No kids. No
bills. You’re never going to be as beautiful as you are right now, and I don’t say that to be harsh. It’s common knowledge. Once you hit thirty, your metabolism turns to shit and gravity makes everything just … hang.”

  With that, I rise from the table, laughing through my nose. “All right. I’m going to go to bed now. Thanks for the pep talk, Aunt Bette.”

  “I’m serious, Irie.” She turns in her chair as I head for the hall. “Live it up while you can. You won’t regret it. And if you do, well, regrets always make for good stories at parties.”

  “Goodnight,” I call out.

  I can’t deny Aunt Bette’s valid argument, but I also can’t throw four years out the window all because the man can kiss just as well as he can throw a football—maybe even better.

  I’m stronger than that.

  Even if I’m currently having a moment of weakness.

  Chapter 10

  Talon

  “Talon, good. You’re here.” Coach Jackson waves me into his office, where a silver-haired man with bronze skin sips coffee as he scans the wall full of plaques and trophies Monday morning. He called me while I was on my way to Anthro and told me to get here immediately, so this better be good. “Talon, this is Jerry Quick. Scout for the Richmond Hawks.”

  The man turns from Jackson’s Wall of Fame and extends his right hand toward mine. “Talon, wow. What a pleasure to finally meet you in person. Been watching you play for a long time.”

  I meet his grip with mine. He squeezes hard. I squeeze harder.

  “Why don’t we have a seat?” Coach points to the sofa and chair set up in the corner.

  A moment later, we’re all situated. Jerry won’t stop blinding me with his 3D smile and Coach’s knee won’t stop bouncing.

  “All right, I’m going to cut to the chase here,” Jerry says, producing a manila folder and splaying it open on the table between us. “We’d like to sign you.”

  I reach for the paperwork, pulling it close to read over the terms, and I maintain my best poker face as I re-read the numbers.