by Love,Amy
Her hair was tied up in a bun, so I couldn’t tell how long it was or wasn’t. It was dark—like the color of expensive hardwood floors. She was brunette, but it wasn’t the same color all over. There were some lighter streaks here and there, probably not natural, but that was fine. I liked brunettes. I wasn’t one, so it was something different. Exotic, if you will. From where I was sitting, her eyes looked like they were dark, too. I wondered what color her nipples were, you couldn’t be sure whether they’d be brown or pink with the brunette girls.
She had been looking over at me when she was talking to the coach, him too. They were obviously talking about me. Understandable. Maybe she wanted an interview or something. I could give her one of those. She could get under the hood and find out who the real Dante Rock was, as long as she made the ordeal worth my while.
I wanted to give her a number rating, but I wanted to get closer first. I wanted to see if her skin was nice, if she had good teeth, those things that ruined an otherwise good package when they were there.
“Dante, get ready, you’re going on,” the coach said in my direction.
Showtime.
I stood up and walked up to the line. The hottie with the mic was a couple feet away. She saw me looking at her and looked over herself.
“Big fan?” I asked her. “If you hang around after the game, I can sign your chest,” I told her. She walked up to me.
“Hm, I think I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer.”
“I’m Dante Rock,” I said.
“I know who you are,” she told me. I was used to people looking up at me because of my height, and she was too, but she was pretty tall for a girl.
“Who do you write for? TMZ?”
“Not a chance. You know, there are a lot of articles about you on there.”
“You’ve been reading about me?”
“Nothing good. I’m Quinn Blaze.”
“Well, Quinn Blaze, you obviously want something from me.”
“An exclusive would be nice.”
“How about I give you that if you let me take you out?”
“Take you out” was code for “let me fuck you.” I mean, I would take her out first. I wasn’t a total animal. She’d get her dinner or her night out, or her wine, whatever she wanted, but then I would have to get what I wanted, too. She was hot. She was smoking. Was she sure she was a reporter? If she ever wanted a career change, she could model or be an old guy’s trophy wife.
“Gotta give me something to write about first,” she said. I got my signal and had to leave. I ran onto the court.
It was just twenty-four minutes. I could do this. I could do this. I had put myself through hours of training after worse nights than the one I had had. This would be a piece of cake. I could play ball in my sleep. It was what I was good at.
I ran out onto the court. There was applause and some quiet booing. Our competitor’s fans were mad that they were going to lose yet another away game. The score was fifty-one to forty-three and they were winning. For now.
I went through the motions, keeping my game simple but fast. I just needed to stay ahead of the other guys and I would be okay. As soon as I got to the three, I would shoot, no hesitation. I caught the ball and dribbled it over to our hoop. I jumped into the air to make the shot and felt another guy thud into my back, taking me down with him. I lost the ball, and it rolled away out of my reach and his too.
The ref had to have seen that.
It was a hard foul. It was a flagrant fucking foul. The guy fucking climbed my back to stop me from making the shot. Barely seconds into the second half and the guy got the fucking whistle blown. If I wasn’t at one hundred percent before, I was now. I was fucking livid. Who was the little shit who thought they could try? I got up and looked at the ref, waiting for him to say something.
I had my back turned, but I didn’t have to see it to feel it. I felt something hard connect with my shoulder and then the sound of whatever it was hitting the ground. The shit that happened next happened like it was slow motion. I turned slowly and saw the red cup on the wood floor of the court. I looked up into the crowd. It was like the oaf wanted me to know it was him.
It was this kid in red. He was laughing and pointing with the guy next to him. I looked him in the eye, and when his finally met mine, I lost it. I lunged for the guy, taking off into the stands. I had gotten like, halfway there, just about to take those steps three at a time to get at the little fucker, but I felt someone grab me and pulled me back, then more hands. There must have been at least three of my teammates trying to pull me back from going after the kid—and that was how many it would take.
I was so fucking angry. I heard the jeering and booing from the crowd, feeling my teammates practically drag me back onto the court and onto the bench. I was fuming. I left the bench. I wasn’t going back in. There was no way the ref would let me after that anyway. He was lucky. That little punk was lucky. If I had gotten my hands on him, I would have made him swallow that fucking cup through his asshole.
Why the fuck?
Why did fans act like that when they came to games? For them, it's just another day watching a fucking game. It was fun or whatever, but this was my fucking job. I was at work, and their dumb asses were here trying to be funny. It wasn’t my fault his team was losing. If he was mad about that, he should have thrown shit at them.
I got to the lockers. I was too mad to sit down. I wanted to do something. I wanted to punch something or break something… or someone.
Everything had been going great. It had been fine. What the fuck. Why today and why now? I had been great for the last six months. Fuck. Were they going to suspend me again? Were they just going to fire me, trade me?
I had fucked up. I had fucked up, and I had let that shitbag kid get the best of me. He wasn’t the one who could be suspended from the league, I was. I was and the dumbass kid got to go home and talk about how he almost got beat up by Dante Rock at a Charlotte Yellow Jackets game.
The press would have a field day with this. The coach would have my fucking ass. It wasn’t as if I had actually managed to do anything, but still. The damage was done. They'd probably have me pay another fine again… shit. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money to pay a fine. I could afford it, but I didn’t want to fucking pay again for a fan being an asshole.
If they didn’t know how to act at basketball games, then they needed to stay the fuck home and watch the games on their damn televisions. Why was that so hard to understand? You didn’t do shit like that and just get away with it.
I remembered the last time something like this had happened. It had been worse then. I hadn’t actually gotten to punch the shithead who thought it was a good idea to chuck a fucking glass bottle through the air, but I almost had. Everyone had sort of swarmed then, and in the disruption, I had lost the guy. That one had been a little more serious. We were actually lucky that there hadn’t been a stampede and also that neither myself—nor any of the other players—had ended up beating on one of the fans and gotten arrested.
Nobody was arrested, but I was suspended. Eighteen fucking months off the court because some idiot wanted to play games with me. You didn’t come to my court, my fucking place of work, and act like a hoodlum. You could take that shit outside. It was just plain disrespectful to me and all the guys on the court who had a game to play. It was disrespectful to the fans, too, who were sitting in their seats and trying to enjoy the game.
I was so mad. I should have just stayed where I was or asked the ref for a timeout. The idiot had it coming, but it wasn’t he who would potentially get in trouble for this. It was me. My mind raced as I thought about what the hell I was going to say to the coach when he wanted an explanation. I didn’t want to get suspended again. He would understand why the fuck I got mad, right?
There was no way this shit wasn’t going to be all over YouTube by tomorrow. Ha. Tomorrow, who was I kidding? Later tonight even. It would be all over the news, too. I shut my eyes realizing somethin
g.
Quinn.
She had been there. She was the news. She was probably going to report on it. God. I had never had to think about the impressions I made on women, but I hated thinking this was the impression that Quinn would leave with of me. I was a dick, yeah. I knew that and she seemed to know that, too. There was the whole fact that she was a reporter, and now she really had no reason to write anything positive about me, but on the other hand, I didn’t want her to think I was just this angry maniac on the court.
Whether or not I actually was, was beside the point. It wasn’t about what was true. It was about what she thought, and there was no way she was thinking anything good at the moment. I had never read anything by her, but she must be a good writer if she was being paid to do it. The thought of reading the smear piece she was probably going to write about me at this point was a little bit exciting, not because I was masochistic, but because I liked the thought of her having to talk to me again. I had liked our little bit of banter on the court. She seemed tough, like she took no shit. I appreciated that. She wouldn’t spare me. She would let me have it.
Not all publicity was good publicity. Bad publicity was bad publicity, and I had it out the ass. It went in levels. There was some bad publicity that was harmless, like rumors about who I was or wasn’t fucking. There was nothing too damaging about that.
Then there was the shit like this. Especially when it was coming off what had happened last time. If I would really have to take a loss for this, it would probably be bigger and worse than the last one I had taken. How much time off? Two years? Three? How much money?
I hated it. I hated this.
She would most likely be back here to talk to me. I didn’t want to talk to her. I couldn’t face her just yet. The game would be over soon. The other team had a lead on us. Were we going to win? Did I care?
Some time passed before the locker room started filling up. I was getting changed back into my street clothes because, fuck this, I was out. The guys would likely be back in soon. I owed them something. Like a thank you or whatever, but I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see anybody. I wanted to go the fuck home and go the fuck to sleep, my hangover was still killing me.
If it hadn’t been for Troy, Dre, and the other guys, I could have been leaving here in a police car. I sighed, thinking I didn’t want to get into it just then. I would talk to them, the reporters, the coach, and Quinn tomorrow. Tomorrow. That was when.
They must have heard me thinking that I didn’t want to talk to them because just like that, in they started coming.
“Yo, Rock, what the fuck?” one of my teammates asked. His name was Troy Lees. He was the center. I started getting changed faster.
“Did we win?” I asked.
“We won. You decided to lose your shit and get kicked off again. What the hell happened?
“He threw a cup at me, man, what was I supposed to do?” I said to him.
“Come on, man, still?”
Yeah. Still.
I knew he understood, but he was still mad. I got why I would be mad, too. Troy and I were friends. I was friends with a lot of the guys on the team, but Troy and I were buddies. Like, I used to go see him when he was out with his injury and he would come to my place to hang out when I had been suspended. He was this big, black dude. He was pretty intimidating, but he was a cool guy. Unlike me, he had the whole wife-and-kids thing going on. All great people, but it wasn’t for me.
“Coach is going to have your ass for this,” he said. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to think about it.
“It was the kid’s fault; he started it.”
“Even if the guy gets banned, coach is likely going to want to do something to you. You’re lucky you didn’t take him out.”
Yeah. I was lucky.
I thanked him and the other guys for helping me out and stopping me from murdering that kid.
So I had a couple problems with my anger. Who didn’t, right? I was an athlete, where did anyone think all that aggression and on-court fights come from? That wasn’t a good excuse, and I knew it. I had just lost my temper on the wrong person, and now I had to get ready to take my fucking punishment.
Was it right of me, trying to get away before coach came by and saw me, or before the after-game interviews started? I sighed, thinking it was a bitch move. I was no bitch. I wasn’t a pussy. I could face a little criticism if that was what the coach wanted to give me. I could face another fine too, whatever he wanted.
The reporters would want to hear something, Quinn included. If I got to talk to the coach first, maybe he could close the post-game interviews for today, or at least for me. He would want to hear from me first. He wasn’t just going to throw me to the wolves and let them have at my corpse. There weren’t even that many. It wasn’t as if this was a final championship game or anything; it wouldn’t be all that hard to dodge the guys who were there. It wasn’t like I had to say something when one of them asked me a question. I could just politely decline to answer.
Fuck, what about Quinn though? She would be… disappointed. I could see it now. I didn’t think she was in love with me or anything when we had been talking on the court, but now she would hate me. I was surprised at how much her opinion of me mattered to me. We didn’t even know each other, but she felt like someone I wanted to impress.
It was fine. I would just talk to the coach when he showed up, and then I would leave. All the rest could be handled tomorrow by public relations. Quinn… I didn’t know what I would do about Quinn. Maybe I would talk to her and tell her it was all a misunderstanding and release a statement directly to her tomorrow.
“Hey, Troy, guys. That chick reporter, the one with the brown hair, don’t talk to her,” I said.
“If she’s a reporter, we have to tell her something, Dante,” Troy said to me.
“Don’t tell her anything about the cup and me going after the guy.”
“Why not? She was there. She saw the whole thing. She probably has it all on tape.”
“I want to talk to her. Just don’t bring it up.”
What did I have to lose? It wasn’t like we were friends. If she had a poor opinion of me, she could just join the club.
Chapter Three
Quinn
What the fuck did he think he was doing?
What was wrong with him?
It wasn’t as if this was his first time; he knew what that sort of behavior could potentially earn him. I nearly had a stroke watching him lunge for that kid who had thrown the cup at him. There was just some shit you couldn’t do. The guy who had thrown the cup was a kid. He looked what, like, eighteen, nineteen?
Dante had to easily have a foot of height on him and ten years if not more in age. I shuddered thinking about the scandal that would potentially have followed. Did he just want to give away hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to that kid when he pressed charges? Because he would press charges. Even if he didn’t, the Yellow Jackets or Dante himself would have to compensate the guy to “pay for damages.”
I had been watching the game. The kid had thrown the cup first, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was what Dante had decided to do about it, and he had decided to lunge for the guy and basically try and kill him. Dante was so big, what could he do to an average-sized guy in a fight?
Oh, my god.
It made me so mad.
Why was he like this?
Did he realize the position he was in? First of all, he was in a position where he couldn’t afford to act like a wild animal whenever anyone made him mad. Didn’t sports help you channel your aggression? At that point, that kind of behavior from him was expected but that didn’t mean he had to go and prove all his detractors right.
He wasn’t irreplaceable. If he continued, the Yellow Jackets would not hesitate to get rid of his ass. At some point, he would be on suspension more than he was playing in games and he would just be a liability. Like a gangrenous limb that cost the team more than it rewarded the
m, they would cut him loose. He was nearly thirty, he needed to get his act together. There was only so much more time before people would stop entertaining his nonsense.
My job was to be impartial, but he made it so hard. So so hard.
The worst part was this shit… he had done it before.
I could remember it like it was yesterday. I wasn’t at the game myself, but there were so many videos of the event online, and I had seen it from every angle possible. It was big news in sports. Dante Rock, point guard of the Charlotte Yellow Jackets attacked a fan.
