by Alexa Anna
“Yeah,” I say. “That was easily the best session yet.”
“And the craziest,” says Zach.
“And the most intense,” I say.
“I’m going to be sore tomorrow, that’s for sure,” says Zach.
“Me, too,” I say. “Fuck, that was worse than some of the preseason workouts I’ve had to do.”
“Same,” says Zach, yawing wildly.
We’re driving down a dark, narrow dirt road outside of town. The moon is shining down from above us.
“The full moon is crazy, isn’t it?” says Zach.
“Why?” I say.
Zach shrugs. “Just looks weird,” he says.
I laugh. “Very profound,” I say.
“What do you want? I ain’t no astronomy teacher.”
“That’s clear,” I say, laughing.
Zach chuckles himself and gives me a punch in the arm.
“I bet Aly’s worn out,” Zach says.
I nod.
We just dropped her off at her mother’s house. It’s about five in the morning, so the timing works out for Aly. She can say she got an early train or bus into town, or that she got a ride.
“Let’s get some shut eye,” says Zach.
“Since when do you talk like that?” I say.
Zach shrugs. “Isn’t that what you guys say around these parts?”
“Don’t try to talk like us,” I advise.
“Hey,” says Zach. “What’s that up there?”
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice slowing down as I slow down the truck.
There’s something strange off to the side of the road. It looks like a big dark mass. Maybe it’s a truck or something that’s crashed off to the side. Maybe it’s someone having automotive trouble. The weird thing is that I can’t see it even though the moon is full.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” says Zach.
“Come on,” I say. “Someone might be having trouble.”
Just as I say that, someone steps out onto the road and waves what looks like a white shirt.
He or she steps right in front of the path of the pickup.
I slam on the brakes and dust and dirt go flying up all around us.
“What’s going on?” I shout out of the window. “Are you crazy?”
“Yeah what the fuck, man?” yells Zach.
The person just stands there right in front of the truck.
“Doesn’t that person look familiar?” says Zach.
“I can’t see anything,” I say, peering ahead, but this strange person is holding the t-shirt in front of his or her face. I think it’s a guy…
The gang…
What about the gang?
I open the door to the cab against my better judgment. As soon as I do, two guys run into me from either side, pummeling me with their fists. I shove at one of them and upper cut the other in the stomach.
I’m exhausted from the multi-hour sex session, but I can still fight. I’m never someone you want to mess around with.
The attack comes out of nowhere, but I’m ready.
Zach jumps out of his side of the car, and for a moment I think he’s going to help me out. But two guys jump him, and pretty soon he has his own hands full.
My fist connects with one of their heads, but at the same time someone gets an uppercut into my solar plexus. I tense them but the hit is a good, hard one and it knocks my breath out of me for a moment.
There are too many of them. They’re rushing out from all around now. Five of them all together. Then ten. Then twenty of them.
Someone hits me in the leg with a metal baseball bat and I fall down.
On the other side of the truck, I hear Zach going down, probably taking out a couple of them while he does so.
There are too many of them. But I’m still fighting. I’m kicking and punching. My foot connects with a skull, making a loud crack.
Suddenly, the fighting stops. The attack ceases and everyone withdraws.
A man I recognize from the other day walks slowly up to me, his hands free of weapons. He has a sinister look on his face… it’s the one with the scar. The one who has been extorting money from my dad.
My lungs fill with rage and I spit at him, the spit flying high and landing on his face. He calmly wipes it off, his expression unreadable and frozen.
I’m too injured. I’ve taken too many punches and too many kicks and too many baseball bats. It was all happening so fast that I completely lost track. But I’m pretty beat up. I can barely move my body. There’s no way I can even get to my feet right now.
“You interfered with us the other day,” he says. “I don’t take kindly to that. My name is Cain, and what you just experienced was a minor attack by my gang.”
“What do you want?” I say.
I look over and underneath the truck, I can see Zach lying there on the ground. It looks like he’s passed out. They’ve at least stopped beating the shit out of him. There are six or seven guys lying around him at his feet. Looks like he took a lot of them out before he went down.
“Let us conduct our business,” says Cain, the scar rippling across his face as he talks. “This is our town now.”
“Ah,” I say. “I know how this goes. I’ve seen it in the movies. I ask you what happens if I don’t obey and you threaten me or my family, right?”
Cain nods, the very edges of his lips turning up the slightest and most sadistic smile I’ve ever seen on a human.
“Word gets around,” he says. “I know all about your lover. Or, should I say, the lover that you and your friend share.”
Does he mean Aly? There’s no mistaking it. He’s threatening Aly. How the hell does he know about her, though?
“You’re threatening our female friend?” I say.
“We’ve been watching you,” said Cain. His scar looks eerie and vicious in the moonlight, as if it’s made of some special reflective material. “And we’ve been watching her. We own this town. Don’t you forget it.”
“So this is where I tell you I’ll leave you alone and let my dad give you all his money,” I say.
Cain nods. “I notice your sarcasm and don’t appreciate it,” he says. He walks closer to me and gives me a vicious kick in the stomach. It hurts.
But I spit on him anyway again.
“It would be wise for you to leave us alone,” says Cain.
I nod. “Message received.”
There’s really nothing more I can say. I can’t fight this many guys at once, especially not with me on the ground and Zach knocked out.
Cain gives his henchmen a nod and a hand sign. They head back into their van, which is parked on the side of the road. They quickly and efficiently grab the guys that Zach knocked out and the guys that I knocked out and toss them into the van.
I watch from the ground as their van speeds off into the moonlight night, kicking up dirt and pebbles which shower me and Zach.
I get up, groaning. My body already hurts all over. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have some wicked bruises. Nothing feels broken, though.
I’ve been dealt worse tackles in football. I can just shake this off. I’m just glad we already dropped Aly off and she wasn’t here for this. That’s interesting, I think to myself—my first instinct is to protect her, to keep her safe.
I wince as I walk over to where Zach’s lying on the ground. I nudge him with my foot.
“Get up, man,” I say, but he’s out cold. That’s what this gang will do you to you when you take this many of them out.
Zach’s got some cuts on him but he looks OK overall. I bend down and shake him.
Finally, he rouses, opening his eyes slowly. One is starting to swell.
“How many did I get?” says Zach, wincing as I help him to his feet.
“More than me,” I say. “At least six.”
Zach nods and we both get back into the pickup, and I crank the engine and we drive wordlessly into town. I figure we shouldn’t go back to my parents’ house, since
the sun is starting to rise on the horizon, and I need to think of what to tell them about what happened—I can’t just show up at their place with torn clothes looking like this without some excuse.
So we eat breakfast at a diner that’s been here for the last fifty years easily. We sip coffee and I explain to Zach what Cain, the gang leader, told me.
“Fuck him,” says Zach. “He can’t tell us what to do. We can’t just let him steal your dad’s money and leave your dad homeless or whatever.”
I nod. “That’s how I feel about it too,” I say. “But what about Aly? He basically threatened her. What are we going to do?”
Zach shrugs and winces in pain as he does so. “We’ll think of something,” he says. “We just got to think about it like football.”
I shovel the last spoonful of hash browns and eggs into my mouth and I start to feel a little better with the food in me, warming me up. “What do you mean, like football?” I say.
“Like a football play,” says Zach, fishing a pen from his pocket and pulling a napkin close to him. He starts making little drawings, with X’s, O’s, and arrows on the napkin. “In football, right, you always think the other team has a chance of winning?”
“Very profound,” I say, sarcastically.
“But,” says Zach, ignoring me. “You each have a chance of winning. Just ‘cause they got more guys doesn’t mean anything, so long as we plan it out right.”
He holds up the napkin so I can see it better. It’s like a light bulb goes off in my head. I think I’m starting to understand his plan.
“See,” says Zach, gesturing to the napkin. “All we have to do it plan it out right.”
I nod. “I think I see what you mean,” I say. “But you’d better put that away in case someone here knows the gang. You don’t know who they’ve got working for them.”
“Right,” says Zach, stuffing the napkin in his pocket, looking around, and draining the last of his coffee.
By the time we drive back to my parents’ house, it’s 7 o’clock and I’ve completely forgotten to come up with an excuse.
Well, I think to myself, maybe they’re still asleep.
But of course, they’re not. My dad and mom are seated at the kitchen table like always. My dad’s got the paper in front of him, and my mom looks at me nervously.
“What’s up?” I say.
They exchange glances as Zach and I walk in.
To my surprise, they don’t take a second look at our clothes, our bruises, or Zach’s swollen eye. They seem to be preoccupied with something else entirely.
“We read the article,” says my mom in a hushed voice. “How could you, Colton?”
“How could I what?” I say “What are you talking about?”
“Disgusting,” grunts my dad, sounding much more displeased than normal. “I ask you to take care of her, and you just corrupt her with your… friend here, if that’s what you want to call him. She’s a nice girl. I just asked you to make sure she’s OK in the big city after her dad died… and you go and… do this to her.”
My dad’s getting so worked he can’t even talk right.
“Do what?” I say, calmly. “What did I do to her?”
My mom starts crying.
“I can’t believe you, Colton,” she says, her head in her hands. “All the stories about you were true… You and your friend sleep with the same women… at the same time. But it’s right here in the morning paper. Someone in New York followed you three and found out what you were doing. Did you think you could get away with it, being a pro football player? You’re a celebrity. You’re supposed to be a role model for the kids, for everyone. And they found out. Of course they found out! How could you?”
I nod.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s true.”
“Degenerates!” screams my dad, picking up the newspaper and chucking it at me.
I don’t bother dodging it and it hits me in the face. I’ve received much worse blows to the face today, though, and it doesn’t bother me. It takes a lot more than this to get me angry.
Zach
Every time I open my jaw I wince in pain, but I do it anyway.
“Listen,” I say. “I can tell that your son’s not going to say anything that might further upset you and that’s because he cares about you so much.”
Colton’s parents stare at me with their jaws open. They obviously can’t believe that I would dare to speak up in a situation like this. After all, I’m the degenerate that their son fucks women with. Who knows what they think actually happens—in my mind, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. After all, what’s wrong with giving a woman double the pleasure that one man could?
Anyway, I’m actually in a unique position here, standing here in the kitchen. Since I’m not their son, I doubt they’re going to try to throw anything at me.
The paper lies at Colton’s feet.
If they do throw something at me, that’s fine with me.
“You don’t seem to know your son very well,” I say. “But I do. He’s been my best friend since college.”
Mr. Smith rolls his eyes and Mrs. Smith continues to cry. Obviously, they’re just thinking about what horrible degenerate sex acts their son has been up to recently, with me as a willing accomplice.
“This is going to surprise you, I suppose,” I say, speaking slowly and carefully, partly because of the pain in my jaw, and partly because I really want them to listen. “But Colton did nothing but try to help Aly. He got her out of a really bad living situation with a crazy drug addict person. Then, he let her stay at his apartment, even though I was already there.”
Colton groans. “Not good…” he whispers.
“So it’s all true!” shouts Colton’s dad. “I’m hearing it from the horse’s mouth.”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s true we’re dating Aly. But we care about her, don’t we, Colton?”
Colton nods stiffly.
I have to say this. I know Colton doesn’t want me to and I know his mom doesn’t either, or his dad. But this is the position I’m in—Colton’s not going to say it so I have to. He might be mad at me, but that’s that. I have to do what I think is right.
“And the only reason he came home,” I say, “is to help you with your gang problem, Mr. Smith. And that’s why I came too, because Colton is my best bro and I wanted to help him out.”
“You told him?” shouts Mr. Smith to his wife, who looks horrified.
Colton doesn’t seem to respond.
“He just wanted to help,” I say.
“Get out!” shouts Mr. Smith, picking up his coffee cup and holding it as if he wants to throw it as us like the newspaper.
“Come on,” says Colton quietly to me. “Let’s go.”
We head out of the house. There’s yelling inside. His parents are arguing.
“Shit, man,” I say, trying to put my arm on his shoulder, but something in my own shoulders hurts too much. “I’m sorry, I guess I said the wrong thing back there.”
“Yeah,” says Colton. “But I know you meant well.”
I sigh. “What the fuck are we going to do now?” I say. “Back to New York?”
Colton shakes his head. “I liked your plan in the diner,” he says. “Treat it like a football game.”
“You still want to help your dad after all that?” I say. “After he called us disgusting pigs or whatever, and after he threw us out of the house.”
Colton nods. “Yeah,” he says. “What can I say? I want to help the stubborn bastard.”
I nod my head. “All right,” I say. “Let’s do it. But first, we need to sleep.”
Colton laughs. Despite his injuries and everything, he laughs. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s been one hell of a night. We need to get some rest.”
We climb into the old pickup and drive out to the same field that we enjoyed so much last night with Aly. We head right into the middle of it and fall, park the pickup, and head into the back bed to fall asleep. This way, no one will be a
ble to find us here, not the gang, not Colton’s parents.
When we wake up, the sun is high in the sky.
“Fuck,” I say, moving slowly. “I feel terrible.”
“I feel like I got run over by a truck,” says Colton.
“You don’t look so good, either,” I say, taking a look at him. His bruises have grown while we slept and his face is scratched up from someone’s fingernails.
“You should take a look at yourself, hot shot,” says Colton.
I pull down the mirror and brush the dirt and cobwebs off it. Holy shit, I look horrible. My eye is really swollen and red.
“You think I’ll be OK?” I say.
Colton shrugs.
“Whatever,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
Colton nods.
“So what’s the plan?” I say.
“The plan?” says Colton.
“Yeah,” I say. “Like what are we going to do and all that?”
“Hey,” says Colton. “You’re the one who admitted all that stuff to my parents, so it’s your fault we got kicked out.”
“What happened to you while we slept?” I say. “You were fine with it before.”
“I’m sorry,” says Colton, his tone suddenly changing. “I guess I’m just taking it out on you is all. You’re right, it’s not your fault. You did the right thing trying to explain it them.”
“No worries, buddy,” I say, patting him on the arm. He winces a little as I touch him and I have to admit I’m beat up so bad that my arm actually hurts as I lift it up.
“So what are we going to do?” says Colton. “Should we go see Aly?”
I nod, then grin at Colton. “Maybe she can help us out with this mess. She’s pretty smart, you know”
“Smarter than us,” says Colton.
I laugh and grin at him. “We’re just a couple of pro football playing knuckleheads, always trying to use our fists when there’s often a smarter solution. Maybe Aly will know what that smarter option is.”
“First,” says Colton. “Let’s get a hotel room so we have a place to stay.”
We drive over to the next town, which is about half an hour away, and get a hotel room there. We figure it’s better to avoid any entanglement with more people in the town, more gossip. We don’t want to make things harder than they already are on Aly.
