AllFreeNovel
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Tonight was our last game of the season, so Daniel had almost the whole team here to celebrate. He’s our captain, and he’s generous as shit. I don’t think he asked any of the guys to help with food or liquor, not to mention gas for this big bitch.
I know most guys couldn’t shovel over the money. Lyon gave Dan a handful of Benjis yesterday, once Dan had gotten confirmation from his family’s captain.
The two of them are pretty friendly: Ly and Dan. I heard them talking a couple weeks ago in the locker room, and I’m pretty sure it was about Ly becoming team captain in a few more years. Dan is a lineman, and Ly is a tight end—second string right now—and neither of them is consumed with playing, like I am.
Not that I would be team captain anyway. I’m not cut out for that shit. Lyon has always been. And that’s a good thing, that one of us likes being the life of the party, because I’d rather take a knee to the nuts than spend a bunch of time with other people—most days, anyway.
Nights like tonight, it’s cool. The bar is bleeding freely, there’s a bunch of not-quite-strippers in the cinema room, and I heard Murray’s making Mississippi hunch punch in the master bathroom.
I get a buzz on my phone and pull it out and yep, my boy Murray—our superstar wide receiver—is asking me do I know how to sink a honeydew melon. I laugh smoke into the humid air and turn around from my spot at the bow of the yacht. I flick my blunt over the rail and take the port side back toward the stern, to avoid where all the girls are, on the starboard deck. I’m kind of sick of Gillian and her mind games. If she wants me, she can come and find me inside.
I take my time going down the stairs and through the living area. It’s big—way bigger than the one on Robert’s yacht—and flashy as shit, with gold fixtures, a swank ass chandelier, and a bunch of leather furniture, all centered around the biggest flatscreen I’ve ever seen.
As I start down the rear hallway, I bump into McQueen and his girl, Fiona, with her hand in Mc’s jeans. I give him a grin and he slaps my shoulder.
I pass a couple of staterooms before I get to a wide-ass door that’s propped open with a fifth of tequila.
There’s a party in the bedroom: a bunch of the D and a harem of girls who could either be strippers or their girlfriends. Since I’m not sure which, I don’t say much either way.
I tip my chin at them, then bang on the bathroom door and yell, “It’s Kellan, dumbass. Open up!”
Murray slaps the door open. I catch it right before it hits me in the face, then give his cheek a hard swipe. He steps back and shakes his head.
“Man, this shit looked easy when my older brother did it.”
“Us little bros gotta stick together,” I say. He laughs at that, because Murray is six-foot-five and three hundred pounds of lethal muscle—and some long, fast legs—so he doesn’t seem like anybody’s little anything. He told me once his brother, an accountant, is five-foot-eight with a fro and wire-rimmed glasses.
I follow him deeper into the bathroom, which has a flowery, funeral parlor smell, and Murray points to the melon floating in a giant Tupperw
are box in the shower. “I tried to cut that shit with this knife—” he passes me a fillet knife from one of the sinks—“but that motherfucker will not budge.”
I laugh my way out of a smirk. “You know where the kitchen is, man?”
Murray nods.
“Go ask someone in there for a chopping block and a Kuhn Rikon melon knife, or something like that.”
“Kuhn Rikon, you say?”
I nod. “Whoever’s in there, they should know.”
I think about telling him what to look for if the kitchen is unmanned, but no way it will be. Not with this many people on board.
Murray takes a fuck while to come back, so after I use the fillet knife to finish slicing the three watermelons he busted open on the counter’s edge, I pour another bottle of Everclear into the box and stand at the door, listening to the boom of music from the bedroom.
I look around the bathroom.... at the giant whirlpool. Then I start the water, lock the door, pull my shoes and clothes off. Nothing like a good soak. I slide into the water with a bottle of Cristal.
I lean my head against one of the shell-shaped pillows on the tub’s side and let my breath out. I’m pretty fucking tired from this morning’s game, but very fucking happy. We went 7-3 this season, which is damn good for a team with me as quarterback.
I curl my right hand into a fist. Then I take a long pull of Cristal.
Now all I have to worry about is Gill. And Thanksgiving. My father will probably work the break away, and Barrett won’t come home—he’s down in Georgia, training with the Rangers—but even being in that fucking house makes it hard for me to breathe.
Dad’s expectations stalk me through every echoing corridor, and my mom is still all over. The place is like a fucking shrine to her. Her art, her murals. Even a tapestry she wove. I guess I never noticed how much I hated it in high school. How I tried not to go downstairs for much, or even be home at all. Who can blame me? I don’t think Dad has spent more than six or seven hours in a row at home since Mom’s death. Sometimes I think he’s trying to follow her, the way he always works and never sleeps. I know, I know—he re-wires tiny little baby hearts. Does things no one else knows how to do. But still...
I rub my forehead. My dad is a fucking prick.
The times we do see him, he makes Lyon get all stiff and quiet. Ly has got this low, serious voice he uses with Robert, like to show him he’s a real man or some shit. It doesn’t matter how much he trips over himself, trying to impress our father. Robert never bats an eye. He never has any praise to spare. At the end of every day we’re there, Ly goes to his room and shuts the door. He doesn’t even rant about what a dick Robert is—not anymore. He doesn’t say a word to me about our bastard Dad. He hasn’t in at least a year.
