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5 The Final Countdown
Sophomore Year
“God dammit!”Alex storms into the locker room, not caring he’s making himself easy fodder for the varsity team with his little temper tantrum.
I glance at the other side of the room, waiting for fallout that never comes. The juniors and seniors on the team are too busy gearing up for the playoffs to care about us loser JV guys. Thank God.
I don’t want any repeats of the dick measuring contest from earlier this year.
Mike rolls his eyes at me then turns to Alex. “What’s got your panties all in a bunch?”
“I got turned down for a date!” Alex spits.
A few lockers away, Christian peeks around his door, his eyes wide. “You? You, the amazing Alex Fossoway, got turned down for a date?”
The expression on Christian’s face is almost laughable. I can’t tell if he’s really appalled or just mocking Alex.
My muscles tense with the apprehension of breaking up a fight if it’s the latter. One wrong word when Alex is in a mood like this, and all hell will break loose.
Trevor sidles up to Alex, a suicidal glint in his brown eyes. “So? That’s it? You’re not gonna give us the down low on what went wrong?”
“I don’t know what went wrong,” Alex hisses before slamming his locker closed. “One minute, I’m laying on the charm; the next, I’m being shut down.”
Mike looks skeptical. “What did you say to her? Who did you ask?”
“Hannah Allen,” Alex admits. He seems, strangely, like he wants to vent about this. Which makes no sense. Failure is not something to be discussed out in the open in this locker room, where we’re all sitting ducks for the upperclassmen’s abuse. “I suggested dinner and a movie. I even told her she could pick!”
“Boring,” Anthony, one of our junior cornerbacks, sing-songs as he walks past us to head out to the field for practice.
Immediately, we all clam up and get back to the business of getting ready to watch the varsity team practice. None of us is stupid enough to keep this discussion going if our guard dogs are paying attention.
“Well, well, well, Fossoway.”
I cringe at the all-too-chipper sounding voice of our team captain, Jeff Black. If he sounds this happy, it’s only because he’s about to put some kind of smack down on us.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your tale of woe. For a guy who has no problems with dicking, this is a surprise.”
Never one to back down from a challenge, Alex faces Jeff with a very convincing bored expression. “Dating and dicking are two different things, Black. Do you need me to explain that to you? Because I’m a team player, so if you need help learning which is a salad fork and which hole your little prick is supposed to go in, I can school you on both.”
“Holy shit,” Mike whispers beside me. “He has a death wish.”
Yeah, he does. I’m not sure whether to be proud or…no. Terrified. I’m just terrified on his behalf. I glance around me at the other JV players. They’re squaring their shoulders like they’re prepping for a fight. If Alex finally crossed the line, at least we’ll all have his back.
More like it’ll be an ugly brawl, and we’ll end up in the hospital, but still.
“You know what? I’m feeling generous today, since you little shits will be watching from the sidelines while we gear up for another Warriors playoff run. Since I’m such a team player, I’m gonna give you this anyway.”
The slap of a large, falling-apart-at-the-seams book making contact with the bench echoes off the tile walls. Jeff walks away, whistling like he’s just dropped a bomb.
The second he rounds the corner, everyone crowds around.
“The fuck is that?”
“It’s a scrapbook.”
“About dating?”
“It’s a manual.”
