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“Dude, what are we talking about here? How do you carry on conversations without hearing any of the conversation?” Ellis shook his head and looked at me. “Care to verify?”
“Nothing to say,” I told him, finishing my burger and polishing off my milk, staring at my soggy, crinkly fries and wishing they were garlic potato wedges because apparently my stomach hadopinionsnow.
“I saw you come to school together,” Walker said, like that was a crime.
I guess I knew people might notice, it’s not like we’d parked a block away and walked in separately or anything, but I was still surprised somehow. I opened my mouth to make up some lie and then just didn’t. Not exactly anyway. “I’m crashing over awhile.”
I didn’t expect that to be such a big bomb drop, but even the chewing stopped for a minute.
“With The Beast?” Riggs asked. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t know you guys were friends like that,” Walker said carefully, and I wondered if maybe I hurt his feelings by not asking to crash with him, but his feelings weren’t my problem.
I shrugged. “We’re not. We weren’t. Just… some shit went down, and I can’t do the living at home right now. He was there, so I just bailed with him.”
Mostly all I had to do was mention “shit at home” and people would back off no matter how vague I was. Nobody wanted to ask and that worked for me, even if it made things awkward laying half my cards out on the table.
This was way more complicated than just fucking in the showers, and I really didn’t expect my conscience— or maybe it was my ego— to get so involved. I kept shit private. It was what I did. So what. I liked it that way. But lying about where I was staying wasn’t going to work, not when it was so obvious, so here we were. They could fill in the blanks how they wanted, I guess.
“You good though?” Riggs finally asked. “Staying there?”
I nodded, agreeing like it wasn’t the biggest understatement of all time. “Fine. It all works out. He’s cool. And now we can study like all the time. So it’s way easier.”
“Yeah, but study does mean boning though, right?” Ellis demanded.
“Jesus, Ellis,” Walker muttered, and Riggs elbowed him in the ribs.
“If you’re that interested in his dick, just ask him to show you,” I told him, and then kind of wished he hadn’t, because knowing Ellis he might.
“Interested foryou.Getting laid helps you study. It’s like scientific fact.”
“That’s why your grades are so shit, then?” Walker asked him.
“Getting laid helps your passing game too, you should try it sometime.”
“You know what would really help my passing game is if you put half the effort into running routes as you do into running your mouth.”
Ellis looked over at me and pointed to Walker. “This is the guy you want me to be nicer to?”
“You do run your mouth way too much,” Riggs told him, and Ellis shook his head.
“See, now you’re being toxic. Everybody’s being toxic. You guys know there’s no toxic in team, right?”
“Thought that double Sunday was supposed to fix you two,” Riggs muttered. “Your chemistry’s worse than Logan’s.”
“My chemistry’s gonna be fine,” I told them when that got a big laugh across the table. “I’ll be showing up Friday ready to beat the shit out of Ollie. You all better be too.”
The conversation took an easy turn back to practice and Coach T’s team building bullshit and Friday’s game and whether or not Walker was going to get his shit together, and at least temporarily, me crashing with The Beast was old news.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I spotted Caleb on my last lap, leaning up against the fence,casually watching the end of practice. There were a few dozen people scattered along the chain link divide, mostly sideline dads and girlfriends waiting for practice to end, a few jock wannabes who liked to come and heckle shit, some slackers just killing time. It was no big deal to see him standing there, except it was.
I’d looked around for him the first few minutes of warm up, but shit turned no joke real fast and my body needed that workout, that slacker shit I’d pulled yesterday sticking in my head and my gut, leaving me with something to prove, making me hyperfocused, seeing everything, lunging fast and low like I was fighting for my life untilFuck yes, that’s what I’m looking for, Prescottburied theGet your head out of your assI hadn’t realized was still buzzing around in there.
It was extreme, hard-to-breathe, hard-to-see practice, andstillmy heart went into turbo thrust like it had been lagging when I saw him standing there. Even though I was dead on my feet, aching and soaked through with sweat, I could feel my body trying to correct itself, to run that last quarter mile high quality, show off my form like that’s what he showed up for.
