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I hadn’t been here at night in a long time. We used to do it a lot when we were kids— bust out of his house when I slept over, play catch on the high school field, and talk about how much better we’d be than the guys playing then. Honestly, we were, and he could back that up with stats, but high school sure had looked a lot more glamorous when we were still years away from it.
He looked around, spotting me in the dark, scooping the ball up and heading toward me. The lights from the parking lot were bright enough to fuck around by, but we were both just ink spots on an inky field until we caught up with each other.
“Might not be my call, I guess.”
I squinted at him, but it was too dark to see what kind of damage Walker’s fist had done. “How’s your mouth?” I asked him as we headed over to the bleachers.
“Ehh.” He waved his hand like it was no big deal. “Been punched harder by babies.”
“Looked pretty rough for a baby. What’d you say to him, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Lighten up or something? Nothing to get pissed about. He’s just cracking up is all.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious. You keep saying it’s nothing, but it’s not nothing. You ever seen him take a swing before?”
I shook my head. Walker was more of a deep sarcasm guy if you rattled him at all. Fancy footwork, bob and weave, just like on the field. This was definitely a one-off. At least so far.
“He’s frustrated,” I said.
“He’s fucked up.”
I sighed. We could both be right, I guess. “What happened during clean up? He say anything?”
“Not a goddamn word. I totally shook off the whole punched-me-in-the-face thing, tried to be nice, but he wasn’t having it. Ignored me, kept his mouth shut, wouldn’t even double up and help me with the big cart. Took forever and he was sour the whole time. Shed actually looks pretty good, by the way,” he said, surprised, and I grinned a little. Not my credit to take, but I’d take it anyway.
“Told you.” I sat down on the front row of bleachers, and he dropped down a few feet away, spreading out and leaning back, staring up at the sky. I could see his mouth better then, nasty and swollen with a scrape on his chin that might have been from that or something else. “Howser’s leaning in on your job. You know that. Right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Well, he may just fucking get it. Either Walk cracks open tonight and says what’s up or I’m done here. He’s the only QB we’ve got and if he’s allergic to me, not much I can do. Howser’s trash, but—”
“But nothing. He’s trash. And him catching one pass and then getting shattered isn’t gonna do much.”
“I mean, it would make a lot of people smile,” Ellis said, looking over at me and grinning.
I snorted. “Yeah. It would do that.”
I looked out over the field, tried to imagine the kind of mess Howser would make of the game, the mess we were probably in either way. This seemed like my fault somehow, like if my life hadn’t gone completely off the rails I’d have noticed something sooner, wouldn’t have blown Ellis off every time he said something was wrong. For someone who didn’t have friends, I was feeling like a pretty shitty friend.
“So what the fuck am I doing here?” I asked, looking back over at him, watching him spin the ball on his finger.
“You’re bait,” he said, like it was obvious, tossing it to himself. “Walker likes you. I’m clearly not his favorite person right now, he wasn’t gonna get out of bed just for me. We wait for him to show, we demand some answers. This ain’t yips, I’m not buying that anymore. This is a problem with a solution and I’m gonna shake it out of him.”
“Great. So a whole lot of nothing. Is Walker even coming?”
“I’m here.”
I jerked around when I heard him speak up behind me, but Ellis didn’t move, making me wonder how long he’d been there. Swear to god the longer I spent out of my natural habitat the quicker all my animal instincts slipped away. I wasn’t half as alert and paranoid as I’d been a week ago. Probably good for my heart rate, but it felt fucking dangerous.
“Well? Where’s the party?” Walker said, coming around to stand in front of us like he was waiting for something.
“What party?”
He pulled out his phone, reading off a text. “You. Me. Prescott. Fifty yard party. Offer expires in twenty.”
Ellis took his phone out too, pulling up the time clock. “You got here with… twelve seconds to spare. You sure do love cutting it close.”
“You sure love jerking me around,” Walker said, starting to head off, and Ellis jumped up.
