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“Relax. Party’s in my pocket.” He glanced back at me. “Sorry, Press, not that kind of party. But you’re getting plenty of that at home these days, right?”
I rolled my eyes and watched him pull a fat blunt and a lighter out of his pocket and light up. He dragged hard, clouding out with a soft cough, and held it out in my direction.
I shook my head, and he shook his. “Swear to god it’s like you have no drug addict in your veins at all. You ever check to see if you were adopted?”
“Asshole,” Walker muttered.
“This can all be yours,” Ellis said, turning around to him, holding the joint up, showcasing the fat cherry. “Just as soon as you say what’s going on with you.”
“I just did. You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah, you gotta do better than that. I hear that a hundred times a day. And you’re the only one rearranging my face.”
“Today.”
They were both quiet, and it was tense enough I braced myself for someone to take another swing.
“Give me the ball,” Walker finally said, and Ellis made a show out of picking it up and handing it off carefully, and he was probably lucky to make it out alive. “Press, go long,” Walker told me, not even looking at me, and something felt off, but I jogged down toward the posts, looking back every few yards until he threw it.
Not the best pass of his career, but I wasn’t much of a receiver either— my hands and feet worked a whole different direction. But I caught it. An easy catch, accurate, right in my basket when I turned, like he knew me better than I knew myself, and I guess that was his job the same way mine was mine.
Still, I froze up so stunned I tripped over myself, ran wild a few steps and rolled over before I popped up and threw it back. While Ellis sat and watched from the bleachers, we tossed it back and forth half a dozen times before Walker finally took it and punted it high up into the seats.
“Okay, you’ve proved your fucking point,” Ellis shouted as we came back. “Whatever it is. You’re just fucking with me? You want me off the team? What? I don’t get it. You can throw? You can’t throw? You look like shit, Walk, you can’t—”
“It’s you, asshole. It’syou.I can’t throw toyou. I can’t even fuckinglookat you. You make me so fucking crazy I can’t even think. I’m losing my fucking mind just being around you.”
Not gonna lie, he really did sound like he was losing it, screaming to shatter the quiet. Ellis took it in stride, you could say that for him. Maybe because he’d heard it before, or maybe because he was stoned, or maybe because he was just Ellis.
“What does that mean?” he finally asked. “You’re like in love with me or something?”
Walker laughed out loud, a long hissing noise heavy on the absurdity. “Who the fuck would ever be in love with you?”
“I mean, you could just say no.”
He sneered. “No. I’m not in love with you. I fucking hate you, Ellis.”
“You hateme?”He honestly looked stunned. “Why?Since when? What did I do?”
“Same shit you always do.”
Ellis shrugged with his whole body, and after a minute of some real true quiet, Walker held out his hand and he handed over the blunt that was going down quick. We sat there and watched him walk away in a cloud, smoking and pacing and rubbing at his buzz cut and after a minute, Ellis got tired of sitting still and went stomping up the bleachers, looking for the ball.
I was sure he was gonna toss it out there, peg Walker in the back when he found it, but he just came and sat back down beside me, spinning it in his hands, thunk, thunk, thunk against his fingers while we waited some more.
Eventually, Walker came back and dropped down on the grass in front of us, flopping flat on his back, sighing hard and long.
“My parents are splitting up,” he finally said.
I waited before I said anything to see if there was more, but he seemed empty, like saying that took everything out of him.
“Fuck, that sucks, man. Sorry.” I maybe wouldn’t have said that a week ago. Never really felt that bad for people who got torn up by divorce, but I’d gotten a peek at how it could mess with people who looked just fine, so I guess maybe I had more empathy now.
“You think that’s my fault somehow?” Ellis demanded, less empathetic.
Walker laughed, a weird, hollow thing. “My mom’s moving out,” he said after a minute. “She’s got a boyfriend. A younger boyfriend. A much, much younger boyfriend.”
I glanced over at Ellis who stared at me like I was stupid.
