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Was he upset because I had returned his beer?
Was he irritated that I simply existed?
I shook my head at the unanswered questions. It didn’t matter if Orion Knight liked me or not. We lived in a world where he was Orion Knight, and I was Sinclair Hansen; we’d never be friends. People wanted to believe that society was divided by politics, but it wasn’t. We were all divided by money, and we were always going to be divided by money, because the love of money was the strongest vice out there. Very few people believed in their convictions and stuck by them if money was involved. Was I being judgey? Yeah. Was I wrong? Not at all.
“You know you’re sitting next to Hickey Roman, Claude Kanjorski, and Orion Knight, right?” Harley asked under his breath.
“I’m aware,” I replied just as low. “Oh, c’mon, ref! That was a fair play!”
“Are you blind or something?” Harley and I both turned to look at an infuriated Orion Knight. “That was clearly holding.”
“He was looking back at the ball,” I argued. “It was a fair play.”
“The hell it was,” he snapped.
“Knight, man-”
“Just admit that your team needs some work and quit being a-”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Harley ordered, interrupting both Orion Knight and Hickey Roman, and the love that I had for my best friend just went up a hundred notches. Orion Knight had a lot of muscle and a few inches on Harley, but he wasn’t about to letanyonedisrespect me, and it made me feel all warm inside, though also worried.
Orion eyed him. “I was going to call her a jackass.”
“I don’t care what you were going to call her,” Harley shot back. “It’s not happening while I’m here.”
“Is there a problem here?” We all turned to see the manager making his way towards our tables. “We’re all here for a good time only, folks.”
“Just a minor disagreement on the ref’s call, is all,” Orion answered him through clenched teeth.
Then, as expected because these were NBA stars and Harley and I weren’t, the manager asked, “We can clear them out if they’re causing problems.”
A dark laugh escaped my lips. “Of fucking course.”
“Sin-”
“Oh, yeah, no,” I went on, on a freakin’ roll, still pissed off that the Hawks were out of the playoffs. “Let’s not getbothsides of the story. Let’s not give the patron that was herebeforethese three showed up the benefit of the doubt. Let’s all just drop to our knees and suck the NBA’s dic-”
“Yeah, okay,” Harley said as he slapped his hand over my mouth. “It’s time to go, baby girl.”
“That’s not necessary-”
“Oh, don’t do me any favors,” I mumbled behind Harley’s palm, glaring at Orion. “It’s obvious thatyourmoney is more valued here.”
I heard Harley let out a tired sigh as he removed my hand. “Let’s go, Sinclair.”
I was fuming.
Seriously fuming.
Intellectually, I knew that it wasn’t Orion and his friends’ fault that management was picking them over us. I also knew that Orion Knight was only doing what any real friend would do, and that was defend his best friend from any and all attacks.
I knew all this.
Nevertheless, my history of baggage made it hard to give these three the benefit of the doubt, something that I wasn’t ready to meet a therapist for just yet. That privilege that was automatically assigned to them because of their talent had me feeling rabid.
“It’s fine,” Orion said, trying again. “There’s no need to-”
“I paid cash,” I told Harley, cutting Orion off again. “Let’s go.”
