Now I’m wincing because that’s an ugly picture of both the guys and the girls involved. But somehow I get the sense that Ace is speaking from actual experience, so I feel even grodier. The thing is, Matt didn’t come off that way. As he pointed out, he didn’t play the football card when he so easily could have, when it had such good results in the past.
“Iverson didn’t seem like a dog. He was kind of nice.”
Ace snorts. “Yeah, he’s real nice. Here, let me show you how nice he is to girls.”
My heart lurches, because I don’t like the disgust in Ace’s eyes. And I’m worried when he pulls out his phone. He scrolls through a #WarriorsWin hashtag, and while there are pictures of the players celebrating a touchdown, there are also plenty of pictures showing Matt Iverson kissing many, many, many girls. So many different ones I start to get dizzy. #WarriorsWin clearly has more than one meaning to the Warrior faithful.
“He’s fully clothed,” I point out, but it’s a weak attempt to make what I’m seeing less...sleazy, I guess. But damn it, I didn’t get a sleazy vibe from him at all. He didn’t look at other girls in the restaurant even once. The waitress practically tried to rub her tits into his nose, but his attention was focused solely on me.
The picture of Matt constructed from my interaction with him is entirely different than the one that Ace has painted, but truthfully, didn’t I really believe, deep down, that Matt’s interest in me was shallow and would last no longer than one night, maybe two? That’s why he’s got so many checkmarks in the risk column. I add another one there, just to be on the safe side.
Ace tugs on a hank of my hair. “Stay away from Iverson, Lucy. Promise me that. I don’t want to spend the off-season worrying about you.”
“I will.” The words sound unconvincing to me, but Ace looks pacified.
Inwardly, I worry that I’ll be breaking promises all over the place. To Ace, and most importantly, to myself.
8
Matty
The weekend is shot to shit. I have no interest in smoking weed, drinking myself into a coma, or getting laid, and end up taking long walks around campus. I find myself outside the Brew House several times and looking up at different apartment complexes wondering if Lucy’s inside.
For some reason, I failed to get her number. For some reason, I still want it. I’ve never pursued a girl in my life, and I don’t even know if this is the time to start, particularly with all the team shit going down.
What do I even know of this girl, other than that she eats tofu, works at a coffee shop, and has puppy dog eyes I keep seeing when I close mine. And she’s risk averse.
I need some of her analyzation skills right now. We could make a pro/con assessment of Ace moving or me sticking my nose into the whole mess as Coach ordered me to. And then, after I’ve worked it out on paper, we could release some tension between the sheets.
I’ve got a lot of built-up tension. Coach and me exchanged terse words about my conditioning on Saturday, which is complete and utter bullshit because I work harder in the weight room than anyone on defense. I’m there every day of the week, even during the off-season, for frickin’ sake. Coach Benson, the linebacker coach, had to come over and drag me away before I said anything stupid.
Coach’s words had zero to do with my lifting and everything to do with the fact that I haven’t persuaded Ace to move to safety. Shit, it’s been less than a week. I know that National Signing Day, the day that all the top recruits announce their college choices, is only a few weeks away, but give a guy a moment to breathe.
I went to the Gas Station with Hammer on Friday and Saturday nights, just to settle him down and so I can report back to Coach that I at least carried out part one of his directives. Arms folded, I stood in the middle of the bar and glared at all my teammates.
Hammer told me to pick a girl and leave because I was bringing everyone down. But being the heavy hand was the point.
And no one did anything stupid under my watch that night. No bathroom sex. No under-the-table hand action. No shot-drinking challenges. The team ended up going home early, taking the party—and the women—with them.
I went, too, but alone, because there wasn’t one girl in the place who made my dick move. Apparently my dick likes rejection because it gets hard when I think about Lucy, when I stand outside of the Brew House, but not when hot babes wearing down-to-fuck dresses are batting their eyelashes at me.
I swear to God, the scent of coffee Hammer was brewing this morning had me mooning about her. Jacking off to a girl I exchanged a few words with at a coffee shop is a new one for me.
The only thing to do is talk to her again. I can admit when I’m hung up on something. After all, I have no problem admitting I love football, and I really don’t have a problem with being drawn to one particular girl. The only issue is that she views me as a bad risk.
So how am I overcoming that?
My sour mood follows me all the way to the weight room and then plummets into my feet when I spot Ace working out.
There are only a few people even up this early on a Sunday. Some are at church, but most of them are hung over or even still drunk from last night’s revelries. I like that we’re keeping it close to home, so it didn’t bother me to wade through a mess of bodies, beer cans, and pizza boxes. No cop is going to bust us for drinking in our own place, and there are going to be a lot fewer guys who think they’ll prove their manhood by picking a fight with a Western player. We made the girls drop their phones in a bucket on their way in, solving the whole picture problem.