Текст книги "Sacked"
Автор книги: Jen Frederick
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3 Knox
I’d convinced myself at some point, maybe senior year of high school or maybe my first year at Western, that going without sex made me a better player. That belief had held me in good stead for years. Whenever I felt like wavering, I reminded myself that the pursuit of my dreams was more important than screwing some girl I wouldn’t remember after I’d moved on. So it surprises me a little that while I can’t get the brunette from the stadium out of my head, I’m sharper than ever.
This morning’s scrimmage feels like I’m playing Madden on easy mode. I see everything JR “Ace” Anderson, our quarterback, will do before he does it. I’m reading the shifts in the offensive line as if I was in their huddle. Coach takes me out after the tenth series.
“Save some of that for the game,” he orders. “Besides, you’re killing Ace’s confidence. Go do the ladder. You can work on your footwork and get rid of some of that goddamned energy without demoralizing half your team.”
“Yes, Coach.” I give him a cocky salute and go off to run through the string ladder set up between the twenty and third yard lines opposite the line of scrimmage. There I do multiple sets of agility exercises—the centipede, the Icky Shuffle, the Riverdance—and the whole time I have brown eyes in my head watching me, clapping for me to go faster and harder.
It’s another sign.
I didn’t get her name or her phone number, but I’m not worried. A girl who puts on her running shoes before dawn cracks the sky has to know where the gym is. I’ll find her. I have zero doubt of that.
After our two-hour morning practice, Coach spends twenty minutes telling us the ways we can get suspended in the weekend before our opening kickoff. Too much boozing, missing curfew. If we want a goddamned lobster tail for dinner, he’d prefer we called him instead of sneaking one out of Kroger’s under our workout gear.
“Don’t disappoint me, men,” he ends, and then waves us off.
Despite the size, the newly laid carpet, and the fresh veneer on the mahogany lockers, the locker room still stinks of sweaty balls and swamp ass. The smell of home. I grin to myself.
“You’re in a good mood.” Harry “Hammer” Wright drops onto the wooden seat and starts stripping off his gear. Hammer’s a good natured southern boy, with a torso covered in ink and a quick smile for everyone.
I lean to the side to avoid being hit with his jersey. He has no sense of personal space. “We had a good workout.”
Hammer is a prime example of why I always thought being single while chasing my NFL goals made a whole lot of sense. I’d watched other guys play shitiful games because their personal life was a mess. Their girlfriend cheated on them or maybe he got caught with his pants down.
Hammer is single because his last girlfriend caught him with some out-of-town babe. After a night game, we’d drank with a few of the locals and Hammer decided one of them needed consoling—with his dick. His girlfriend drove up and surprised him at the team hotel. She succeeded with her surprise, but it ended with a lot of screaming, a little hair pulling, and a call to security to get to the two girls escorted from the premises.
Hammer got a lecture from Coach and me about keeping it in his pants on away games.
“Easy for you to say, Masters,” Hammer whined at the time. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re missing.”
“Get your nutsack under control or your hammer time will be on the bench,” I told him.
“You’re not human,” he called as I walked away. “It ain’t right for you to be denying yourself like that.”
Hammer’s about the only one who gets away with talking to me like that. We roomed together during our freshman year and I spent a hell of a lot of time listening to him lay pipe in his bed. Nothing about Hammer’s casual sexual encounters made me believe I missed anything. Sometimes they didn’t take more than fifteen minutes before he hustled them out the door so he could play a round of Madden.
Then some guys got kicked off the team after they’d videotaped themselves getting a blowjob race. It had all been consensual and the football team weren’t the only Western athletes represented in the six-person video, but it’d looked bad. Real bad.
And the guys had seemed more interested in showing off for the camera than the fact that someone sucked their dicks. I’ve taken more satisfying dumps than the blowjobs those fuckups got.
Nothing had convinced me that my decision to save my athletic skills for the field was wrong…until now.
“Hey, Masters. I know the dinner’s supposed to be team only, but my sister just moved in and I haven’t seen her in two months since two-a-days started. Do you mind if she comes to dinner?” Jack Campbell stops by my locker. He’s a newbie—a transfer from a top tier juco—and by the effort he’s put forth this summer, a potential difference maker. As a bonus, he’s not an asshole.
“I guess that’s okay. She’s not a jock chaser, right?”
Hammer snorts. “Yeah, Campbell, we got rules and standards. Only tens at the table. Your sister a ten?”
“Did this become Deliverance country and I didn’t notice?” Campbell shoots back. He’s not an asshole and he’s got some balls. “Maybe where you come from, you spend long hours deciding whether your sister is fuckable, but I prefer to do that outside my immediate family tree.”
“You’re good with first cousins, right?” Hammer says in a serious tone, but I know he’s still fucking with Campbell. We’re not allowed to haze anymore, so we have to get our digs in where we can.
“Yeah, first cousins are fair game.” They exchange fist bumps. Sick fuckers, I grin. Sick fuckers, but my sick fuckers.
“But, seriously, what’s she look like?” Hammer presses.
“You better tell him or he won’t stop asking until dinner tonight. You don’t want that kind of headache.” I throw my sweaty jock and work out gear in the laundry and grab my towel to cover my junk. The locker room got renovated over the off-season and now the showers are on the other side of the building. The team rules require us to cover up with towels because there’s a hallway in between. Genius design, boys.
Campbell rolls his eyes. “She’s about five foot eight. Long brown hair. Works out, although she needs to be careful, because she blew out her right knee in eighth grade. Uneven surfaces are a bitch for her.”
I stop and backtrack. Tall and athletic with a right knee injury? “What happened in eighth grade?”
“She was playing flag football. A douchebag with an inferiority complex and bad technique took her down. He ended up crushing her right knee.”
“Man that sucks.” Hammer shudders. “No more talk about that. Bad juju for the locker room.”
“I thought you had a brother named Eliot,” Jesse calls.
“Nah, my sister’s name is Eliot because my dad had naming rights.”
Tall and athletic with a right knee injury, and a boy’s name? She said it was different. It has to be her.
“Yeah, bring your sister to dinner.” The smile I turn on Campbell is so big he stumbles back. “It’s good for the team that we get to know your family.”
“Since when?” Hammer stands, buck ass naked. “I asked if you wanted to have dinner with me and my sister this summer, and you said no.”
“Your sister tried to molest me under the table during the family dinner at the Spring game,” I remind him.
“Someone’s got to punch your V-card, man. Might as well be my sister.”
“You know the rules,” Matty, another lineman, interrupts. He’s got dark eyebrows from his mother’s Columbian side that always makes him look serious. “No girlfriends. No sisters.”
“That’s a stupid ass rule. My sister is high quality WAG material,” Hammer protests. Hammer’s tried to get one of us to take his sister off his hands ever since he found out she was dating a twenty-five-year-old.
“Your sister is also underage.” I tighten my grip on the towel. I’d sat across from Hammer’s then seventeen-year-old sister, who had rubbed her foot against my dick the entire three-hour dinner. I ended up leaving my seat and standing for the last hour, citing a slight groin pull.
“You’re a virgin?”
We all swivel back to Campbell, who appears rooted to the spot.
“Yeah, man, but don’t bring that up at any parties.” Hammer rushes over and Campbell backs up so Hammer’s free-swinging dick doesn’t slap Campbell in the balls.
“You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.” It’s not a secret and I’m certainly not ashamed.
Hammer puts his arm around Campbell. “Jack Flash, you were fly out there today, but let me tell you a secret. You will get no pussy at a party this year if you bring up Masters’ V-card. All those sweet honeys rubbing against you on the dance floor will get it into their heads that we all want virtuous chicks. We don’t. We want to get laid.”
I roll my eyes. These guys haven’t spent a night without company since they stepped foot on campus.
“Don’t forget the line of girls who want to be the one to convince Masters to give it up,” Matty chirps.
“Yeah, man, it poisons the well. Don’t do it.” Hammer makes a gun with his fingers and points it at Jack, who appears dumbfounded by this information. Newbies. What can you do?
Laughing, I leave to take a shower while Campbell deals with the truth laid on him by the team.
When I get out, the reason for the new towel rule is standing in the hallway with her eyes pinned to the floor—Stella, one of the team managers, who happens to be the coach’s daughter.
“Coach wants you and Ace in his office now.”
“What for?” Ace comes up.
“Don’t know.” She doesn’t look at Ace and he pretends he’s not eating her up with his eyes. The whole situation between the two is pretty damn amusing, and as long as it doesn’t fuck up the season, that’s how it will remain.
I throw on a pair of cargo shorts and a Warriors T-shirt and shove my feet into a pair of flips. Ace leads the way into Coach’s office.
“Shut the door and sit down,” Coach orders.
As soon as our asses hit the hard plastic, he hands us each a sheet of paper.
“Here’s the list of the new guys. Twenty-six of them. Andersen, you’re in charge of the offense. Masters, the defense list is yours.”
I have ten guys on my list. These are mini leadership tests from Coach. He likes to see what we’re made of off the field. We’re set on defense, having lost only two senior starters last year.
Ace has the bigger task. Some of his guys, like Campbell, are expected to start and make an immediate impact. However, since they haven’t played together before, things like timing and chemistry, knowing what the other player is thinking about before he opens his mouth, will take work.
But they don’t have time. In college, we have very little room for error. One loss and we could be out of the national championship hunt before the season is even underway. Last year we lost in the first round of the playoffs because we couldn’t score. Ace needs to turn that around, like yesterday.
“Any issues we should know about?” I ask, tucking the list away. I already know my guys. I met them at spring camp and again when they arrived for summer term in June. For the most part they were good guys—young, eager, and hiding their homesickness under a thin sheen of bravado.
“Maurice Kim, Kaleb Shannon, and Jack Campbell all have academic issues. Make sure Campbell stays academically eligible. The other two we are redshirting, so spend less time on them. Andre Getty is already making noise about quitting. He could be a solid backup. If we can keep him, that’d be good for the team.”
“There are sixteen players on my list and a quarter of them are already problems?” Ace frowns and shakes his list a little.
Before Coach can tell him to nut up, I snatch a marker off the desk and rip Ace’s sheet from his hand. “I’ll take this one.”
I draw a heavy line through Campbell’s name and toss the marker on the table. “We done here?”
Coach nods. “Make sure they know to stay away from my daughter.”
“Of course.” Ace grabs his list of players and shoves it into his back pocket.
That’s when I know Ace is going to be all right during the season, because he doesn’t even flinch. If he can stay stone-faced and in control in front of Coach while secretly nailing the most off-limits girl on a campus of twenty-five thousand, then he’ll do fine as a starter.
I don’t really care who Ace is fucking. There are only a few important things in my life right now, and they start and end with winning the national championship. Ace could fuck a goat if he was into that, so long as he took care of the ball and showed some leadership on the offense.
“What do you think about Campbell?” Ace asks me as we walk toward the Playground, where Ace and I live with the other starters. As one of the team captains, I have a third floor apartment all to myself. Granted, the place is noisy as shit because eight other guys live in the two floors below me, but for the most part, it’s decent. When I need to get away, I put on my headphones and zone out. If I need company, I go downstairs and play a couple rounds of Madden or Call of Duty. It could be worse.
“Good guy. Hard worker. Has good hands. His routes could be shaper. Timing isn’t great with you, but it’s early. All you got to do is score three times.” I slap Ace on the back.
“That’s my objective? Three touchdowns?” he asks in disbelief.
“If we can’t hold every team to a couple of touchdowns this year, we don’t deserve to be in the playoffs, let alone hoist the trophy.” Last year we got lit up by a West Coast team. They scored on us at will and it felt fucking humiliating. I can still feel the sting of that loss today. At the end of that game, I vowed we’d never be caught with our pants down like that again.
“Noted. So what’s your interest in Campbell?”
I shrug. “Figured you had your hands full.”
He raises his chin slightly in disbelief, but doesn’t challenge me. We part ways at the Playground—him to his house and me to mine.
I’m not ready to show my cards yet. The team has a general rule: no sisters because it makes for a messy locker room. Ace screwing Coach’s daughter already meant bad news. But if push comes to shove, I’d lay my claim. There are some things you are born knowing: Treat your mother with respect. Family comes first. Bringing down a quarterback is as close to a religious experience as a boy can get. When you meet the girl who’ll be sitting on the front porch holding your hand when you’re eighty, you don’t let a thing like cool dismissive looks, big brothers, or fucking rules stand in your way.
4 Ellie
The Agrippa Learning Center is painted this awful yellow color. Maybe it looked bright when first applied in the prehistoric era, but right now, it’s faded, ugly yellow.
The director, Susan Shearer, reminds me of Riley. She’s small but full of energy. Her dark hair is cut close to her scalp and patches of it stick straight up as if she’s suffered one too many harrowing events.
“Thank you so much for coming back tonight. I’m sorry I wasn’t here yesterday when you came. Things are always chaotic here, but the school calendar moved up a week this year, and even though we knew about it we weren’t quite prepared.”
She motions me to follow her into an office that looks like a paper mill explode in it. There are reports, drawings, catalogs, and brochures on every surface. “As you can see, we seriously need help, but donors don’t like paying salaries. They’ll buy supplies or donate equipment, but not for admin staff. So we need a grant.”
“I’m just a junior, ma’am. I’ve never written a grant before.” I feel like it’s necessary to point this out so she doesn’t get her hopes up. I wanted to get experience writing a grant and get an A. “I’m here to write a draft for you as part of my grant writing class at Western.”
“I know. Isn’t it great?” She points to a stack of papers about five inches thick. “I had Christie, that’s our receptionist slash secretary you met out front, print out the last five years of budgets, along with our mission statement, program directives, and statistics of usage. The grant we’d like to apply for is an operational one.” She motions for me to sit, and when I do she drops down behind her desk. I have to lean to the side so I can see her. “Tell me what you know about Agrippa.”
“It’s a not-for-profit agency designed to provide assistive learning to students between the ages of four and fourteen. For a nominal fee, students get extracurricular help in math, science, and language.” I recite the information I gathered from my internet search.
“Yes, we charge a small fee because that makes sure the student and parent,” she bobs her head a little, “or guardian, as the case may be, has skin in the game. They’ve paid money and they want to get their money’s worth—even if the fee doesn’t begin to cover the costs.” She leans forward, her shoulder brushing an unsteady pile of papers. I reach out to steady it. I don’t think she even notices. “Tell me why you chose Agrippa,” Susan asks.
“I have a friend from high school who I believe has a learning disability, but she never got tested.”
Susan makes a sympathetic noise. “That’s terrible. Talk about hamstringing that child for the rest of her life. Early detection and testing really helps kids overcome and manage their learning disability. There are so many ways we can help them these days.”
I hope this meeting will be over soon. Susan’s words make me feel even guiltier than when I talked on the phone with Mom, particularly when I spent all of my morning adding two classes for the express purpose of further “hamstringing” my brother.
“Well, a personal connection is good. It makes you more empathetic. You want to have passion when you write a grant proposal, and a personal appeal makes you really want to get after it.” She makes a rocking motion with her fist.
“Is there any chance for adults?”
“Of course. We don’t specialize in that, but—” She holds up a finger and digs through a pile of papers on the bookcase near her desk. “Here. This is a great organization for helping adult literacy challenges.”
“Thanks. If I see her at break, I’ll give it to her.” I take the brochure and tuck it into my bag.
“You might want to be careful when you approach her,” Susan cautions. “Most people, regardless of age, are quite sensitive about having reading or writing challenges. Adults tend to deny it, particularly if they are functioning well in most other areas.”
“I hear you.” She’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. I broached the subject with Jack only once before. We took an SAT prep course as juniors. He’d gotten very frustrated and I suggested extra tutoring. He looked at me with a look of utter betrayal and asked me if I thought he should be riding the short bus. I told him that was offensive. We got in a big fight and didn’t talk for about three days. We made up but I never brought it up again. I don’t even know if I can now.
“Good,” she says briskly. “If you don’t need anything further, then we’re done. I’ll want to see a rough draft by your midterm.” She looks down at a sheet of paper. “Is that in October?”
“Yes. I could get it to you by October 1. How’s that?”
“Perfect. Rough draft by October 1, and then the final version on December 1.” Susan shakes my hand, piles me with paper, and sends me on my way. The brochure burns a hole in my pocket.
•••
Jack shows up the next afternoon to check out my apartment and, I suppose, Riley.
“Nice place,” he says. “I call dibs on the chair.”
He points to a round velvet chair in deep red Riley said she found at a thrift store. It’s as comfortable as Jack imagines and I plan to spend a lot of time there in front of the television on Saturdays, watching Jack’s games. Despite what I told Masters, I don’t sit at the top of the stadium or with the other students. It’s too damn stressful.
“You can’t call dibs,” Riley protests. “This isn’t your apartment.”
“It’s Ellie’s, which means it’s mine, too.” Jack winks at her but Riley is having none of it.
She scowls and shakes a scolding finger at Jack. “You make a mess and you have to clean it up.”
“No problem.” He smiles again and this time it’s deep enough that his dimples appear. Uh oh. I had better separate the two before Riley falls under the spell of Jack’s charms.
“Come on.” I grab his arm. “I need your help unpacking stuff.”
He snaps to immediately and follows me to my room. “What do you need?”
I point to the stack of empty cardboard boxes. “I’ve unpacked most everything, but I need help getting rid of these boxes.”
“Sorry I wasn’t here to help you carry this shit up here.” Jack makes quick work of the first box, tearing off the tape and punching it flat. “I still can’t believe those shitheads didn’t drive down with you.”
He tosses the now flat box into the hallway and proceeds to efficiently destroy the five other boxes.
“It’s fine. The manager had a four-wheel dolly and he helped me bring most of it up.”
“Riley wasn’t even here?” The nerve in Jack’s jaw starts ticking with annoyance. It’s not directed at me or Riley. It’s directed at our parents. I reach over and pull the laundry basket away from him before he crushes it.
“Her family is in town. Look, I didn’t want to stay home any longer and I missed you.”
“So what’s your roommate like? She seems nice.”
“No dating her.”
“I wouldn’t date her,” he protests a shade too vigorously.
“I think she’s nice and normal, so you have to stay away.”
“Do you see something wrong with this picture?”
Not wanting him to date my roommate, dump her, and make her not want to live with me? No, I didn’t see anything wrong with preventing that outcome. “It sounds exactly right to me.”
He throws himself onto my bed. “What you’re essentially saying is that if your roommate is a great chick, fun to hang out with, totally normal, then she’s off limits. If she’s burn-the-bunny crazy, though, she’s all mine.”
I push his feet off. “That’s right. Good job on putting together two and two.”
“Shouldn’t you be encouraging me to date nice girls?”
“First, you don’t date anyone. You sleep with girls for anywhere between one night and a month. Maybe two tops. Then I’m left with either the constant crier or the I’m cutting off your brother’s dick the next time I see him roommate.” I had both in junior college.
“You’re a killjoy, El.” He reaches to my desk pushed against the foot of the bed and grabs the miniature Nerf football sitting between my pen cup and Kleenex box. “Besides, I can’t help it if the girls you room with turned into bunny boilers.”
“Guess what! You don't have to sleep any of them. Here’s an idea; how about you not sleep with the girls who have a tendency to go rabid after you dump them.” I grab the football from him and throw it at his face. He snatches it out of the air before it can come within two feet of him. Damn reflexes!
“Next thing you’ll say I should stop having sex like Knox Masters.”
I stumble on a non-existent fold in my rug and have to steady myself on the edge of the desk. “Knox Masters is celibate?”
Jack rolls over on his side and tosses the football at me. I don’t bother to catch it. The ball strikes the back wall and bounces onto the desk, knocking papers onto the floor.
“Not just celibate, but a virgin.” Jack bends down and gathers up the papers on the floor. I’m still too stunned to help him.
“No. I don’t believe it,” I answer flatly. Knox is gorgeous. His abs are so defined that a girl might cut her tongue on his ridged perfection, and based on this morning’s interaction, he’s got a little charm. Okay, a lot of fucking charm. “Do you really believe he’s a virgin? Maybe he tells people he’s a virgin and then the girls fight each other to show him the ropes—to be the first.”
“Hard to say. I’ve seen him hook up with girls. One night we went to a club downtown and a girl ate his face off.”
Yeah, so not a virgin.
“Still, I mean, he could be a virgin.” Jack rifles through the papers. Fuck, where is my class schedule? I surreptitiously look around my desk for it. “What’s this?” he demands.
I look over at the sheet of paper he’s thrust out. Is it…? No, thank God. I grab the intramural informational sheet from his hands and drop it on my desk. The other paper he has is the literacy brochure.
My schedule with his classes rests innocently inside a notebook. I stack my papers together and shove them all in the drawer.
“It’s the Western intramural schedule.”
“What are you playing?” he says with suspicion.
“Softball. Is that okay?”
“Maybe. What position? Not catcher, I hope. Not with your knee.”
“This is intramural softball, Jack.” I emphasize the word in hopes he catches on that I don’t want him interfering or riding me about playing. I need to have a life outside of him and football. “And I don’t know what position I’m playing. I’m meeting with the team Sunday night.”
“You should play left field.” He studies the pamphlet in his hands for a second. “What is this? Are you doing some teaching internship? I thought you planned to major in English.”
“No, I took a grant writing class this semester and my coursework involves writing a proposed grant for the literacy center.” I watch him closely to see if he has any interest at all.
“Glad someone in the family likes writing.” He tosses the paper on the desk.
I watch it as it floats down and summon my courage. “Susan, the director of the learning center, gave me this for research. There’s a lot of adult learning resources out there. I didn’t realize how many, in fact.”
Hint. Hint.
Jack’s silent and his head dips down. For a moment, I think he’s seriously considering my words, but then he kneels on the floor. “Shit, Ellie, I think I got glitter on my shoes. Look.”
I look down, and sure enough, there are sparkles on his running shoes. During the move, glitter I used for some high school craft project must have risen to the surface.
“So?”
“So, I’ll get hazed over this.” He shakes his foot.
“You told me once that glitter was a stripper’s calling card. Tell your friends you went to a strip club,” I say impatiently. Obviously, he has no interest in learning disabilities and I’m too chicken to brazenly ask him about it. Jack has always been my best friend, and I’m afraid of saying something that would push him away.
Other people might have resented how their parents focused too much on one kid, but Jack hated that attention and has always gone out of his way to make me feel important and necessary. I repaid him by doing these things, only I’m not sure it’s the right way any longer.
I sigh at my own cowardice.
“Good point.” He checks his watch. “So you want me to swing by and pick you up in about an hour?”
Oh no. No way I’m going to dinner. “No, sorry. I’ve got too much stuff here to do.”
We both look at my immaculate room with its tidy desk, the clothes all put away, and the once pristinely made bed.
“Rrrrrright,” Jack drawls. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“No, Jack. Really. I want to stay home tonight. Eat by myself.”
“You want to stay home. Alone. Your second night here?” He raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Not to mention, after missing me for the last two months, you drove up early to move in and didn’t call me until all your shit had been unpacked.”
He stands now, towering over me. He looks pissed off.
“Um, yes?”
“Bullshit. You’re coming to dinner with me tonight. And if you keep saying no, I’m calling my entire house to come and carry you out of here.” He holds up his phone and shakes it at me. He lives with half of the offensive starters.
Jack doesn’t make idle threats, so I give in. “Okay. Fine.”
What’ll one dinner with members of his team do to me? Besides, in junior college, Jack hung around solely with the offense and Masters plays defense, so I’m not worried I’ll see him. Still…
“What’s the dress code here?”
“Shorts, flips, T-shirt.”
“For me, not you.” I throw a pencil at him that he snatches it out of the air. One of these days, I’ll learn not to throw things at a guy who wants to catch things for a living.
“It’s pretty casual.”
“I swear, if I show up and everyone wears a suit and tie, I’ll castrate you.” I shake my scissors at him before tucking them into the desk drawer.
“Shit. Ties are for away games. I don’t know what the girls are wearing these days. This summer it’s been mostly nothing. I can tell you that there are a lot of thongs. I remember those.” His eyes get dreamy.
“Jesus, Jack. I don’t want to hear that stuff.”
He laughs and mock throws the football at me. I duck and scowl when he laughs even harder. After a few fakes, he sets the ball down and starts to leave. At the door, he turns back.
“Thanks for coming tonight. I know you told me that you wanted to find a new—what did you call it?” He winds his hand in a circle.
“Tribe?”
He snaps his fingers and points one at me. “Yeah. I thought troop, but I knew that was wrong.”
“I want to make sure I broaden my horizons. Find new people to hang around with.”
“You know it's okay by me if you hang with us jocks. I’d be okay if you even wanted to date a football player.”
“Well, I won’t. I went through that horror house and I don’t need to revisit it.”
Once was enough, thank you very little, Travis F.
“I don't know why you think a guy who plays chess will be better to you than one who plays football.” Jack sounds mildly annoyed.
I shrug and pull out my favorite jean skirt. I wore this all summer long. It was the right length between sexy and sporty. I might as well go with something tried and true. Plus it has pockets, which means I can stuff my ID and keys in the skirt and forego a wristlet or purse. “Maybe they aren't, but I haven't ever dated a guy who played chess before.”
“I’m all for you exploring new shit, but guys are dicks regardless of whether they wear a jock strap or a pocket protector.”
“That's a ringing endorsement of your gender.”
He walks toward the front door. “If you decide to take a vow of celibacy that'd be great, but I’m not that naïve.”
“Maybe I should hang around with Masters,” I joke.
Jack opens the door and steps into the hall. All the traffic stops and stares at him. He smiles and nods to the bangable girls, which it appears encompasses all of the females in the hall. “I thought you didn't believe him.”
“Jury’s still out.”
