“You can’t have had a very exciting night, then.”
No. No, I hadn’t. I’d tagged along with some other teammates, thinking I needed to make an effort to get to know them off the field. I’d gotten to know them all right. And I was already tired of them. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to walk on to a team like this, it never was. People were nice enough, but none of them took me seriously.
Just a walk-on.
Most people see us as just players for the real athletes to practice against with no real chance of getting any substantial playing time for ourselves. A few are more accepting.
But fitting in isn’t worth spending an hour with those ass**les. They aren’t even drunk yet, so I can only imagine how much worse it will get.
I shrug off that frustration and tell the girl, “At least things are looking up now.”
She stiffens, shaking out her hair like a mane. The deep red shines, catching glints from the lights as she moves.
“Listen,” she says, “tonight is not the night to flirt with me.”
I should probably be annoyed by her brusque tone, but I find myself smiling instead.
“Who said I was flirting?”
She scoffs, her fingers curling tighter around the balcony banister.
“You were.”
I grin because, yeah . . . I was. She’s not cocky when she says it either, just matter-of-fact. I find it . . . fascinating.
“It’s not like I stood below the balcony reciting Romeo and Juliet.” Not like I could either. I never managed to finish that when we read it in high school English, and the movie version I watched with guns and gangs got me a big fat F on the exam. She makes a noise, and I can’t tell whether she’s scoffing at me again or laughing.
“Romeo was a tool.”
“Really?” I thought girls lived for that shit.
She crosses her arms over her chest and huffs, “He’s head-over-heels, mopey in love with Rosaline, and then in one night, he flip-flops and decides now he’s in love with Juliet. If he would have just thrown his whiny tool self at another girl, Juliet wouldn’t have died.”
“Well, I can promise I’m not going to suddenly declare my love for you. Satisfied?”
She shrugs, and I assume that’s the only answer I’ll get.
“So was it a Romeo who inspired that scream?”
“Nope. Just the regular kind of ass**le.”
She stumbles over the last word, her cheeks pinking prettily, and I get the feeling her blunt honesty doesn’t usually include swear words.
“Well, f**k that guy.” My suspicions are confirmed when her blush deepens, and she pulls that full bottom lip between her teeth. I try to connect this shy piece of her puzzle with the brazen girl who called me on my flirting without blinking.
“Uh . . . yeah,” she replies hesitantly.
I make a mental note to cuss as much as possible to keep that sweet flush on her face. “Don’t let that dick ruin your night.”
I should probably learn to take my own advice. I’m the one hiding in the backyard of a frat house.
“They will not ruin my night.”
They? There’s more than one? Damn.
I start to ask her name, but then someone inside the house shouts out, “Dallas?” and her head whips around in response.
“That him?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes and nods.
“Well then, Dallas. As I see it, you have two options. You can turn around and unleash another of those screams on him, which would be entertaining. Or . . .”
I trail off, debating whether or not to try again considering my crappy flirting record with this girl so far.
“Or what?”
“Or forget about the prick, and hang out with me. I’ll make my best effort not to be an ass**le.” She hesitates and I add, “Or a Romeo. Or a tool. Or whatever it is you’re sick of.”
There’s a third option that I don’t add, as appealing as it is. She could introduce me to the dick, and I could introduce him to my fist and work off some frustration. But that could get me in trouble with Coach, so while effective, it’s off the table.
I am fully prepared for her to say no and lump me in with whatever other guys have pissed her off tonight. Instead, she considers me. Her lips twist, somewhere between pursed and pouty.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” she says.
Surprised, I bark out a laugh and feel the last of the night’s frustration ebb away. She says exactly what she’s thinking, and I love it. I’m shocked by how much I want to keep prodding until I’ve unraveled every little thought that crosses her mind.
“Again with the assumptions,” I say.
“Like you weren’t thinking about it.”
I hadn’t actually gotten that far, but now I’m thinking about it, about how it would be an even better way to work off my frustration than fighting. I bet that flush is just as pretty across her chest as it is across her cheeks. It’s hard to tell from down below her, but she’s tall, maybe just a few inches shorter than me, and her legs go on and on. I imagine them going around and around my hips.
I clear my throat before I can wander too long down that trail of thought. “Thinking about and expecting it are two different things. One makes me a douche-bag, the other just makes me a dude.”
Tempting or not, I don’t have time for that kind of thinking. It was one thing to hook up with girls at Westfield. It didn’t take nearly as much effort to secure my spot on the team or keep up my grades there, but I am on an entirely different playing field here. Literally.