Loose Lips Sink Ships
Page 4
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A cell phone rang in a duffel bag beside an outdoor basketball court. It harmonized with the steady noise of the ball banging against the floor.
“Just ignore it,” Carter advised his friends, who were in the middle of a two-on-two game. He squared off against a stringy black man named Daniel, whose shorts were so low they almost touched his shoes. Dribbling furiously, Carter swerved around him, leapt into the air, and sunk an easy lay-up.
“Alright, white boy. That’s the last time I let you drive it up my backside and dump it in the hole like that.”
“Maybe if you pulled your shorts up over your ass cheeks you might be able to catch me.”
Carter returned the ball to the top of the circle and prepared to put the ball in play when his phone started ringing again.
“Are you going to get that or are we gonna play every point to the tune of ‘Party in the U.S.A.’?” Daniel jabbed.
“I’m not answering it. She’s the last person on the face of the Earth I want to talk to,” Carter scowled.
“What the hell happened anyway?” his teammate Paul asked.
Not only did he not want to talk to Avery, he didn’t even want to think about her. But his friends deserved some sort of an explanation, and so he passed the ball away and grumbled as he thought about the best way to say it.
“There are just some things you can’t ever do to someone, and she did one of them. Now we’re through, and she can choke to death on her vibrator for all I care.”
“Sisters’ll do that to you,” Daniel sympathized. “It’s a shame we gotta live with ‘em at all. The world would be a better place if there was just dudes running around everywhere.”
Carter jogged off the court, reached into his duffel bag, and shut his phone off. The only reason he’d ever left it on was because Avery would scream at him when he didn’t, but he could do whatever he wanted now that he wasn’t talking to her. He’d hungered for that freedom before, but after this morning’s incident he wondered if it was worth it. Now he told himself he didn’t really need anything when his friends were around. Except, that wasn’t true.
“Why is it so hard to find a good girl?” he mused to his friends, who had dissolved their game and started to just shoot around. “Seems like as soon as you think you have one the crazy starts to leak out and she tries to rip your heart out through your asshole.”
Paul passed Carter the ball and jogged up next to him as he took a shot. His shirt was drenched in sweat while everyone else’s was dry. Some of the moisture sprayed Carter and distracted him.
“Don’t I know it, man,” Paul wheezed. “Just the other day this girl I was seeing turned out to be an illegal immigrant. I guess that’s what you get for picking up the smart girl in Spanish class. She got deported and now it’s like a part of me is gone forever.”
“She’ll probably just be back in a few days,” Daniel said, catching the ball as it fell through the hoop.
“That’s not exactly what I mean,” Carter corrected. “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that girls are just deep down treacherous and manipulative?”
“Course, dude, all the time. But that’s everybody. The thing is that you have to wait for them to grow out of it. Give ‘em fifteen or twenty years and all of a sudden they forget they used to take pictures of their boobs and post them on the Internet,” Paul smiled.
“Fifteen or twenty years?” Carter moaned. “I don’t want to wait that long for someone who appreciates me for who I am, listens to what I have to say, and…”
“…has a pussy like a McDonald’s drive-thru,” Daniel interjected.
“You don’t have to wait. Women like that are already here,” Paul insisted. “I’ll tell you, when I was fourteen there was this secretary who worked at my dad’s dentist office. She knew how to take care of a boy like you wouldn’t believe. Plus she used to jam that little air hose they use to clean your teeth up my ass while we were doing it. You have no idea how good that feels! I just feel sorry for the people who came in for a cleaning afterward.”
“Older women, huh?” Carter contemplated, scratching his neck. He held the basketball against his side, and Daniel came up behind him and stole it. Carter immediately started chasing after him.
“You both got it dead wrong,” Daniel explained, dribbling around the court. “Younger women, older women, it makes no difference. It’s easy to get them to care about you, but it’s so much harder having your bros care about you.”
Daniel twisted around and drove for the hoop, making Carter backpedal to try and defend. Leaping into the air, Daniel dunked the ball and hung on the rim, his thighs landing on Carter’s shoulders.
“How’s it taste?” Daniel laughed.
“Ahh!” Carter hollered, his face buried.
He finally managed to wriggle out and take a few gasping breaths as he trotted away. His face looked like he’d just been on a roller coaster. Staggering toward his bag, he grabbed a towel to wipe himself off. His phone was right there, showing another message from Avery. He reached for it but checked himself. Feeling a quick flash of anger, he turned back to his friends.
“So where are we going tonight? I can’t wait to get hammered!”
“As long as we don’t go to another one of those fruity little clubs,” Daniel added. “I’m talking about a bar with bottles on the shelf, a DJ bumping, and plenty of meat in the jeans.”
“I guess that means we’ll be headed uptown to the Pirate’s Cove,” Paul declared.
“The Pirate’s Cove it is!” Carter agreed.