Playing The Game

by Jeff Shelby

  Her fingertips were like an electric jolt to my skin. “Anything can happen,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.

  She pursed her lips, fighting off a smile. “I don't know that you have it in you.”

  I could feel the dull thump of the bass from the music, even though we were outside. “I haven't actually put the uniform on yet, so who knows? It apparently has some sort of magical asshole power around here.”

  Her lips curved into a half-smile and it was pretty much the best damn smile I'd ever seen in my short life.

  “So you think then you'll be a raging asshole?” she asked, raising the perfect eyebrow again. “Like a reverse Clark Kent thing or something?”

  I nodded. “Could happen.”

  She tried to frown at me, but it was still more of a smile. “I don't think so. You seem...different.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And you should know. I'm hardly ever wrong. Like, ever.”

  “Except when you make sweeping assumptions about people.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “Except then.”

  “Good to know.”

  She smiled and turned away from me for a second, her eyes looking back toward the house. She seemed so sure of herself, so confident. Not in a bitchy kind of a way, but she just didn’t try to be someone she wasn’t. And yeah, she was opinionated and assertive and some people might find that off-putting, but I didn’t. I just thought she was cool.

  And hot.

  “This is totally weird,” she said, turning back to me suddenly.

  “What is?”

  “This,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “You.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to not like you,” she explained. “I wanted to find you dumb and shallow and arrogant. I wanted to be wrong about you being nice, which is weird, because I don’t ever like to be wrong. But you are nice, and plus you've read the greatest book ever written and admitted to trying to astral project yourself.” She shook her head. “I was not prepared for this.”

  “Uh, I'm sorry?”

  “You should be,” she said, swatting at my shoulder. “I'm not supposed to like basketball players. It's against my personal code of ethics.”

  “You have a personal code of ethics?”

  “It's on a laminated card in my underwear drawer.”

  “You're gonna have to show me if you want me to believe you.”

  “You probably just wanna see my underwear.”

  “It might've crossed my mind.”

  “I don't wear thongs,” she said. “I'll just disappoint you right now. The idea of floss up my ass grosses me out.”

  “You'll be happy to know I don't wear thongs, either. For exactly the same reason.”

  She smiled and, I realized I was wrong. This particular smile was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. “You're flirting with me. And you're smart. This is so confusing. I think I need more beer.”

  I handed her mine. “Finish mine. I don't want it.”

  She took it. “Why not?'

  I shrugged. “I don't wanna get hammered. It's basketball season.”

  “You don't mind if I do then, do you?”

  “Be my guest.”

  She downed half of the remaining beer in one swallow. “But don't get the wrong idea, Brady Mickelson. I'm not gonna get super drunk and then offer you a blowjob behind a tree in the backyard or fuck you in the backseat of your car.”

  “I actually rode my bike.”

  “Then we are totally not doing it on your bike,” she said, tilting the cup in my direction. “Or anywhere else.” She paused. “No matter what you've heard about me.”

  Something in the way she said that last sentence made me think she wasn't saying it to be funny or sarcastic.

  “I haven't heard anything about you,” I said.

  She arched her eyebrow like that was impossible, started to say something, then just shook her head. “Whatever. The point is you can't just liquor me up and expect things from me.”

  “I wouldn't,” I said. “I don't.”

  Her mouth twisted a little, like she didn't believe me. But no matter how hot she was and no matter how much I couldn't stop staring at her legs and wondering what her bare skin felt like, I wasn't expecting anything from her. Hell, I'd already gotten more from her than I'd hoped for. A conversation and some one-on-one time.

  A cell phone chimed. She sighed, chugged the rest of the beer, set the cup down, and pulled a phone from the waistband of her skirt. She glanced at the screen. “Shit.”

  “What's wrong?”

  She sighed again. “A friend.”

  “Didn’t you say there are no real friends here?”

  “Semi-friend,” she corrected. “She's being cornered somewhere in this place by some creepy dude. I told her to text me if she needed an out.” She held up the purple and black phone. “She's texting me.”

  “You better go save her then,” I said.

  “I know.” She made a face. “But I don't want to.”

  “I don't want you to, either.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “No?”

  “No. I want you to stay so we can talk about I Know What You Did Last Summer and Daughters of Eve and then maybe try and astrally project ourselves.”

  Her eyes widened. “Have you read all of Duncan's books?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  “Shit,” she said, chewing on a fingernail. “I wanna stay. If you keep talking Lois Duncan to me, I will, at the very least, make out with you.”

  “Summer of Fear,” I said, rattling them off as fast as I could. “Killing Mr. Griffin.”

  “Oh my God. You're relentless. Maybe we will do it on your bike. I'm so turned on.”

  So was I. “You better stay, then.”

  Her phone chimed again. She tapped the screen. “Shit.”

  “Semi-friend again?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should go,” I said. I only half meant it. “Don't bail on her if you said you'd help her. I'll just find some other girl to talk about Lois Duncan with.”

  Her dark eyes narrowed. “You wouldn't dare.”

  “You're right,” I said, smiling. “I was bluffing. I wouldn't.”

  She was trying to fight off a smile.

  “Go find your friend,” I said. “I'll be around.”

  “Finally, some arrogance out of you.”

  The heat made another mad dash for my face. “Or not.”

  “I'm kidding,” she said, standing up. “I'm seriously kidding. I'm seriously having a good time talking to you.”

  I wasn't sure how to take that. I didn't want her to move me into the friend zone, but I figured it was at least a start.

  “Well, then hurry up and go and then come find me when you're done,” I said. “We can keep not having sex on my bike and just hang out.”

  She laughed and it thrilled me that I could make her laugh.

  “Right,” she said, backing toward the house. “But beware the claws. They will come for you. I may tell people that you're gay or something so they'll stay away from you.”

  “Do whatever you need to,” I said. “I'll be around. I'll wait for you.”

  “Ten minutes,” she said. “Fifteen max.” She paused. “And I wanna know what's in those headphones.”

  I didn't follow. “What?”

  “You said normally you'd have headphones on and have your nose in a book,” she said. “When I come back, I wanna know what you'd be listening to.”

  I watched her walk inside. She stopped at the keg and filled up the cup I'd given her. Then she turned back in my direction. She took a long drink, smiled and waved at me.

  I waved back and watched her disappear into the masses, hoping it would be less than fifteen minutes and hoping she was serious about making out.

  Because I sure as shit was.

  ELEVEN

  I stayed outside for at least an hour before I started to realize Amy wasn't coming back.

  People came and went, a f
ew stopping to talk about basketball and acting like we were old friends. I recognized a lot of faces, but didn't know many names. And the whole time, I was glancing around them, looking for Amy. I started to wonder if her friend needed more help than advertised or if she'd just ditched me.

  The wind picked up outside and I finally stood and went back into the kitchen, my mood having taken a significant nosedive. I didn't have a lot of experience flirting because most of the time I took the chicken shit route and just didn't do it. But I thought I’d had a good read on Amy, and the vibe I'd been getting was that she was interested in me, which alone had made the party worth going to. Because I liked her. Not just because she looked so good. She seemed real and couldn't give a shit that I played basketball. Now, though, I was starting to think she'd just been drunk enough to feign interest and had used the text as a way to bail on me.

  I grabbed another cup from the counter and held it under the tap on the keg. I’d already broken my two-beer maximum vow and besides, I was a little pissed at the whole ditching thing.

  “You don't look very happy,” a voice on my left said.

  I looked over and the girl Derek had pointed out earlier was standing next to me. The tight pink top and the even tighter jeans. Cameron something.

  “I'm fine,” I said, letting go of the pull on the tap and stepping back.

  She held out her cup. “Will you fill mine? I always get too much foam and foam makes me gag.”

  We traded cups and I tipped hers under the spigot, filled it without foam, and we traded again.

  “Thanks,” she said, amping up the wattage in her smile. “I'm Cam.”

  “Brady.”

  “I know,” she said. “Pretty sure everyone knows.”

  “Ah,” I said, sipping from the beer, then scanning the room behind her.

  No Amy.

  “Do you snowboard?” she said, holding the cups to her lips.

  “Snowboard?”

  “You're from Colorado, right?” she said. “I've always assumed everyone there snowboarded.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I've boarded before. But I'm not very good.”

  “I'm scared of heights,” she said. “My family went to Tahoe last year and I stayed in the lodge the entire time because I was too afraid to get on the lifts.”

  I laughed. “Bummer.”

  “Massive bummer,” she said, making a face. “Especially when you have two younger siblings who kick ass on snowboards.”

  “That does suck.”

  “You have no idea,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Unless you have siblings.”

  “I don't.”

  “Then you might be the luckiest person I know.”

  “I doubt that.”

  She leaned her hip against the counter. “Was Derek talking about me earlier?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I saw him talking to you and I thought I saw him say my name,” she said, putting a fake angry expression on her face. “And I'd like to make sure he wasn't telling lies about me.”

  “Why would he tell lies about you?”

  “Isn't that what boys do?”

  I laughed again. “Nothing bad. Promise.”

  “But he was talking about me then, right?”

  “Just telling me who you were,” I said.

  She lifted her eyebrows. “So you were looking at me?”

  I mean, was every chick in the place competing to see who could get me to blush the hardest?

  Then she laughed. “I'm kidding. But why didn't you just come over and talk to me?”

  I laughed into my cup and wondered if I could have the blood vessels removed from my face. “I don't know.”

  Which wasn't true. I didn't go talk to her because I'd been holding out for Amy.

  “Ask me anything,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “I'm like an open book. Here's your shot. Ask away.”

  I thought for a moment. “Why are you afraid of heights?”

  “Because I might fall,” she said, smiling. “Ask another.”

  “Do you like books?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I'm not much of a reader. I like movies, though.” She paused. “Is that gonna be a deal breaker?”

  I didn't know there was a deal to break and I would've been lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that she didn't read, especially after my conversation with Amy. But at least she was honest.

  “Not a deal breaker,” I said. “I like movies, too.”

  “How about school?” she asked. “Are you liking school?”

  “Sure, it's okay.”

  “It's just school, right?” she said, nodding. “Nothing to get too excited over.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, unless you run into the new basketball star at a party and get to talk to him,” she said, a small grin creeping onto her face.

  It felt fake. I knew it was fake. No one says that kind of shit when you're in high school. It was like the opposite of the way Amy talked. I may have sucked at flirting, but I could smell bullshit a mile away, and Cam was spitting it out right in front of me. I should've ran and grabbed my bike and gone home, gotten the fuck out of there right then and realized the entire place was toxic.

  But I was still a tiny bit buzzed and Cam was hot and she was funny and Amy was nowhere to be found and I was a little bent because I thought she ditched me.

  I smiled at her. “Right.”

  She smiled back, assuming I'd taken the bait, which I guess I had. Then she tilted her head to the side, her cotton candy lips glistening in the kitchen light. “You seem like you're looking for somebody.”

  “Do I?”

  “Well, I'm trying not to take it personally that I'm flirting with you and you seem distracted,” she said, still smiling. “I think it goes back to you being unhappy at the keg.”

  I drank more of the beer, the alcohol buzzing in my head. “Yeah, probably so. Sorry.”

  She made a semi-serious face. “You seem to be a man of few words.”

  I found that funny and laughed. “Words can be overrated.”

  “We don't have to talk,” she said, shrugging. “We can, you know, do other things.”

  The room tilted a little. I was drinking more than I planned. Or maybe it was just her words that were doing things to me. I looked over Cam's head.

  No Amy.

  Shit.

  “Is there a girlfriend I'm competing with here?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Because I'm not looking for drama or anything. So if I need to bail...”

  “No girlfriend,” I said, shaking my head. “No girlfriend.”

  She paused, glanced over her shoulder, then back to me. “So you and Amy aren't, like, together?”

  She finally had my full attention. “What?”

  She shifted against the counter. “Amy Mitchell. I saw you talking to her earlier. I wondered if that's who you were looking for. I didn't know if you guys were together or what.”

  I set the cup down on the counter. “Yeah,” I said, then shook my head. “I mean, no. We aren't together. But I was talking to her earlier.”

  She pursed her lips and shrugged. “Well, if you're looking for her, pretty sure she's upstairs. With Derek.”

  An invisible fist nailed me right in the gut. “What?”

  She hooked a perfectly manicured thumb over her shoulder and pointed. “A little bit ago. She followed him upstairs.” She paused. “They used to have a thing, so I don't know what the deal is now, but they went upstairs.”

  “A thing?” I said.

  She nodded and fiddled with her headband. “Yeah. Last year. I don't really know much, but they were totally into each other for awhile.”

  The fist hit me again. I remembered Amy’s words.

  I tried that once. Never again.

  Unless she changed her mind, apparently.

  And now I knew why Derek had given me that look when he'd seen me talking to her. I was encroaching on his territory. Maybe he'd taken her upstairs just to show
me he could, to remind me I was still the new guy and a year younger. But why the hell had she gone up with him after everything she'd said to me about basketball players and all that crap? Was that just denial? Or was she just talking to me to piss Derek off?

  I hated drama.

  “Hello?” Cam said, waving her hand in front of my face. “Brady? Are you still there?”

  I grabbed my cup off the counter. “Yeah, I'm here. Sorry.”

  Her hand touched my wrist, her fingers resting lightly on my skin. There was no electricity like the jolt Amy had given me. “You sure there isn't a girlfriend or someone?”

  I shook my head and took a drink. “Nope. No one.”

  She moved in a little closer, brushing up against my thigh. “So, then, we could...maybe do some of those other things?”

  I looked down at her. I was pissed that Amy was upstairs with Derek. Hurt, too, but I wasn't gonna tell Cam that. My buzz was a little stronger now and I wasn’t in the best place to make decisions. But Cam was hot, had tremendous cleavage and was basically asking me to hook up with her.

  I drained the beer, set the cup down, and focused on Cam. “Sure. I'm in.”

  TWELVE

  “You get in Cam's pants last night?” Derek asked, tucking his practice jersey into his shorts. When I didn't answer, he turned to Blake and said, “Looks like maybe Brady bats for the other team if he couldn't close that.”

  It was Saturday afternoon, our first Saturday practice of the year. I'd slept in late because I'd gotten home late. I hadn't bothered to shower and I knew that, even with washing my face and a heavy dose of deodorant, I probably still smelled like beer and cigarettes. I was pretty sure all of us did as we yawned and stretched.

  “Fuck off,” I said, as much for the comment as for whatever he'd ended up doing with Amy.

  Derek laughed. “No worries, dude. I don't care who you fuck. Just don't fuck up our team.”

  Blake laughed, shook his head, grabbed a ball from the rack and dribbled away from us.

  Cam and I didn't have sex. We'd found a bedroom on the first floor and ended up on the bed. The room spun when we made out and at some point, we'd both lost our shirts and she'd ended up in nothing more than a pair of black panties. We'd stopped just short of having sex and I was pretty sure it was me that stopped it, though my memory of it all was foggy. I'd been oddly disconnected the whole time, unable to clear my mind of the thought of Amy with Derek in some other part of the house, doing far more than Cam and I were doing. At some point, she'd rolled off of me, stood over me in just the panties, told me she had to go and got dressed. I pulled on my shirt and she'd kissed me and told me to find her on Monday at school.