Rough Guy: Providence Prep High School Book 3

by Allen, Jacob

  And yet, if I touched her, if I so much as laid a finger on her, because of social media, rumors would spread so fast that I wouldn’t be able to control them. The last thing I needed was the small chance of a scholarship popping up getting ruined because I’d placed my pinkie finger on her pinkie finger.

  Fucking stupid bitch.

  Of course, as soon as she drove off, the feelings of arousal were quickly replaced by the reality that Coach Miller had suspended me one game because, in his words, “of conduct detrimental to the team.” It pissed me off even more that Coach Miller had made the announcement in front of the entire fucking team, as if to prove that no one was above reproach. Yeah, because public punishment worked so great.

  I couldn’t wait to see the team fall apart without me. In fact, I hoped they did—I wanted them to see how much they needed me. Maybe then, some of the basketball programs would realize just how damn valuable I was. Or they’ll realize what an ass you are and never recruit you.

  “Fucking Samantha,” I said with a laugh as I turned around and headed back to my car.

  My raging erection now dropping to normal size, my arousal turned to fear as I realized that I now had to face the only adult that I actually feared.

  My father.

  * * *

  I loved my mother. She was a sweet woman, a stay-at-home mother who doted on me, her only child. If life only involved her, things would be great.

  My father, though, was like a goddamn drill sergeant. I would’ve have called him that more, but “Sergeant Locke” did not fly over at all in the house nearly as well as “Dad.” Too bad he’d easily earned the first moniker but barely earned the second.

  From as far back as I could remember, my father wasn’t a dad; he didn’t laugh, wrestle with me, play with me, or help me with homework. He was a cold, brutal, tough taskmaster; instead of laughing at my jokes, he’d critique them and instruct me on how to be funny. He wouldn’t wrestle with me so much as he would just pin me to the ground and then tell me how to get out. Play? Forget it. Homework? He would give me more if I finished early.

  It worked well enough on my older brothers. On me? Well, I played football and basketball, but there wasn’t much else I had to thank him for.

  I had plenty for which to give him the middle finger for, though.

  When I pulled up to the house, I saw both of their cars home, because of course they were; it was just after 5:30 p.m., not like ten in the morning when my father would have been at work for his sales job. I parked the car, took a deep breath, and told myself to just get to my room. My father couldn’t ask me more stupid questions about scholarship offers if I wasn’t present to take such questions.

  I opened my car door, stepped out, rigidly marched to the front entrance, and opened the door to see my father standing at the entrance, arms folded.

  “Care to tell me what happened with Coach Miller?”

  Well, not going to escape this one.

  “Not really,” I said.

  I already knew what happened. Coach had called my father and explained everything that had happened. After our lunch-time meeting, he’d expected me to rally and show how much I wanted to be there in practice. I was still pissed from that afternoon, though, and still pissed about everything, and it showed. I had more turnovers than assists, I half-assed drills, and I didn’t get back on defense.

  All things that not only did Coach Miller get on me about, my father would have gotten on me about if I was there.

  But this was all to say there wasn’t anything new I could tell my father, so why would I need to tell him everything?

  Well, if I wasn’t so apparently damn crazy and had an ounce of self-preservation in my body, I would not have talked back to the sergeant of the house. Too bad that wasn’t the case right now.

  “Really,” my father said. “Because he just called me twenty minutes ago to tell me you were suspended for the next game. What kind of stupid shit did you get into?”

  “Nothing, just a bad day at practice.”

  “Bad day at practice?!?”

  I swore my father was going to slam the walls in anger.

  “You know we can forgive missed shots or mistakes on the field,” my father said, a blatantly false statement. “But to have an attitude problem is unforgivable! That is not how we raised you in the Locke household!”

  “I know,” I muttered.

  “If you knew that, then why did you act the way that you did?!?”

  I was trying really hard not to fight back against my father. He was one of the few people I genuinely feared pushing back against.

  “I can’t believe this, we raised you better than that,” my father grunted. “We never had attitude problems with Andrew and Clark. Why, suddenly, are you like this?”

  My father couldn’t have said anything worse if he’d tried. I’d hated comparisons to my brothers since the day I first started dribbling a basketball and throwing a football. Andrew and Clark relished those comparisons, knowing that they were both much better athletes than I was. I could have gone on to be the next Tom Brady or LeBron James, but so long as my brothers were more athletic and more accomplished, they were always going to hold it over me.

  It was a comparison that easily made me forget that getting angry at my father was a counterproductive strategy.

  “I’m my own man, Dad,” I said.

  “No, you’re your own boy.”

  Is he trying to piss me off?

  “We clearly have not instilled enough discipline for you in this household,” my father said. “You acting like a spoiled millennial is not—”

  “Would you just let it rest?” I shouted. “Do you think I enjoy being bothered at not getting any scholarships?”

  “Are you raising your voice at me?”

  I had a moment of silence where I needed to think very carefully about what direction I wanted this to go in. Nothing was going to temper how angry my father was at me, but a lot of my actions could have provoked him to go further.

  “I’m just pissed that Clark and Andrew so easily got scholarships and I only have preferred walk on status.”

  “Because you didn’t work hard enough.”

  That was it.

  It had nothing to do with that. I worked far harder than either of my brothers ever did; hell, I worked harder than everyone but our quarterback, and that was only because I needed him by my side in order to practice. There was no one who worked harder than me across all of Providence Prep.

  And my father had the gall to say it was because I didn’t work hard enough?

  “I hate you,” I said, walking out the door.

  “Don’t you dare leave, son!”

  But I ignored my father. In the distance, I heard my mother shouting something about letting me be for a bit, but I didn’t much care what followed. If my father wanted to follow me out the door, fine. If my mother restrained him, fine. I was walking down this long driveway and onto Broad Street until I found something to kill time with.

  And, wouldn’t you know it, about a quarter of a mile down the street, one of the wealthier families had their home and two of my friends that I could go and see.

  I just had to hope Adam didn’t have Emily over. God, that would have put the rotten cherry on this fucking shit sandwich day.

  I went up to their front door, knowing that Mrs. Collins wouldn’t send me home if my parents called her. She was a wonderful lady, but she was also easily pushed over. I rang the doorbell and waited, hoping to see Adam. His mother—a very attractive woman in her own right—answered.

  “Nick!” she exclaimed, always excited to see us. If only you had a semblance of an idea of how we destroy your house when you and your husband are gone. “Are you looking for Adam?”

  “Yeah, is he here?”

  “Of course, hun, come on in, come on,” she said. “He and Emily are just doing homework in his room. I’m sure the three of you have some classes in common you can work on.”

  I nodded and pla
yed along, but there was absolutely zero chance of me going into that room.

  “Where’s Ryan, by the way?” I said.

  I couldn’t believe I was resorting to hanging out with the youngest Collins as a means of escaping Emily and the reminders of this day. If anyone laughed at both the world and the Broad Street Boys as a concept, it was Ryan. Adam took the group seriously, almost as a religious identity; Kevin begged to be in a group where he felt like he belonged; and I enjoyed the two for who they were, not caring too much for the moniker.

  But Ryan? He had a nihilistic streak that made him laugh at everyone and everything. It was sometimes enjoyable to see him and Adam clash, but one of the side effects was that it meant he wasn’t as close to us as the three of us were to each other.

  Still, he wasn’t someone who was going to mock me for today.

  “Oh, he’s playing video games in the game room, Fortnite, I think it is called. You’re welcome to go say hi to him.”

  I intended to do a lot more than that.

  I found him with the controller in his hands, his legs sprawled out on the couch, and his eyes glued to the TV. I couldn’t have imagined a more stereotypical image of a lazy teenager avoiding responsibilities.

  “Shouldn’t you be doing homework?” I said with a chuckle.

  “Shouldn’t you be partying or some shit?”

  We shared a short laugh at that as I slapped his legs and commanded him to sit up.

  “Damn you being smart,” I said.

  “Damn you for being a second semester senior,” he shot back. “I still have to keep up appearances of giving a shit.”

  “I, um, see that,” I said, noting his unkempt hair, his gym shorts, and the lack of shirt on his part. “And anyways, it’s not like it’s stressless.”

  “Well, if you give a fuck, sure,” Ryan said before he quit his game and tossed me an extra controller without saying a word. “The only thing I’m giving a fuck about right now is this shit.”

  “That’s something I can get behind.”

  The two of us played Fortnite for about twenty minutes, the silence punctuated only by the occasional “shit!” or “goddamnit!” or “fuck yeah!” whenever something of importance happened on the screen. When we finished our third round of battles, Ryan leaned back on the couch.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, anyways?” he said. “Your boy is in the other room.”

  “Probably fucking his girlfriend.”

  “Hah, seriously. Amazing how that dude preaches not giving a fuck, but as soon as some pussy that he once fell for walks in the door and they become serious… man, you would not believe how much that dude stresses about Emily.”

  “I can guess,” I said, not really thinking about it as another game started.

  “No, really, you can’t,” he said. “I don’t get him at all. I follow his rules better than he does.”

  Ryan shrugged.

  “But, fuck it, to each their own. You still haven’t said why you’re here, though.”

  I sighed. I didn’t anticipate Ryan acting as my de facto therapist today, but if that’s what today had come to, well, it was pretty low on the list of crazy shit.

  “I got suspended for the next game,” I said. “Sarge is pretty pissed about it.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Yep. He said I needed to work harder. I wanted to fucking smash his skull in. Nobody works harder than me.”

  “See, that’s your problem, you give a fuck.”

  “It’s hard to not give a fuck when your older brothers are constantly outshining you and you hear about it all the time.”

  I did not expect silence to follow in that moment. I was much less expecting of the fact that the thing that finally broke the silence was Ryan saying “yeah, it sucks.” When I looked at him, surprised that he’d admit as much, he kept his eyes glued on the big screen in front of us.

  “I don’t give a fuck what Adam does or says,” Ryan said. “I just do me. And see? By not giving a fuck about anything, I don’t have to worry about anything. I get more pussy than he ever did. And I don’t fall into the emotional trap of a relationship. So, if you’re looking for a real big brother to look up to, look up to me.”

  “Your scrawny ass?” I said with a laugh. “Learn to grow a beard first and I’ll consider it.”

  “Learn to grow some balls, and you can consider it.”

  “Damn!”

  We both shared a laugh at that. There were some things he’d said I was curious about, but I was trying my best to assume Ryan’s don’t-give-a-fuck attitude.

  “Well, I did when it came to Samantha.”

  “Who, the tall dumb chick?”

  “Dumb?” I said. “She’s going to go to Harvard. Duke, at least.”

  “And?” Ryan said. “So she can recite a Leo Tolstoy novel from heart. Congrats. Has she ever shown you the capability of interacting with another human without causing trouble?”

  “Hey, easy,” I said.

  Why are you defending her?

  “Whatever, man,” Ryan said. “Like I said, don’t get involved, and you don’t have to deal with this shit. I’m more likely to kill my mother than I am to date another girl. Talk to me in two decades when all of you are having kids, and then maybe, I’ll go from a girl for every day of the week to just one for weekdays and one for weekends.”

  Oh, Ryan, you little ass. If only we could all be so chill about it.

  If only I could stop thinking about Samantha and scholarships as you do.

  “What the hell are you two hanging out for?”

  I looked over at Adam, who had just entered, wearing a tank top and gym shorts, the type of clothes that suggested he had not been wearing anything at all in the minutes before.

  “Shocking to hear, brother, but we were nice and didn’t want to interrupt your coitus,” Ryan said. “Nick is a gentleman and a scholar, and so he decided to wait until you came out to hang.”

  “Well, he’s a scholar, but I don’t know about gentleman from today,” Adam said. “But it’s all good. We’re all allowed to be an asshole from time to time. Here, gimme a controller.”

  From today?

  Fuck, is even Adam on Samantha’s side? Probably because he fucking let Emily talk him into it. Whatever.

  Ryan sat up entirely on the couch now, the three of us playing Fortnite for the next hour. Thoughts of Samantha and Coach Miller and my father never were too far from my mind, but the brief moments of relief playing Fortnite were at least a nice break from the day. Emily came in at one point and whispered something into Adam’s ear before kissing him and walking away, but she notably did not look at me at all.

  I knew I couldn’t spend the entire night at the Collins. Adam made as much clear when he said that if Emily couldn’t be over, I couldn’t be over. I headed home a couple of hours later, prepared to take my punishment from my father. I’d had my relief; now I could better handle what was to come.

  Instead, though, when I got in, my father just stared at me, sighed, and shook his head.

  “Go to your room and do whatever homework needs to be done,” he said. “We’ll deal with what happened with you later.”

  Relieved at this, I hurried upstairs, taking my laptop and starting work.

  I couldn’t, however, shake the thoughts of Samantha from my mind. I couldn’t believe that I had defended her in front of Ryan, especially for what she’d done to me. Yeah, thinking of her made me hot, but more than that, it made me angry. It pissed me off that she could just drive off, knowing what she’d heard Coach Miller tell me, and just not have anything happen.

  I was a man of my word. I had promised severe consequences for her actions.

  It was time to follow through.

  Just not tomorrow.

  7

  Samantha

  I suppose Nick got the hint to stop being such a fucking ass, because up to Friday’s lunch break, nothing happened.

  Oh, sure, I saw him in the hallway. Every time I saw hi
m, my heart beat faster, goosebumps crawled over my skin, and sweat poured down my forehead. In a different circumstance with a different boy, maybe such emotions would have been a sign of excitement.

  Well, Nick excited me in a very perverse way, and it wasn’t one that I was interested in pushing any further. Tuesday was, not surprisingly, the worst day. Every encounter—even when I saw him far away, on the other side of the hallway—had me believing he was about to bullrush me, press me against the lockers, and find a way to humiliate me. I assumed that anything from a slap to a verbal shaming was possible.

  I just assumed I got lucky at the end of Tuesday. I didn’t even study in the school library after classes ended that day; I chose instead to go to a nearby public library. Wednesday was much of the same, though when school ended and I found myself in the public library, I allowed myself a glimmer of hope that someone had knocked some sense into Nick.

  In fact, by the time Thursday ended, I was mostly back to feeling my normal self. Seeing Nick in the hallway still stressed me out, but it didn’t bother me to the same extent it had earlier in the week. I even studied in the school library at the end of the day, and though I could hear the basketball team practicing in the gymnasium, I didn’t feel any particular need to hurry up when I passed by those doors.

  All of which was to say what happened Friday at lunch showed me I should have never let my guard down. With the Broad Street Boys, the decision to just not worry and believe things were done was never the case. You didn’t get the moniker “Broad Street Boys,” I suppose, without doing something that only stupid teenage boys would do.

  It seemed normal enough at the beginning of lunch. I went to the library and ate my food while I prepared for my AP History class that afternoon. Nothing out of the ordinary here—I had myself a salad with chicken, cheese, olives, lettuce, avocado, and mushrooms. Delicious, healthy, and invigorating.

  And then, just as I would have tried to get on Twitter to look at the social media accounts for the various schools—maybe finding a tweet to like or to somehow make myself visible to the schools in whatever manner possible—the head librarian started to walk to me, concern on her face.