by Hughes, Maya
At the velvet rope, the bouncer’s gaze lit up with recognition and went from guard dog to a flicker of confusion to a bro handshake and a pat on the back in the space of five seconds.
“I won three hundred bucks on that interception play you ran last season.” He let go of my hand, sporting a wide grin.
“Glad it worked out,” I shouted back and shoved my hands in my pockets. Getting recognized always felt awkward. Nix handled it like an old pro—he probably got tips from his dad. But I had bigger things to deal with tonight. Namely, the drunk-off-her-ass redhead taking another sip of her drink.
“Can you help me? I’m here for her.” I lifted my chin toward the beyond tipsy, stumbling version of Alexis.
“Girlfriend?”
I shook my head. “Nah.”
He eyed me up and down and lifted the velvet rope.
Standing in front of Alexis, I stared at her picking herself up off the floor and reaching for another drink.
“Oh no, you don’t.” I lifted it out of her reach.
Her gaze narrowed and then brightened when her drink-hazed brain registered my face. “Berkie, you came.” She flung her arms around me and looped them around my neck.
I wrapped my arms around her and turned my face away from the alcohol-soaked smell permeating a three foot radius around her. “Jesus, Alexis, what the hell are you wearing?” I averted my gaze and was three seconds away from pulling off my own shirt and putting it on her. My backpack was in the car or I’d have had a thermal and some sweatpants to put her into. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“But I want to stay. Let’s have some fun, let’s dance.” She tried to lift my arm over her head.
“No, Alexis. We’re leaving. You’re beyond drunk and you’re not even twenty-one yet.”
“Don’t ruin my night. I invited you here so we could have fun.” Only a practiced translator of Drunk-Alexis would even understand what she was saying.
“You didn’t invite. You said you needed help.”
“I did, but then I found some guys to buy me drinks. Problem solved!” She smiled like she was a genius for hatching that complex plan.
“We’re going. You can walk out or I can carry you.” I wrapped my fingers around her arm.
“Carry me.” She flung her arms out in front of her and pouted just like she had when she was eight and she’d been told she couldn’t leave the table until she ate her broccoli. She’d sat there until it was time for school in the morning, bleary-eyed and broccoli-free.
“What the fuck, dude? No poaching.” A dude half a foot shorter than me and probably one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet stepped to me. “We’ve been buying rounds for her. You can’t just swoop in and cock block like that.”
Alexis’s eyes got wide and she bit her lips like this was hilarious.
I didn’t feel like fighting tonight, but I would. The pounding of the bass matched the throbbing in my neck.
“Consider your cock officially blocked. She’s my sister and I’m taking her home.”
The guy’s head whipped back and forth between me and Alexis in the way I hated, comparing the way we looked. That made my skin crawl and want to punch something hard—like his smug face.
“You’re not my brother,” Alexis slurred, falling into me.
Every time she said those words, it hurt. Even all these years since the first time. “We’re not having this conversation here.” I turned to the guy, who had been joined by two more of his friends. “She’s leaving. Step aside or I go through you.” Don’t move, dude. I didn’t want to fight, but I could knock him on his ass in half a second flat.
“He runs through guys three times your size every day of the week. I’d listen to him,” the bouncer called out from his sentry post.
The guy squinted at me and then glared at Alexis. “You would’ve been a sloppy lay, anyway. Have her.”
I balled my fists at my side, grinding my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
I shifted from the balls of my feet, ready to lay into this guy, but then Alexis slipped her hand into mine. “Berk, I don’t feel so well. Can you take me home?”
Grabbing her hand, I hustled her out of there and into my car. Street lights whipped by as we drove in silence to her apartment.
My former foster parents had moved her into a studio apartment in the University City area, probably hoping she’d finally make a decision about college by being around so many students. All it had done was open up even more free places for her to get booze until she was twenty-one. Sometimes, late at night, I’d stare up at my bedroom ceiling and try to picture what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t been kicked out of their house. Would I have had a place to go back to for Thanksgivings? Christmases with presents under the tree with my name on them? Parents who texted and called to check up on me, see how school was going? If I was dating anyone?
Alexis never seemed to care. Never got comfortable there. Never believed it was real. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been there too. But they actually gave a shit and I’d sacrificed something real for her. Something she still didn’t feel she could trust. It broke my heart for us both.
I used my spare key and helped her inside with my backpack slung over my shoulder. It had never failed me yet. Everything I needed and everything I cared about was in the bag.
The light gray walls and coordinated teal accents pulled the space together and made it look like something out of a catalog. Other than the empty pizza boxes, take out containers and half-empty cups on most flat surfaces.
With my lips slammed together tight, I flung open the cabinet under the sink and shoved paper plates and other trash into the garbage can. This place looked worse than The Brothel, and there were four guys living there.
When the garbage bag was filled to the brim, I tied it off and dropped it beside the door, grumbling the entire time. I rummaged through my backpack, gently pushing aside the gift-wrapped box and found the overly large bottle of ibuprofen. After filling a glass of water, I checked the time. Fuck, I had practice in less than four hours.
“Are you mad at me?” She stared up at me as I handed her the pills and shoved the water into her hand.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “No.”
She downed half the glass. “You look mad.” Her small voice reminded me of the scared little girl on her first night in a new placement. The first time she’d ended up in the system with a paper thin dress in the dead of winter, clutching a stuffed bunny rabbit missing one eye. The grayed ear of that same rabbit peeked out from under her blankets.
And the simmering anger at her irresponsibility evaporated. She was still just my kid sister. “I worry about you. This is the second time you’ve texted me this week to come get you. You disappear all summer and then football season’s right around the corner and you keep having meltdowns.”
“Good to know football’s more important than me.” She crossed her arms over her chest and the SpongeBob T-shirt that might as well have been a tent.
“You’re my sister. Nothing’s more important than that.”
“Except for football.”
I threw my arms up. “You’re drunk. You need to get some rest and I need to get back to my place. I have practice in the morning.”
She grabbed my hand. “Can’t you stay?” The puppy dog eyes. Always with the freaking puppy dog eyes, and she used them because they worked.
“Fine.” I grabbed my stack of blankets from the closet.
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“Like I want to get punched in the face by your flailing all night. No thanks. Plus, who knows when you last washed your sheets.”
“Mom came over last week, so a week ago.” Mom and Dad. The same Mom and Dad bankrolling her tiptoes into adulthood that bordered on aimless—outside of partying.
“Still have her doing your laundry.” I took a couple pillows out.
She shrugged. “She offers.”
“Maybe they don’t want you to attract bed
bugs.”
“That happened one time. They still bring it up every Sunday dinner.”
“You mean the ones you don’t even go to anymore?”
“I have food here.” The eye roll was practically audible.
“When’s the last time you went for one?”
She shrugged.
I unfolded everything. Kicked off my shoes and snatched my backpack up off the floor.
“Maybe she’s just looking for an excuse to check up on me.”
“Like any concerned parent. You’re not exactly known for making the best choices.”
She flopped back on the bed and flung her arm across her eyes. “Not with this again.”
“With what? Me telling you that maybe you need to make some decisions and stop waiting for everyone else to clean up your messes?”
“I don’t ask anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.” She glared at me.
No, she didn’t. She never did. It was always a request, but the vivid images of what kind of trouble she could get herself into always drove me to action, even when I should let her learn from her own mistakes. That was the bitch about caring about someone who didn’t seem to have any form of self-preservation—you always wanted to protect them from the fall.
I took my stuff into the bathroom. My toothbrush sat on the sink beside Alexis’s. In the studio apartment her parents rented for her. The same ones who had been my parents for a short while. They’d opened their arms to me—to us.
It had taken me a week to finally go to sleep without my shoes on, but then I did and we had movie nights with popcorn and soda. Homework time after school every day. Some of the kids griped about it, but the fact that Barry and Patricia—although she said we could call her Patty—gave a shit about us at all was another way they showed they cared. Like before I’d gone into the system and my biological mom would come home from her second job before her third shift and make sure I’d done mine. It was simple worksheets and stuff, but that didn’t matter.
But even after all these years, I’d never been invited back to Barry and Patty’s house. Not for a single holiday. Not after what they thought I’d done. Maybe it wasn’t worth their time for the kid they saw as throwing their generosity back in their faces. I wasn’t bitter about it anymore—at least I tried not to be.
I pushed those thoughts aside. No use dwelling on that shit. Ha, said the guy who’d put his whole damn pro career and this entire football season on something that should’ve been left in the past. I changed into my sweatpants and T-shirt from my backpack. This tattered navy-and-black Jansport always had my back.
Alexis had turned out the lights while I was in the bathroom. Punching my pillow a few times, I laid down on the pillow- and blanket-laden couch. Alexis had been getting more and more out of control, but it was up to me to be there for her no matter what.
We were family.
“Can you not call me your sister all the time?”
Why didn’t she just boot me straight through the heart?
“Everyone always does that mental math when they’re looking at me and you and it doesn’t add up and that brings on the questions and… I just hate that, okay?”
It didn’t make it hurt any less. I hated those looks too. The ones that called you a liar without ever saying a word. It hurt and I hated it, but I understood.
“Please don’t be mad. I love you, Berk.” Her small voice cut through the apartment.
And that melted all my anger. Wasn’t this what little sisters were supposed to do? Push buttons. Make you want to strangle them? And then tell you at the end of the day they still loved you?
“Love you too, Alexis. Night.” It was nearly three am. Practice tomorrow would be a bitch. But at least after that I’d get two whole days with Jules, not that I was counting and not that anything was going to happen. Just two friends, hanging out for the weekend.
7
Berk
An ear-splitting whistle ricocheted inside my helmet. Sweat poured down my face and everything in my body ached. The paint from the lines on the field criss-crossed my back after the drills I’d had for twenty minutes before our scrimmage. The pre-season always stretched on for way too long. Without the adrenaline from running out onto the field in front of thousands of people losing their collective minds, and an opposing team to face down, the grind of two-a-day practices took its toll.
Coach hadn’t been happy about my right-on-time arrival, so I’d had to run laps. My own personal hell. Hey, let’s get this lineman who’s never had to run more than twenty yards at a sprint to do laps. Not that I couldn’t use the extra cardio. There was no holding back this year. It was about laying everything on the line and pushing harder than I ever had. I wasn’t getting straight As or anything, but I didn’t have the luxury of a family business or support to fall back on like Nix. Even with a degree, it would be hard to find work without a safety net. But a few years in the pros and I’d be set for life.
Right now, however, I was eight seconds from puking. I braced my hands on my knees. Sprinting in full pads and going straight to the lineup was what I got for rescuing Alexis last night. The second time this week. This time she’d found herself stranded an hour outside the city at some house party in Jersey.
Two-a-day practices leading up to the season opener were brutal, but no one could question Coach’s methods. We’d won the national championship last year, and we all knew that with Nix and Reece gone, there was a lot of ground to cover to get our asses to the dance two years in a row.
Our new QB, Austin, was doing everything in his power to make it happen, and I’d be the guy getting in the way of the other guys trying to take his head off. We huddled up and our QB went over the play.
Breaking the circle, we jogged to our positions. I crouched down, fingertips sinking into the freshly-mown and meticulously-maintained grass. This grass probably got more care and attention than eighty-five percent of people in this world.
Energy crackled along the line as everyone waited for the snap. My legs tingled waiting for the telltale sound of the ball hitting the QB’s palm. There was the call and smack. Using muscle memory ingrained from the first time I’d run these drills back in high school, I charged forward, holding off the defense who wanted nothing more than to come out of this practice with the nod from Coach. Not happening.
The ball sailed over my head and my job was done. A touchdown pass and the rookie hunched over, resting his hands on his knees.
“You did good, kid.”
He stared up at me with a huge grin. “Kid? I’m barely a year younger than you, fuckface.”
“But much wiser, I am.” I pressed my palms together and went for the best Yoda impersonation that I could manage while being nearly six-three and hefting at least twenty pounds of gear across the field.
“More like more annoying.”
“One man’s wise is another man’s foolish.”
He shook his head and punched my shoulder pads. “Either way, thanks for having my back out there. I won’t let you down. I know with Nix gone things are different.”
“Things always change.” Better than anyone, I knew how quickly life could become quicksand under your feet. Suck it up and adapt or end up in a spiral that shot you out on death’s door or somewhere worse.
“You’re killing it so far. Don’t psych yourself out. Keep running plays like you have been and I’ll keep the defensive line off your ass for as long as I can.” That was one thing I kicked ass at—protecting the QB at all costs. Better I get my bell rung, the bruised ribs, or a cleat straight to the face than the guy calling the plays. If the ball made it to where it was supposed to, we were good.
“But you throw a few interceptions and I’m going to let them knock you around a bit.”
“Thanks.” He rolled his eyes. “No pressure there.”
I shook his shoulder pads and they clacked against his helmet. “Just giving you a heads up.”
“Why’d Coach have LJ riding the bench all pre
-season?” Austin shielded his eyes from the late August sun, staring at our should-be cornerback hanging on the sidelines looking like he could bite through steel bars.
“It’s complicated.” I clapped him on the shoulder.
LJ had made the unfortunate mistake of pissing off our Coach in more ways than one. You’d think being best friends with his daughter would come as an advantage. That was so far from the case it was hovering in the outer atmosphere only visible with a telescope. And it had only gotten worse when Marisa had moved into The Brothel. The name probably wasn’t helping things.
Coach had us all huddle up. “You’ve all hustled hard this pre-season. We’re going into the next season and I want you to get it out of your heads that with last year’s seniors gone we don’t have it in us. Every single one of you—” His gaze froze on LJ and his lips tightened. “Almost all of you have what it takes to make this another winning season. You have Labor Day weekend off.”
Guys banged their helmets together and cheered.
“You have these three days off, and I’m trusting you all to rest up and not make me regret giving you some time before the semester starts. Get ready for your classes. Get some sleep. Do not make me have to attend any honor council meetings once you’re all back. Dismissed.”
The whole team charged toward the tunnel, ready for three solid days off. The energy that flagged during practice roared back. The unmistakable smell of IcyHot, sweat, and soap filled the locker room.
I headed straight for the showers, not wanting to be late to meet Jules. Since I had practice so late, I told her I’d meet at the pickup spot for the shuttle to wherever it was we were going.
She’d had to go earlier to help her sister. I’d leave my car at the house and get a taxi there, so I wouldn’t be late. I’d make sure to eat and drink my fill to make up for the ding to my wallet.
Some guys were already slamming their lockers shut and heading outside, clothes clinging to their barely-dried bodies. Classes started in three days and there was no slacking off once the semester began. Sometimes it was hard enough keeping my eyes open after practice, but throw in classes and I’d be 90% powered by caffeine and sugar.