Cash chuckles. “No, but seriously. Leave this man alone. We don’t care for your books and pencils; we have a football season to win.”
“Unlike you, Reeve’s not a hopeless case.” She gives Cash an impatient look and then, narrowing her eyes, leans closer to him. “Did you get a second set of piercings?”
“Christ, it took you this long to notice? I need to buy bigger studs.”
“Please don’t. You’re already tacky as fuck,” I say. Cash has a thing for jewelry—diamond studs in his ears, gold chain around his neck—not to mention a disdain for shirts. I could draw his chest and back tattoos from memory, much to my annoyance. “You ever noticed I pull in the kind of numbers you could only dream of, yet not a single karat of gold or diamonds adorns my body?”
“Okay, I think you guys are talking about pussy, so that’s my cue to leave,” Maisy says with a grimace. “But, Reeve, think about keeping up the tutoring. Please?”
“I’ll think about it,” I lie. “See you, Mais.”
Cash watches her walk away. “Like she doesn’t want to talk about pussy?”
“I think you can be a lesbian and still not want to discuss it with your brother.”
We grab a table, and Cash eases into a plastic chair with a huge sigh.
“You want food?” I ask. “I’m gonna get a sandwich.”
“Nah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Same old shit.” Cash is usually a loudmouth who likes the spotlight almost as much as me, but he’s been mopey ever since a girl he barely knew dumped him last week.
“Are you really pouting over that girl? I didn’t know it was that serious.”
“It wasn’t. And I’m not pouting.”
“Then why aren’t you eating?”
“I’m annoyed. She said she didn’t want to hook up anymore because I flirt with other girls too much.”
“You do.”
“Okay, explain to me the difference between flirting and talking. I like to have fun. So what? It doesn’t mean anything.”
I shrug, feeling a little bad for Cash. Flirting is like breathing for him, and he’s right. It doesn’t mean anything. But it never would have lasted with this girl anyway. “You’re not cut out for a girlfriend, man, you know that. And especially not now. We can’t afford to be weak if we want a winning season.”
“Weak? You mean like Cam?” He smirks. “Yeah, that twelve hundred yards receiving he had last year was pretty weak.”
Cam is only one of my buddies who’ve gotten serious with girlfriends in the last year. It’s wild to see my closest friends dropping like flies and talking about long-term plans with these girls when we’re not even out of college. “Yeah, but watch our friends fucking crumble when they get dumped. I’m tellingyou, man, now is not the time to fall in love and start needing someone else to make you happy. We have what we need.”
Cash mumbles something noncommittal.
“Whatever, you didn’t even like her that much; you just don’t like that she dumped you.”
He smiles a little. “Maybe.”
“So now that your evenings are free, you can have some fun with me. Got plans after practice?”
His eyes light up. “What do you have in mind? Strip club?”
“Nope.”
“Happy hour?” With most of our games being on Saturdays, we don’t drink or party on Fridays. But that doesn’t mean we sit inside and read the Bible.
“No.”
