Because I’m the coward…
I could see it unfold so clearly. At the party, I’d ask her to homecoming. We’d date, and I’d make it through the year without having to confront any feelings I didn’t feel like confronting. Violet was an overachiever like me. We wouldn’t have time to get serious. I wouldn’t break her heart. She couldn’t touch mine. It was perfect.
Bitterness flooded my mouth.
“Hey, man. Wait up,” Chance called. The beefy center lumbered after me. “You’re going to come over early on Saturday for party prep, right?”
“I told you I would, didn’t I?”
“Good, since Evelyn’s invited half the school. Including weird rich fuckers who smoke on campus, apparently.”
My teeth clenched. I felt Chance watching me as we strode across the quad, his wide face scrunched up in confusion.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said tightly. “Just…worried about my mom.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“It’s all good. I gotta go. I’ll be late to calc.”
He chuckled. “Dude, I don’t get it. It’s our senior year. You don’t evenneedmath.”
“I like it. And I’ll need a shit ton of math to balance the books on the auto body business.”
“Maybe in, like,twenty years. Once you’ve racked up a Super Bowl or two, you can pay someone to do all that shit for you.”
I glanced at Chance, a guy I’d known since we were kids, friendssince grade school, teammates on peewee football and beyond. His position as center was to pass me the ball so that I could be the hero while he took the brutal hits from any D line that wanted to rip my head off. A thankless job he performed with ferocity, berating himself hard when someone got past him. Because he was my friend. My best friend, when it came down to it.
I wondered how he’d feel if I told him I wanted engine grease on my hands instead of Super Bowl rings. Or that I was still thinking about that “weird rich fucker” who might show up to his party.
“Gotta go,” I said and turned away.
“See you at practice?” Chance called after.
I sighed. “I’ll be there.”
***
After practice on Saturday, I spent the afternoon helping Chance set up for the party. Mr. and Mrs. Blaylock were out of town, visiting Chance’s older brother at Auburn.
“I don’t know why they don’t lock you in a cage every time they leave the house,” I said as Chance raided his dad’s liquor cabinet,on topof the keg we’d bought with his older cousin’s help. “You’d think they’d have learned their lesson after the last rager.”
Chance grinned and carried three bottles of liquor from the living room to the spacious kitchen. “Because they know that the kings of the school—especially seniors—are going to live it up. So long as I don’t do major damage to the house or furniture, they’re cool.”
He emptied a bottle of vodka into his mother’s Waterford crystal punch bowl.
“My dad would lose his shit,” I said, unwrapping a stack of red Solo cups from the plastic.
Not that I could have a party at my place now, even if I wanted to. I didn’t want to be atthisparty. It all seemed so pointless. Get wasted to terrible music and talk about unimportant crap as if it were life anddeath.Reallife-and-death stuff was happening in my own home.
I dipped a Solo cup into the bowl of Chance’s infamous party punch: one part cherry Kool-Aid, one part Mountain Dew, one can of Red Bull, and a zillion parts cheap-ass vodka.
“Jesus Christ…” I croaked as the sip burned a path down my throat.
“Red Bull is the secret ingredient,” Chance said, grinning proudly. “Gives it that extra kick.”
“It tastes like carbonated ass.”
