"Send Jake to my house for a couple nights. My parents wouldn't care."
I look at him. "I'm good, okay? Just drop it. A night without sleep isn't going to kill me."
"No, but it affects your game," he mutters.
I grab his jersey and yank him up to my face. "What the fuck are you trying to say?"
He looks me in the eye. "Let go of me."
"Not until you tell me what the fuck you're trying to say. That I'm not good enough? My game's off?" I hear the anger in my voice. I feel it in my veins, trying to get out.
Danny stares at me, his eyes on mine. "I can't help you if you don't listen to me. You asked me to tell when you're doing it." He pauses. "I'm telling you right now. Get your fucking hands off me."
Something clicks in me and I let him go, looking at my hand—the one that was practically choking him with his jersey just seconds ago—and wanting to know who was controlling it. It couldn't be me. Danny's my best friend. I wouldn't treat him that way. So why the fuck did I do it?
Danny pats my shoulder. "It's okay, man. We'll keep working on it."
I shake my head, muttering, "Fuck. Sorry."
He didn't hear me. He's at the water jug, filling his sports bottle.
Last year Danny and I made a deal. When my anger takes over, he'll stop me before something happens. We made the deal after I got in a fight at a party and almost killed a guy. I didn't mean to take it that far, but I'd lost control of my anger and didn't realize what I was doing. I'm a big guy and it doesn't take much for me to hurt someone. Danny and some of the guys from the team stopped me, getting me off the guy I had in a choke hold and forcing me back to the car.
Danny took me home, but before we went inside, he looked me in the eye and told me I needed help. I couldn't argue with him because it was true. But I refused to go to some stupid counselor who'd tell me my fucked-up parents are the reason my anger gets out of control. I already know that, but I don't want it to be my excuse for acting this way. I refuse to be like either one of them, which is why I'm working on it. I'm nowhere near where I need to be, and maybe it'll never happen. Maybe it's in the genes. Even so, I'm doing what I can to control it, and Danny's agreed to help me.
Problem is, he's not always around. But I made the same deal with Jacob. If my anger gets out of control, he knows what to do. One word. Stop. That's all he has to say. It doesn't always work but it's starting to. When I hear it I imagine a flashing red alarm going off, screeching at me to stop whatever I'm doing and calm the fuck down. I picked that word to prove to myself I'm not like my dad. That word never worked on him. My mom would scream it over and over and it only made him beat her more. He got power from that word. Power to keep going. To me, it's the opposite. It's my trigger word to drag me back into reality, out of whatever caused me to lose control.
"You okay?" Danny says, coming up beside me.
"Yeah." I half-smile. "I'm good. And you were right about me being off my game. I haven't been playing as well. I think it's all this shit with Jacob. I don't know what I'm doing. I suck as a parent."
"You're not his parent. You're his brother. And the kid's doing better with you than with some foster family."
I sigh, rubbing my hand over my jaw. "I gave him a fucking candy bar for dinner last night. Even my mom fed us better than that."
Danny chuckles. "That's nothing. I lived on candy bars at his age. Pretty sure I had them for dinner a few times."
"It's not just that. It's stuff at school. His homework. I can barely do my own. The kid's gonna fail and I can't help him."
"So hire a tutor."
"With what money?"
Danny doesn't answer. He's looking across the field at someone walking down the street. "Is that the new girl?"
My eyes follow his gaze to the girl who sat her tight little ass on my desk this morning. The girl with the sassy mouth that wouldn't take no for an answer when I told her she couldn't sit there. The girl who showed up at my locker, telling me to move with that same sassy mouth, those big brown eyes staring up at me with a fierce intensity that nearly convinced me to do as she asked. I didn't, of course, which only made her angrier, and for some reason turned me on. I have no idea why. She's not even close to being my type. I know nothing about her but I can tell by the way she holds herself—head high, shoulders back—and by the way she speaks, enunciating each letter, that she comes from money. But why would a girl with money be at such a shitty high school? I don't fucking care. I've already given this girl too much thought and it needs to end.
"Fuck, she's hot," Danny says, watching as she waits at the bus stop.
She's taking the city bus. Why would a rich girl take the bus?
"Stay away from her," I say, keeping my eyes on her. "She's trouble.”
"Why? What do you know about her?"
"I know she doesn't stop until she gets her way." I watch as she bends over to pick something up. She's got a damn nice ass for someone that tiny. The girl's barely over five feet and maybe a hundred pounds. She stands up, gathering her long blond hair in a ponytail and fastening it behind her head, her perky breasts poking out of her tight pink t-shirt as she reaches back.
"Wait." Danny turns to me. "Is that the girl who sat on your desk this morning?"
