Alec scowls. “We need all the publicity we can get.”
“Why do we?! We’ll get it by winning games, if you’d actuallyplay.”
“Just film the video!”
“I don’t know why you won’t.” Dyers pollutes our air with hisgodawful deodorant. “She’s panting around you most of the time. It’s not like you have to get it up for the fat bitch. Just kiss her.”
The sudden quiet of the locker room should have keyed him into the fact that he was in deep shit, but Dyers’s such a cocky fucker that he doesn’t give a damn.
I might not have been playing for the team for long, but they all know not to bring up Denny.
Alec mentioned her hanging around after practiceone timeand I nearly bit his head off. Especially when he accused her of watching so she could sell our plays to another team.
Apparently, she’d tried to watch last year and Pecan had backed down when Alec had refused.
I wasn’t about to back the fuck down when it came to her.
One second, I’m on my side of the locker room, burning holes into the asshole’s face with my eyes. The next, I’m on his side and he’s eating my fist as I pound him into his cubby.
Dyers doesn’t even have a chance to get his own hands up. He plunks backward, arms and legs falling akimbo with a yelp of pain. I lock my forearm around his neck and use that to yank him upright, only so that I can shove my knee into his stomach.
As he coughs and splutters, I fume, “You so much as think Denver’s name or insult her to my face againand I’ll make your intestines wish they belonged in your throat.”
“Fucking hell, Zach, calm down,” Alec frets, wading into the fray.
Pecan snorts. “How would you even move his intestines, bro?”
“I don’t know, but I’d have a great time making it happen.”
“He’s turning purple,” Gregg Harrison, a D-man, points out with an approving smirk.
Which means he likes Denny too.
What, with Callan and now him—fuck my life.
“Zach, you need to let the asshole breathe,” Pecan placates. “It pains me to say it, but he kinda needs oxygen to live.”
I release him, but only so he’ll fall flat on his face.
When Dyers’s head meets the bench, he whines, “My nothes!!”
“Keep yournoseout of my business. Denny’s my business. So back the fuck away from her.”
Gregg recently told me that Dyers got into deep shit last year so he’s on his best behavior. Seeing as I saw Dyers snorting coke before the game, I know the jackass’ll keep his mouth shut about this mess too.
Not that I care.
If people think they can talk shit about my friends in front of me, then they’ll pay the price for their stupidity.
I’m not messing around anymore.
Losing Mom fucked with my head. Made me see the bigger picture.
Let me figure out who matters and who doesn’t.
Popularity is fickle. Friendship is forever.
Gregg claps me on the back, but Pecan complains, “I wanted to hit him too! How was I supposed to when you went all Overlord on him?!”
