1 Load
The first thing I notice, when I wake up at five in the afternoon on a Friday with no alarm and no reason to set one, is the quiet.
No shitty music from Derek’s Bluetooth speaker. No one slamming the bathroom door because Derek takes forty-minute showers. No Derek shrieking into his headset about some guy on the other team who’s camping, who’s hacking, who’s afucking loser, bro, I swear to god.No Derek existing in theaggressively Derek-wayto exist.
Just my room. Half empty—thank fuck. Sunlight slanting across the carpet where his shit used to be. And me, sprawled on the mattress with one arm behind my head and absolutely nothing on the docket until Monday morning.
I stare at the ceiling for eleven minutes. I know it’s eleven minutes because I counted.
Then Grant’s voice carries up through the floorboards.
“Boys!”There’s a pause and the sharp hiss of a can being cracked. “We are celebrating the fall of a dictatorship!”
I allow myself exactly thirty more seconds of ceiling time before I roll off the bed, drag on a shirt that’s probably clean, and head downstairs.
Grant is holding court in the kitchen when I get there.
Now, one thing you gotta know about Grant is that the dude is absolutelymassive. If I had to describe him, “brick wall” would pretty much do the job. Wide everywhere. Thick through the shoulders, thick through the neck, with thighs that tell the whole horror story about the football program’s leg days. Or maybe just from lugging his Materials and Methods binder across campus, which is a full-body workout in itself.
He points a finger at me the second I clear the doorway.
“Kit, bro,” he says with a reverence that makes me snort. “Derek. Is.Gone.”
“I know.”
“His stuff is gone, too.”
“Yeah,I know. Some weirdo helped him haul it out last night.”
“Man, I woke up this morning and his truck wasn’t in the driveway. I sat in my car for five minutes just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.” He drinks his beer and burps. “I cried a little.”
“Man, you didn’t cry.”
“A little.”
I fill a glass of water and lean against the counter, letting him have his moment. He’s mid-sentence about the time Derek complained that Grant’s protein powder was taking up too muchfridge real estate—a story I’ve heard three times and which gets longer each time—when Walker shows up.
He fills the kitchen doorway, two six-packs tucked under one arm while casually doing pull-ups on the doorframe with the other. He found a natural lip there four minutes after moving in, and has treated it like a gym ever since. He hangs there, ankles crossed, his biceps popping massive. It’s an insane look.
“Nineteen. Twenty.” He drops and sets the packs down on the counter. “Some of Derek’s shit was on the curb when I walked past. Little sad.”
“As if,” Grant scoffs.
“I’m notsad, bro. I’m just saying. Sad little pile of shit.”
Walker grins, a mischievous expression that’s pure fifth-grader. He’s the guy who suggests the most unhinged things just to laugh at people’s reaction. Or maybe all that shit just pops out in his brain and he has no filter, who knows. Depending on the day, it’s either really funny or really exhausting.
He’s also the guy who lives in gym clothes—tiny shorts (seriously, why so tiny?) and almost always shirtless—and sees zero issue with it. There’s still chalk on his hands when he reaches over to hijack a sip of Grant’s beer.
“Dude, get your own,” Grant mutters, not even bothering to move.
“I brought more.”
“Then drink that!”
Walker ignores him, and drops into a seat at the kitchen table, drinking his stolen beer. “Kamaru Usman versus prime Jon Jones. Same weight class. Who wins?“
“Jones,” Grant answers immediately.
