Page 5 of His Reckless Freshman

I keep my mouth shut as we file out of the lecture hall and listen to the complaints around me.

“The workload is insane. How the hell am I supposed to get through everything?”

“Professor Truman is such a dick. I can’t believe he’s lumped us with this.”

“And all that reading? Shit, my life is over!”

Moving around the group of whiners, I pick up my pace and head for the gym. I have practice in twenty minutes, and I want to move my car so I don’t have to run all the way back here afterward.

Dumping my bag in the back seat, I make the short drive and end up parking next to Mac’s car. I’m surprised he’s already here. The guy usually prefers to run a few minutes late, like he’s made the decision in advance. Like showing up on time is uncool or something.

I hate running late, and it’s been a bone of contention between us.

He must be hanging with Jimmy today, which means he’s on time for once.

Hitching my gym bag onto my shoulder, I lock my car and head for the changing rooms.

And the first thing I hear when I open the door is another complaint.

Shit, I can’t get away from them today.

“And then she told me we’re the worst team in the school.” Darian’s voice pitches.

“I still can’t believe she actually said that shit.” Sawyer shakes his head. “When I saw her, I told her none of us would speak to her. Thanks for the warning, by the way.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Darian throws on his practice jersey, and I catch Sawyer’s eyes, silently asking what’s up.

“You haven’t checked your phone?”

“I was in class,” I tell him, remembering that my phone was blowing up just as I was walking in and the beeps were driving me insane. I ended up not just silencing it but turning it off so it’d stop vibrating in my pocket.

I don’t have time to check it now, and I kind of don’t want to. I can just imagine that thread in the team chat. It’ll be all bitching and moaning about…

“Who is this person?” I make the mistake of asking.

The second the words are out of my mouth, Darian kicks into another rant that makes Mac snicker and Jimmy look like he wants to melt into the floor just to get away from it.

“I have no idea what her name is, but she’s this skinny blonde with eyes too big for her face and a mouth that can’t stay shut. Seriously.”

“I think her name was Joanne or something.” Sawyer fills in the gaps.

“And she wanted to interview me for an article in the paper, and I actually stopped to listen… until she told me we’re the worst and the school thinks we’re a bunch of losers.”

Nolan U is known for its hockey and its football. We’re pretty good at track too, but basketball… that’s never been our forte.

In fact, our performance has been so bad the last two seasons that our funding has taken a hit. We still get our scholarships covered, but we don’t get paid to play like other D1 schools do.

But I’m not going to complain about it.

At the end of the day, we get to play.

So, we show up every damn day we’re told to, and we play our guts out, because we love the game and even though we’re not the best, we want to keep going.

Occasionally we win, mostly we lose, but I think we’re all here to just have some fun, you know?

Our coach isn’t exactly a hard taskmaster, and this summer he was more laid-back than he’s ever been. Seriously. I think he spent half of our training camps asleep on the side of the court.

We’re the shortest team in the division and we don’t have much going for us, but we play. We play despite all the odds stacked against us, and I think that makes us fucking amazing!