Page 20 of The Golden Receiver

Might as well blend in. Not that I did, standing there alone.

I took a lap around the first floor of the frat house, which seemed to be where the party was focused. I saw Wes, the team’s running back, and I thought about going to talk to him. He seemed like an okay guy. A bit standoffish, but that didn’t bug me. I had been described as standoffish on more than one occasion, and I could see how the word fit. I didn’t exactly go out of my way to make friends. Fuck, if I did, I might not be at this party feeling like I was about to crawl out of my skin. I wouldn’t have to go to some place like this to make a damn friend on the team.

Wes was standing with Eric and one of the offensive linemen. I could have knocked all three out in one go, made some small talk, and got away clean, but I didn’t. They were chatting up a group of three girls. If I went over, it’d fuck up the dynamic, and no one wanted to talk to the cock block.

I was about to begin the second lap when I saw Evander walk through the door with three people I’d never seen before. I stopped and watched them for a moment. Evander and the two guys gave the girl with them a bunch of hugs and sent her off. Then they started walking toward the kitchen. It was uncanny, the fact that they all walked the exact same way. I had a feeling Evander knew these guys from before college.

There was a small part of me that was tempted to follow them, study them like they were a weird science experiment. The larger part of me wanted to knock out the three football player goal so I could get the fuck out of this party. I’d decided Evander didn’t count because I talked to him every morning. I made another lap, but Eric, Wes, and the offensive lineman were still chatting up the girls. It looked like they were making some kind of progress, and I wasn’t going to fuck with that. I didn’t think that would help a lot with my goal of making friends and influencing people.

But damn, it was tempting.

Luckily, it didn’t come to that. When I stepped into the kitchen, I spotted two players getting drinks. One of them was Zak Reyes, the team’s tight end. He was a year above me and had a good seventy pounds and six inches on me. He was a good blocker, and I knew why he’d made the first string. The other guy was Damien Willis. I didn’t know much about him, other than the fact that he and I were both in the wide receiver room. I also knew that he was currently taking that starting wide receiver two position. He was the closest thing to my direct competition that there was, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still play nice, make small talk, and the like.

I downed the rest of my soda and pushed in beside them. I reached out and grabbed a bottle. “Having a good night?” I asked.

Reyes and Willis turned their heads at the same time, looking at me like I was speaking in tongues. Maybe that wasn’t the best opening line. Maybe I should’ve found something deeper to ask, but what the fuck would that be? I didn’t know them all that well. I didn’t have any classes with either of them and I figured talking about practice to Willis when I was actively going after his starting job probably wouldn’t play very well.

After a second, Reyes nodded. “Yeah. You?”

Okay, this was the start of some kind of forward momentum. “Not much of a party person, but it’s not been too bad so far.”

The look they gave me made me glad I didn’t mention that I was only planning on sticking it out for about thirty minutes. Something told me that wouldn’t go over well. It would just be another way I didn’t fit in with the other guys on the team. Hell, it was just another way I didn’t fit in with other guys my age point blank. Pops used to say I had an old soul, but right about now, I felt like I should be pushing a walker.

“If you’re not much of a party person, why bother coming to a party?” Reyes asked.

Fuck. I shrugged. “Seemed like the thing to do.” Willis and Reyes were both still looking at me like I had a second head. It made me feel like I needed to elaborate, which usually meant that I shouldn’t say anything else or I’d risk saying too much. Normally, that was the path I’d take, but I was trying to get to know the rest of the football team. And the deal was three players or thirty minutes, so I pushed myself out of my comfort zone. “Trying to make some friends.”

There. I didn’t say too much. I wasn’t rambling on like a certain other member of the team.

“Did you have a lot of friends on your old team?” Willis asked. “The human one?”

I hadn’t had a lot of friends back home either, but I didn’t feel a need to point that out. Just like I didn’t feel a need to question his weird emphasis on the word human. I just shrugged. “Grew up in the same town as my last school, so I knew a lot of people.” That was a much more tactful way of saying that I didn’t have a ton of friends. I didn’t think they could read between the lines. More importantly, I didn’t think they cared enough about me as a person to even try.

That was one benefit to not being one of the more popular members of the team—or the human race in general.

One of the bad things about it was the fact that I couldn’t keep this conversation going. Neither Reyes nor Willis seemed all that invested in the conversation either and an awkward silence settled over us. I tried to rack my brain for anything that could have kept the conversation going, but I didn’t get the chance. They excused themselves, and I knew they were talking about me as they left.

I pulled out my phone to look at the time.

Fifteen minutes. I’d been there for fifteen minutes, and I’d had a conversation with two teammates. Just one more, and I could blow this popsicle stand. I could go back to my dorm and pretend I’d had a good time. I refilled my cup, screwed the cap back on the bottle of soda, and decided to do another lap of the party.

Maybe I’d find Marlon hanging around. I hadn’t planned on counting him, but if it meant I’d get out of here quicker, then I was going to count it. Or maybe Wes, Eric, and the offensive lineman whose name I couldn’t remember wouldn’t be caught up chatting with those girls and I could knock the last conversation out that way. It’d feel less like a cheat than talking to Marlon.

I had a plan. I turned around to start the lap. I made it two steps before someone collided into me, splashing soda out of my cup and soaking my shirt. It was cold, wet, and sticky, and it did not do wonders for my mood. Anger flashed deep inside me, and I didn’t bother looking to see who the guilty party was before lashing out. “Watch where the fuck you’re going,” I snapped, stepping backward and resting my cup down on the drink table.

I reached blindly for the stack of napkins I’d seen there, but another hand kept reaching over mine. A familiar hand, one I’d seen in practice wrapping around balls in mid-air. One I’d seen clutched into fists as he ran or grasping at his own thighs when he doubled over after.

Evander.

Fucking Evander Hemmings.

If it had to be anyone who bumped into me, it had to be him. Because it couldn’t have been someone that counted toward my three-player rule, someone that would get me out of the hell that was the Alpha Claw Omega party sooner. No, it had to be Evander. It had to be someone I talked to frequently enough that he didn’t count. Maybe I could just say fuck the rule. Let him count. Then I could get out of here and not have to walk around with a sticky, soda-stained shirt for the rest of the night.

Evander tugged me out of my thoughts. Not with words, but with actions. He started wiping vigorously at the stain on my shirt with this dopey look on his face. I took a step back. “You’re going to make it worse,” I snapped.

I didn’t know if it could be worse, but I didn’t want him pawing at me like this. I started to dab at the stain, and I was hoping he’d catch the hint. Walk away.

I should have fucking known better. Evander couldn’t catch a hint if it was thrown clean at him from a short distance with a perfect spiral by the best professional quarterback in the league’s history.