This Is War - Chapter 23 – Ramming Speed! #2
“Don’t celebrate yet,” said Cole as he scooped a glob of mud off his face. “You’re still losing 13 to 5.” He walked by and slapped my ass, leaving a giant mud print.
“Hey!” I squealed. Stupid cocky Cole.
Tanner started to run after him, but I stopped him.
“Don’t let him distract you,” I said. “The best way to wipe that smug smile off his face is to just keep beating him.”
And that was exactly what we did.
The next event was a game of giant chess: Tanner vs Cole. I got a little nervous when Cole took Tanner’s queen, but two moves later Tanner called checkmate.
Holy shit that was fast.
Yes, Tanner’s muscles were sexy. But seeing him dismantle Cole with his superior intellect was even more of a turn-on.
“Way to go, dumb-dumb!” I yelled to Cole as he stared in disbelief at the chessboard.
His usual confident smirk had returned when he looked up at me. “You’re still losing 13 to 6.”
Tanner shrugged. “We just wanted to make things interesting. We got this.”
“Well, one more win for me, and…” Cole’s eyes scanned my body. “Well, you know what happens next.”
I gulped. Yes, I wanted to win more than anything. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I lost. After all…I had been telling Tanner the truth about how horny I had been ever since he left. God, what was I even thinking? My loins were out of control. Focus!
Chastity put her hand on her hip as Cole walked back to their team. “I told you you should have let me play. I would have whooped his ass.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d once seen her beat our school champion in 60 seconds. And she hadn’t even distracted him with her tits.
The next event was 2-on-2 basketball - one guy and one girl per team.
It probably would have been smart for me to put Diablo or Angel in, since they were a good 6 inches taller than everyone else, but I still didn’t fully trust Diablo.
Tanner had good momentum going. And I used to play basketball with my dad in our driveway all the time.
That would probably be good enough for us to beat Cole and Chastity, right?
Tanner started off with the ball. He passed it to me and I tried to drive past Chastity, but she easily swatted the ball out of my hands.
Damn it! I hated how good she was at everything. Shouldn’t her huge boobs get in her way?
I fared better the next time Tanner fed me the ball. Instead of trying to dribble around her, I just put the ball through her legs. Thanks to her ridiculous thigh gap, the maneuver worked. I nailed the layup and ran over to give Tanner a big high five.
Cole scored next, and then Tanner went in for a layup. As he jumped, Cole came up behind him and tried to block the shot. He missed the ball and hit Tanner right in the face. Tanner tumbled to the ground with a thud.
Ouchies. Tanner’s elbow was suddenly missing a lot of skin. But he popped right up and immediately got in Cole’s face. A few guys from each team had to jump in to keep them from throwing any punches. From there, Tanner took over the game.
Time after time, he drove straight at Cole. He wasn’t at all afraid to put his shoulder into him. He even knocked Cole on his ass a few times.
At first I was loving it, but then I started to just feel kind of ignored. It quickly turned into Tanner versus Cole while Chastity and I stood around hoping in vain that someone would pass us the ball. At one point we just sat down.
“Oh yeah!” yelled Tanner when Ocelot blew the final whistle. We’d won. Or rather…Tanner had won. I walked over to celebrate with him, but he was too busy rubbing it in Cole’s face.
When he finally turned to me, all he could say was, “Did you see that shot?”
“Which one?” He had taken so many that it was hard to tell which one he was talking about.
“The sky hook.”
“Yeah, it was awesome,” I lied. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Great win.” I gave him a half-hearted high-five and walked back to the wheel to spin for the next event.
I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that Tanner had ignored me so much. I hadn’t been playing badly. Why hadn’t he wanted my help?
Oh well. I decided to chalk it up as a bit of over-competitiveness. Guys were weird about basketball. The next event would be different.
My spin landed on Angry Swans. At first I thought it was going to be related to Angry Birds , but it turned out to just be a swan boat race.
There were a bunch of heats, but it was tied by the time we got to the final race: Tanner and me vs Cole and Chastity.
All the horrible spin classes finally paid off, because I was actually pretty decent at it. Despite that, we still fell behind a bit. Three quarters of the way through the course, they were a full turn ahead of us.
“We’re never going to catch them,” I said.
“What if we didn’t have to?” asked Tanner.
“What do you mean?”
“How much do you know about 18 th century naval warfare?”
“Uh…”
Tanner turned the rudder and started peddling like hell. “Ramming speed!” he yelled as we cut through the water directly towards Cole and Chastity’s boat.
“What are you doing?!” I yelled. “Turn!” But it was too late.
Tanner masterfully guided us right into their broadside.
Chastity shrieked as the head of their swan boat was taken clean off.
And I shrieked too, because the force of the collision sent me flying into the lake.
The decapitated swan’s head bobbed in the water next to me before sinking below the surface.
“Take that!” yelled Tanner. He looked back and laughed as he peddled off towards the finish line…with me still stuck in the lake.
Stupid competitive asshole.
I started to tread water, but the lake was way colder than I’d expected. My muscles started to seize up and my teeth were chattering. I was about to freak out until I saw that Cole and Chastity had forfeited the race to come to save me.
Cole leaned over the side of their half-destroyed boat and stuck his hand out for me. “Grab on.”
I reached up and Cole effortlessly pulled me into his boat. He rubbed his arm on my back to help warm me up as they peddled up back to shore. Rather than complaining to Ocelot about psycho-Tanner trying to kill him, he instead ran and got me a towel.
“Thanks,” I said. Cole may have been the enemy, but right now he was acting more like my knight in shining armor.
“No problem. And make sure you hang on to that towel…you’re going to need it after you lose.” He winked and walked away.
Oh God. Why was I going to need a towel? I hoped it was because of more water rather than bodily fluids.