4. Jordan
JORDAN
“I thought you two had forgotten.” Gavin tosses a wad of material at me. “New shirts.”
“Sorry. Coach held us late again.” Liam sets his bowling shoes down on the floor and takes a seat. “Just the three of us tonight?”
Gavin nods. “Jenkins had a study session.”
I hand Liam a shirt and hold up mine in front of me, then drop it to look at Gavin. “Lucky Strikes?”
He stands and picks up his blue bowling ball. “We couldn’t be Team Blue Balls again this year.”
“Why not?” I ask and slip the black Dickies shirt with our new team name printed on the front over my T-shirt. “It’s funny.”
“It’s really not that funny,” Liam says.
I flip him off as he moves to the computer.
“Same order?” he asks as he punches in our names.
“Sounds good to me.”
I’m rusty from not playing for a few months.
The three of us, plus Gavin’s teammate, Andy Jenkins, joined a bowling league freshman year when Gavin and Andy lived across the hall instead of their sweet new digs at The White House.
We were bored and heard this place never carded for alcohol.
At the time, it seemed like as good a reason as any to join a bowling league.
But two years later, we’re still doing it even after we’ve all turned twenty-one except Gavin.
At the end of the first game, we pause to grab a pitcher of beer and shoot the shit.
I stretch out my legs in front of me and rub at my left quad. “Coach is gonna kill us if he keeps running us like he has the past two weeks.”
“Practice is still that bad?” Gavin asks as he fills our glasses. Liam waves him off in favor of his water.
“It’s pretty bad. Coach doesn’t know whether to keep yelling or give us the world’s longest pep talk,” I say.
We lost another game last weekend. There is nothing worse than losing at home.
“What’s the problem? Are the rookies struggling that much to mesh with the rest of the team?” Gavin’s question is innocent enough, but I feel the prickle of discomfort wash over my buddy.
“I’m going to get some air.” Liam starts toward the doors without pausing for our response.
Gavin waits until he’s out of earshot. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Nah. It isn’t you. He’s feeling the pressure.” Coach made Liam captain this year, and ever since, his game on the ice has gone downhill.
“Is it just hockey, or does he have other distractions?”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. A tough class schedule?”
I shake my head. “He has straight A’s.”
“New girlfriend?”
“No.” Another shake.
“Good,” he says. “Nothing like a new chick to make a guy lose focus. Trust me on that. New girlfriends are the worst kind of distraction. Women weaken the legs.”
“What?” I bust a laugh at his last words.
“It’s from Rocky.”
I keep staring at him.
He jumps up and hops from leg to leg, tossing punches like a boxer. “The movie. Rocky?”
“Oh, I understood the first time, but don’t stop making an ass out of yourself on my account.”
He stops and flips me off.
The next afternoon, Liam shows up late for practice. His face is red, and his shoulders are stiff.
“Sorry, Coach,” he says as he skates onto the ice.
He’s never been late for practice or a workout. Never.
I fall into line behind him for drills. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He stares straight ahead, jaw set.
I stop him with a glove to his bicep before he can skate forward. “Are you sick?”
“I’m fine. I overslept. No big deal.”
I let him go, but now I’m more worried than before. He wasn’t in his room when I left. I know because I checked. I needed a clean pair of shorts. But why the hell would he lie?
At the end of practice, Coach stops him.
“Price. Do you want to tell me why you were late today?” Instead of waiting for his answer, he continues. “You’re late, you’re missing passes, you’re slow on your feet. If you keep it up, you’re going to find yourself next to me during games.”
“It was my fault.” My chest heaves as I struggle to catch my breath. “I shut off his alarm before I left. I thought he was up.”
Coach’s mouth falls into a hard line.
“It won’t happen again,” Liam promises.
“Good.” Coach motions with his head toward the locker room. “Get out of here.”
When we sit in our stalls, my buddy finally speaks. “Thanks.”
“Where were you?”
“I told you. I overslept.”
“I know you weren’t in your room.”
His brows pull up toward the blond, matted hair on his forehead. “Checking up on me?”
“I forgot to do laundry again,” I admit. I pull the band of my hockey pants down to show him the shorts I borrowed.
He chuckles lightly. “I was in the library. I passed out with my head on the desk trying to look over econ notes.”
“I should have known.”
Despite the lousy practice, Liam seems to be in a better mood when we get back to the dorms. I’m playing video games, and he brings his laptop out to the living room to work on an assignment.
“I’m thinking of asking out our lab partner,” he says without looking up from the screen.
“Who?”
“Daisy. The girl in our physics lab.”
“Right.” I ponder that, not liking how it sits with me. “Really?”
“She’s nice.”
I pause the game. Liam hasn’t really dated in the three years I've known him. He hooks up so infrequently it still surprises me when I wake up to find him walking a girl out. But something tells me him asking out Daisy wouldn’t be like that. It’d be real. They’d go on actual dates and shit.
“Won’t that be weird if shit goes south, and we have to team up with her twice a week for class?”
“Look at you all glass half empty.”
“I’m just saying, maybe now isn’t the best time to start something.”
The insinuation is clear, and he pulls his bottom lip behind his teeth and bobs his head. “Yeah. You might be right about that. I’m one screw up away from Coach benching me.”
“Of course, I’m right. When have I ever steered you wrong?”
He cocks a brow.
“Okay, yeah. Don’t answer that, but dating is distracting. You can trust me on that.”
“And partying and hooking up four or five nights a week isn’t?”
“You’re not me. You have to ease into being as awesome as me. Maybe try getting a polite hand job at a party or something first.”
Thursday, during our physics lab, Daisy joins our table again. She and Liam fall into easy conversation, and I take my usual role, reading through the steps and calling them out. It’s how Liam and I always worked. I learn better by writing things down, and he’s a hands-on guy.
A pit forms in my stomach as I watch my lab partners interact.
Liam would never intentionally sabotage the team.
He’s too good of a guy for that, but the way Daisy is looking at him with hearts in her eyes sends warning bells off in my head.
She isn’t the kind of girl you take out once, hook up, and then maybe call for a repeat a few times in the future when your schedule is clear.
Daisy is the kind of girl that would have someone like Liam wrapped around her little pinky finger. She’s the perfect sweet, smart, na?ve catnip for him.
We’re doing a projectile motion lab that involves launching a ball onto carbon paper. It’s an easy lab, and as Liam loads up the ball in the launcher, Daisy smiles and moves the carbon paper a few feet away, which brings her closer to me.
“It’s probably easier if I sit in the middle,” I say.
She hesitates, then looks between Liam and me.
“I can walk around to the other side of the table,” she says.
I fight a smile. She wants to be near him. How cute.
“You know what.” I drop my pencil. “Give me a turn on that thing.”
On my feet, I step toward Liam and the launcher.
“Yeah?” he asks with an apprehensive smirk.
“Looks fun.” It absolutely doesn’t.
He tosses the silver ball at me and takes my seat.
Since I’ve read the handout, I’m already adjusting the angle to thirty degrees and preparing to fire when Liam gives me the instruction.
“Ready?” I ask Daisy.
Her blue eyes flit over me through the safety goggles, and she pushes them up higher on her nose.
The ball shoots out and bounces onto the paper, then directly at her. She tries to catch it, misses, and a series of metallic pings ring out as it bounces along the floor.
Her cheeks are pink as she circles, trying to capture it. Liam and I both move to action. He gets there first, snatching it up and holding it out for her. He winks. On anyone else, it would seem like a skeevy move, but he pulls it off, and Daisy swoons at his feet.
“Why don’t you have a turn?” I motion toward the launcher.
She nods and moves into position behind it. I stand near the paper, ready to catch the ball after it lands.
Her blonde hair falls forward like a curtain blocking half of her face as she leans down to set the ball in place.
She glances up at me, or in my general direction anyway, before she fires.
I nod, giving her the go-ahead. As the ball comes my way, I’m temporarily distracted as her shirt gapes hinting at a little cleavage.
The daisy charm around her neck dangles seductively.
Her boobs are small, but the cleavage is still nice.
The ball bounces while I’m still staring, but I easily catch it in one hand. She stands tall and takes a tentative step toward me like she wants to switch spots again.
“Nah, you go again,” I say and hold the ball up to indicate I’m going to toss it to her. She places both hands out in front of her apprehensively. I smother a laugh and throw it directly into her hands.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look down her shirt the next three times she does it, but I convince myself it’s better this way, so she doesn’t fumble around trying to catch the ball as it shoots out at her. And I think she kind of likes sending flying objects in my direction.
When we’re finished with the launcher and start calculating velocity, I find myself back on my side, and the two of them huddled together.
I keep waiting for my buddy to ask her out, but he doesn’t even after we finish the lab and start packing up to leave. Huh. Maybe he wasn’t that serious about it. Or maybe I’m just that good.
Or he caught sight of her small tits or terrible ball catching skills and decided against it. It doesn’t sound like him, but whatever. I’m just thankful he didn’t.
Crisis adverted.