3. The Deal
The Deal
Gus sat alone in the dewy grass drawing under a cottonwood tree at McNair Skatepark.
He’d woken up extra early to claim a safe spot before anyone else could arrive.
This was the closest he’d ever gotten to the park’s concrete slopes.
Gus kept his head down, only sketching, as the local skate kids trickled in throughout the morning.
Max, Bridger, and their friends showed up around midday.
Gus’s nervously shaking foot bounced against his homemade board—hidden and unused—beneath his sketchbook.
He watched the group of cool skaters as they landed tricks and joked around, wishing he knew the smoothest way to join them.
The familiar clang of trucks hitting rails, wheels rolling on concrete, and conversations melding together swirled around the busy park.
Gus sketched each intricate detail of the scene before him as he admired it: the fist bump between two baggy-shirted riders, the wolf graphic adorning the underside of a skateboard as it was kicked up and caught, the smoke drifting from joints passed between pretty girls gossiping on the bowl’s edge.
The multiple crews of skaters spanned vastly different ages, but all exuded the same adrenaline from the thrill of the risk.
That raw energy rippled toward Gus as cottonwood tufts floated gently past like a rare flurry of summer snow.
The handsome boy, Bridger, cracked a clever quip that sent everyone laughing as he finished a skate line. In response, Max punched him in the arm.
“Okay, okay. Not bad, Bridge,” Max commented. “My turn.”
Max dropped his board, pushed off, and laced together several tricks, showing off his impressive skills.
All of his friends called out encouragement until he finished by landing what Gus recognized from online demos as a kickflip out of a boardslide on a flat rail.
Gus’s eyes widened with awe. The boys applauded the smug and talented Max.
Hearing approaching footsteps, Gus turned to his left.
Three girls walked his way, and he accidentally locked eyes with the center one.
The beautiful, confident girl had flowing curly black hair spilling out from beneath a bright red snapback.
She oozed a natural swagger that made Gus tilt his head.
Her face had no makeup but donned a captivating smile.
She held her own skateboard and wore army capris with a tank top and a little gem necklace.
When the girl clocked Gus’s gaze, she nodded a casual greeting.
Gus smiled back awkwardly. The girl stopped walking and chuckled in a bro-y way.
She nodded at Gus’s sketchbook, looking down to observe it.
“Hey. Great drawing,” the skater girl told him.
“Oh. Thanks,” Gus responded, barely looking at her.
“You new here?” she asked.
“Um, yeah.” Gus cringed. “You can tell?”
“Collared shirt, those pants…? Yup.” The girl smirked.
Gus’s attention drifted past the confident girl back to the boys. He resumed his sketch.
The skater girl rolled her eyes. “Don’t bother with those idiots. Between them all, they share about two and a half brain cells.”
Gus didn’t move his eyes from his sketch, too shocked by this girl’s bluntness, by how bold and carefree she seemed.
He wished he was like her. Gus promptly lifted his head, realizing that maybe she could be the one to teach him how to skate, but she had already walked far off with her two friends.
She passed the group of skater boys Gus was drawing.
“Yo, Tara! Lookin’ good with those knockers!” one skater catcalled.
Two boys behind him cupped their hands at their chests.
The skater girl, Tara, rolled her eyes and flipped them off, barely affected.
She skated away, leading her friends through the park.
As Tara pumped her legs to speed around a bowl, Max’s head followed her zooming path across the concrete, watching her longer than the rest. The hooting boys pulled his focus back to Bridger, who traced a new line.
Bridger effortlessly Smith grinded the flat rail and landed a few other small tricks, once again amazing Gus.
However, when Bridger followed up by attempting a boardslide on the same rail, he botched the landing and rolled to the ground.
“That was some pussy shit,” Max scoffed jokingly. “Quit skating like a faggot.”
The guys laughed as Bridger got up and jogged to grab his rolling board. He seemed perfectly fine, unfazed by the taunting. Gus, however, was grateful he was sitting far away.
Two older boys walked past Gus to get water and scanned him and his journal suspiciously.
They knew he was out of place. Gus looked down at his drawings in embarrassment, covering his journal pages with his hands.
Feeling more eyes turning to spy on him, he slammed his sketchbook shut and stuffed it into his backpack.
Gus didn’t want to leave the park—he had promised himself he’d skate today—but there was no way he could sit here any longer.
He picked up his backpack and snuck to his dad’s truck at the very far edge of the parking lot.
Once inside, Gus shut the door and dropped his head back against the driver’s headrest. He sighed in defeat.
Max Stevens loved days like this. Hot summer afternoons sweating and skating with his boys.
They were all he really understood these days.
This was his kingdom. He’d be damned to let anything or anyone take it from him.
However, today felt off. Something was different.
A familiar lighthearted snicker made him twist his head. Tara, chatting with Sophia and Kelly.
Why is she here?
He watched her mount her board and zip past. He turned as Tara skated by him again without even a glance his way. A sinking in his stomach returned that he hated to remember. She hadn’t come to skate since the previous summer.
I knew she couldn’t leave it. Not even skating with her college friends can beat skating with me.
But… she wasn’t skating with him.
Max needed to know why.
A loud clank from Bridger’s attempt at grinding a rail pulled Max’s attention away from Tara and onto Bridger’s line.
Bridge had been getting good lately. Too good.
A bead of sweat rolled down Max’s forehead.
His determined, unblinking gaze followed the blurred outline of Bridger Owens shooting off a lip into the air to try a tail grab.
He bailed before he landed, losing his board and having to chase after it down the bowl.
In the heat, Bridger took off his shirt and drank from his plastic squeeze bottle, letting some of the water trickle down his chest to cool his skin in the hot sun.
Max’s eyebrows lifted as the glinting liquid slowly dripped down Bridger’s sculpted torso.
He had been friends with Bridger for years, but lately, Bridger seemed…
stronger. His closest friend, his partner in crime, his bro was looking different.
Max turned to keep his friend’s form in sight, watching the svelte muscles of Bridger’s slender back ripple as he kicked alongside his board to go faster and propel himself around the bowl.
Max squinted at the shape of him in the distance.
As Bridger sped back toward where Max was posted up in the center of the concrete, Max’s gaze slowly lowered to notice the bulge in Bridger’s jeans.
He saw how it swerved as Bridger swerved.
“Max, you’re up!” Bridger called to him. Max warped back to reality—back to being outside with others around.
Fuck! These little twerps who kept crashing his skate practices with Bridger always watched him like a herd of sheep. I can’t slip up. No shit like that. Max snapped back into focus.
Shaking his thoughts away, Max raced down the concrete. “Watch this, dude. You still can’t beat me. Never will.”
He smirked slyly as Bridger laughed and kicked up his board to rest. Max’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he pushed faster toward the largest bowl, popping over the coping at the edge and dropping in. His next move had to be epic. A frontside 360 with an Indy grab? Yeah. That’d do it.
Max flew into the sky. His right hand reached around his back leg to grab the middle of his board as he arched his spine and bent his knees to do a full rotation in mid-air.
The entire crew roared as Max landed the move.
He smoothly skated back to a huddle of smacking boards.
As they slapped his shoulders and bumped his fist, Max grinned, unbeaten as always.
“Top that, choads!” Max gloated with a proud sneer.
The sun set, and the sky of McNair Skatepark deepened into a smokey violet before Gus, who still sat alone in his father’s Chevy at the edge of the parking lot.
He wanted to finish drawing the final details of his new sketches from today, but it was growing too dark to see.
That marked the second goal he hadn’t met today.
Gus glanced down at his painted skateboard, lying uselessly in the passenger seat beside him, and tossed his sketchbook next to it.
He let out a long sigh and pulled out the keys to the Chevy, fortified for the long drive back to the cabin.
However, hoots and hollers drew his attention back to the skatepark.
Gus looked up and saw Bridger calling out goodbye to his friends and hopping on his board to skate home.
Max and the rest of their crew piled into the back of a blue pickup to drive away.
The overindulgent rev of the engine and the boys’ raucous banging on the truck’s side panels was loud enough to alert the whole neighborhood.
Gus watched the boys, wild and free, depart.
As the echoes of teenage laughter and the truck peeling away faded, Gus realized he was the absolute last car in the lot.
The skatepark was finally empty. This was his only chance.