Chapter 16
Noah
“You look pleased with yourself.”
Dustin sat down on the chair across from me, a bag of chips already in his hand. I was playing Madden and hadn’t heard him come in.
“Hello to you too,” I greeted him. “You’re in the dorm and it’s nighttime . . . and am I to assume you know you’re supposed to be here?”
He gave me a flat look, kicking off his shoes as he got comfy. “Hadley said if I woke her up at six in the morning for the fourth day in a row, she was going to kill me.” He took a handful of chips. “I decided to stay here tonight.”
“Sounds healthier,” I murmured in agreement. “Aren’t you both supposed to be in the rosy glow of love, though?”
Dustin grinned. “Yeah, but have you met her without coffee? Raging monster. Like totally unhinged.”
“Huh.” I focused on the game. “I mustn’t have seen her with coffee . . .”
I caught the chip he threw at me and popped it in my mouth.
Dustin looked between his bag and me. “Did you trick me?”
With my attention on the screen, I made sure to keep my face carefully blank.
“You almost done?” he asked.
I paused my game, restarted it, and handed him the other controller.
“Sweet.” He settled in beside me, chips forgotten. I snagged a few before he could stop me. “Is there any chance you’ll buy your own snacks, ever?”
“Too poor,” I told him around a mouthful of salty goodness.
I watched him hesitate, and then his eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. For that, I’m kicking your ass double hard.”
“Double hard?” I snorted. “You should have paid more attention in English class, man.”
“Fuck you.”
We started a new game, and for a few minutes, the only sound in the dorm room was the game.
But good things never last.
“So . . . Punching an assistant coach . . .”
I kept my focus on my player. “He had it coming.”
“Did he?”
“If you want to ask me something, Dust, just ask me. Subtle isn’t your strong suit.”
“You got a boner for Briar?”
I kept my focus on the screen, but I couldn’t hide the twitch of my lips. “Told you before, she’s gorgeous.”
“She’s staff.”
“Not really,” I countered. “She doesn’t want to be here any more than I want to be benched. She’s not really staff.”
Dustin sniffed. “Pretty sure she’s active staff as long as Wrighton U is signing her paychecks.”
He was right. I knew that, but still. “Well, she’ll be gone soon enough.”
I felt him watching me. Didn’t need to feel it, really — his player had stopped moving, and mine was racing up the field with the ball.
“Your stare is making me think you have something else you want to say to me, or have you just stopped playing?”
“Shit.” He paid attention to the game, and the silence grew once more.
Until he decided he hadn’t finished.
“If I were Dante, I’d be giving you a lecture right now.”
I straightened my spine a little. “I don’t need a lecture.”
“But he won’t give you a lecture because he’s still hung up on the whole misunderstanding you two had.”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Yeah, you know, you punched Savvy, he punched you, you both stopped talking. That misunderstanding. And he’s being all sensitive and shit.”
“We resolved that and moved on.” I paused the game and turned to look at Dustin. “Did he send you in here instead?”
Dustin made a face at me and picked his bag of chips up again. “No. If Dante had sent me in here, I’d have a whiteboard and props.”
I didn’t hide my snort of laughter, and Dustin grinned in return. “Can you see it? Me in glasses and—”
“A blazer,” I joked. “And a pointer so I could follow the diagram.”
Dustin was laughing now. He sprang to his feet, straightened his hoodie, and assumed a formal pose. “Now, Matthews . . .” He pitched his voice unnaturally high.
“That sounds nothing like him!”
“Shut up, I’m in character!” He cleared his throat.
“Now, Matthews,” he deepened his voice to a gruff baritone.
“I know you’re looking at the Sterling girl with intent to play the horizontal tango, but you need to remember this is not for the good of the team.
The Sterling girl has her own agenda for being here, and you need to focus on yours.
We need to work as a team. Only as a team will we succeed! ”
I was laughing so hard my eyes were watering. “‘The horizontal tango?’ Fuck me, I haven’t heard that phrase since my grandfather died.”
Dustin grinned at me as he dropped back onto the sofa. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used. I don’t know where that shit came from!”
We laughed harder, and Dustin sobered quicker than I did. “You know, for the fact that I was mocking him, he would say that, or something like it, and . . . he might be right.”
I lost my smile. “I think her agenda is pretty much our agenda, no? Expose the corruption, make them accountable, clear Mason’s name?”
“I don’t—”
“I’m pretty sure that’s Hadley’s agenda. Savvy’s too.”
He scratched his beard. “Look, you’re right, but their agenda isn’t to clear Mason. Mason did nothing. No one except this program removed him. He isn’t on their radar, or ours, especially now that we know he did nothing. But Briar? He’s her whole focus.”
I thought about it. He was right. Mason had been dealt a shit hand and accepted it. No one remembered him because he’d let them forget him. Yet somehow that didn’t sit well with me.
“I asked her to help me with my social media stuff.”
Dustin looked surprised but waited for me to give him more information.
“I don’t have a presence or whatever the hell you want to call it.
They could have thrown me out weeks ago and made up some bullshit excuse, just like they did with the guys we were fighting.
If I’m more known, if I have a . . . a following, like you and Moore and Dante, I reckon it’s easier for me to stay viable. ”
“Absolutely.” Dustin picked up his controller and moved the one beside me closer. When I picked it up and resumed the game, he continued. “Do you think it needed to be Briar that helped you with that?” he asked carefully.
“She’s the media girl — social media is her job title.”
Dustin gave a noncommittal grunt. “We’re twenty years old, Noah. Any one of us could have done this for you. Helped you with it.”
“So you’re saying?”
“You want to bone the sister of the guy we’re not trying to vindicate.” He whistled softly. “It’s going to get messy.”
“No, it won’t.”
“You’re delusional, man. It’s going to be even messier than Dante calling Savvy’s mom and them having a showdown in a shed.”
I gave a grunt. “You definitely missed drama out of your schedule. That is such a sensationalized version of the truth.”
“My girl’s a journalist,” he told me with a wink.
“Your girl kicked you out of bed so she could sleep in peace.” I scored a touchdown through a turnover.
I stood up while Dustin was still protesting about the game, or Hadley, I wasn’t sure.
“Asking her for help to improve my media is a smart move. It helps me with my visibility. It helps all of us keep tabs on her and her plans.” I clapped his shoulder as I walked past him to my room.
“Trust me, Dust. I know what I’m doing.”
“We done?” he asked, looking between me and the TV.
“Yeah, I have to call Tate in five minutes, need a piss first.”
“Oh, okay, I’ll be out here if you want when you’re done.”
I closed the door behind me. I knew I was doing the slow withdrawal, and I couldn’t stop it right now. I’d been missing out on their friendships while they navigated new ground with their girlfriends, and now it seemed I was closing myself in my room rather than chill out and play Madden.
But I didn’t need the third degree about Briar. I knew exactly who she was and why she was here, and it was not to further the lives and experiences of college students in an institution she loathed because of what happened to her brother or their childhood . . . friend?
Was Tiffany a friend? Acquaintance was probably more like it. It didn’t change what happened to her.
“Shut up, Noah.”
I took my own advice.
After my visit to the bathroom, I sat on my bed, back against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of me, and I FaceTimed my brother.
“Hey bro, you good?”
I smiled. Tate was as skinny as a rake and long-limbed to boot. He also had the personality of a forty-year-old man in a teenager’s body. He put the sharp corners in square.
“Still using the term ‘bro?’” I’d tried to tell him before that he couldn’t pull that off. He hadn’t listened.
“I tried it again earlier, and I got high-fived.”
“Were they five? You can tell me. I won’t judge.” He could see I was serious, and he rolled his eyes.
“You’re a dick, Noah.”
“You know it.” I shot him a grin, and he flipped me the finger. “But seriously, you just don’t have the swagger to use ‘bro’ in your vocabulary.” I cleared my throat, changing the subject. “So . . . What’s new? Tell me all about it.”
“Nothing has happened since you checked in with me yesterday,” he said, and I heard the slight edge of resentment.
“Uh-huh, I hear you.” I also didn’t believe him. “That fucker, Bronson, leave you alone today?”
“I’m an adult, Noah—”
“Yes, you are, but you were also being bullied by the prick in high school until I kicked his ass. I will kick Bronson’s ass again if he ever so much as looks at you the wrong way in future.
So tell me, little brother. Did the fucker leave you alone?
I know you have two classes in the same building as him today, and I know you probably saw him, so humor me. ”
Tate dropped his head, shaking it slowly. He leaned back in his chair, the camera shaking slightly as he adjusted it. He’d always been restless in small movements — fingers tapping, knee bouncing — but his eyes were sharp.
“It’s nothing, Noah. He called me a . . . a name. You call me names all the time.”
“I’m allowed to, I’m your brother, and you know I don’t mean it.” I kept my face calm, but my left hand tightened into a fist. “What did he call you?”
“Noah, I—”
“Tate. Tell me now.”
“He called me a faggot.”
For one second, every reasonable thought I had disappeared. “Well, I’ve never called you that,” I growled softly.