Page 25 of Foolish Games

“That’s why I don’t date,” I point out. “I just fuck.”

The guys all laugh and slap hands.

“That’s the way to go,” Tony says, crowding Theo as the skater guy pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Tony plucks it from his hands and takes one. Theo just tosses his hair out of his eyes and stands there waiting for his own cigarettes to come back to him.

I don’t know the Willow Heights guys well, and while Tony plays football, Theo just tags along like a sidekick and doesn’t say much. Since they go to the fancy private school, we only run into each other on odd jobs. Tony’s a scholarship kid from our side of town who lives on Maddox’s street. His brother graduated already, but he’s got a record, which means he’s good at finding the kind of job that takes muscle and pays under the table. He started getting Maddox work, and Maddox knew I needed cash and looped me in. Now, we’ve worked a half dozen or so jobs with Tony and his brothers.

“What are you going to do with that hundred dollars?” Lexi asks, nodding to my pay. “You’re gonna have to take Vivienne to Little Rock and spend it all on one dinner at a fancy place.”

“How’s he gonna get there?” Billy asks. “He don’t got a car!”

The others howl with laughter, and even though we all give each other shit, that one hits a nerve.

“Well, he better find a way,” Lexi yells over the din. “I bet she won’t put out for El Chico’s!”

More roars of laughter follow.

“Fuck off,” I say, shoving Billy a little harder than necessary. “I could get her if I wanted.”

“Dude, I was kidding,” he says, shoving me back.

I grab him around the neck, and we scuffle until Maddox drags us apart before one of us can shove the other down the three cement steps and crack a skull.

“Cut it out,” our gigantic lineman growls, shaking us both. “We need you both in the game Friday. Any girl in school would bend over for you, no questions asked. No one pussy is worth fighting over.”

“Don’t be sore,” Billy says, shrugging his shirt straight and holding out a hand to me. “I’m just giving you shit. She’s hot as hell, man. If she wasn’t Rob’s sister, you could totally tap that.”

I reluctantly bump his knuckles with mine. “I could still tap it,” I grumble.

“No way,” Randy says, shaking his head. “Rob watches out for her. He’d beat your ass into the ground.”

“I wouldn’t do it,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t.”

“You’re a dog,” Tony says.

“And you’re not?” I shoot back.

“Dude, we’re all dogs,” Billy says. “Which is why you’ll never get a girl like Vivienne Delacroix.”

“Oh, I could get her,” I assure them, smirking when I think about the sounds she made when she came around my fingers.

I’m tempted to elaborate, to point out that they didn’t see her in the car on the way to the party. Usually, that’s the kind of thing I’d share. It’s not every day you fingerbang a chick doing one-twenty in a Corvette. That’s something worthy of note. If it was anyone but Vivienne, I’d be bragging about it right now. But I keep my mouth shut, even though that means they keep giving me shit. It’s not just that she’s Robert Delacroix’s sister, and if it got back to him, he’d knock my teeth out for breaking the bro code.

It’s her.

“I’m with Sebastian on this one,” Lexi says, tapping her cigarette on the railing. “That girl is a smitten kitten.”

“Leave it alone,” Maddox says, giving her a warning look. “You don’t fuck a friend’s sister.”

“Yeah, that’s what would fuck up the game,” Billy says, snagging the pack of cigarettes from Lexi and lighting up. “A little tussle, we can walk that off. Fucking a teammate’s sister? No way, man.”

I shrug, trying to quell the competitive urge to prove them wrong by doing something so fucking stupid it might as well be illegal. “Doesn’t mean I couldn’t.”

“Yeah?” Tony asks. “Then prove it.”

“I might,” I say, giving him a cool look. He runs with Maddox’s crew, but he definitely knows who the Delacroixs are from going to the private school where the other founding sons and daughters go. Since Faulkner High is their main rival in football, Rob is enemy number one to the Willow Heights team. He says the Delacroixs are fucking famous over there for thumbing their noses at the snooty private school and choosing public school instead.

“You won’t do it,” Randy says. “All that talk, but you’d never fuck over your best friend.”

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