Page 14 of Fair Catch

“You’re such a dick sometimes,” I mutter under my breath.

“Where do you think I get it from?”

“Funny, considering I was a nice, innocent angel of a human before I met you.”

“Hmm, if that’s true, then I guess you wouldn’t dare fight fire with fire and be an absolute terror for Kason to live with,” Q goads, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

“Don’t fucking tempt me,” I say slowly, enunciating every word.

The two of us fall into a relatively conversation-free battle for the rest of the game, only chatting coms for the match until we pull out a victory. The two of us are unstoppable in this game as a duo, even if he refuses to admit that I play better as Lifeline than he does.

“Maybe you should come out our way to visit during winter break,” he offers while we load into a new match. “You could get away from your roomie from Hell, spend some time around people you actually like.”

“So why would I come see you?”

“Like I said earlier, where do you think I get it from?” He laughs, the sound filling my headset. “But be real for a second. I hear Times Square is the place to be on New Year’s Eve.”

Uh, what?

“I hate people and you want me to ring in the new year surrounded by damn near a million of them in that tiny slice of Manhattan? Do you know me at all?”

“Touché, didn’t think about that,” he concedes before offering up an alternative. “But there’s always Christmas. Ice skating at the Rockefeller, sleigh rides in Central Park. We’ve got home games bookending the holiday, so Oakley’s family is planning to make the trip out for one of those too.”

“You know my parents would likely disown me if I didn’t show up for Christmas.” I bite my tongue, realizing my slip-up before I could reel the words back in. “Shit, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he tells me, and it sounds like he really means it. Maybe those two assholes he calls parents cutting him loose was for the best after all. “Break’s a month long, though. Surely you could slip away from Chicago for a long weekend or something.”

“That could be possible.”

“Just offering. Let me know.”

“Careful, Q,” I caution as we start gathering weapons again. “Keep talking like that and I’ll think you actually miss me.”

He laughs. “Oh, that was just a pity invite. I couldn’t care less if you actually come.”

“Dick,” I mumble, swapping a pistol for an AR.

All Quinton does is laugh some more before wrapping around to the unresolved matter at hand. “So what are you gonna do? About Kason, I mean?”

Out of nowhere, a sniper knocks my ass to the ground, and I start crawling out of shot before he kills me completely, calling out, “Fuck, I’m down,” to Q as I hide.

“‘Kay, give me a sec.”

Sitting back in my chair, I debate my options with Kason, realizing there’s really only one. The last thing I need is to spend my senior year having some kind of ridiculous turf war with the roommate I’ll all but forget about by this time next fall.

“We’re gonna have to call a truce eventually. Which means I’ll have to talk with him about it,” I acknowledge, however begrudgingly it might be.

“I can hear thebutat the end of that sentence.”

“Nobut. Just stating a fact.”

He scoffs. “You’re a shit liar.”

“And you’re a shit Lifeline if you don’t get it together and fucking revive me,” I counter.

“Okay, okay. I got you.”

True to his word, I’m revived a few moments later and ready to find the jackass that sniped me to near-death.

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