Page 41 of Scrimmage

“I am,” Penny sighs, scrunching her eyebrows together and making another note. “Do you think this is too classical?” She turns the giant sketch around.

“Kind of reminds me of those Greek statues,” Alexi offers.

“Fuck,” she groans, slamming it onto the table.

Ashland takes a look at it. “If you make the dick bigger you’ll give it a modern twist.”

Penny rolls her eyes. “I fucking cannot with you.”

“Fine. If you don’t want my expert opinion then I won’t give it.” She grabs her sketchbook and turns to shield it from my prying eyes. Penny is conversing with Alexi, but she keeps looking at Ashland with obvious worry.

“What are you drawing?” I ask.

She doesn’t bother looking up. “Dicks.”

“So you really are a slut then?”

Her hand hovers over the page. “Not more of a slut than you.”

“Touché,” I answer, keeping my expression neutral. She's such a fucking brat. The need to fuck her again is overwhelming. I want her under my thumb, doing what I say and repeating what I tell her to.

Penny and Alexi are deep in some sort of conversation about Greek art compared to Roman art, and she’s explaining the difference to him in depth. Oddly enough, he doesn’t look bored.

“…And then an internship opportunity came up. I’m thinking about taking it. My, um, friend, Vale, applied,” she finishes.

“What?” Ashland sits up quickly, knocking her charcoal to the ground. She seems angry. The real kind.

Penny blushes. “Um, yeah. It just came up like an hour ago.”

“I just remembered I have something else to do. Later, cunts.” Ashland shoves headphones onto her head and grabs her bag, breezing past us. I notice Cole is inside behind the counter. So he works here. It makes sense considering he was bringing her food and coffee, and they were hanging out here.

They exchange words, and he offers her a smile. She bristles while he makes her a drink. When he holds it out to her, she grabs it and takes her board from the door, taking off. I see that she left her sketchpad on the table, and the charcoal is still on the ground. I don’t know what possesses me to grab it, but I put the charcoal in my pocket and the sketchpad in my bag with the thought that I’ll return it.

“Is she alright?” Alexi asks, seeming a little confused.

Penny sighs. “She’s just…stressed.”

I watch her head across the quad. She stops in the middle and changes directions, almost running someone over until she’s out of sight.

“Damn. I was hoping that I could have her help with our ancient culture homework. She wasn’t in class today,” Alexi explains. “Figured I’d find her here since lover boy is always fetching her coffee.”

“I do feel bad for Cole.” Penny glances in his direction. “He’s hopeless.”

“That’s putting it nicely,” I mumble under my breath. They don’t hear me. They’ve already moved on.

“So, Alexi, how’s the football season going?”

He laughs. “Pretty good. Undefeated this season.”

“Well, that’s awesome. Very cool. Do you like playing football?”

I’m not sure we’ve been asked that question before. I guess because we’ve always played people automatically assume we love it. The question gives Alexi pause. I know he’s had his moments. We all have. When we were getting scouted for college I wasn’t sure he was going to follow through. After he did, I figured he had gotten over his hump, but now it looks like he’s having to think about his answer. He's never really said much when we talk about going pro, now that I've come to think about it.

“I enjoy it,” he says carefully.

“Have you always played?”

“Since middle school." He nods toward me. "Koda got me into it actually.”

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