Page 7 of Scoring the Player
Following Malik’s gaze to Sid, who’s chatting with our teammates, I quirk my eyebrow.
“I’m not even bi, but if I knew he was, I’d have given Ty a run for his money, y’know?” he rattles on.
Sid hugs his mother.
“N-nah.” I clear my throat. “I don’t see him that way.”
He smirks.
Everyone believes headlines.
He starts to walk away, then pauses. “Yo, that Darius and Todd segment was bullshit. You belong here just like everyone else. Just ball and do you.”
I wave it off. I caught a snippet of the show this morning. Fuck ’em.
“How’s your pops? His Offensive Player of the Year speech had me dying. The funniest presenter all night.”
Carter Cade, retired NFL tight end, and everyone’s favorite dinner party icebreaker.
“A speech?”
He nods. “At the NFL Honors. He’s good?”
I grunt.
Ty places a tender kiss on a seated Sid. They’re so certain about each other. In the bleak span of mortality, what does forever even mean? Will it all have been worth it sixty years from now when one sleeps coldly in death?
Who will keep the other?
Ghosts do not warm.
“Because of you,I know that love is the greatest of mysteries…”
I crank up the music in my car until the bass is in the center of my brain.
“Whatever storms may come to pass, we’ll bear them together…”
Maxing out the volume on my speakers until my teeth vibrate, I reach into the glove compartment and snag the psilocybin. Unscrewing the capsules, I pour back the dust. Soon, the slithering unrest beneath my skin will retreat.
“I am already yours…”
I chase it with another dose.
The faint echo of a car horn cuts through the music. Who could fault Los Angeles if she threw up her hands—or land—and evoked a 9.5 earthquake that careened half of the population and their cars into the Pacific Ocean? Cars digested to the depths, forming coral reefs. Bloated corpses burped up to the surface. Decades of congestion cured.
Solved.
My head swims through the reverberating bass.
Why does the sun have to constantly burn through the flesh here?I yank down my sun visor.
Everything about California is dramatic. Even the goddamn traffic.
I switch lanes and take the next exit.
My ringtone blares through the speakers.
“You’re horrible at calling people back.”
