Page 73 of Call the Shots
BACKGROUND CHARACTER
After practice on Monday,I left with the sole purpose of telling Xavier that I had sex with June.
I couldn’t ignore the doubts anymore. Nothing made sense, and for as much as June snapped at me, I couldn’t get over the feeling that she was telling the truth.
He wasn’t in the housing department but when I mentioned it was an emergency, they told me where I could find him, at the unveiling for an exhibit at the art school. It was the opposite of the party he invited me to. Everyone was dressed in slacks while I had my jersey on. I shouldered through the crowd until I found him, in the middle of telling a story to a dozen people, one of those glass pottery awards in his hands.
“Bear!” A grin split across his face as he held out the award. “For ‘the enrichment of the community.’ Nice, huh?” He set the award on a table and took my arm, pulling me away from the conversation. “You’re my savior, did you get those receipts?”
“You lied to me,” I said flatly.
“What?”
“You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me.”
His eyes flickered to the rest of the crowd, and he led me further from everybody. “Those receipts only say June’s namebecause she processed the paperwork. They’re formystuff, inmyoffice?—”
“We had sex.”
Xavier froze. “I—what? You what?”
“June and I had sex,” I repeated, my voice low.
“You—?” He gripped my arm, trying to formulate words. “I don’t—what are you—you didn’t?—”
“I did.”
“No. Because she wouldn’t have sex withyou.” A hard laugh burst out of him. “She wouldn’t fuck you!”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because she—she?—”
“You said she fucks everybody.”
“But notyou,Bear!” His voice jumped up. “She wouldn’t fuck you! There’s no fucking way she’d ever fuck you, I don’t believe it—” He jerked back to see everyone staring at us. Even the music seemed quieter. His friends raised their eyebrows, inquisitive, and people craned their necks to see why Xavier was yelling. With steps to the right, Xavier hid us by the stairs. “This isn’t funny?—”
“She has a mole on the bottom of her left thigh.”
The breath wheezed out of him.
“She owns a pair of bright blue panties with flowers on them.”
Xavier’s face darkened.
“She doesn’t like pet names.”
It was like a flip switched. He gazed back, triumphant. “She fucking loves pet names, she’d cum when I called her cupcake. She doesn’t like pet names fromyou!” The laugh tore out of him. “She fucked you to get back atme!You’re not even involved in our game, you’re a background character, she doesn’t give a fuck about you?—”
Hurt welled up in my chest, but it didn’t compare to the anger simmering under my skin.
“I can’t believe you,” he continued. “I said she’s Gangbang fucking June and?—”
“Don’tcall her that.”
“Bear—”
“I don’t care if she’s gone through a thousand gangbangs, if you call her that again, I’ll punch you in the fucking mouth.”
