Page 51 of Keeper
“Vaughnsy, bud,” Dane said, “you know you could’ve saved yourself a lot of pain and suffering if you’d jerked yourself off before the game, right?”
“Idid,D.”
His eyes narrowed with doubt. “You’re telling me you cleared the pipes and you werestillaching afterward?”
“Yeah, man. It was that bad.”
“Huh. You must’ve been pretty backed up. How hot was she, anyway?”
I shook my head. “She was a stunner, boys. So cute and sweet, too.”
The guys wentaw—most were being wise asses, I’m sure, but a few seemed genuine, too.
“So after this amazing chick gives you blue balls,” Reavo said, “you get your first win in two months. And not just any win, but a fifty-fuckin’-save shutout. You realize you can’t let that girl go, right? You gotta get blue balls from her beforeeverygame.” Reavo waited for the laughter to die down. “Seriously though, Vaughnsy, please tell me you got her number.”
I sighed. “I didn’t get anything from her.”
“Yeah, we know—not even a handjob!” Parisi joked, and the room detonated into laughter again. Parisi’s jabs were always that much funnier because of his thick accent.
“You know what I mean, Frenchy,” I said, but even I had to laugh. “When I woke up in the morning, she was already gone, and she didn’t leave me with any way to contact her. No note, no number, no Insta and no Snap. Nothing.”
“Aw. That’s sad. It’s like a modern day Cinderella story.” Dane’s eyebrows stitched together with too much sympathy to be genuine. I knew he was setting me up another punchline. “Except instead of leaving you with a glass slipper to find her with, your Cinderella left you luggin’ around a pair of blue balls to try to fill her with.”
The room went,Bahahahaha.
“Obviously, what we have to do tonight,” Reavo said as he sidled next to me and put his arm around me, “is take Prince Blue Balls here back to Club Plush tonight to find his Cinderella.”
“What do you say, Vaughnsy?” Dane asked. “We’ve got the day off tomorrow.”
“I’m down,” I said, grinning. “Gotta keep that winning tradition alive and ride the hot streak, right, boys?”
The team roared back,hellyeah!
I took off the rest of my sweat-soaked clothes and hit the showers. When I returned, the topic of conversation had mercifully moved away from my backed-up testicles and into a debate about where we should eat dinner tonight.
Cooper, still in his suit, waited for me at his stall. “Hell of a game, kid.”
“Thanks again, Coops.”
“Sounds like you liked that girl,” he said.
I laughed as I pulled on a fresh pair of boxers. “I guess. I barely know her.”
“But you liked her.”
“I mean.” I blew out a heavy breath. “You know. She was definitely different than what I’m used to.” I lowered my voice. “I guess I liked her, yeah.”
Those words brought a smile to his face. “There. That wasn’t so hard to say, was it?”
“I’ve been burned before, Coops.”
“Good. Burn away the rot. That’s how the soul grows.”
I didn’t know what to say. “How … what do you mean?”
“When I was your age, I spent my better years chasing tail at the club,” he said. “It’s easy to think everyone’s a certain way when you’re only meeting a certain type of people. In the end, it’s not that everyone out there is the same—it’s that you keep going to the same place and finding the same people. You’re bashing your head against the wall, struggling with something insideyou,until you’ve finally learned whatever lesson you needed before you can move on.”
Something burned at my throat. “Yeah,” I grumbled. “Who knows. Maybe you’re right.”
