Page 99 of Puck You Very Much
“Dude, just chill out, would you? If I told you I don’t want to talk about something, then I totally mean it.”
Jakob’s face reddened a little. Normally, he didn’t get mad. He used that smart mouth of his to make fun constantly. Now, I could see that I’d totally gotten under his skin.
“Things haven’t been right between us lately,” he said. “And you’ve been a lot different. I feel like we’re going backwards instead of forward.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“See? That’s exactly what I mean, Zane. I try to bring up a problem and you won’t talk about it. Worse, you shoot me down like I’m being ridiculous.”
“But youarebeing ridiculous. No shock there, dude.”
He paused like he needed to regroup. Fine by me. Maybe he would turn up nothing useful to say and throw in the towel on this discussion.
“The game is a problem,” he said. “I need you to admit that.”
I paused, saying nothing. I didn’t even want to have this conversation let alone admit to anything he wanted me to.
“You might not think so,” Jakob said, “but that’s mostly because you have a head hard enough to etch glass.”
“See? There you go again. You can’t have any kind of conversation without turning it into a joke.”
“I’m sorry, it’s the only way I know how.”
“Yeah, and being a mind-blowing asshole is the only wayIknow how.”
“I wouldn’t wear that as a badge of honor, Zane.”
We both took a beat. This could get out of hand in a hurry. I didn’t want that to happen, but I also didn’t want to get Jakob to win the argument—or think he did.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “That’s me. It’s the guy you got involved with and the one who stole your heart.”
He pursed his lips and raised his index finger like he wanted to say something—almost certainly another wisecrack—and had to stop himself.
Case in point, right?
“I know that facing each other in the championship game complicates the hell out of things,” I said, “but so does overthinking everything. Why can’t we just play the game and let the chips fall where they may?”
“Because I know what’ll happen when you lose.Ifyou lose.Whenyou—you know what I mean.”
That did it. Something sparked within me when he said that and not for the first time. This whole smooth-things-over-and-clear-the-air routine was bullshit. He was as responsible for the tensions between us as I was.
“WhenI lose?” I asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“Hold on, let’s not gloss over that. You just implied that you’re going to beat us. That’s the sort of thing that started trouble in the first place.”
“Butyoudid the exact same thing.”
“Um, if memory serves, you’re the one who took the first swipe in that department.”
“Sorry, Zane, but that’s really not how I remember it.”
In truth, I couldn’t remember exactly how it went either. I just knew that you had to keep Jakob Martin in check, or he could get a leg up on you…in all the wrong ways.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I think we can agree that we wouldn’t have landed in this problem if we’d just not talked about shit like we were supposed to.”
“I don’t agree.”
