Page 12 of The C*ck Down the Block

“Well, fuck me. You’re finally going to do it. You’re finally gonna tell Trixie you love her.”

I was a hair’s breadth away from denying it. That’s what I’d been doing for a long time. But Everett and I spent a lot of time on and off the field paying close attention to what the other one was thinking. It was why we had the highest passing success rate in the league. He knew what I was thinking half the time before I did. I’d come to him for his help, and he was going to give me a game plan or I was going to flush his face in the toilet. “You are a jackass. I’m not just going to blurt out that I love her. I need to win her heart and that requires good game strategy.”

He stared at me for a long time, and I wasn’t sure if he was thinking or if his hangover and my admitting I had feelings for Trixie had broken his brain. He took a slow sip of his coffee, set it down on the side table, and rubbed his hands together. “You’ve come to the right place, brother. You are going to sweep that girl off her feet and right into your bed, uh, I mean heart.”

Oh god, what had I gotten myself into?

Everett leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me this since she moved in next door when we were kids.”

Trixie’s family bought the house next to ours when I was ten. “Don’t get all over dramatic.”

“Don’t lie to yourself.” He made a you’re-a-dumbass face at me that I was intimately familiar with. “You were in love with her the second she beat you at mud puddle golf. Everyone knew it. Even Mom.”

That hit me harder than Seattle’s defensive line trying to maintain their most sacs in a season record. I sat down on the nearest lawn chair so hard the metal squeaked. I wasn’t prepared to bring my memories of Mom into this.

“The fact that Trixie beat me at mud puddle golf means nothing. It was one time.” I knew how to deflect conversations about Mom like a champ.

“Sure, bro. Keep telling yourself that.” Everett leaned back, a smirk playing on his lips, but there was that same flash of pain behind his smile too. He was the one who fucking brought her up.

“Fine. But asking her if she wants to go play in the mud with me isn’t going to help me win her heart.” Not that I wouldn’t like to do some naked mud wrestling with Trixie.

“It could. If you do exactly what I tell you to.” He grinned at me and took a sip of his coffee so long, there was no way he even had that much liquid left in his cup. He was enjoying this way too much.

But I thrived on doing the hard stuff. If I couldn’t push my way through pain, I wouldn’t be a top tier professional athlete. I wouldn’t be a multi-millionaire. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to hold it together and help my father raise my younger brothers and sister at the age of twelve.

And Everett was definitely going to make this whole thing painful, just for funsies.

I gritted my teeth through my agreement. “Fine.”

He set his mug down with a flourish. “Now, why the fuck haven’t you ever asked her out?”

“I have.” Which I hadn’t ever admitted to anyone before. “She basically told me to fuck off.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? When?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Enthusiastic consent, man.”

When we each turned ten, our dad would sit us down and give us the sex talk. I have no doubt he was coached by Mrs. Moore, because this was no weird and uncomfortable, ‘keep it in your pants or keep it wrapped up’ with a slug on the shoulder and we’re done chat.

He had fucking diagrams, and he tried really hard to help us understand that, with him, there was no shame around the subject. But his main sticking point had been exactly what Everett was trying to remind me of—enthusiastic consent. No did not mean keep pushing until she said yes. It didn’t mean not right now. It meant no.

I’d battled with that a lot when I even thought about wooing Trixie. Had I been in love with her all these years? Yep. But I didn’t want to be that creep that was the nice guy and her friend just trying to get into her pants. I genuinely enjoyed her. She was funny as shit, even when she didn’t mean to be. She was kind, without letting people walk all over her. Even in high school, when she had a tough time because of the mean girls, she still had this inherent confidence in her own self-worth.

What wasn’t to love? None of that had anything to do with romance or sex. I sure as shit hoped that if I did ask her out again, that if she said no, again, it wouldn’t make everything awkward between us. I valued her friendship more than I could say. But it might.

She meant enough to me to take the risk.

Because I wanted the woman I spent the rest of my life with to be my best friend, not just some arm candy, or a ball bunny looking for the spotlight.

Now my little brother was judging the shit out of me, thinking I was just trying to wear Trixie down or manipulate her into being with me. “Why the fuck do you think I’ve waited ten god damn years to try asking her out again, asshole? She’s my friend, outside of the family, she’s probably my best friend.”

“Wait. You asked her out ten years ago and she told you no?” He shook his head at me. See? Judgy asshole. “This is one fucking long game you’re playing.”

“I’m not playing a game just to get my rocks off. Do I want to fuck her brains out? Absolutely. But I’m in love with her, the real her. The one who loves her weird chickens and reality TV and children’s literature, who is a genuinely nice person who cares about making the world a good place to live. But we’ve grown up a lot since we were eighteen and graduating high school. If she tells me no again now, I’m not destroying our friendship over it. I’ll just have to fucking move on.”

“Good. I was going to have to kill you if you’d fallen off the big brother who we all look up to because he’s a fucking good guy pedestal.”

I threw a cushion at his face. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Yeah, I am. There’s one single thingyou need to do.”

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