War of the Roses: Redux Edition
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
comeback squared
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
I’m the Captain Now
“TCU’s offense comes back out onto the field after a touchdown drive from the Mustangs here in the first quarter. Junior Aaron Sullivan wasn’t great on the Frogs’ first drive, but the All-Big 12 signal caller won’t be fazed by that.”
Ron stood on the sideline of Amon G. Carter Stadium using his hands to signal a playcall to Aaron. Next to him the team’s third string quarterback, Jacob Wright, held up a placard of numbers that signified a different play. It was up to the junior to decide what he was going to go with. A sign of the trust that Coach Griffin had in the three-year starter.
Adjusting the headset on his ears, Ron watched as they lined up in the shotgun. Aaron marshalled the offense, making adjustments at the line of scrimmage.
The ball was snapped, Aaron putting the ball in Jamichael Stallworth’s stomach and eyeing the defensive end. The end crashed and Aaron kept it himself. He wasn’t the fastest quarterback, but he had enough speed to need to be respected.
Aaron cut it outside and picked up a handful of yards before being shoved over by a corner. As he went down, his right leg was rolled over by another player. The trainers started to rush on the field, but Aaron extricated himself from the pile and waved them off – with a noticeable limp as he walked back to the huddle.
The headset cackled to life. “Rebel right...”
Ron’s hands started moving to relay the play call in. During camp, he could remember thinking that the NCAA should really catch to the NFL’s 40-plus-year-old technology of having audio in the quarterbacks’ helmets.
Aaron went through his pre-snap adjustments once more. He was still limping around. He called for the snap and dropped back. His knee seemed to buckle underneath him when he planted to step up, but he stayed on his feet.
He tried to spin away from an edge rusher, but his leg didn’t cooperate with the decision and it twisted awkwardly underneath him. Crumpling to the turf, he avoided the first tackler, but that motion put his head level with a second defender’s knee which caught him in the helmet.
The trainers and Coach Griffin were running on to the field as soon as the play was blown dead with a hush descending over the stadium. Aaron lay motionless on the field as the trainers tended to him. After what seemed like an eternity, the cart rolled out and Aaron was loaded onto a backboard to be taken off the field.
There was a light ripple of applause as Coach Griffin jogged back to the TCU sideline, speaking to the head ref as he went.
Coach Griffin turned to Ron when he’d reached to the sideline. “Go warm up, son. You’re going in.”
Ron ripped the headset from his head and went to get his helmet.
…
“… on his condition when it’s available. Entering the game in his place is true freshman Ron DeRossi. A five-star signal caller from Louisiana, DeRossi was the offensive crown jewel of last year’s recruiting class and many were surprised that Aaron Sullivan was chosen as the starter over him after the clips that made the rounds from summer camp. He’s known for having a cannon of an arm, but enough accuracy to get passes into tight spaces. And don’t let his age fool you, scuttlebutt out of the TCU camp says that he is already one of the leaders on the team despite choosing to stay in Louisiana until May. It looks like we’re getting back underway now after the break.”
…
Ron licked his fingers as he got set to receive his first snap as a college quarterback. “Hut, hut.”
A linebacker ran to the line and almost got caught offside before he backed up.
“Easy, easy,” Ron called in an even tone. “Easy, easy.” He raised his hands. “Hut.”
As soon as the ball hit his hands, he was in his zone. He went through his reads, scanning the field. As if having a sixth sense, he stepped up in the pocket to avoid an oncoming rusher from his left. Planting his feet, he drew his arm back and launched a bomb downfield to Garrison Reed who had the slightest step on his man.
The ball dropped right over Garrison’s outside shoulder, taking him away from the safety in the middle of the field and allowing him to walk into the endzone.
The crowd erupted into cheers as the band cranked up the fight song.
…
“DeRossi rolls out on the bootleg and rockets a pass between two defenders into Andrews. Andrews might need to check his pads for cracks. That one had some heat on it! First down, TCU!”
…
“How did he do that?! Young was all over DeRossi there and somehow he still managed to complete the pass to Sanders downfield!”
…
“Stallworth’s got a step on his man and DeRossi hits him in stride and that’s another six for the Horned Frogs!”
…
Ron tucked the ball and pushed off one of his right guard as a nose tackle drove the lineman back into Ron’s lap. He spun out of the pocket and into the arms of an edge rusher who tried to use Ron’s momentum to spin him to the ground.
For a moment, Ron lost his bearings but shot his left hand out to the turf to stay on his feet. He took for the first down marker to get what he could and make the most out of a broken play.
A corner closed on him and the two of them went shoulder to shoulder, but Ron stayed on his feet and changed directions, jumping as the cornerback tried to dive for his feet.
He cut through the middle of the field and lowered his shoulder on the next white jersey that he saw – who happened to be a linebacker. He wrapped his arms around the ball to brace for getting popped. Instead, he ran the defender over.
Breaking to the opposite side of the field, he picked up a few blocks and headed for the endzone, diving for the pylon to get the touchdown.
…
A SID in a purple polo held up his ID badge as the cameras in the room got their white balance.
“Y’all good?” he asked the room. “We’re going to start with players today. Stevie, Keith, Javari and Ron. Y’all need any of that spelled? No? Last names? No? Good.”
The four players filed into the room and sat behind a table. A couple reporters scrambled up and repositioned their phones, so they were closer to Ron instead of the other three. Ron earned a couple laughs when he pushed a couple of them back toward the middle of the table.
The SID pointed to a reporter on the front row.
“Ron, we know you are a confident guy, but you couldn’t have imagined your first game being like that when you weren’t expected to play today barring a blowout?”
Ron nodded slowly. “I just want to start by saying, and I know these guys will agree with me, that all of our thoughts are with Aaron right now. You never want to see one of your brothers get stretchered off the field. But we know he’s a fighter and whatever the diagnosis is, he’ll come back ten times better than he was before. That said, I’m just glad we got the win.”
“Three hundred and eighty-seven yards through the air, fifty-two on the ground, four total touchdowns. No interceptions. That would be an impressive performance for any quarterback, but especially a true freshman in his first game. What was going through your head when you got out there?”
“I was afraid they wouldn’t remember my name without it taped on the front of my helmet.”
“Not going to lie. I had to look at your back a couple times,” Stevie said, drawing laughter from the room.
“Do you think you should start going forward?”
The SID looked up from his phone, ready to kill that question.
Ron shrugged. “I just want to help the team win a National Championship. If that’s holding a tablet, I’ll do that. If that’s on the field, I’ll do that. Whatever it is. I’m fine with it.” He nodded to his right. “Y’all know these guys played, too. I’m sure they can talk.”
“Y’all up here trying to get Ron to say ‘Look at me. I’m the captain now.’ like that old movie from way back in the day, but he ain’t falling for that. That’s why he gonna be up in Congress after he hang up the cleats,” Javari said.
Ron laughed and sat back in his chair as questions started to be lobbed at the other three.
“TCU’s offense comes back out onto the field after a touchdown drive from the Mustangs here in the first quarter. Junior Aaron Sullivan wasn’t great on the Frogs’ first drive, but the All-Big 12 signal caller won’t be fazed by that.”
Ron stood on the sideline of Amon G. Carter Stadium using his hands to signal a playcall to Aaron. Next to him the team’s third string quarterback, Jacob Wright, held up a placard of numbers that signified a different play. It was up to the junior to decide what he was going to go with. A sign of the trust that Coach Griffin had in the three-year starter.
Adjusting the headset on his ears, Ron watched as they lined up in the shotgun. Aaron marshalled the offense, making adjustments at the line of scrimmage.
The ball was snapped, Aaron putting the ball in Jamichael Stallworth’s stomach and eyeing the defensive end. The end crashed and Aaron kept it himself. He wasn’t the fastest quarterback, but he had enough speed to need to be respected.
Aaron cut it outside and picked up a handful of yards before being shoved over by a corner. As he went down, his right leg was rolled over by another player. The trainers started to rush on the field, but Aaron extricated himself from the pile and waved them off – with a noticeable limp as he walked back to the huddle.
The headset cackled to life. “Rebel right...”
Ron’s hands started moving to relay the play call in. During camp, he could remember thinking that the NCAA should really catch to the NFL’s 40-plus-year-old technology of having audio in the quarterbacks’ helmets.
Aaron went through his pre-snap adjustments once more. He was still limping around. He called for the snap and dropped back. His knee seemed to buckle underneath him when he planted to step up, but he stayed on his feet.
He tried to spin away from an edge rusher, but his leg didn’t cooperate with the decision and it twisted awkwardly underneath him. Crumpling to the turf, he avoided the first tackler, but that motion put his head level with a second defender’s knee which caught him in the helmet.
The trainers and Coach Griffin were running on to the field as soon as the play was blown dead with a hush descending over the stadium. Aaron lay motionless on the field as the trainers tended to him. After what seemed like an eternity, the cart rolled out and Aaron was loaded onto a backboard to be taken off the field.
There was a light ripple of applause as Coach Griffin jogged back to the TCU sideline, speaking to the head ref as he went.
Coach Griffin turned to Ron when he’d reached to the sideline. “Go warm up, son. You’re going in.”
Ron ripped the headset from his head and went to get his helmet.
…
“… on his condition when it’s available. Entering the game in his place is true freshman Ron DeRossi. A five-star signal caller from Louisiana, DeRossi was the offensive crown jewel of last year’s recruiting class and many were surprised that Aaron Sullivan was chosen as the starter over him after the clips that made the rounds from summer camp. He’s known for having a cannon of an arm, but enough accuracy to get passes into tight spaces. And don’t let his age fool you, scuttlebutt out of the TCU camp says that he is already one of the leaders on the team despite choosing to stay in Louisiana until May. It looks like we’re getting back underway now after the break.”
…
Ron licked his fingers as he got set to receive his first snap as a college quarterback. “Hut, hut.”
A linebacker ran to the line and almost got caught offside before he backed up.
“Easy, easy,” Ron called in an even tone. “Easy, easy.” He raised his hands. “Hut.”
As soon as the ball hit his hands, he was in his zone. He went through his reads, scanning the field. As if having a sixth sense, he stepped up in the pocket to avoid an oncoming rusher from his left. Planting his feet, he drew his arm back and launched a bomb downfield to Garrison Reed who had the slightest step on his man.
The ball dropped right over Garrison’s outside shoulder, taking him away from the safety in the middle of the field and allowing him to walk into the endzone.
The crowd erupted into cheers as the band cranked up the fight song.
…
“DeRossi rolls out on the bootleg and rockets a pass between two defenders into Andrews. Andrews might need to check his pads for cracks. That one had some heat on it! First down, TCU!”
…
“How did he do that?! Young was all over DeRossi there and somehow he still managed to complete the pass to Sanders downfield!”
…
“Stallworth’s got a step on his man and DeRossi hits him in stride and that’s another six for the Horned Frogs!”
…
Ron tucked the ball and pushed off one of his right guard as a nose tackle drove the lineman back into Ron’s lap. He spun out of the pocket and into the arms of an edge rusher who tried to use Ron’s momentum to spin him to the ground.
For a moment, Ron lost his bearings but shot his left hand out to the turf to stay on his feet. He took for the first down marker to get what he could and make the most out of a broken play.
A corner closed on him and the two of them went shoulder to shoulder, but Ron stayed on his feet and changed directions, jumping as the cornerback tried to dive for his feet.
He cut through the middle of the field and lowered his shoulder on the next white jersey that he saw – who happened to be a linebacker. He wrapped his arms around the ball to brace for getting popped. Instead, he ran the defender over.
Breaking to the opposite side of the field, he picked up a few blocks and headed for the endzone, diving for the pylon to get the touchdown.
…
A SID in a purple polo held up his ID badge as the cameras in the room got their white balance.
“Y’all good?” he asked the room. “We’re going to start with players today. Stevie, Keith, Javari and Ron. Y’all need any of that spelled? No? Last names? No? Good.”
The four players filed into the room and sat behind a table. A couple reporters scrambled up and repositioned their phones, so they were closer to Ron instead of the other three. Ron earned a couple laughs when he pushed a couple of them back toward the middle of the table.
The SID pointed to a reporter on the front row.
“Ron, we know you are a confident guy, but you couldn’t have imagined your first game being like that when you weren’t expected to play today barring a blowout?”
Ron nodded slowly. “I just want to start by saying, and I know these guys will agree with me, that all of our thoughts are with Aaron right now. You never want to see one of your brothers get stretchered off the field. But we know he’s a fighter and whatever the diagnosis is, he’ll come back ten times better than he was before. That said, I’m just glad we got the win.”
“Three hundred and eighty-seven yards through the air, fifty-two on the ground, four total touchdowns. No interceptions. That would be an impressive performance for any quarterback, but especially a true freshman in his first game. What was going through your head when you got out there?”
“I was afraid they wouldn’t remember my name without it taped on the front of my helmet.”
“Not going to lie. I had to look at your back a couple times,” Stevie said, drawing laughter from the room.
“Do you think you should start going forward?”
The SID looked up from his phone, ready to kill that question.
Ron shrugged. “I just want to help the team win a National Championship. If that’s holding a tablet, I’ll do that. If that’s on the field, I’ll do that. Whatever it is. I’m fine with it.” He nodded to his right. “Y’all know these guys played, too. I’m sure they can talk.”
“Y’all up here trying to get Ron to say ‘Look at me. I’m the captain now.’ like that old movie from way back in the day, but he ain’t falling for that. That’s why he gonna be up in Congress after he hang up the cleats,” Javari said.
Ron laughed and sat back in his chair as questions started to be lobbed at the other three.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
What are the transfer rules in 2055?
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
i gotta get back in this family.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
On the Dotted Line
Devin felt a kick at his foot and cracked one eye open. Hasan stood in his living room, holding his phone up so that Devin could see the screen. He tried to focus on whatever his friend was trying to show him, but the fog of sleep hadn’t quite left his vision yet.
“Wake yo sleepy ass up, bruh,” Hasan said, kicking at his foot again. He flipped his phone in his hand, tapping away as a few notifications pinged. “I come bearin’ good news. For both of us.”
Devin sat back on the sofa, so he was sitting up and rubbed at his eyes. “How’d you even get in here? And I thought you were in Baton Rouge?”
“Boy, Ralph must’ve been workin’ y’all hard last night. It’s Sunday afternoon, nigga. I told you I was only goin’ up there for the one day. This ain’t my first time visitin’ LSU. Everybody knew what the deal was when I got on the campus. And ya mama let me in as she was headin’ out.” Hasan held his phone out again. “Check this shit out, man.”
As Devin took the phone from him, he noticed that a second guy was in the room looking at one of the few shelves of family pictures that the Kings had in their home. Likely the only family pictures that any of the Kings, all three living generations, had.
The boy at the shelf turned around and nodded in Devin’s direction. “What’s up, man?”
“Where did you run into him?” Devin asked Hasan.
“Erik? LSU, nigga, clearly. I ain’t fuckin’ go to Dallas.”
Erik shrugged. “I was in Baton Rouge looking for the apartment that they promised me. They said they’d find it for me, but I don’t trust folks like that. Saw this dude up there and one thing led to another and here I am.”
“For?” Devin asked.
“Just look at the damn phone, bruh, damn.”
Devin sighed and looked down at the phone. A poorly edited graphic announcing Hasan’s verbal commitment to LSU to the social media world was on it. He zoomed in on the jersey and noticed bits of white skin poking out from under the jersey they’d pasted onto Hasan’s body.
Laughing, Devin tossed the phone back to Hasan. “I hope you didn’t fucking pay someone to do that. That shit is horrendous.”
“I tried to tell him that he shouldn’t have paid some random guy in a basement somewhere to do that and just sent it out if he was going to send it out,” Erik said.
“Y’all fuckin’ hatin’. The response you should’ve had was ‘Damn, bro. Big ups to you committin’ to LSU. That’s crazy, man. All love.’” Hasan glanced at the phone and then shoved it into his pocket.
“I mean, congrats on committing to LSU. I’m still going to laugh when you show me something that you paid someone to do and it looks like they did the worst jersey swap I’ve ever seen. They didn’t even bother to clip that off a black guy. AND THEY GAVE YOU NUMBER SEVENTY-FIVE!” Devin got up and walked toward the kitchen, still laughing, with Hasan and Erik following behind him.
Devin grabbed a cup and filled it with water from the tap, leaning against the counter as he drank from it.
“Now that you got your laughs. What you doin’?” Hasan asked.
“Doing about what?”
“Where you goin’ to school, motherfucker.”
Devin shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Boom, I got the decision. LSU. We goin’. You go.”
“I don’t even know him,” Devin said, nodding in Erik’s direction. “And I know I don’t say it a lot, but I don’t really want to sit on the bench for five years while waiting for the chance to play on special teams or something.”
“How you gon’ sit on the bench? You ain’t got no faith in yourself.”
“LSU’s got Tomori Perkins and Austin Williams coming in at corner. Both four stars. They have two sophomores, a junior and three freshmen already in the room. And that’s not counting Mike Stingley if he gets granted another year.”
“That’s just a little competition.”
“Fuck all of that,” Erik said. “Williams is going to decommit. Word is that Alabama got something for his baby mama. I’m guessing a spot somewhere in Tuscaloosa. Stingley’s going to transfer, graduate student. So is Lavallois. He’s already in the portal.”
“Still sounds like the makings of a packed cornerback room to me,” Devin said, shrugging.
“You ever heard of LeBron James?”
“Is that a serious question?”
“I’m just checking. I don’t know you like that. I’m trying to pull some LeBron James type shit and put together my own team. I ain’t getting 22 guys down to Baton Rouge, but I can get five or six for a secondary.”
“The disrespect for the ones who put points on the board,” Hasan said, shaking his head.
Erik waved off the comment. “This is LSU we’re talking about. The reason they’ve been mediocre these last few years is because they started worrying about the ones who put points on the board.”
“This isn’t the NBA we’re talking about. We’re talking about college football. I’m sure Coach Santini up in Baton Rouge has his own ideas about how he chooses who starts and who doesn’t.” Devin put down the glass and rubbed at his temple as he spoke.
“Yeah, we’re talking about college football. And we’re talking about a unit that gave up 379 passing yards a game last year and ain’t looking so hot this year. Why the fuck you think they are trying to get so many defensive backs in? So, this is how I see it. I’ve already committed and signed my paperwork to enroll in January, so I’m in.” Erik held up his hand to count through the names. “Tomori’s from Baton Rouge. He’s not going anywhere else. You got Jaren Thomas at safety from Atlanta, throw in Popeye Anderson from Houston and you. That’s—”
“That nigga real name Popeye?” Hasan asked.
Erik shook his head. “I don’t fucking know. Ask him when he gets to campus. Anyway, that’s five guys. A whole new secondary. Three years, no fly zone. All you have to do is call coach and tell him that you want to come to LSU.”
“I haven’t made a decision yet,” Devin said.
“It’s an easy choice, man. This is DBU. Been DBU for fifty years. We’re DBs. We should be at LSU.”
“I ain’t no pussy cornerback, but I agree with Erik,” Hasan said. “Where else are you gonna go? You ain’t even fucked with any of the schools you visited so far. Just go on and put that verbal in and call it a day.”
Devin nodded slowly before turning around and refilling his glass with water. Taking a sip from the glass, he exhaled dramatically as he squeezed between Hasan and Erik to walk back to the living room.
“We ain’t done talkin’. Where you goin’, bruh?”
“It’s Sunday. What the fuck you think I’m going do?” Devin asked as he plopped down on the couch and turned the Saints game on.
“Can I ask you a question?” Kaley reached up to flip the rearview mirror down to check her appearance before heading into Casa Jenkins. Despite her regular appearances there, she was still intimidated just existing inside the opulent home.
Caesar looked up from his phone. “Depends on the question.”
“What do you mean it depends on the question?”
“That it depends on the question,” he said as he grabbed his stuff from the car’s cup holder and swung the door open.
She got out as well and followed him around to the trunk. He held out a pair of grocery bags for her to take.
“Okay, actually I have two questions.” She looked in the bags to make sure what he was handing her wasn’t heavy before taking the bags.
“I hope you aren’t going to keep adding questions to ask without asking them. By the time we get into the house, you’re going to be up to having fifty of the motherfuckers and I’m going to spend the rest of my life answering questions.” He picked up the rest of the bags and shut the trunk before starting up the driveway. He looked over his shoulder. “Are you going to ask your two questions?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but if your family has a personal chef, why do you bother to go buy groceries for yourself? Couldn’t you just wait ‘till, I don’t know, the chef cooks something?”
“I enjoy cooking for myself every so often. Pierre isn’t here twenty-four-seven.”
Kaley nodded and pointed to his friends’ cars that were parked along the driveway. “Okay, don’t you think it’s a little weird that your friends show up at your house and just hang out when you’re not here?”
She waited a moment for him to answer, but he kept walking in silence.
“Caesar?”
He still didn’t answer.
“Caesar!”
“You said you had two questions. You asked two questions,” he said, laughing at his own joke.
Kaley rolled her eyes. “You’re so fucking lame. I don’t know why I’m with you.”
“Because I have a huge dick.”
“Huge compared to what exactly? If you’re comparing it to, say, an ant leg then yeah, I would say it’s huge. If you’re comparing it to a regular man’s dick then I don’t know about all that. In that case, we’d just be insulting other regular sized dicks.”
“It’s not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean and this dick is the Atlantic, baby,” he said with a wink.
She ignored that comment. “So, about your friends?”
Caesar shrugged as he balanced the bags in one hand to unlock the door and shove it open. “It’s something that we’ve always done. My parents are barely here. No one really cares. I don’t know. It’s just a thing. Who knows? They might come here even after I go off to college. Drive from Mississippi and shit just to hang out by my parents’ pool.”
“It’s weird.”
“Only because you grew up in Slidell and everyone is too hoity toity or hopped up on painkillers to talk to each other so your friends aren’t close enough to you to just show up at your house. And now all your friends are mad at you for breaking up with ol’ boy.”
“Ol’ boy?” She dropped the bags on the counter in the kitchen.
“You take offense to me calling him white trash so I figured that would be a better way to bring up your ex.”
“Caesar! Come here!” Deion Jenkins’ voice boomed across the house, deciding to shout instead of using any number of ways to get his son’s attention that likely would’ve been more effective.
Caesar set his bags down and pointed at Kaley. “Keep your hands out of my Skittles. I have no issues with fighting you over them.”
“No one wants your shit ass Skittles. Go on before he comes looking for you and I have to hide.”
He shook his head. Taking a moment to glance at his phone, he swiped away all the notifications of girls trying to hang out with him and reminding himself that he was a changed man and Kaley was all that he needed.
He found his father in a room that most families of their income bracket would refer to as a study. In the Jenkins’ household, it was just a mostly empty room that Deion used as a makeshift office whenever he wanted to get away from his family – despite the fact they had more than enough fully furnished rooms for him to do that in.
Deion looked up from a laptop and pointed to a tablet next to him. “Sign those documents where they’re highlighted.”
“What are they?”
“Documents that I told you to sign where they are highlighted,” his father said, nodding to the tablet.
Caesar held his hands up and walked over to pick up the tablet. A dozen or so tabs where marked for signatures. He signed his name in the first blank and noticed that it was a contract to engage his father as his agent.
That gave him pause. Enough of a physical pause that Deion noticed.
The man sighed and shoved the laptop aside. “Give me the tablet.”
“Nah, I’m signing it.”
“Give me the damn tablet, boy.”
Caesar handed it over.
Deion swiped through the pages and placed the device back on the table. He pointed to the text on the screen. “You have to make me your agent and give me power of attorney so that I can set up a shell company to manage your image rights. The NCAA’s little loophole on their image rights rules is that no 18-year-old kid more interested in getting his dick sucked by sorority girls than making money is going to know how to manage that and they aren’t going to get rich from selling signatures to Jim Bob at the gas station.”
“Isn’t that against the rules though?”
“It’s not against the rules for the father of an athlete to manage said athlete’s affairs for them so they can focus on their education and playing whatever sport is making that school money.”
Caesar shrugged. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“That’s why you need to trust me that I know what I’m doing and sign it.” The older man picked up the tablet and held it out to his son.
Caesar took it from him and quickly signed all of the spots that were highlighted before placing the tablet back on the table.
“Caesar, make sure you keep family business in the family. Try to think with the head on your shoulders for a change.”
“Alright, dad.”
Deion dismissed him with a wave of his hand. Caesar had been alive long enough to know when he was no longer needed so he left the room, closing the door behind.
When he got back to the kitchen, he noticed the bag that once held his Skittles was now empty. He looked out of the window into the backyard where Kaley, Skittles in hand, was talking to Bentley, Andrew and Jurgen.
Shaking his head, Caesar headed outside.
Devin felt a kick at his foot and cracked one eye open. Hasan stood in his living room, holding his phone up so that Devin could see the screen. He tried to focus on whatever his friend was trying to show him, but the fog of sleep hadn’t quite left his vision yet.
“Wake yo sleepy ass up, bruh,” Hasan said, kicking at his foot again. He flipped his phone in his hand, tapping away as a few notifications pinged. “I come bearin’ good news. For both of us.”
Devin sat back on the sofa, so he was sitting up and rubbed at his eyes. “How’d you even get in here? And I thought you were in Baton Rouge?”
“Boy, Ralph must’ve been workin’ y’all hard last night. It’s Sunday afternoon, nigga. I told you I was only goin’ up there for the one day. This ain’t my first time visitin’ LSU. Everybody knew what the deal was when I got on the campus. And ya mama let me in as she was headin’ out.” Hasan held his phone out again. “Check this shit out, man.”
As Devin took the phone from him, he noticed that a second guy was in the room looking at one of the few shelves of family pictures that the Kings had in their home. Likely the only family pictures that any of the Kings, all three living generations, had.
The boy at the shelf turned around and nodded in Devin’s direction. “What’s up, man?”
“Where did you run into him?” Devin asked Hasan.
“Erik? LSU, nigga, clearly. I ain’t fuckin’ go to Dallas.”
Erik shrugged. “I was in Baton Rouge looking for the apartment that they promised me. They said they’d find it for me, but I don’t trust folks like that. Saw this dude up there and one thing led to another and here I am.”
“For?” Devin asked.
“Just look at the damn phone, bruh, damn.”
Devin sighed and looked down at the phone. A poorly edited graphic announcing Hasan’s verbal commitment to LSU to the social media world was on it. He zoomed in on the jersey and noticed bits of white skin poking out from under the jersey they’d pasted onto Hasan’s body.
Laughing, Devin tossed the phone back to Hasan. “I hope you didn’t fucking pay someone to do that. That shit is horrendous.”
“I tried to tell him that he shouldn’t have paid some random guy in a basement somewhere to do that and just sent it out if he was going to send it out,” Erik said.
“Y’all fuckin’ hatin’. The response you should’ve had was ‘Damn, bro. Big ups to you committin’ to LSU. That’s crazy, man. All love.’” Hasan glanced at the phone and then shoved it into his pocket.
“I mean, congrats on committing to LSU. I’m still going to laugh when you show me something that you paid someone to do and it looks like they did the worst jersey swap I’ve ever seen. They didn’t even bother to clip that off a black guy. AND THEY GAVE YOU NUMBER SEVENTY-FIVE!” Devin got up and walked toward the kitchen, still laughing, with Hasan and Erik following behind him.
Devin grabbed a cup and filled it with water from the tap, leaning against the counter as he drank from it.
“Now that you got your laughs. What you doin’?” Hasan asked.
“Doing about what?”
“Where you goin’ to school, motherfucker.”
Devin shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Boom, I got the decision. LSU. We goin’. You go.”
“I don’t even know him,” Devin said, nodding in Erik’s direction. “And I know I don’t say it a lot, but I don’t really want to sit on the bench for five years while waiting for the chance to play on special teams or something.”
“How you gon’ sit on the bench? You ain’t got no faith in yourself.”
“LSU’s got Tomori Perkins and Austin Williams coming in at corner. Both four stars. They have two sophomores, a junior and three freshmen already in the room. And that’s not counting Mike Stingley if he gets granted another year.”
“That’s just a little competition.”
“Fuck all of that,” Erik said. “Williams is going to decommit. Word is that Alabama got something for his baby mama. I’m guessing a spot somewhere in Tuscaloosa. Stingley’s going to transfer, graduate student. So is Lavallois. He’s already in the portal.”
“Still sounds like the makings of a packed cornerback room to me,” Devin said, shrugging.
“You ever heard of LeBron James?”
“Is that a serious question?”
“I’m just checking. I don’t know you like that. I’m trying to pull some LeBron James type shit and put together my own team. I ain’t getting 22 guys down to Baton Rouge, but I can get five or six for a secondary.”
“The disrespect for the ones who put points on the board,” Hasan said, shaking his head.
Erik waved off the comment. “This is LSU we’re talking about. The reason they’ve been mediocre these last few years is because they started worrying about the ones who put points on the board.”
“This isn’t the NBA we’re talking about. We’re talking about college football. I’m sure Coach Santini up in Baton Rouge has his own ideas about how he chooses who starts and who doesn’t.” Devin put down the glass and rubbed at his temple as he spoke.
“Yeah, we’re talking about college football. And we’re talking about a unit that gave up 379 passing yards a game last year and ain’t looking so hot this year. Why the fuck you think they are trying to get so many defensive backs in? So, this is how I see it. I’ve already committed and signed my paperwork to enroll in January, so I’m in.” Erik held up his hand to count through the names. “Tomori’s from Baton Rouge. He’s not going anywhere else. You got Jaren Thomas at safety from Atlanta, throw in Popeye Anderson from Houston and you. That’s—”
“That nigga real name Popeye?” Hasan asked.
Erik shook his head. “I don’t fucking know. Ask him when he gets to campus. Anyway, that’s five guys. A whole new secondary. Three years, no fly zone. All you have to do is call coach and tell him that you want to come to LSU.”
“I haven’t made a decision yet,” Devin said.
“It’s an easy choice, man. This is DBU. Been DBU for fifty years. We’re DBs. We should be at LSU.”
“I ain’t no pussy cornerback, but I agree with Erik,” Hasan said. “Where else are you gonna go? You ain’t even fucked with any of the schools you visited so far. Just go on and put that verbal in and call it a day.”
Devin nodded slowly before turning around and refilling his glass with water. Taking a sip from the glass, he exhaled dramatically as he squeezed between Hasan and Erik to walk back to the living room.
“We ain’t done talkin’. Where you goin’, bruh?”
“It’s Sunday. What the fuck you think I’m going do?” Devin asked as he plopped down on the couch and turned the Saints game on.
-*****-
“Can I ask you a question?” Kaley reached up to flip the rearview mirror down to check her appearance before heading into Casa Jenkins. Despite her regular appearances there, she was still intimidated just existing inside the opulent home.
Caesar looked up from his phone. “Depends on the question.”
“What do you mean it depends on the question?”
“That it depends on the question,” he said as he grabbed his stuff from the car’s cup holder and swung the door open.
She got out as well and followed him around to the trunk. He held out a pair of grocery bags for her to take.
“Okay, actually I have two questions.” She looked in the bags to make sure what he was handing her wasn’t heavy before taking the bags.
“I hope you aren’t going to keep adding questions to ask without asking them. By the time we get into the house, you’re going to be up to having fifty of the motherfuckers and I’m going to spend the rest of my life answering questions.” He picked up the rest of the bags and shut the trunk before starting up the driveway. He looked over his shoulder. “Are you going to ask your two questions?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but if your family has a personal chef, why do you bother to go buy groceries for yourself? Couldn’t you just wait ‘till, I don’t know, the chef cooks something?”
“I enjoy cooking for myself every so often. Pierre isn’t here twenty-four-seven.”
Kaley nodded and pointed to his friends’ cars that were parked along the driveway. “Okay, don’t you think it’s a little weird that your friends show up at your house and just hang out when you’re not here?”
She waited a moment for him to answer, but he kept walking in silence.
“Caesar?”
He still didn’t answer.
“Caesar!”
“You said you had two questions. You asked two questions,” he said, laughing at his own joke.
Kaley rolled her eyes. “You’re so fucking lame. I don’t know why I’m with you.”
“Because I have a huge dick.”
“Huge compared to what exactly? If you’re comparing it to, say, an ant leg then yeah, I would say it’s huge. If you’re comparing it to a regular man’s dick then I don’t know about all that. In that case, we’d just be insulting other regular sized dicks.”
“It’s not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean and this dick is the Atlantic, baby,” he said with a wink.
She ignored that comment. “So, about your friends?”
Caesar shrugged as he balanced the bags in one hand to unlock the door and shove it open. “It’s something that we’ve always done. My parents are barely here. No one really cares. I don’t know. It’s just a thing. Who knows? They might come here even after I go off to college. Drive from Mississippi and shit just to hang out by my parents’ pool.”
“It’s weird.”
“Only because you grew up in Slidell and everyone is too hoity toity or hopped up on painkillers to talk to each other so your friends aren’t close enough to you to just show up at your house. And now all your friends are mad at you for breaking up with ol’ boy.”
“Ol’ boy?” She dropped the bags on the counter in the kitchen.
“You take offense to me calling him white trash so I figured that would be a better way to bring up your ex.”
“Caesar! Come here!” Deion Jenkins’ voice boomed across the house, deciding to shout instead of using any number of ways to get his son’s attention that likely would’ve been more effective.
Caesar set his bags down and pointed at Kaley. “Keep your hands out of my Skittles. I have no issues with fighting you over them.”
“No one wants your shit ass Skittles. Go on before he comes looking for you and I have to hide.”
He shook his head. Taking a moment to glance at his phone, he swiped away all the notifications of girls trying to hang out with him and reminding himself that he was a changed man and Kaley was all that he needed.
He found his father in a room that most families of their income bracket would refer to as a study. In the Jenkins’ household, it was just a mostly empty room that Deion used as a makeshift office whenever he wanted to get away from his family – despite the fact they had more than enough fully furnished rooms for him to do that in.
Deion looked up from a laptop and pointed to a tablet next to him. “Sign those documents where they’re highlighted.”
“What are they?”
“Documents that I told you to sign where they are highlighted,” his father said, nodding to the tablet.
Caesar held his hands up and walked over to pick up the tablet. A dozen or so tabs where marked for signatures. He signed his name in the first blank and noticed that it was a contract to engage his father as his agent.
That gave him pause. Enough of a physical pause that Deion noticed.
The man sighed and shoved the laptop aside. “Give me the tablet.”
“Nah, I’m signing it.”
“Give me the damn tablet, boy.”
Caesar handed it over.
Deion swiped through the pages and placed the device back on the table. He pointed to the text on the screen. “You have to make me your agent and give me power of attorney so that I can set up a shell company to manage your image rights. The NCAA’s little loophole on their image rights rules is that no 18-year-old kid more interested in getting his dick sucked by sorority girls than making money is going to know how to manage that and they aren’t going to get rich from selling signatures to Jim Bob at the gas station.”
“Isn’t that against the rules though?”
“It’s not against the rules for the father of an athlete to manage said athlete’s affairs for them so they can focus on their education and playing whatever sport is making that school money.”
Caesar shrugged. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“That’s why you need to trust me that I know what I’m doing and sign it.” The older man picked up the tablet and held it out to his son.
Caesar took it from him and quickly signed all of the spots that were highlighted before placing the tablet back on the table.
“Caesar, make sure you keep family business in the family. Try to think with the head on your shoulders for a change.”
“Alright, dad.”
Deion dismissed him with a wave of his hand. Caesar had been alive long enough to know when he was no longer needed so he left the room, closing the door behind.
When he got back to the kitchen, he noticed the bag that once held his Skittles was now empty. He looked out of the window into the backyard where Kaley, Skittles in hand, was talking to Bentley, Andrew and Jurgen.
Shaking his head, Caesar headed outside.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
a skittle thief?
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 2183
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Glad to have a new update for this. LSU seems like the place to be.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Nostradamus
Danny walked out of the Field House and was greeted by the pandemonium on the street the ran in front of Thomas B. Smith Stadium. Car horns blared, people shouted and cheered while some emboldened students yelled obscenities at the departing buses heading back to Morgan City with a humiliated football team on board.
He had to dodge a few overenthusiastic slaps of congratulations from parents when he rounded the fence, smiling his thanks.
Eventually, he managed to make it to the street for the long walk home.
A SUV screeched to a halt on the street. “Where are you going, QB1?!”
Danny leaned closer to the vehicle to see it was packed with his teammates and a couple guys he’d seen around school. He shrugged and pointed down the road. “Home. I have an exam Monday and I want to get some sleep if I’m going to have to study all nigh—”
Kenyatta jumped out. “Fuck that. Get in. We’re goin’ celebrate.”
“Nah, I really gotta study. Y’all know how Ms. LeBlanc is. She always put stuff on the test that she didn’t talk about in class—”
“La’Quan, come get this, negro. I don’t want to hear none of that studyin’ shit. We goin’ fuck some bitches. You gonna find somethin’ to fuck on, too.”
The big defensive tackle hopped out of the other side of the SUV and ran around, scooping Danny off his feet before he could protest and tossing him into the vehicle before it sped off into the Louisiana night.
…
“Danny Jackson is in the shotgun with Hasan Santiago, a recent verbal commit to the Louisiana State University to his right. These Terrebonne Tigers have been slow starters in their first two games this season, but let’s see what they’ve got up their sleeves for the green and white Tigers from Morgan City High.”
“Jackson calls for the snap and hands off to—No, it’s a fake. He steps up in the pocket and heaves it downfield toward Caesar Jenkins who has a step on his man!”
“Are you listening to me?”
Devin nodded and looked up from the spreadsheet he’d threw together on his laptop to help make his decision on where to go to college. “Yeah, I’m listening to you. I think you should do that.”
Carla rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re clearly not listening because I didn’t say anything about doing or not doing a God damn thing.”
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to figure out what other things to put on this spreadsheet to figure all of this out. What’d you say?”
“I said that I got my ACT scores back from the session during the summer. I got a 28.”
“Hey, hey! That’s great! Congrats, babe!”
“Would’ve been a good response if I didn’t have to repeat myself because you weren’t paying attention to me.” She reached over and pushed the laptop lid back a bit so that she could see the screen. “You know what column you’re missing right?”
“Which school has given me a car?”
Carla’s eyes all but bulged. “You’ve gotten a car from all of this?”
“Miami and Ole Miss tried to give me one, but I turned them down. I don’t want to get involved in all that crazy shit. It won’t end well,” he said, shaking his head.
“You would be the only football recruit in the entire country to turn down a car that was given to you for free.”
“Not the only one. Caesar gives away all of the stuff schools send him. His friends are always walking around with swag from some school that isn’t recruiting them. I saw Bentley with an Auburn-themed tablet just the other day.”
“Okay, sorry. You would be the only football recruit in the entire country who isn’t rich enough to buy fifty of the cars schools are trying to give him to turn down a car.”
“Valid point.”
She pointed to the columns that Devin had placed in order of importance. “Right here before ‘pro potential’ and ‘academic success,’ you forgot to put ‘going to the same school as my girlfriend who I love very much.’”
“Thought you were going to UNO for film?”
“UNO doesn’t have a football team?”
Devin shrugged. “I think they do. It’s Division II or something. Don’t think they’ll be sending me a scholarship offer any time soon.”
“Well, that sucks. Sounds like you’ll be going to Tulane then since they’re on your list and they are probably the best school on this list as far as getting an education goes.”
“Over Stanford and Northwestern?”
“I thought that was Northwestern State in Natchitoches.”
He laughed. “No, Northwestern in Illinois. Northwestern State did offer me a scholarship last year, though. I don’t think anything about that was serious. Probably just a shot in the dark to see what happens for them.”
“Alright, tell me which ones are at the top for you and I’ll tell you which one you should go to.”
Devin hesitated.
“I get it. None of them are going to be close. I just want to help you make your decision.” Carla sat up on the sofa and turned so that she was facing him, throwing her legs over his. “C’mon. What you got?”
“I’d say my top five right now are… TCU, UCLA, Florida State, Villanova, and uh, San Diego State.”
She furrowed her eyebrows. “Isn’t Villanova in Philadelphia? How do they sneak into a list that has two schools in California, a school in Florida and a school in Texas? TCU’s in Texas, right?”
“Yeah.” Devin nodded to his spreadsheet. “They are graduating all of their cornerbacks. I could start there in my freshman year. Not in a huge conference, but in a big enough one that I could dream about the NFL.”
“My vote is for them, then.”
“Why?”
“They probably have the ugliest student body of those schools and it’s snowing half of the time in Philadelphia so you won’t be seeing much anyway so Villanova is where you should go so your long-distance girlfriend doesn’t have to worry about you being around hotter girls.”
He laughed and shut the lid of the laptop, placing it aside. “I don’t think that I’ve thought about which school has the ugliest girls. TCU’s a private, religious-linked university. You sure you don’t think they should take top spot since they’re closer to Louisiana than Villanova is?”
“Nope. It’s still Texas. There are beaches and stuff in Texas. Pennsylvania has Amish people and not much else.”
Devin picked up his phone and looked at the time before glancing out of the window. “When are your parents coming back from Dulac?”
“I don’t know. Probably not for a while. You know how my dad gets about the price of shrimp. Why?”
“Good. I only need like five minutes.” He scooped her up as he stood, heading toward her room.
She smacked him on the chest but laughed all the same. “Put me down!”
Caesar’s feet slipped on the roof as the rope he held threatened to yank him forward. He wrapped it around his wrists and leaned back, finding enough purchase to start to move his weight back toward the roof’s peak instead of the edge.
He clenched his teeth and pulled with all the strength he could muster…
…and the recliner at the other end of the rope flopped over the gutters and onto the roof. He scrambled forward and snatched it away from the edge that it was threatening to fall back over. He hadn’t hauled it all the way to the roof to see it fall back down as soon as he’d gotten it up there.
Positioning the recliner on the roof, he picked up a case of beer he’d already brought up on top of the house and sat down.
He popped the cap off a bottle of beer and threw the cap off the roof. A Friday night and despite numerous offers to do otherwise, his plan ended up being to drag a recliner onto the roof of the Jenkins house and drink alone.
It didn’t help matters that Kaley had chosen to stay in Slidell for the weekend to attend a family function. A wedding? A funeral? He couldn’t remember. Didn’t much care. That wasn’t something that was had in his part of the world.
His phone buzzed with texts from people still trying to get him to one party or another and from recruiters reminding him of their interest and congratulating him on another big game.
He snorted when he read one from the receivers coach at Oklahoma. He’d rather swan dive off the roof than wear that jersey. He tapped a quick ‘fuck off’ in reply before blocking the number.
There were also a lot of texts from hostesses he’d met on his travels. Sorority girls from all over the country who were taking their job of getting him to their school seriously. Or maybe they just really liked him for his personality, he thought to make himself chuckle.
A video of a couple “sisters” at Arkansas engaging in acts that probably wouldn’t be frowned upon if they were actually sisters caught his attention.
The cloud of boredom lifted a bit as he watched the video through a couple times, and he sent a text to Kaley to find out what she was up to.
When she didn’t answer in a few minutes, he started making video calls to every girl he had in his phone.
Francesca was the only one who answered. She was mid-bath when her face appeared on the screen. “What do you want, Caesar? It’s like 11:30.”
“Didn’t realize it was so early. What are you doing at home? Everyone’s at Bentley’s.”
“I’m taking the ACT again tomorrow. If that’s all you needed to know, you mind letting me get back to bathing?” She shifted her weight but made sure to keep her phone pointed at her face.
He took a swig of his beer, tossed the now-empty bottle off the roof, and opened a second one before looking back at his phone. “Show me something.”
“Are you serious? No, Caesar. You have a girlfriend.”
“And you have a boyfriend so what? I’m not asking you to come over and fuck. This is no different than me watching porn.”
“That’s horrible logic. You don’t know porn stars and porn stars haven’t met your girlfriend, multiple times. I’m going to hang up. You’re clearly drunk.”
“I’ve had one beer.”
“Bye, Caesar.”
He waited for the call to end, but it didn’t. “This is where you press the little red button if you aren’t interested and want to hang up.”
“You’re really serious, aren’t you?” she asked, running her hand through her hair.
“That would be why I called.”
Francesca paused for a moment before sighing. “Hold on for a second. Let me make sure the door’s locked.”
She put the phone down and he heard her hop out of the tub. And it was at that moment, Kaley replied to his text.
’Kinda disappointed I chose my sister’s third baby shower over Houma. Hope you aren’t partying too hard without me’, she’d written.
Caesar sighed to himself and hung up the call with Francesca and rejected the call from her a few seconds later.
He finished off the beer in his hand then chugged another two in quick succession before putting his phone on airplane mode and popping the footrest of the recliner up.
“Jenkins hauls it in and that’s touchdown number three on the night for him and touchdown number six for Danny Jackson who has been on fire these last four games as Terrebonne has roared to a dominant 5-1, barring a 65-point comeback by East St. John here in the final few minutes of this game.”
…
Pierce McCoy cursed under his breath as he struggled to get the hardware store’s paint selector app to work with the swatch that he was holding in front of a row of paint cans. He swiped his finger across the phone and tried it again only to be met with a red box and a demand to do it again.
“Working on your honey-do list, coach?”
He looked to his right where one of the boosters, Davis Gautreaux, had come to a stop in front of the same set of paint cans with a swatch in his hand.
“I guess you could call it that if I could get this daggum thing to work. You’d think by now they’d have some AI-powered thing to just pick the right mix.”
“Then they wouldn’t be able to torture all of us when our wives send us out to get a specific shade of blue that is exactly the same as another shade of blue.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the coach said as he tried to get the app to work again.
Davis Gautreaux looked around and leaned toward Coach McCoy. “Can I level with you, coach?”
“I ain’t leaving this store without the exact color of paint I was sent here for because, frankly, I’m afraid of my wife, so if you say what you’re planning to say before then then yes, I’m all ears.”
“No offense, but I thought they were making a huge mistake when they hired you. I know football’s tough in Texas but Louisiana’s turned out an absurd number of pros for a state much smaller than our neighbors to the west. Then you decided to start that kid Jackson and he looked like he was ready to piss himself whenever he stepped onto the field. Some of the boosters wanted to get you fired then.”
McCoy raised an eyebrow. “And I’m guessing you’re going to tell me that you didn’t?”
“After the initial shock, no. I know that things take time and after that second half against Euless Trinity I knew we’d get going on our way to a state championship. You could almost call me Nostradamus.” He laughed.
“For a school that’s never won a state football championship in 150 years in existence, you’d think the expectations wouldn’t be to do that.”
“Nothing wrong with aiming for the stars and landing on the moon.”
The coach’s phone dinged as he finally got the app to work right. “Or aim for the stars and fall into the void of space to suffocate to death, huh?” He held the phone up and headed for the counter. “Good luck with that.”
Danny walked out of the Field House and was greeted by the pandemonium on the street the ran in front of Thomas B. Smith Stadium. Car horns blared, people shouted and cheered while some emboldened students yelled obscenities at the departing buses heading back to Morgan City with a humiliated football team on board.
He had to dodge a few overenthusiastic slaps of congratulations from parents when he rounded the fence, smiling his thanks.
Eventually, he managed to make it to the street for the long walk home.
A SUV screeched to a halt on the street. “Where are you going, QB1?!”
Danny leaned closer to the vehicle to see it was packed with his teammates and a couple guys he’d seen around school. He shrugged and pointed down the road. “Home. I have an exam Monday and I want to get some sleep if I’m going to have to study all nigh—”
Kenyatta jumped out. “Fuck that. Get in. We’re goin’ celebrate.”
“Nah, I really gotta study. Y’all know how Ms. LeBlanc is. She always put stuff on the test that she didn’t talk about in class—”
“La’Quan, come get this, negro. I don’t want to hear none of that studyin’ shit. We goin’ fuck some bitches. You gonna find somethin’ to fuck on, too.”
The big defensive tackle hopped out of the other side of the SUV and ran around, scooping Danny off his feet before he could protest and tossing him into the vehicle before it sped off into the Louisiana night.
…
“Danny Jackson is in the shotgun with Hasan Santiago, a recent verbal commit to the Louisiana State University to his right. These Terrebonne Tigers have been slow starters in their first two games this season, but let’s see what they’ve got up their sleeves for the green and white Tigers from Morgan City High.”
“Jackson calls for the snap and hands off to—No, it’s a fake. He steps up in the pocket and heaves it downfield toward Caesar Jenkins who has a step on his man!”
-*****-
“Are you listening to me?”
Devin nodded and looked up from the spreadsheet he’d threw together on his laptop to help make his decision on where to go to college. “Yeah, I’m listening to you. I think you should do that.”
Carla rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re clearly not listening because I didn’t say anything about doing or not doing a God damn thing.”
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to figure out what other things to put on this spreadsheet to figure all of this out. What’d you say?”
“I said that I got my ACT scores back from the session during the summer. I got a 28.”
“Hey, hey! That’s great! Congrats, babe!”
“Would’ve been a good response if I didn’t have to repeat myself because you weren’t paying attention to me.” She reached over and pushed the laptop lid back a bit so that she could see the screen. “You know what column you’re missing right?”
“Which school has given me a car?”
Carla’s eyes all but bulged. “You’ve gotten a car from all of this?”
“Miami and Ole Miss tried to give me one, but I turned them down. I don’t want to get involved in all that crazy shit. It won’t end well,” he said, shaking his head.
“You would be the only football recruit in the entire country to turn down a car that was given to you for free.”
“Not the only one. Caesar gives away all of the stuff schools send him. His friends are always walking around with swag from some school that isn’t recruiting them. I saw Bentley with an Auburn-themed tablet just the other day.”
“Okay, sorry. You would be the only football recruit in the entire country who isn’t rich enough to buy fifty of the cars schools are trying to give him to turn down a car.”
“Valid point.”
She pointed to the columns that Devin had placed in order of importance. “Right here before ‘pro potential’ and ‘academic success,’ you forgot to put ‘going to the same school as my girlfriend who I love very much.’”
“Thought you were going to UNO for film?”
“UNO doesn’t have a football team?”
Devin shrugged. “I think they do. It’s Division II or something. Don’t think they’ll be sending me a scholarship offer any time soon.”
“Well, that sucks. Sounds like you’ll be going to Tulane then since they’re on your list and they are probably the best school on this list as far as getting an education goes.”
“Over Stanford and Northwestern?”
“I thought that was Northwestern State in Natchitoches.”
He laughed. “No, Northwestern in Illinois. Northwestern State did offer me a scholarship last year, though. I don’t think anything about that was serious. Probably just a shot in the dark to see what happens for them.”
“Alright, tell me which ones are at the top for you and I’ll tell you which one you should go to.”
Devin hesitated.
“I get it. None of them are going to be close. I just want to help you make your decision.” Carla sat up on the sofa and turned so that she was facing him, throwing her legs over his. “C’mon. What you got?”
“I’d say my top five right now are… TCU, UCLA, Florida State, Villanova, and uh, San Diego State.”
She furrowed her eyebrows. “Isn’t Villanova in Philadelphia? How do they sneak into a list that has two schools in California, a school in Florida and a school in Texas? TCU’s in Texas, right?”
“Yeah.” Devin nodded to his spreadsheet. “They are graduating all of their cornerbacks. I could start there in my freshman year. Not in a huge conference, but in a big enough one that I could dream about the NFL.”
“My vote is for them, then.”
“Why?”
“They probably have the ugliest student body of those schools and it’s snowing half of the time in Philadelphia so you won’t be seeing much anyway so Villanova is where you should go so your long-distance girlfriend doesn’t have to worry about you being around hotter girls.”
He laughed and shut the lid of the laptop, placing it aside. “I don’t think that I’ve thought about which school has the ugliest girls. TCU’s a private, religious-linked university. You sure you don’t think they should take top spot since they’re closer to Louisiana than Villanova is?”
“Nope. It’s still Texas. There are beaches and stuff in Texas. Pennsylvania has Amish people and not much else.”
Devin picked up his phone and looked at the time before glancing out of the window. “When are your parents coming back from Dulac?”
“I don’t know. Probably not for a while. You know how my dad gets about the price of shrimp. Why?”
“Good. I only need like five minutes.” He scooped her up as he stood, heading toward her room.
She smacked him on the chest but laughed all the same. “Put me down!”
-*****-
Caesar’s feet slipped on the roof as the rope he held threatened to yank him forward. He wrapped it around his wrists and leaned back, finding enough purchase to start to move his weight back toward the roof’s peak instead of the edge.
He clenched his teeth and pulled with all the strength he could muster…
…and the recliner at the other end of the rope flopped over the gutters and onto the roof. He scrambled forward and snatched it away from the edge that it was threatening to fall back over. He hadn’t hauled it all the way to the roof to see it fall back down as soon as he’d gotten it up there.
Positioning the recliner on the roof, he picked up a case of beer he’d already brought up on top of the house and sat down.
He popped the cap off a bottle of beer and threw the cap off the roof. A Friday night and despite numerous offers to do otherwise, his plan ended up being to drag a recliner onto the roof of the Jenkins house and drink alone.
It didn’t help matters that Kaley had chosen to stay in Slidell for the weekend to attend a family function. A wedding? A funeral? He couldn’t remember. Didn’t much care. That wasn’t something that was had in his part of the world.
His phone buzzed with texts from people still trying to get him to one party or another and from recruiters reminding him of their interest and congratulating him on another big game.
He snorted when he read one from the receivers coach at Oklahoma. He’d rather swan dive off the roof than wear that jersey. He tapped a quick ‘fuck off’ in reply before blocking the number.
There were also a lot of texts from hostesses he’d met on his travels. Sorority girls from all over the country who were taking their job of getting him to their school seriously. Or maybe they just really liked him for his personality, he thought to make himself chuckle.
A video of a couple “sisters” at Arkansas engaging in acts that probably wouldn’t be frowned upon if they were actually sisters caught his attention.
The cloud of boredom lifted a bit as he watched the video through a couple times, and he sent a text to Kaley to find out what she was up to.
When she didn’t answer in a few minutes, he started making video calls to every girl he had in his phone.
Francesca was the only one who answered. She was mid-bath when her face appeared on the screen. “What do you want, Caesar? It’s like 11:30.”
“Didn’t realize it was so early. What are you doing at home? Everyone’s at Bentley’s.”
“I’m taking the ACT again tomorrow. If that’s all you needed to know, you mind letting me get back to bathing?” She shifted her weight but made sure to keep her phone pointed at her face.
He took a swig of his beer, tossed the now-empty bottle off the roof, and opened a second one before looking back at his phone. “Show me something.”
“Are you serious? No, Caesar. You have a girlfriend.”
“And you have a boyfriend so what? I’m not asking you to come over and fuck. This is no different than me watching porn.”
“That’s horrible logic. You don’t know porn stars and porn stars haven’t met your girlfriend, multiple times. I’m going to hang up. You’re clearly drunk.”
“I’ve had one beer.”
“Bye, Caesar.”
He waited for the call to end, but it didn’t. “This is where you press the little red button if you aren’t interested and want to hang up.”
“You’re really serious, aren’t you?” she asked, running her hand through her hair.
“That would be why I called.”
Francesca paused for a moment before sighing. “Hold on for a second. Let me make sure the door’s locked.”
She put the phone down and he heard her hop out of the tub. And it was at that moment, Kaley replied to his text.
’Kinda disappointed I chose my sister’s third baby shower over Houma. Hope you aren’t partying too hard without me’, she’d written.
Caesar sighed to himself and hung up the call with Francesca and rejected the call from her a few seconds later.
He finished off the beer in his hand then chugged another two in quick succession before putting his phone on airplane mode and popping the footrest of the recliner up.
-*****-
“Jenkins hauls it in and that’s touchdown number three on the night for him and touchdown number six for Danny Jackson who has been on fire these last four games as Terrebonne has roared to a dominant 5-1, barring a 65-point comeback by East St. John here in the final few minutes of this game.”
…
Pierce McCoy cursed under his breath as he struggled to get the hardware store’s paint selector app to work with the swatch that he was holding in front of a row of paint cans. He swiped his finger across the phone and tried it again only to be met with a red box and a demand to do it again.
“Working on your honey-do list, coach?”
He looked to his right where one of the boosters, Davis Gautreaux, had come to a stop in front of the same set of paint cans with a swatch in his hand.
“I guess you could call it that if I could get this daggum thing to work. You’d think by now they’d have some AI-powered thing to just pick the right mix.”
“Then they wouldn’t be able to torture all of us when our wives send us out to get a specific shade of blue that is exactly the same as another shade of blue.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the coach said as he tried to get the app to work again.
Davis Gautreaux looked around and leaned toward Coach McCoy. “Can I level with you, coach?”
“I ain’t leaving this store without the exact color of paint I was sent here for because, frankly, I’m afraid of my wife, so if you say what you’re planning to say before then then yes, I’m all ears.”
“No offense, but I thought they were making a huge mistake when they hired you. I know football’s tough in Texas but Louisiana’s turned out an absurd number of pros for a state much smaller than our neighbors to the west. Then you decided to start that kid Jackson and he looked like he was ready to piss himself whenever he stepped onto the field. Some of the boosters wanted to get you fired then.”
McCoy raised an eyebrow. “And I’m guessing you’re going to tell me that you didn’t?”
“After the initial shock, no. I know that things take time and after that second half against Euless Trinity I knew we’d get going on our way to a state championship. You could almost call me Nostradamus.” He laughed.
“For a school that’s never won a state football championship in 150 years in existence, you’d think the expectations wouldn’t be to do that.”
“Nothing wrong with aiming for the stars and landing on the moon.”
The coach’s phone dinged as he finally got the app to work right. “Or aim for the stars and fall into the void of space to suffocate to death, huh?” He held the phone up and headed for the counter. “Good luck with that.”