Caesar stared at the overflowing garbage can next to Devin’s desk. The trash had been on the verge of falling onto the floor for days and Devin had done nothing about it. The smell was beginning to become noxious enough that Caesar was sure that Devin would finally make the effort to try to be a little cleaner in his space.
Yet, there he sat on his laptop, completely ignoring it.
Sighing to himself, Caesar stood up and walked to the desk to pick up the garbage can. Devin glanced up with a look of confusion on his face.
He removed an earpod from one ear. “What are--”
Before Devin could finish his sentence, Caesar turned and poured the trash onto Devin’s bed. He gave the can a few shakes as a mixture of water and old soft drink poured from it then used his foot to press the mélange of refuse into the sheets before tossing the empty can onto the bed as well.
“Now, maybe you’ll clean that shit up,” Caesar said.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Devin asked as he stood up and whipped the now-filthy sheets off his bed, in the process flinging a half-eaten bagel across the room.
Caesar snatched it up from the floor and threw it at Devin, who smacked it down before it hit him. “My problem is you live like you sleep under an overpass. Have some damn pride and clean this shit up for once. It’s already starting to smell like a high school locker room in here.”
“Yeah, let me just call my cleaners. Oh, hold on. They’re on vacation. Do you want to send me the number to yours so they can just come knock all of this out today?”
“Using me not being poor as an insult isn’t going to help you not be a fucking slob, King. It costs exactly zero dollars to not have the standards of someone living in Bon Jovi Trailer Park. I understand you’re going to move in there when you get cut here, but that’s some on the job training stuff. You can at least pretend to be a decent member of society until then.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m not trying to have my room looking like the inside of a psych ward. Do some shit like that again and--”
Caesar shoved Devin. “And what? You know I’ve already kicked your ass once before and you don’t have anyone to save you around right now.”
Devin stepped back and took a moment to collect himself. He waved away Caesar’s threat and started to take everything off his bed. “You’re not even worth it. I’d just be wasting my time sinking to your level.”
“That’s what I thought, bitch.”
Caesar waited for a response from Devin, but Devin ignored him and went about packing his bedding up to take it to wash. Shaking his head, Caesar grabbed a pair of shoes from the line of them along the wall by his bed and left the room.
“Childish motherfucker,” Devin said to himself when he heard the door close.
Once he’d gotten over the anger of Caesar’s blatant disrespect of his stuff, he’d put it out of his mind. It was easy on that day, because he had other issues clouding this conscious since the win over Auburn. There was one elephant in the room that he couldn’t shake.
He really wasn’t an unknown any more, and the pressure to continue to perform was already starting to weigh heavily on his shoulders.
His social media following, which he already considered fairly large, seemed to double every night as more journalists tagged him in articles they’d written about Tulane’s fast start to the season. It didn’t help that some people assumed that he and Caesar were friends given they were from the same city and graduated from the same school.
There were more than a few keyboard warriors taking swings at him because of things Caesar had put out into the open one way or another.
It would’ve been unlikely for him to go his entire college career flying under the radar. He knew that. Especially once he was named a starter as a freshman. That put him in a different echelon of college athlete, even in the SEC.
But the pressure was immense.
There had to be some way to deal with it, but he hadn’t figured it out yet.
The washing machine with his sheets in it beeped a melodic tune and he got up to put them in the dryer on the opposite wall.
As he was swapping everything over, Kwame walked into the room with two laundry bags hanging from his shoulders.
“What’s happenin’, bro?” he asked, offering his fist to Devin to dap him up. He started to pour his clothes into an empty washing machine, glancing at Devin out of the corner of his eye. “Just washing your sheets? You must’ve had a wild ass fucking night if you just washing that. That’s why you gotta have a fucking set of sheets and a sleeping set of sheets.”
“Thanks for the advice, I guess?”
“I’m just letting you know, man. I know you football playing niggas be out here running through these girls, especially them white ones and you don’t want to be sleeping in your own nut so before you call her for the sneaky link, pull off the sleep sheets and put on the cheap sheets. Get some from Wal-Mart or something.”
Devin shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be in need of that, but I’ll keep it in mind if I ever do.”
Kwame sat down on the bench that Devin had been sitting on and pulled out his phone. “I’m surprised you even down here doing that shit yourself. I don’t think I ever came down here and seen no one here for ball washing their own shit. Figured that was a perk y’all get or something like that.”
“Not one that I know of. Only person washing my shit is me.”
“Sounds like you got the game messed up then, brother. If I were you, I wouldn’t be washing, folding, cooking, nothing. You can’t be having me here playing football for your school and not providing me with no services, know what I mean?”
Devin shrugged as he turned on the dryer and sat down next to Kwame, also taking out his phone. He pulled up his messages and sent a text to Carla asking what she was doing before heading to ESPN’s social media accounts to see what was going on in the sports world.
“Say, you know anyone involved in the music industry?” Kwame asked.
“Nope. I know some people who tried to make music at cafeteria tables in high school, but I doubt you’re talking about that.”
“I’m trying to make it big, man. I’ve been trying to find someone who got some connections being this is fucking New Orleans but no one know anybody. Thought you would because y’all be signing them image deals and shit.”
“You ever heard of Faubourg Photography?”
Kwame raised an eyebrow. “No. Fuck is that?”
“That’s the beginning and end of my image deals.”
“My nigga, you know you play football for an SEC school, right?”
“I’m aware.”
“See that’s why you down here washing your own sheets instead of having the bitch you fucked on them doing it. You ain’t taking advantage of your status. Go find some music mogul to hook you up and help us both out.”
Devin leaned back and gave Kwame a side-eyed glance. “I’ve never heard your music. You could be trash for all I know. Why would I put my name on the dotted line so you can get a record deal? Sounds like a lose-lose situation for me.”
“One, I ain’t trash. Two, it’s win-win for both us.”
“There are a hundred people on the football team. I’m sure you can find at least one who has what you’re looking for.”
Kwame sucked his teeth. “C’mon, bruh. I thought we were cool. I ain’t even been getting in your way with fucking on Ella.”
Devin laughed. “I’m not trying to fuck her. If you want that, you can have it. You haven’t been doing me any favors there.”
“You just telling me that, nigga?!”
“I figured you knew that,” Devin said, shrugging.
“Man, I done missed weeks of putting in the groundwork behind yo ass.” Kwame looked down at his phone and pulled up the messages.
Devin shook his head and looked at his own phone just as he received an answer from Carla telling him that she was studying and she’d call him later. Sighing, he rested his head against the wall behind him and let the sound of the washers and dryers drown out Kwame’s rambling about what could’ve been with Ella.
The door opened and a bleary-eyed Gia poked her head through the gap.
“Why are you knocking on the door like you’ve lost your mind?” Gia asked before yawning.
“Because your roommate told me she was here and apparently is not here since you’re the one answering the door.”
She shrugged. “She was here when I got back, but I have no idea where she’s disappeared to. Maybe she just ducked out to get something and figured that you wouldn’t get here until after she got back?”
“I live across campus, not across New Orleans.”
“I’m just giving you suggestions to explaining your missing girlfriend, Caesar. No need to get all pissy with me.”
“You’re right. I guess I’ll just walk back and tell her to meet me in mine,” he said, reaching for his phone to send Kaley a text that he’d gone back to his room. “My bad for waking you up. I know I’d be pissed if someone did that to me.”
“You don’t have to do that. You can just wait in here. It’s not like you aren’t here as much as I am.”
Caesar raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, c’mon. I’d feel bad if you had to walk back and forth across the campus when you could’ve just waited for Kaley here.” She stepped back to open the door a bit wider, but she was still behind it. “Unless you plan to try something with me then maybe you should wait out there. I’m not the other woman type.”
He scoffed. “I think I’ve been around plenty enough pretty women that I don’t feel the urge to fuck them just because I’m alone with them.”
She opened the door to let him in. He walked straight to Kaley’s bed and threw himself face down onto it, getting comfortable.
“Define ‘plenty enough’.”
He rolled onto his back and saw it looked like she was wearing a slightly oversized t-shirt that barely covered her ass as she closed the door behind her. She got back into her bed and covered her lower half with the blankets.
“Are you asking me for my body count?” he asked, laughing.
“If that’s how you heard that then that’s on you. I just wanted to know what you meant by ‘plenty enough.’”
“What do you think it means?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“I’ve hung out with enough pretty women alone without having sex with them to be able to do it again. That’s what it means.”
“So, you think I’m pretty?” she said, a mischievous smirk playing at her lips.
“I’m in a relationship, Gia, not fucking blind. I’d imagine that when y’all are around all those frat boys and shit there are a few that Kaley takes a couple extra looks at, but she knows she’s got the best already so why downgrade? All’s well that ends well as they say.”
“A confident man. I like that,” she said, adjusting the blankets. “So, what is your body count then?”
“None. I’m saving myself until marriage like a good Catholic boy.”
“Seriously? You do know I sleep across the room from your girlfriend who you’ve fucked in here while I was in here before.”
“Hearing things in your sleep.”
She rubbed her chin. “I’m guessing seven.”
“Seven? That’s just insulting. Minor league numbers.”
“Ten?”
“Higher.”
“Twenty?” she asked, her eyes squinting.
“Higher.”
“Now, you’re just lying. You’d either have something or a kid or ten.”
He laughed. “C’mon now. We’ve advanced far enough as a country that there are ways to prevent both of those things for the most part. I don’t see why it’s so hard to believe. I’ve been over six feet tall since I was 15. Women love a tall man. I’m a good looking motherfucker, I’m not picky, I’m willing and I got a lot of experience making women cum. That shit gets around, you know?”
Her eyes narrowed again. “How long have you and Kaley been together?”
“I don’t know. About a year and a half, I think?”
“How many in that year and a half then?”
“One. I don’t cheat, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head and grabbing his heart as though the question had pained him. There was that one time, but he was willing to take the Bill Clinton defense if anyone ever found out about that.
“You don’t or you haven’t?”
“Don’t. Why? Are you interested?”
She shrugged before raising her arms over her head to stretch. The shirt she was wearing rode up, exposing a bit of her stomach and fell over the blanket. “No, I’m just wondering. We all read the shit you get on social media. I’m sure the opportunity has presented itself.”
“I’m satisfied with who I have. I don’t need to go looking for greener grass. Life’s pretty good right now. Except when she tells me she’s one place and she’s not there.”
Caesar’s phone dinged in his pocket. Gia reached for hers on the nightstand, causing the blankets to fall away giving him a peak of what she wore under that shirt – or what she wasn’t wearing under the shirt.
He sighed when he read the text and stood up.
“Found out where she is?” Gia asked, now back under the blankets.
“Yep. Always fucking eating,” he said, starting for the door.
She laughed. “She is. I always ask her what it is that keeps her so skinny with all of the eating she does.”
“Multiple doses of 228 mm’s of vitamin CD. I’ll catch you later,” he said as he left the room.
Gia stared at the door for a moment, confused. She put ‘228 mm’ into Google and saw it converted to inches. Then she got it.