Two Lies and a Truth
“Fuck this shit.” Caesar stood up from the table and tossed a quarter next to the cups in the center of it.
“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be a sore loser,” Dawn said. “We can let you win next time!”
“I agree, but not because of his ego. We don’t know if he suffers from whiskey dick,” Val said, sipping from one of the filled cups.
Caesar looked to Ron and Britton for help, but the two of them only shrugged. Ron because he was too busy enjoying the fact that four girls, three of whom were willing to give it up fairly easily, had practically taken up residence in the beach house for the last three days, and Britton because he didn’t care. He’d drink a bit and then go to sleep.
“Y’all enjoy,” Caesar said as he stepped into his shoes and headed for the patio.
Kaley sat cross-legged on one of the loungers. She stared at her phone, flicking a thumb across the screen every so often. Caesar walked to the opposite side of the deck and leaned against the railing to look out toward the Gulf.
The night was peaceful there. Back home, the weather would be worsening as Hurricane Ana approached one of its handful of forecasted landfalls.
He reached into his pocket for his cellphone but cursed when he realized he’d left it inside. It was an easy decision to leave it. He didn’t want to be dragged into another game of quarters when he wasn’t particularly good at it. Call it his competitive side – or his ego.
With nothing else to do, he tugged at the bandage wrapped around his hand. He’d gone to a store in the morning to replace the makeshift wrapping with something a bit more suitable for the job. Kaley hadn’t so much as looked in his direction since her outburst.
That didn’t make him any less curious.
He glanced back at her. Her head was still buried in her phone. Deciding to shoot his shot, he went and sat on the side of the lounger next to her. He wasn’t surprised when she ignored him, so he peeked at her phone.
Picture after picture of her and some guy who looked like he drove a lifted truck with a “Salt Life” sticker on the back of it and balls hanging from the hitch.
“Shouldn’t it be about time for you to figure out which one of my friends you’re sticking your dick in?” she asked without looking up from her phone.
“I don’t ‘figure out’ which one. It’s more like a reverse train.”
Her thumb stilled for a moment. “That’s fucking disgusting.”
“You hang around here like you’re thinking about joining in. It could just be the two of us if you want. Ron can handle your friends by himself.”
“Nope. I’m good. Thanks. I’m here because we’re waiting out a storm and my friends are here. No other reason.”
Caesar nodded, vaguely remembering one of the other three mentioning that they were from the North Shore. It would be families from St. Tammany Parish that would evacuate to a vacation destination.
“That the guy who broke up with you?” he asked, reaching over and flipping through a few photos himself.
She pulled the phone away and finally looked up. “Is it any of your business?”
“I just wanted to see the fella who was stupid enough to break up with someone who looks like you right before she came to a place like this. A lot of hot guys on the beach and shit to turn your head.”
“I would ask if that shit really works, but obviously it does.”
“So, is that the ex? What’s his name? He looks like a Brandon. Brandon David and that’s what he likes to be called.”
She rolled her eyes. “How about I ask you questions? Why did you treat my cousin like shit? She didn’t do anything to deserve that.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He gestured toward her. “Whatever it may be that you want to show me.”
“Do you try to be this skeevy or is it just natural?”
“Au naturale, sha. C’mon. You tell me about Brandon David and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about me and Carla, short lived as it was.”
She glanced at her phone then locked it and put it down next to her. Taking a deep breath, she looked at him. Caesar could tell her curiosity won out. “His name isn’t fucking Brandon David. It’s David James.”
“I knew he was one of those motherfuckers who wanted to be called by his first and middle name! Let me guess. He has at least three kids already. None of ‘em from you. And you finally got tired of the baby mama drama.”
“If you’re going to insult me then—”
He held his hands up. “I’m sorry. It’s like an unconscious tick to be an asshole. My bad. So, why did you and David James break up?”
“He proposed.”
“To you?”
“No, to his fucking sister. Yes, to me.”
“What are you, 16? 17? Aren’t you a little young to be having people getting down on their knee? You one of those girls who mess with those 30-year-old pedos?”
“He just turned 18, and yes, I’m too young, that would be one of the reasons I said no.”
Caesar scratched his chin. “I could see why someone would break up with someone else because they shot down their proposal. Feels bad man. What’s the other reason? Little dick? Doesn’t eat pussy?”
“Seriously?” she raised her eyebrow.
“Sorry, sorry. Last time. I swear. But I really want to know. It can’t just be because of your age. Plenty of folks just promise to get married to one another when they graduate.”
“He wanted me to drop out of school. Be the oilfield wife for his oilfield life. The last straw was when he got my mom and my sister on his side. Of course, my sister loves that whole being a housewife shit so why wouldn’t I?”
“That’s fucking dumb. Who the fuck wants to be a housewife?”
“Isn’t your mom a housewife?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but you can tell she doesn’t like it. She has a degree and shit, but at this point no one’s going to see her as anything else but Mrs. Jenkins and it’s obvious that pisses her off.”
“Exactly!” she shouted, turning so that she was facing him. He could tell she was getting riled up about the situation. “And the fucking worst part? That everyone thought it was a better idea to go get fucking knocked up and do that shit than for me to go to Tulane and get a law degree! Apparently, in 2050, it’s still too high of a rung for a woman in Louisiana to want to be a fucking lawyer instead of breeding cow!”
“Sounds like you made the right choice then. Fuck David James.”
“What?”
“You—made the right choice?”
She blinked. “Thanks. Now, your turn.”
“Oh, that’s simple,” he said, shrugging. “I keep a lot of girls around because I’m afraid of being alone, but I cheat because I don’t want them to reject me before I get the chance to reject them.”
“That’s such bullshit. You read that in a book somewhere. You just like to stick your dick in everything.”
He held his hands up. “You don’t have to believe me, but that’s why. For what it’s worth, Carla is a nice chick. She just needed to find someone other than me to fuck.”
“There has to be more to it than that.”
Caesar threw his legs onto the lounger and put his hands behind his head. Staring up at the sky, he smiled a bit. “It sure is a pretty night. Don’t you think?”
“Back to being a dickhead, I see.” Kaley picked up her phone and went back to swiping through pictures of her and her ex.
…
Kaley walked down the boardwalk along the beach. Dawn, Andrea, and Val had again decided to stay the night at the beach house with the guys. That meant another lonely walk back to Dawn’s family’s place. For the past couple nights, her parents had been too drunk to realize that their daughter and two of her friends had only been back to take showers and change clothes before leaving again.
Her phone vibrated in her hand as David tried to call her again. It was attempt number fifteen of the night to go along with the countless texts, growing from apologetic to angry and back again as she ignored those too.
She’d decided whether to accept his apologies or not when she got back to Slidell and he got back from his hitch in Fourchon.
Until then, she’d continue to ignore him.
Footsteps approaching from behind her shook her from her thoughts. She reached for her pockets but cursed as she realized she didn’t have any on the pair of shorts she was wearing which meant she didn’t have her pepper spray.
“Whoa, you going to stab me or something?”
Her panic turned to anger as Caesar stepped up alongside her. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! You scared the shit out of me.”
“I called your name like four times. You must’ve been in your thoughts again.”
“What do you want?”
He looked down as her phone started vibrating again. He pulled the phone from her hand, rejected the call and put the phone in his pocket.
“Give me my phone back,” she said, holding her hand out.
“You’re not even answering it. C’mon. I’m going where you’re going.”
“Give me my phone, Caesar.”
He looked around. “I don’t know what phone you’re talking about, Kaley. Is it the one that’s vibrating in my pocket that you weren’t answering? If you need a vibrator, they sell those.”
“You’re a fucking asshole.”
“That I am.” He winked at her. “Now, where are you going? I’m going there, too.”
“No, you’re not. Go back and get your dick wet.”
“I got my fill of that for now. Maybe Britton will have himself a good time tonight,” he said. “We could either walk or we could stand right here. It’s up to you.”
She turned toward the sand and walked out onto the beach. Glancing back, she held out her hands. “Well, come on then. If you’re going to ruin my night, then I’m at least going to be by the water while you do it in case I need to drown myself.”
Caesar smiled as he followed behind her. “So, tell me more about this lawyer dream you have. I might need one if I ever knock up any of these girls.”
“You don’t need legal advice for that. You need plan B or an abortion clinic.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re definitely my type.” He laughed.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
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Captain Canada
- Posts: 2186
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Caesar is charismatic, I'll give him that.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
#presidentialWar of the Roses: Redux Edition
F.O.A.T
The wind howled outside the house, tree limbs smacking against the roof and boarded-up windows. The lights had gone out hours ago, but a furtive glace at his cellphone told Devin that the storm had slowed down as was still lashing the extreme southern reaches of the Pelican State as it skirted by in the Gulf. Meteorologists were predicting another 10 hours of heavy rain – which meant at least 12 hours of darkness.
Devin tossed a football in the air as he sat under a battery powered fan. Hasan sat across from him with two power block chargers on either side of him to keep his phone going until power could be restored.
“Who you got for the best running back in NFL history?” Hasan asked.
“I don’t know. What era are we talking? The old old days when teams used to run the ball 40 times a game or the current shit?”
“All time, nigga. I’m saying Emmitt Smith.”
Devin looked over at him as he caught the ball. “The NFL been around for about 150 years and you pick Emmitt Smith? You could’ve said Barry Sanders, LeSean McCoy, Adrian Peterson, Walter Payton, Ezekiel Elliott, LaDainian Tomlinson, Jim Brown, Kylon Jett, Asher Williams, Edgerrin James, Fran--”
“You could’ve just said you disagree. We also not about to say Kylon Jett or Asher Williams who played ball 10 years ago are even in the same conversation with anyone else you named.”
“Didn’t Jett run for 2,100 and some change? Doesn't he have the rushing record?”
“One season doesn’t make someone the goat, bruh. Or even close to it. I’m goin’ to let your ignorance of the most important position on a football field slide and move on. Best quarterback?”
“That’s easy. Tom Brady. The run from the 90s to like 2025 is filled with great quarterbacks and Brady’s the best of them so he’s the best all-time.”
Hasan nodded, checking his phone for messages before turning it off again. “I’ll give you that, but I’m goin’ to have to disagree and you might put me out, but Deion Jenkins is the best quarterback of all-time. The guy had like a 5.7 touchdown-interception ratio.”
“And only four rings.”
“You ain’t got to have rings to be one of the best to ever do it!”
“Yeaaaah you do, and Tom Brady has more. Plus, off-the-field?”
“That doesn’t have shit to do with being the best. He was a little wild. That’s the pro life. Shit, he got his son livin’ it already.”
Devin shook his head. “Give me a leader at quarterback any day. I don’t need someone out there doing it for themselves. Jenkins went from playing football to preying on uneducated college kids to pad his pockets even more. At some point, you have to have all the money you could ever need, right?”
“I ain’t goin’ to knock his hustle. It’s a lot of pros come out the league and can’t count to ten, let alone go into a second career that ain’t being on someone sports show. How much you think he pull in a year though? He’s like a second tier agent.”
“Does it matter? It’s still millions of dollars. My grandpa told me he has like 60 guys under him and gets a few more every year. Change the subject though. No one trying to talk about the Jenkins family. Especially if the house about to get blown down on top of us.”
“Speakin’ of gettin’ blown! Nigga! You turned down Gina?!”
Devin threw the football at him. He caught it before it hit him in the face.
“Don’t be gettin’ mad at me, bruh. I’m tryin’ to figure out how you got the willpower to do that. That’s some iron will shit.”
“How the fuck do you even know about that?”
“Michael told me. Some other bitch who work mornings told him. Gina told her. Fuck all that though. You turned her down?!”
“Y’all are going to ruin my life. It doesn’t even matter. I’m not going to cheat on Scarlett, especially not with some girl I don’t even know. She was way too aggressive about it, too.”
Hasan shook his head as he started to toss the football between his hands. “You gotta future plan, man. What if Scarlett go to school in Oregon and you end up in Florida? Y’all gonna do the long distance thing for three, four years?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about all that. I think she just assumes we’d end up in the same place. She’s looking in state, so, yeah.”
“If she go to Nicholls or Southeastern or some shit, you ain’t goin’ there so it’s goin’ to be long distance either way. Anyway, you got to think, how can I string these bitches along in the event that I’m no longer with my girlfriend, right?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Devin laughed.
“If you gotta let Gina jack you off or suck your dick to keep her on the team for the possibility that Scarlett dips on you then do that shit.”
“I’m going to pass on this advice. I’m not doing that shit.”
Hasan shook his head. He picked up his cell phone and powered it back on. He pulled up one of his social media accounts and a message he’d been sent. “I know something might change your mind.”
“Nothing’s going to change my mind. You pick shit power outage conversation topics, man.”
“Just look at this.” Hasan handed him the phone.
Devin looked down to find a picture of who he assumed with was Gina, albeit a couple years younger, and a gangly, tall kid with floppy hair at a waterpark.
“Alright? What’s your point?” Devin asked.
“You don’t recognize that dude?”
“No. Should I?” he asked, giving Hasan back his phone.
“That’s fuckin’ Caesar, man. I be gettin’ the tea from people, bruh. Tristan said Gina was like that nigga’s first girlfriend. He might still fuck with her, but no one knew all that. You know what’s a good way to get under someone’s skin? Fuck on their bitch.”
Devin shook his head. “I’ll leave that to you. I don’t want anyone else, and for damn sure not one of Caesar’s girlfriends.”
“Suit yourself, but if I were you, I'd fuck her and send that nigga a video with nut on her face or somethin' like that. So, best linebacker of all-time?”
“Ray Lewis. Easy. Next question.”
"I fucks with Ray because he played for Miami, but that nigga a murderer.”
“Didn’t you just say something about off field shit not counting?”
Hasan waved his comment off. “I’m just saying that he should’ve been in jail and no one need no preachy negro on their team giving pep talks after every play and shit. I got a whole list of linebackers better.”
“And I’m supposed to be the one that doesn’t know shit about football. Yet, here’s a dumb motherfucker right here.”
The words had just left Devin’s mouth when he had to put his hands up to catch the ball that Hasan had thrown back at him.
The wind howled outside the house, tree limbs smacking against the roof and boarded-up windows. The lights had gone out hours ago, but a furtive glace at his cellphone told Devin that the storm had slowed down as was still lashing the extreme southern reaches of the Pelican State as it skirted by in the Gulf. Meteorologists were predicting another 10 hours of heavy rain – which meant at least 12 hours of darkness.
Devin tossed a football in the air as he sat under a battery powered fan. Hasan sat across from him with two power block chargers on either side of him to keep his phone going until power could be restored.
“Who you got for the best running back in NFL history?” Hasan asked.
“I don’t know. What era are we talking? The old old days when teams used to run the ball 40 times a game or the current shit?”
“All time, nigga. I’m saying Emmitt Smith.”
Devin looked over at him as he caught the ball. “The NFL been around for about 150 years and you pick Emmitt Smith? You could’ve said Barry Sanders, LeSean McCoy, Adrian Peterson, Walter Payton, Ezekiel Elliott, LaDainian Tomlinson, Jim Brown, Kylon Jett, Asher Williams, Edgerrin James, Fran--”
“You could’ve just said you disagree. We also not about to say Kylon Jett or Asher Williams who played ball 10 years ago are even in the same conversation with anyone else you named.”
“Didn’t Jett run for 2,100 and some change? Doesn't he have the rushing record?”
“One season doesn’t make someone the goat, bruh. Or even close to it. I’m goin’ to let your ignorance of the most important position on a football field slide and move on. Best quarterback?”
“That’s easy. Tom Brady. The run from the 90s to like 2025 is filled with great quarterbacks and Brady’s the best of them so he’s the best all-time.”
Hasan nodded, checking his phone for messages before turning it off again. “I’ll give you that, but I’m goin’ to have to disagree and you might put me out, but Deion Jenkins is the best quarterback of all-time. The guy had like a 5.7 touchdown-interception ratio.”
“And only four rings.”
“You ain’t got to have rings to be one of the best to ever do it!”
“Yeaaaah you do, and Tom Brady has more. Plus, off-the-field?”
“That doesn’t have shit to do with being the best. He was a little wild. That’s the pro life. Shit, he got his son livin’ it already.”
Devin shook his head. “Give me a leader at quarterback any day. I don’t need someone out there doing it for themselves. Jenkins went from playing football to preying on uneducated college kids to pad his pockets even more. At some point, you have to have all the money you could ever need, right?”
“I ain’t goin’ to knock his hustle. It’s a lot of pros come out the league and can’t count to ten, let alone go into a second career that ain’t being on someone sports show. How much you think he pull in a year though? He’s like a second tier agent.”
“Does it matter? It’s still millions of dollars. My grandpa told me he has like 60 guys under him and gets a few more every year. Change the subject though. No one trying to talk about the Jenkins family. Especially if the house about to get blown down on top of us.”
“Speakin’ of gettin’ blown! Nigga! You turned down Gina?!”
Devin threw the football at him. He caught it before it hit him in the face.
“Don’t be gettin’ mad at me, bruh. I’m tryin’ to figure out how you got the willpower to do that. That’s some iron will shit.”
“How the fuck do you even know about that?”
“Michael told me. Some other bitch who work mornings told him. Gina told her. Fuck all that though. You turned her down?!”
“Y’all are going to ruin my life. It doesn’t even matter. I’m not going to cheat on Scarlett, especially not with some girl I don’t even know. She was way too aggressive about it, too.”
Hasan shook his head as he started to toss the football between his hands. “You gotta future plan, man. What if Scarlett go to school in Oregon and you end up in Florida? Y’all gonna do the long distance thing for three, four years?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about all that. I think she just assumes we’d end up in the same place. She’s looking in state, so, yeah.”
“If she go to Nicholls or Southeastern or some shit, you ain’t goin’ there so it’s goin’ to be long distance either way. Anyway, you got to think, how can I string these bitches along in the event that I’m no longer with my girlfriend, right?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Devin laughed.
“If you gotta let Gina jack you off or suck your dick to keep her on the team for the possibility that Scarlett dips on you then do that shit.”
“I’m going to pass on this advice. I’m not doing that shit.”
Hasan shook his head. He picked up his cell phone and powered it back on. He pulled up one of his social media accounts and a message he’d been sent. “I know something might change your mind.”
“Nothing’s going to change my mind. You pick shit power outage conversation topics, man.”
“Just look at this.” Hasan handed him the phone.
Devin looked down to find a picture of who he assumed with was Gina, albeit a couple years younger, and a gangly, tall kid with floppy hair at a waterpark.
“Alright? What’s your point?” Devin asked.
“You don’t recognize that dude?”
“No. Should I?” he asked, giving Hasan back his phone.
“That’s fuckin’ Caesar, man. I be gettin’ the tea from people, bruh. Tristan said Gina was like that nigga’s first girlfriend. He might still fuck with her, but no one knew all that. You know what’s a good way to get under someone’s skin? Fuck on their bitch.”
Devin shook his head. “I’ll leave that to you. I don’t want anyone else, and for damn sure not one of Caesar’s girlfriends.”
“Suit yourself, but if I were you, I'd fuck her and send that nigga a video with nut on her face or somethin' like that. So, best linebacker of all-time?”
“Ray Lewis. Easy. Next question.”
"I fucks with Ray because he played for Miami, but that nigga a murderer.”
“Didn’t you just say something about off field shit not counting?”
Hasan waved his comment off. “I’m just saying that he should’ve been in jail and no one need no preachy negro on their team giving pep talks after every play and shit. I got a whole list of linebackers better.”
“And I’m supposed to be the one that doesn’t know shit about football. Yet, here’s a dumb motherfucker right here.”
The words had just left Devin’s mouth when he had to put his hands up to catch the ball that Hasan had thrown back at him.
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Captain Canada
- Posts: 2186
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Feels more and more that Devin is going to get exposed and Scarlett is going to go hoe on him with Caesar.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Washed In
Devin hefted the remains of a wooden pallet up and lugged it over to the dumpster where a few of his co-workers were breaking the pallets down further and putting them into the slowly filling dumpster. His hands slipped across the grimy woods as his bosses had decided that they didn’t need gloves to get rid of the pallets that had been destroyed in the storm.
“Was it my idea to get this fuckin’ job?” Hasan asked as he passed Devin in the opposite direction. The two of them were some of the first stockers to report back to the grocery store for work after the hurricane had passed and made landfall in Mississippi. While they were getting time and a half for it, it was back breaking work.
“Yep, and it’s your fucking fault that we’re here now. We could’ve told them that we were still evacuated or something.” Devin said as they crossed paths again.
To his right, in the shade of the bay doors of the warehouse, Ralph watched them work while eating from a bag of peanuts. Devin had realized that the manager was always eating or drinking something that he’d taken from the shelves or a cooler. Some privilege.
“I’m gonna quit if this is what we’re goin’ to be doin’ for the next few weeks. Go over to the fuckin’ Off the Hook and start sellin’ cups of gumbo,” Hasan said.
“Their gumbo isn’t even good.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m just tryin’ to do somethin’ that’s less manual labor than this shit here. I gotta keep my hands strong for football. Can’t be holdin’ a football if my hands are full of splinters and shit now, can I?”
“I’m just going to remind you that this was your idea, again.”
Devin came to a stop at the pallets, all the wooden ones gone. He crouched over for a breather and brushed his hands off on his pants, the khaki turning a darker brown as dirt was deposited on them.
“Hey, Devin!” Ralph called. He pointed to the plastic pallets and used milk crates that had been blown across the rear of the store. “Now, grab all those and stack them back up. Go inside and get some wrap so you can re-wrap them.”
“Why didn’t we put this shit in the warehouse before the storm? Then we wouldn’t be doing this shit now?” Devin asked.
“Maybe you’ll do that next time so you aren’t doing this ‘shit’ now,” Ralph said.
Devin sighed and started walking to the furthest end of the driveway where two milk crates were, deciding to work from furthest out in. He could already feel the heat beginning to beat on the pavement as the sun rose higher into the late morning sky. And he could already smell the stench of stagnant water from the ditches around the store.
Hasan’s idea to quit and work at a fast food place was suddenly looking a little better despite his ideas currently batting .000.
He looked at his hand and then at Ron’s and Britton’s hands. “I guess I am, but I’ve been in both of their houses and both of their parents’ have bronzed their first diapers like a trophy so I think I can get a pass for wearing a championship ring until I get a better one.”
“Fuck you for downplaying my achievements,” Ron said, grabbing himself a beer from the fridge. “My parents bronzed my first turd. They knew I was destined for greatness only hours after I came fighting my way into the world.”
“It’s funny this is coming from someone who has been groomed to play football since he could walk. If anyone is bronzing random shit, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins,” Britton said.
Caesar flipped him off. He walked over to the fridge himself, shoving Ron out of the way, to get a beer and a bottle of water.
“What’s a better ring than a championship ring then?” Val asked.
Caesar held up his hand to count as he answered. “One, National Championship. Two, Super Bowl. That’s pretty easy.”
Andrea scoffed. “Typical man. You’d think that you’d find room for a wedding band somewhere in there.”
“Who the fuck is going to marry him? He’s a dickhead.” Dawn laughed.
Caesar walked over to where Kaley was sitting and handed her the bottle of water and took an empty one from her. She smiled her thanks as their hands lingered a little longer than necessary.
“I may be a dickhead, but you, my friend, were mostly definitely sucking my dick’s head so who knows? You could’ve been in the running until you said that shit,” Caesar said.
“Every so often I say a little prayer for whatever poor girl Caesar proposes to. His mom is going to interrogate her like Guantanamo was still open,” Ron said, cringing at the mental image being face to face with Mrs. Jenkins in such a mood brought up.
“Everyone’s mom is tough on the girls they date.” Val rolled her eyes.
“You’ve never met Candice Jenkins,” Britton said. “I know at least 6 girls that have come running out of there like they’d seen the devil himself.
“Y’all are fucking exaggerating,” Andrea said.
Caesar had tuned out the conversation as he took up a spot leaning over the counter in the kitchen. Instead, he fought the urge to interrupt Kaley from her usual phone scrolling so they could leave the rest of them to their mundane conversations.
“So, random question, you wouldn’t name your son Devin, would you?” she asked.
He looked down at her and shook his head. “I think we’re getting the point in the world that there are way too many Devin Kings. I don’t want to be the reason that there’s a Devin King, XX one day. It’s already annoying being in a room with my grandpa and my dad and hearing someone say ‘Devin’ and not knowing who they’re talking to.”
“That’s what I thought.” She laughed. “I like the name Logan.”
“Why are we having this conversation?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something that popped in my mind, so I asked.”
Devin wanted to point out that they would probably need to start having sex before kids even became a topic of discussion, but he bit his tongue and kept it to himself.
Thankfully, she changed the subject on her own.
“Me and my parents are going to start going on college visits in a couple weeks. You should come with us and see if you like the same schools that I do.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I don’t know how that works with recruitment and shit. I’ll have to talk to coach first and make sure that everything’s cool before I just pop up on a campus talking to folks and making trouble.”
“That makes sense. I’ve been thinking about going to school in Texas lately. Just to get a chance of pace. Maybe Rice.”
Devin laughed. “I can say with a good bit of confidence that I won’t be getting into a school like Rice.”
“Houston and Texas Southern are right down the road.”
“And I don’t think that you’ll be making too many trips to Texas Southern.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can handle visiting an HBCU, Devin. It’s 2050 not 1950.”
“Hey, I’m not saying that you can’t, but I’d like to think that my aims are a little higher than that right now,” he said, walking back his comment. “Houston might not be horrible if they give me a scholarship. Bigger schools have sent me some stuff so maybe they will.”
“Wherever it is, I just hope that we go there together, or I’ll be dropping hints for you to propose as soon as we graduate from high school,” she said, laughing.
He took another opportunity to bite his tongue. As soon as she mentioned going to school together, a sentiment that she’d said before a million times, he remembered the conversation that he and Hasan had about their relationship surviving becoming long distance.
Fortunately, that was down the road and a decision for another day.
“You guys really missed out on the water these past few days. It’s nice here. Not like it is in Louisiana where it’s all muddy and shit,” she said, sighing. “I could stand out here forever and just stare out at it all.”
“Yeah. I could, too.” While she was talking about the Gulf of Mexico, Caesar was looking at her.
“We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, we are, too.”
She turned toward him. “We could always run away right now. Not have to go back to reality and whatever bullshit’s back home. You’re going to have to foot the bill, though, because I don’t have thousands of dollars in my account.”
“I’m down, but only if we leave the country altogether. Somewhere where soccer is the most popular sport.”
“That’s pretty much anywhere else in the world.” She laughed.
He shrugged. “Lot of options then.”
Kaley stopped laughing and stepped closer to him. “If only we’d met in a different life where we were different people, huh?”
“But we didn’t so we’ll make do with this.”
Caesar reached out and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. He pressed on when she didn’t stop him and leaned down, so their mouths were inches apart. She closed the distance. Her hands fisted in his shirt and his went to her waist.
Just as he felt the skin under her shirt, she pulled away.
“I can’t. I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down. “Between everything with David and me and you and Carla. And you and my friends.”
He ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, I get it. Poor timing.”
“We can just leave this here and keep it as a nice memory.”
He nodded slowly. “Give me your phone.”
“For what?” Despite asking, she pulled her phone from her back pocket and held it out to him after unlocking it with her thumb.
“I’m going to save my number under your ex’s name. It’ll be the one with the football at the end of it so if you’re ever sitting at home and think you don’t want to just ‘leave this here’ you can give me a ring. Slidell’s only a couple hours away.”
“Why don’t you just save it under your name?” she asked, confused.
“This way if you do send me a text after you’ve gotten back with David James, he won’t look at it. People don’t check their own texts.” He gave her back her phone.
“He doesn—How do you even know that? How many times have you done this?”
Caesar shrugged. “I plead the fifth, prosecutor.”
“Oh, you got jokes?”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss her on her forehead. “You’re beautiful, you know that? I’ll see you around, Kaley.”
The scent of pancakes, eggs and bacon wafted through the house and that gave him a little extra pep in his step. He threw on an old Houma Junior High P.E. shirt hanging on his door and made his way to the kitchen.
His father sat at the table, which was covered with folders and papers, while his mother busied herself in the kitchen.
“Morning, ma. Morning, dad,” he said, walking over to the fridge and grabbing the orange juice. “Looks like I woke up just in time for the food.”
“It’ll be ready in a second,” his mother said. “Grab some plates for us.”
Devin did as he was told, setting the bottle of orange juice down to get three plates out of the cabinet for them. He also got a cup which he filled with the orange juice.
“I signed you up for an ACT prep course this summer,” his father said from the table. He shifted a few folders around and picked up a sheet of paper holding out to Devin. “It’s in the afternoons so you won’t have to worry about football getting in the way.”
He took the sheet of paper and read over it. It was an eight-week course that went all the way up until the school year. “I don’t have time for this. I work in the afternoons on most days, and I’m not taking the ACT until February or April.”
“No, you’re taking the ACT in October. You need to give yourself as many chances as possible to get at least a 26.”
“I don’t need a 26 if I’m going to school on an athletic scholarship. I need a, like, 20.”
His father looked up from whatever work he was doing. He took his glasses off and set them on the table. “You’re not going to be backing into school with a piss poor ACT score because you can run fast and throw far. The ACT is a sign of college readiness and if the best that you can do is a 20 then you might as well keep working at that grocery store when you graduate. Wait, I forgot, football players get majors like basket weaving.”
“Basket weaving or not. I don’t need a fucking ACT prep course right now.”
“What?!”
“Devin!”
Devin picked up his glass of orange juice and turned back to head down the hall. “I’ll be in my room when the food’s ready.”
“Come back here, now!” his father shouted.
He ignored him and shut the door to his bedroom behind him. This year would be the one that he’d focus on football and try to make something out of the game. He wasn’t going to let an unnecessary ACT prep course stand in the way of that.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he sipped his orange juice and thought about the approaching summer camp.
Caesar pushed his sunglasses up and rubbed his eyes as his phone vibrated in his hand. He looked down to see it was a text from Bentley but couldn’t be bothered to read it. “Did Bentley just send that text to the chat?”
“Yeah,” Ron said from the back seat. “He’s asking where we are.”
“For what? Did him and Anthony lose their weed stash in a flash flood or something? Tell him my brother has some plants in the house that they can have when he goes back to school in a couple weeks,” Britton said.
“Coach Thomas is looking for us. Wants all the Vandebilt guys to check in now that the mandatory evac is lifted.”
“Mandatory what?” Caesar turned in his seat. “The word is evacuation, bro.”
“Ron’s been watching those old military movies again before he heads up to West Point with all that ‘sir, yes sir’ and ‘hoorah,’ shit.” Britton laughed. He reached for a candy bar that was in the cup holder and held it up to his head, mimicking a radio handset. “Lima Two Charlie, Lima Two Charlie, come in. Ah, damn thing’s busted.”
“I think he’s just looking forward to all the intimate time with his fellow man out away from prying eyes,” Caesar said.
Ron ignored their jabs. “Bentley says that we’re going to start summer camp before the rest of the team. Don’t think Hill knows about that with all of his ‘every man plays’ bullshit. Seems like he’d want the whole team together.”
“Maybe Thomas is looking to take his job,” Britton said. “I wouldn’t mind if he did that before the season started. I could get my starting spot back then.”
“We don’t need someone to take Hill’s job for that. We need someone to put a rush on fixing the fucking school, so we don’t even have to play there. I’m still trying to have three state rings by the time I graduate,” Caesar said.
“I guess you’re just going to be without all those rings, because there isn’t any way the school will be fixed by August. Shit’s been all in the news about delays,” Ron said. He tapped away at his phone and all three of them buzzed shortly after. “I told Bentley that we’d be back in town in a few hours and to let everyone know that Caesar is throwing a party to celebrate the passing of the hurricane.”
“Who the fuck said I was throwing a party?”
“I did. Just now.”
“And why can’t it be at your house?”
Ron shrugged. “I felt like you’d need something to get your mind off striking out with the hottest piece of ass you’ll see before you get onto a college campus.”
“Wait, you didn’t fuck her?” Britton asked. “Damn, even I feel bad for you.”
“How does it feel for that to be the only chick you didn’t fuck before you never saw her again, Caesar? That’s a major L if you’re asking me.”
Caesar sat back in the seat, tilted his head back against the headrest and crossed his arms over his chest. “Y’all wake me up when we get to Houma. Try not to kill us out here.”
Devin hefted the remains of a wooden pallet up and lugged it over to the dumpster where a few of his co-workers were breaking the pallets down further and putting them into the slowly filling dumpster. His hands slipped across the grimy woods as his bosses had decided that they didn’t need gloves to get rid of the pallets that had been destroyed in the storm.
“Was it my idea to get this fuckin’ job?” Hasan asked as he passed Devin in the opposite direction. The two of them were some of the first stockers to report back to the grocery store for work after the hurricane had passed and made landfall in Mississippi. While they were getting time and a half for it, it was back breaking work.
“Yep, and it’s your fucking fault that we’re here now. We could’ve told them that we were still evacuated or something.” Devin said as they crossed paths again.
To his right, in the shade of the bay doors of the warehouse, Ralph watched them work while eating from a bag of peanuts. Devin had realized that the manager was always eating or drinking something that he’d taken from the shelves or a cooler. Some privilege.
“I’m gonna quit if this is what we’re goin’ to be doin’ for the next few weeks. Go over to the fuckin’ Off the Hook and start sellin’ cups of gumbo,” Hasan said.
“Their gumbo isn’t even good.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m just tryin’ to do somethin’ that’s less manual labor than this shit here. I gotta keep my hands strong for football. Can’t be holdin’ a football if my hands are full of splinters and shit now, can I?”
“I’m just going to remind you that this was your idea, again.”
Devin came to a stop at the pallets, all the wooden ones gone. He crouched over for a breather and brushed his hands off on his pants, the khaki turning a darker brown as dirt was deposited on them.
“Hey, Devin!” Ralph called. He pointed to the plastic pallets and used milk crates that had been blown across the rear of the store. “Now, grab all those and stack them back up. Go inside and get some wrap so you can re-wrap them.”
“Why didn’t we put this shit in the warehouse before the storm? Then we wouldn’t be doing this shit now?” Devin asked.
“Maybe you’ll do that next time so you aren’t doing this ‘shit’ now,” Ralph said.
Devin sighed and started walking to the furthest end of the driveway where two milk crates were, deciding to work from furthest out in. He could already feel the heat beginning to beat on the pavement as the sun rose higher into the late morning sky. And he could already smell the stench of stagnant water from the ditches around the store.
Hasan’s idea to quit and work at a fast food place was suddenly looking a little better despite his ideas currently batting .000.
-*****-
“So, you’re the only one who is always wearing that ring?” Dawn asked Caesar.He looked at his hand and then at Ron’s and Britton’s hands. “I guess I am, but I’ve been in both of their houses and both of their parents’ have bronzed their first diapers like a trophy so I think I can get a pass for wearing a championship ring until I get a better one.”
“Fuck you for downplaying my achievements,” Ron said, grabbing himself a beer from the fridge. “My parents bronzed my first turd. They knew I was destined for greatness only hours after I came fighting my way into the world.”
“It’s funny this is coming from someone who has been groomed to play football since he could walk. If anyone is bronzing random shit, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins,” Britton said.
Caesar flipped him off. He walked over to the fridge himself, shoving Ron out of the way, to get a beer and a bottle of water.
“What’s a better ring than a championship ring then?” Val asked.
Caesar held up his hand to count as he answered. “One, National Championship. Two, Super Bowl. That’s pretty easy.”
Andrea scoffed. “Typical man. You’d think that you’d find room for a wedding band somewhere in there.”
“Who the fuck is going to marry him? He’s a dickhead.” Dawn laughed.
Caesar walked over to where Kaley was sitting and handed her the bottle of water and took an empty one from her. She smiled her thanks as their hands lingered a little longer than necessary.
“I may be a dickhead, but you, my friend, were mostly definitely sucking my dick’s head so who knows? You could’ve been in the running until you said that shit,” Caesar said.
“Every so often I say a little prayer for whatever poor girl Caesar proposes to. His mom is going to interrogate her like Guantanamo was still open,” Ron said, cringing at the mental image being face to face with Mrs. Jenkins in such a mood brought up.
“Everyone’s mom is tough on the girls they date.” Val rolled her eyes.
“You’ve never met Candice Jenkins,” Britton said. “I know at least 6 girls that have come running out of there like they’d seen the devil himself.
“Y’all are fucking exaggerating,” Andrea said.
Caesar had tuned out the conversation as he took up a spot leaning over the counter in the kitchen. Instead, he fought the urge to interrupt Kaley from her usual phone scrolling so they could leave the rest of them to their mundane conversations.
-*****-
Devin and Scarlett lay on the couch in her parents’ living room. Learning his lesson from last time, and despite not interacting with any women who weren’t old and looking for potted meat, he’d taken a shower as soon as he’d gotten to her house. That was indeed one perk about leaving clothes at her house all the time.“So, random question, you wouldn’t name your son Devin, would you?” she asked.
He looked down at her and shook his head. “I think we’re getting the point in the world that there are way too many Devin Kings. I don’t want to be the reason that there’s a Devin King, XX one day. It’s already annoying being in a room with my grandpa and my dad and hearing someone say ‘Devin’ and not knowing who they’re talking to.”
“That’s what I thought.” She laughed. “I like the name Logan.”
“Why are we having this conversation?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something that popped in my mind, so I asked.”
Devin wanted to point out that they would probably need to start having sex before kids even became a topic of discussion, but he bit his tongue and kept it to himself.
Thankfully, she changed the subject on her own.
“Me and my parents are going to start going on college visits in a couple weeks. You should come with us and see if you like the same schools that I do.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I don’t know how that works with recruitment and shit. I’ll have to talk to coach first and make sure that everything’s cool before I just pop up on a campus talking to folks and making trouble.”
“That makes sense. I’ve been thinking about going to school in Texas lately. Just to get a chance of pace. Maybe Rice.”
Devin laughed. “I can say with a good bit of confidence that I won’t be getting into a school like Rice.”
“Houston and Texas Southern are right down the road.”
“And I don’t think that you’ll be making too many trips to Texas Southern.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can handle visiting an HBCU, Devin. It’s 2050 not 1950.”
“Hey, I’m not saying that you can’t, but I’d like to think that my aims are a little higher than that right now,” he said, walking back his comment. “Houston might not be horrible if they give me a scholarship. Bigger schools have sent me some stuff so maybe they will.”
“Wherever it is, I just hope that we go there together, or I’ll be dropping hints for you to propose as soon as we graduate from high school,” she said, laughing.
He took another opportunity to bite his tongue. As soon as she mentioned going to school together, a sentiment that she’d said before a million times, he remembered the conversation that he and Hasan had about their relationship surviving becoming long distance.
Fortunately, that was down the road and a decision for another day.
-*****-
Caesar followed Kaley out to the water’s edge. She looked over at him and smiled before turning back toward the Gulf.“You guys really missed out on the water these past few days. It’s nice here. Not like it is in Louisiana where it’s all muddy and shit,” she said, sighing. “I could stand out here forever and just stare out at it all.”
“Yeah. I could, too.” While she was talking about the Gulf of Mexico, Caesar was looking at her.
“We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, we are, too.”
She turned toward him. “We could always run away right now. Not have to go back to reality and whatever bullshit’s back home. You’re going to have to foot the bill, though, because I don’t have thousands of dollars in my account.”
“I’m down, but only if we leave the country altogether. Somewhere where soccer is the most popular sport.”
“That’s pretty much anywhere else in the world.” She laughed.
He shrugged. “Lot of options then.”
Kaley stopped laughing and stepped closer to him. “If only we’d met in a different life where we were different people, huh?”
“But we didn’t so we’ll make do with this.”
Caesar reached out and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. He pressed on when she didn’t stop him and leaned down, so their mouths were inches apart. She closed the distance. Her hands fisted in his shirt and his went to her waist.
Just as he felt the skin under her shirt, she pulled away.
“I can’t. I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down. “Between everything with David and me and you and Carla. And you and my friends.”
He ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, I get it. Poor timing.”
“We can just leave this here and keep it as a nice memory.”
He nodded slowly. “Give me your phone.”
“For what?” Despite asking, she pulled her phone from her back pocket and held it out to him after unlocking it with her thumb.
“I’m going to save my number under your ex’s name. It’ll be the one with the football at the end of it so if you’re ever sitting at home and think you don’t want to just ‘leave this here’ you can give me a ring. Slidell’s only a couple hours away.”
“Why don’t you just save it under your name?” she asked, confused.
“This way if you do send me a text after you’ve gotten back with David James, he won’t look at it. People don’t check their own texts.” He gave her back her phone.
“He doesn—How do you even know that? How many times have you done this?”
Caesar shrugged. “I plead the fifth, prosecutor.”
“Oh, you got jokes?”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss her on her forehead. “You’re beautiful, you know that? I’ll see you around, Kaley.”
-*****-
Devin groaned as he rolled out of his bed. Working for twelve hours and then heading over to Scarlett’s was seeming like a poor idea now that his body was rebelling against his every move. Hours of crouching and standing repeatedly had his knees screaming and that was just the beginning of his aches.The scent of pancakes, eggs and bacon wafted through the house and that gave him a little extra pep in his step. He threw on an old Houma Junior High P.E. shirt hanging on his door and made his way to the kitchen.
His father sat at the table, which was covered with folders and papers, while his mother busied herself in the kitchen.
“Morning, ma. Morning, dad,” he said, walking over to the fridge and grabbing the orange juice. “Looks like I woke up just in time for the food.”
“It’ll be ready in a second,” his mother said. “Grab some plates for us.”
Devin did as he was told, setting the bottle of orange juice down to get three plates out of the cabinet for them. He also got a cup which he filled with the orange juice.
“I signed you up for an ACT prep course this summer,” his father said from the table. He shifted a few folders around and picked up a sheet of paper holding out to Devin. “It’s in the afternoons so you won’t have to worry about football getting in the way.”
He took the sheet of paper and read over it. It was an eight-week course that went all the way up until the school year. “I don’t have time for this. I work in the afternoons on most days, and I’m not taking the ACT until February or April.”
“No, you’re taking the ACT in October. You need to give yourself as many chances as possible to get at least a 26.”
“I don’t need a 26 if I’m going to school on an athletic scholarship. I need a, like, 20.”
His father looked up from whatever work he was doing. He took his glasses off and set them on the table. “You’re not going to be backing into school with a piss poor ACT score because you can run fast and throw far. The ACT is a sign of college readiness and if the best that you can do is a 20 then you might as well keep working at that grocery store when you graduate. Wait, I forgot, football players get majors like basket weaving.”
“Basket weaving or not. I don’t need a fucking ACT prep course right now.”
“What?!”
“Devin!”
Devin picked up his glass of orange juice and turned back to head down the hall. “I’ll be in my room when the food’s ready.”
“Come back here, now!” his father shouted.
He ignored him and shut the door to his bedroom behind him. This year would be the one that he’d focus on football and try to make something out of the game. He wasn’t going to let an unnecessary ACT prep course stand in the way of that.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he sipped his orange juice and thought about the approaching summer camp.
-*****-
Britton, Caesar and Ron sat in mostly silence save for the sound of the interstate underneath them. After a few hours on the road, they’d finally crossed back into Louisiana but faced another six hours of driving before they got home.Caesar pushed his sunglasses up and rubbed his eyes as his phone vibrated in his hand. He looked down to see it was a text from Bentley but couldn’t be bothered to read it. “Did Bentley just send that text to the chat?”
“Yeah,” Ron said from the back seat. “He’s asking where we are.”
“For what? Did him and Anthony lose their weed stash in a flash flood or something? Tell him my brother has some plants in the house that they can have when he goes back to school in a couple weeks,” Britton said.
“Coach Thomas is looking for us. Wants all the Vandebilt guys to check in now that the mandatory evac is lifted.”
“Mandatory what?” Caesar turned in his seat. “The word is evacuation, bro.”
“Ron’s been watching those old military movies again before he heads up to West Point with all that ‘sir, yes sir’ and ‘hoorah,’ shit.” Britton laughed. He reached for a candy bar that was in the cup holder and held it up to his head, mimicking a radio handset. “Lima Two Charlie, Lima Two Charlie, come in. Ah, damn thing’s busted.”
“I think he’s just looking forward to all the intimate time with his fellow man out away from prying eyes,” Caesar said.
Ron ignored their jabs. “Bentley says that we’re going to start summer camp before the rest of the team. Don’t think Hill knows about that with all of his ‘every man plays’ bullshit. Seems like he’d want the whole team together.”
“Maybe Thomas is looking to take his job,” Britton said. “I wouldn’t mind if he did that before the season started. I could get my starting spot back then.”
“We don’t need someone to take Hill’s job for that. We need someone to put a rush on fixing the fucking school, so we don’t even have to play there. I’m still trying to have three state rings by the time I graduate,” Caesar said.
“I guess you’re just going to be without all those rings, because there isn’t any way the school will be fixed by August. Shit’s been all in the news about delays,” Ron said. He tapped away at his phone and all three of them buzzed shortly after. “I told Bentley that we’d be back in town in a few hours and to let everyone know that Caesar is throwing a party to celebrate the passing of the hurricane.”
“Who the fuck said I was throwing a party?”
“I did. Just now.”
“And why can’t it be at your house?”
Ron shrugged. “I felt like you’d need something to get your mind off striking out with the hottest piece of ass you’ll see before you get onto a college campus.”
“Wait, you didn’t fuck her?” Britton asked. “Damn, even I feel bad for you.”
“How does it feel for that to be the only chick you didn’t fuck before you never saw her again, Caesar? That’s a major L if you’re asking me.”
Caesar sat back in the seat, tilted his head back against the headrest and crossed his arms over his chest. “Y’all wake me up when we get to Houma. Try not to kill us out here.”
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 2186
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Caesar catching feelings. And let me hear Scarlett has been hoeing on my man Devin this entire time.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
Out of the Frying Pan
“Pick up your feet, ladies! You start how you mean to go on! I don’t want to see anyone slacking out here!” Coach Hill shouted as the team ran sprints around him.
The Louisiana summer heat seemed to both rise from the ground and fall from the sky as the sun battered the bodies of the young men on the field in the middle of Thomas B. Smith Stadium. Despite the early hour, Coach Hill pulled his visor from his head and wiped a generous amount of sweat from his brow.
He looked over at his counterpart, Coach Thomas, and nodded to the older coach. Coach Thomas ignored him or pretended he didn’t see the gesture. The two of them had barely exchanged a word since Coach Hill had caught wind of Coach Thomas calling in the former Vandebilt players two weeks earlier than the rest of the team to start camp.
If the LHSAA caught wind of that, they’d catch hell for breaking any number of rules about the number of practices they could put their team through.
Terrebonne’s coach noticed the team beginning to slow once more. He pulled his visor back on before shouting at them.
“What’s that?! It’s a hot day in paradise, gentlemen, and I’m going to get it out you before it’s all said and done!”
…
Coach Hill pulled into his parking spot, surprised by the number of cars in the spots around him. Grabbing his bag from the passenger seat, he stepped out of the car and was immediately pounced upon by a dozen or so middle-aged men all wearing Vandebilt blue polos or hats.
The coach looked at his watch. It was six in the morning, a couple hours before the team was scheduled to report for the first practice of the summer. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“You sure can, coach,” one of them said. He held his hand out. “Name’s Davis Gautreaux. We’re the booster club from Vandebilt. Since you got most of our boys now, I guess that makes us the booster club at Terrebonne then.”
The other men nodded in agreement.
“Wearing the wrong color there, aren’t y’all?” Hill asked, nodding toward the blue polo with the “VC” logo on the breast pocket that Davis Gautreaux was wearing.
“We’re not putting on any God awful red. It’s a different red from E.D. White, but it’s still red. And just because they’re here doesn’t mean they aren’t Terriers anymore. You’re just borrowing them until things get fixed up down the street,” Davis said. “Coach Thomas knows us pretty well and we’re always ready and willing to help.”
“You got a football background?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what do you help with?”
“I heard there’s a kid who lives over on Savanne Road. Big boy. Big, angry, never missed one of his mama’s meals, boy. You need good linemen in 5A and he’s on the wrong side of the street. But there’s a lot for sell across from them.”
Hill shook his head. “This is a public school, gentlemen. Recruiting is against the rules.”
“Coach, when the boundary is a divider in the middle of a road, all he has to do is walk across the street to go to Terrebonne. Hell, they live in a trailer.” He pointed to one of the men behind him. “Gary here can get his company to pick it up and move it for the family tonight to the right lot.”
“Already got a call into his mama and the truck on standby,” the man named Gary said in a thick Cajun accent.
Coach Hill hitched his bag up on his shoulder and nodded to them before starting to walk across the street. “You all have a good day now.”
“Just remember we’re here to help ensure this is a winning program, coach.”
Caesar was one of the first players to snatch a water bottle from one of the managers while the others tried to fill cups to accommodate the mass of thirsty football players descending on them. He leaned on one of the coolers as he took leisurely sips from the bottle.
“Say, my nigga. The rest of us thirsty, too,” Bart said to him. The diminutive running back held a small cup in his hand, waiting for the managers to refill it.
Caesar looked around to see the other water bottles being passed around then he looked down at the one in his hand. “You want some of this?”
“Yeah, nigga. You ain’t special.”
Some of the other players had noticed the exchange between the two of them and were watching for what would happen next.
“Alright, bro. My bad. I got you. Hold up your cup.” Caesar took one last swig from the bottle and held it out.
Bart held up the cup, but instead of filling it with water from the bottle, Caesar leaned forward and spit water from his mouth into it.
“Drink up, benchwarmer,” he said before jumping back to avoid Bart’s fist connecting with his face. He continued to dance backward to stay just out of reach, laughing as he went.
The coaches rushed over and broke them and the few knock-on arguments that had started up. Coach Thomas grabbed Caesar by the jersey and shoved him away, knocking the water bottle out of his hand as he shouted at him.
Coach Hill just let his assistants calm Bart down.
Terrebonne’s head coach watched the fracas get sorted out and shook his head. Only a few hours into summer camp and they were already breaking up fights.
“I don’t think that they’d be surprised that he’d gotten shot. I think they’d be surprised that he’d gotten shot for something other than fucking someone’s daughter,” Anthony said.
“He could always go fuck his kid’s mother and make that the reason he gets shot,” Ron said, tapping out answers to texts on his phone.
Caesar raised an eyebrow, shaking his head. “That motherfucker would have a kid already. For a fucking school that has sex ed, you’d think that they wouldn’t be making so many fucking children here. Does nobody know how to wear a fucking condom?”
“Do you know how to wear a condom?” Bentley asked. “Last I heard, you never wrap up.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t have any children.”
“That you know of,” Britton countered. “You never know. A couple little Caesars running around might be good for you. Calm you the fuck down a bit. You didn’t have to spit at the man on the first day of practice.”
“I didn’t spit at him. I spit into a cup. Don’t be getting the story wrong if you’re going to say that I’m wrong for what I did,” Caesar said.
Ron stuck his phone in his pocket and looked up. “He does have a point though. You could’ve at least waited until we got into season to start fighting the other motherfuckers on the team and shit. I’m not trying to end up a cliché getting piled on the backfield because the o-line quits on me.”
“All y’all a bunch of pussies. I could’ve battered that little shit and y’all should’ve had my back anyway.”
Bentley stopped at his car, popping the trunk and throwing his bag into it. “So, what’s the plan for tonight? Francesca and Hollie been asking me about that shit all day.”
“It’s a Monday,” Britton said.
“In the summer,” Ron added.
Caesar pulled his keys out of his pocket and hit the FOB to unlock his car. He scratched his chin for a moment then turned to his friends. “Any of y’all know Bart’s kid’s mom? And is she my type? We could always give her some time away from the baby.”
“This motherfucker is really trying to get killed,” Ron said, shaking his head as he got in his car.
“Did you even hit him though, son? You should’ve bulldogged his big ass so you could at least hit him a couple times before coach broke y’all up,” Trigga said.
Devin shook his head. “What’s even the point of all that shit? We’re all out here dying in this heat and we don’t need people making the shit worse with all that. You know Coach wanted to have us running stadiums until the sun went down.”
“Yeah, but that shit disrespectful. Spitting water in another nigga cup and telling him to drink it? That’s foul.”
“Fuckin’ right it is. Caesar need his ass whupped if we keepin’ it a buck,” Hasan said. “You can tell he ain’t never met the right one to be actin’ like that.”
“I got some shooters from him if he think it’s a game,” Bart said, shrugging. “It ain’t nothing for a crackhead to do something for some rock either.”
“What shooters you got?” Trigga laughed.
“Don’t worry about all that. Just know they out there waiting on the call.” Bart said, tapping his pocket where his phone was for emphasis.
The group stopped at the street to part ways as Bart and Trigga both lived in the neighborhoods near the school.
“What y’all getting into today?” Trigga asked Hasan and Devin.
“Goin’ to this white man’s job,” Hasan said. “You know how that be.”
Devin nodded. “Yep. They didn’t even give us time to go home and sleep a little bit before going in. Just said to come in as soon as we get out of practice.”
“That’s some bullshit,” Trigga said.
“Yep.”
“Hey, y’all work at the Rouse, right?” Bart asked.
“Yeah,” Devin said. “The one right down the road.”
“Can y’all get me some Enfamil? Steal it, pay for it, it don’t matter. I just need like four or five cannisters of that shit to get Jamie off my ass.”
“I got you, fam,” Hasan said, dapping Bart up as they went their separate ways.
“You’re buying that shit?” Devin asked.
Hasan laughed. “Fuck no. I’m going to ask Tristan to steal it for him. The fuck I look like paying for baby food because that nigga can’t wrap it up.”
“Pick up your feet, ladies! You start how you mean to go on! I don’t want to see anyone slacking out here!” Coach Hill shouted as the team ran sprints around him.
The Louisiana summer heat seemed to both rise from the ground and fall from the sky as the sun battered the bodies of the young men on the field in the middle of Thomas B. Smith Stadium. Despite the early hour, Coach Hill pulled his visor from his head and wiped a generous amount of sweat from his brow.
He looked over at his counterpart, Coach Thomas, and nodded to the older coach. Coach Thomas ignored him or pretended he didn’t see the gesture. The two of them had barely exchanged a word since Coach Hill had caught wind of Coach Thomas calling in the former Vandebilt players two weeks earlier than the rest of the team to start camp.
If the LHSAA caught wind of that, they’d catch hell for breaking any number of rules about the number of practices they could put their team through.
Terrebonne’s coach noticed the team beginning to slow once more. He pulled his visor back on before shouting at them.
“What’s that?! It’s a hot day in paradise, gentlemen, and I’m going to get it out you before it’s all said and done!”
…
Coach Hill pulled into his parking spot, surprised by the number of cars in the spots around him. Grabbing his bag from the passenger seat, he stepped out of the car and was immediately pounced upon by a dozen or so middle-aged men all wearing Vandebilt blue polos or hats.
The coach looked at his watch. It was six in the morning, a couple hours before the team was scheduled to report for the first practice of the summer. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“You sure can, coach,” one of them said. He held his hand out. “Name’s Davis Gautreaux. We’re the booster club from Vandebilt. Since you got most of our boys now, I guess that makes us the booster club at Terrebonne then.”
The other men nodded in agreement.
“Wearing the wrong color there, aren’t y’all?” Hill asked, nodding toward the blue polo with the “VC” logo on the breast pocket that Davis Gautreaux was wearing.
“We’re not putting on any God awful red. It’s a different red from E.D. White, but it’s still red. And just because they’re here doesn’t mean they aren’t Terriers anymore. You’re just borrowing them until things get fixed up down the street,” Davis said. “Coach Thomas knows us pretty well and we’re always ready and willing to help.”
“You got a football background?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what do you help with?”
“I heard there’s a kid who lives over on Savanne Road. Big boy. Big, angry, never missed one of his mama’s meals, boy. You need good linemen in 5A and he’s on the wrong side of the street. But there’s a lot for sell across from them.”
Hill shook his head. “This is a public school, gentlemen. Recruiting is against the rules.”
“Coach, when the boundary is a divider in the middle of a road, all he has to do is walk across the street to go to Terrebonne. Hell, they live in a trailer.” He pointed to one of the men behind him. “Gary here can get his company to pick it up and move it for the family tonight to the right lot.”
“Already got a call into his mama and the truck on standby,” the man named Gary said in a thick Cajun accent.
Coach Hill hitched his bag up on his shoulder and nodded to them before starting to walk across the street. “You all have a good day now.”
“Just remember we’re here to help ensure this is a winning program, coach.”
-*****-
Coach Hill blew his whistle. “Alright, get some water in ya.”Caesar was one of the first players to snatch a water bottle from one of the managers while the others tried to fill cups to accommodate the mass of thirsty football players descending on them. He leaned on one of the coolers as he took leisurely sips from the bottle.
“Say, my nigga. The rest of us thirsty, too,” Bart said to him. The diminutive running back held a small cup in his hand, waiting for the managers to refill it.
Caesar looked around to see the other water bottles being passed around then he looked down at the one in his hand. “You want some of this?”
“Yeah, nigga. You ain’t special.”
Some of the other players had noticed the exchange between the two of them and were watching for what would happen next.
“Alright, bro. My bad. I got you. Hold up your cup.” Caesar took one last swig from the bottle and held it out.
Bart held up the cup, but instead of filling it with water from the bottle, Caesar leaned forward and spit water from his mouth into it.
“Drink up, benchwarmer,” he said before jumping back to avoid Bart’s fist connecting with his face. He continued to dance backward to stay just out of reach, laughing as he went.
The coaches rushed over and broke them and the few knock-on arguments that had started up. Coach Thomas grabbed Caesar by the jersey and shoved him away, knocking the water bottle out of his hand as he shouted at him.
Coach Hill just let his assistants calm Bart down.
Terrebonne’s head coach watched the fracas get sorted out and shook his head. Only a few hours into summer camp and they were already breaking up fights.
-*****-
“You sure he isn’t a gangbanger?” Britton asked Caesar as the two of them, Ron, Bentley and Anthony walked toward their cars. Britton had a fair bit of humor in his voice. “I wouldn’t want to have to tell your parents that you went and got yourself shot.”“I don’t think that they’d be surprised that he’d gotten shot. I think they’d be surprised that he’d gotten shot for something other than fucking someone’s daughter,” Anthony said.
“He could always go fuck his kid’s mother and make that the reason he gets shot,” Ron said, tapping out answers to texts on his phone.
Caesar raised an eyebrow, shaking his head. “That motherfucker would have a kid already. For a fucking school that has sex ed, you’d think that they wouldn’t be making so many fucking children here. Does nobody know how to wear a fucking condom?”
“Do you know how to wear a condom?” Bentley asked. “Last I heard, you never wrap up.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t have any children.”
“That you know of,” Britton countered. “You never know. A couple little Caesars running around might be good for you. Calm you the fuck down a bit. You didn’t have to spit at the man on the first day of practice.”
“I didn’t spit at him. I spit into a cup. Don’t be getting the story wrong if you’re going to say that I’m wrong for what I did,” Caesar said.
Ron stuck his phone in his pocket and looked up. “He does have a point though. You could’ve at least waited until we got into season to start fighting the other motherfuckers on the team and shit. I’m not trying to end up a cliché getting piled on the backfield because the o-line quits on me.”
“All y’all a bunch of pussies. I could’ve battered that little shit and y’all should’ve had my back anyway.”
Bentley stopped at his car, popping the trunk and throwing his bag into it. “So, what’s the plan for tonight? Francesca and Hollie been asking me about that shit all day.”
“It’s a Monday,” Britton said.
“In the summer,” Ron added.
Caesar pulled his keys out of his pocket and hit the FOB to unlock his car. He scratched his chin for a moment then turned to his friends. “Any of y’all know Bart’s kid’s mom? And is she my type? We could always give her some time away from the baby.”
“This motherfucker is really trying to get killed,” Ron said, shaking his head as he got in his car.
-*****-
“This shit ain’t going to be going on all summer, bruh.” Bart was still angry about his scuffle with Caesar hours earlier as he, Trigga, Devin and Hasan left the field house. “That nigga take me to play with but I ain’t the one.”“Did you even hit him though, son? You should’ve bulldogged his big ass so you could at least hit him a couple times before coach broke y’all up,” Trigga said.
Devin shook his head. “What’s even the point of all that shit? We’re all out here dying in this heat and we don’t need people making the shit worse with all that. You know Coach wanted to have us running stadiums until the sun went down.”
“Yeah, but that shit disrespectful. Spitting water in another nigga cup and telling him to drink it? That’s foul.”
“Fuckin’ right it is. Caesar need his ass whupped if we keepin’ it a buck,” Hasan said. “You can tell he ain’t never met the right one to be actin’ like that.”
“I got some shooters from him if he think it’s a game,” Bart said, shrugging. “It ain’t nothing for a crackhead to do something for some rock either.”
“What shooters you got?” Trigga laughed.
“Don’t worry about all that. Just know they out there waiting on the call.” Bart said, tapping his pocket where his phone was for emphasis.
The group stopped at the street to part ways as Bart and Trigga both lived in the neighborhoods near the school.
“What y’all getting into today?” Trigga asked Hasan and Devin.
“Goin’ to this white man’s job,” Hasan said. “You know how that be.”
Devin nodded. “Yep. They didn’t even give us time to go home and sleep a little bit before going in. Just said to come in as soon as we get out of practice.”
“That’s some bullshit,” Trigga said.
“Yep.”
“Hey, y’all work at the Rouse, right?” Bart asked.
“Yeah,” Devin said. “The one right down the road.”
“Can y’all get me some Enfamil? Steal it, pay for it, it don’t matter. I just need like four or five cannisters of that shit to get Jamie off my ass.”
“I got you, fam,” Hasan said, dapping Bart up as they went their separate ways.
“You’re buying that shit?” Devin asked.
Hasan laughed. “Fuck no. I’m going to ask Tristan to steal it for him. The fuck I look like paying for baby food because that nigga can’t wrap it up.”
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 2186
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
I deadass can't wait for Caesar to be knocked off his high horse.
War of the Roses: Redux Edition
So fucking pretenshus. Like just say redo you dont gotta go n say redux like you from france or some shit. Lame ass nigga.
Such a dumb story anyways, nobody cares about your damn Rose, dericck
Such a dumb story anyways, nobody cares about your damn Rose, dericck