novelxo The Graham Effect: Chapter 31
She’s fucking me, bro
“THIS IS BULLSHIT.” CASE KICKS A ROCK AS WE HUDDLE ON THE side of the highway like a pair of Dickensian orphans.
So far, we haven’t ventured into the woods. We’re still loitering on the gravel shoulder, where Colson keeps alternating between kicking pebbles and looking at his phone.
I frown at him. “You should save your battery.”
“Come on. He’s not actually going to leave us out here all night.”
“Pretty sure he is, bro.”
Case narrows his eyes.
“He gave us a Swiss army knife and lighters,” I say with a harsh laugh. “Of course he’s not coming back. We pissed him off good tonight with that penalty.”
“Yeah. We did.”
Colson steps forward and peers down the dark road. Not a single car has passed since the bus left us in its rearview mirror.
“Are there any active serial killers out here?” he asks. “Wasn’t there, like, a highway killer a while back on the West Coast? Do you think there’s an East Coast one?”
“Why? Are you scared?” I mock.
“No. I just feel exposed here. You know what. Fuck it. I’m going to start a campfire.”
At that, Colson takes off toward the woods. The silver stripes on his black hockey jacket glint beneath a shard of moonlight that’s escaped a patch of clouds.
“You coming?” He glances over his shoulder.
“Yeah, whatever.”
I shove my hands in my pockets and follow him. We let the moon guide the way. Since we’re literally on the side of the road, there isn’t an official path, but there are some trodden areas, so we manage to weave our way deeper into the woods without tripping on the undergrowth.
“Did you want to try to walk back to Hastings?” I ask.
“God, no. Do you?” he counters, incredulous. “I can’t destroy my legs like that. We gotta be in the weight room tomorrow. I need to be able to do deadlifts.”
Good point.
“It’s only eight hours. We’ll live.” He stops in a small clearing in the trees and nods his approval. “This spot’ll do. C’mon. Let’s go look for some fire-making supplies.”
We split up to scour the immediate area. I poke around on the forest floor in search of kindling and twigs, also finding some thick broken branches that would serve as decent fire logs. When we reconvene in the clearing, Colson’s already constructed a pit using a bunch of hefty stones.
“Nice,” I say, impressed.
“Thanks. I’m a pro at this. My family goes camping a lot. And not fake camping, like G’s family. They’re all like, We’re roughing it, and then rent a mansion in Lake Tahoe. Nope. My family needs to be sleeping on literal rocks, or my dad says it doesn’t count.”
I can’t fight my laughter. Then it fades when I realize by “G’s family,” he’s referring to the Grahams. Meaning he’s likely spent a lot of time with them.
Gigi brought him around her family. And here I am, fucking her in total secrecy.
“I got a bunch of shit.” I drop the supplies on the ground near the stone pit and start building the fire.
He probably wouldn’t believe it, but I know how to start a fire too. For other reasons, though. I didn’t have a family to go camping with.
“You set that up nicely,” he says, nodding. “You’ve done this before?”
I nod back.
“Scouts? Camping?”
“Hiding,” I say wryly.
“What does that mean?”
I shrug. I’m not a big sharer, but for some reason I decide to elaborate. Maybe Gigi’s rubbing off on me.
“I lived in this one foster home growing up where the dad got violent with his wife a lot. Sometimes it got pretty bad, so whenever that happened, I’d grab a tent and take my little foster sister and brother out to the woods behind the house. Some nights it was cold, so we’d start a fire to keep warm. Most of the time it was more smoke than flames, though. We knew how to start it, but not how to maintain it.”
“Don’t worry, I got the maintaining part down pat.”
He pulls the lighter out of his pocket, bending over the fire. He blows on the spark and soon he’s nurturing a flame that rises taller and taller. Within minutes, we’ve got a blazing fire going.
I peel out of my coat and lay it on the ground before sitting atop it. Case does the same. And then we sit there in silence. Well, not total silence. My stomach is producing a Dan Grebbs–worthy symphony of growls and rumbles. I usually load up on protein after a game and I’m famished.
As if reading my mind, Case says, “Should we go try to hunt a cheetah or something?”
I chuckle. “Yes, all those cheetahs out here in the New England forest.”
“We could forage,” he suggests. “I think some berries are still around in October. And black walnuts should still be in season.”
“Dude, I’m not foraging. That’s a you project.”
He snickers.
“We can survive until morning. I think I’ve got a granola bar, though. We can have it with our bag of chips.”
“Awesome,” he says glumly.
And so we split a late dinner consisting of potato chips and the peanut butter chocolate granola bar from my jacket pocket.
This is gonna be a long night.
Not surprisingly, it’s Colson who eventually brings up our issues. He seems to like talking more than I do.
“We can’t keep doing this shit.”
I shrug. “I know. But I can’t make the Briar guys welcome us.”
“It goes both ways. You need to want to be welcomed.” He hesitates. “When you guys first got here, we were worried you’d take our slots. And—let’s face it, you did. Fuckin’ Miller’s gone. He was a good friend.”
I nod. “So was our old captain. Sean. He transferred when he heard about the merger because he didn’t want to deal with exactly what we’re dealing with right now.”
“Then we both lost good guys. But that part’s over now. We’re all starters. And we’re all good,” he says, albeit grudging.
“All of us?” I say dryly.
“Yes. Fishing for compliments?”
“No, I know I’m good.” I pause, grimacing. “You are too.”
Case grins. “Hurts to say it, huh?”
“A little.”
“All I’m saying is, we’re cocaptains. We need to set an example for the other men. And a little flattery and encouragement goes a long way.”
“Maybe we can change Jensen’s mind about the no-pet decree,” I say mockingly.
That gets me a loud snort. “Highly doubtful. Gigi’s dad told me the story behind that.”
My interest is piqued. “Dude. Tell me.”
“I guess a couple decades ago the team had a pet pig, and one of the guys entered him in an event at a county fair in New Hampshire. He thought the pig would just get a ribbon for being the cutest or whatever. Plot twist: the winning entrant got turned into bacon.”
Holy shit. Shane was right. They did eat their pet.
“That’s traumatic,” I say.
“For real.”
We fall silent for a while, staring at the fire. Case adds another log, poking it with a skinny branch.
“What happened on the bus?” he suddenly asks. “That story Nazem was trying to tell before Jordan shut him down. Why do you guys do that thought experiment thing?”
I chuckle to myself. “Oh. That’s all thanks to our resident idiot. So, Patrick, right, the Kansas Kid, falls in love every other day. At the beginning of last season, he meets this chick at a party, and of course within seconds he’s planning to marry her. He accidentally ends up with her phone—I guess he was holding it for her because she didn’t have a purse. Somehow it ends up in his backpack, which he’s got on him when we’re on our way to play St. Anthony’s. We’re halfway there when the cops speed up, sirens blaring, and pull the bus over.”
“Because they thought he stole her phone?” Case looks incredulous.
“No, even better,” I say on a chuckle. “I guess she took off with some friends to Daytona and didn’t realize Patty still had the phone—she thought she just lost it. But her dad down in Rhode Island hasn’t heard from her in more than twenty-four hours, can’t get in touch with her, and the dude panics. He calls the police, and they use that find-my-phone app and discover her phone is traveling along the interstate. They immediately assumed she’d been kidnapped and sent three cruisers after us. It was a whole thing. Got stopped for hours, bro. We missed our game.”
“Wait, I think I remember this. It was right before the playoffs and Eastwood had to forfeit. They said everyone had the stomach flu.”
“That was a lie. We were literally all being interrogated about the whereabouts of this chick.”
“That’s wild.”
“I know. Fucking crazy. No one’s ever let Patrick forget it. Although I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten all about her considering he’s fallen in love at least sixty-five times since then. But yeah, as our punishment, we weren’t allowed to use our phones on the bus for the rest of the season, which is stupid because it wasn’t our phones’ faults that Patrick is a moron. But suddenly we didn’t have phones to entertain us, so we started asking these questions like would you rather, or what would you do if, and it sort of became a thing we do now before games. Once a superstition sticks, it’s there forever.” I narrow my eyes as something occurs to me. “I just realized—both our superstitions have to do with goddamn Patrick. Kid’s a menace.”
“What’s the other superstition?”
“One time he accidentally texted ‘I’m aching for you’ to our group chat.” I snort. “So that’s a thing now too.”
“Wait, that’s what I always see you guys texting before a game?” Colson’s jaw drops as he glares at me. “This is why we keep losing! Because the whole team isn’t doing it.”
I’m not at all surprised to learn he’s as superstitious as the rest of us.
“We did win one,” I point out.
“Yeah. And then lost the rest.” He stubbornly sticks out his chin. “I don’t acknowledge the ties. A tie is a loss.”
“Agreed. I hate it when people say otherwise.” I let out a breath. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll do a new group chat, then.”
Words I never thought I’d hear exiting my mouth because I hate both chatting and groups.
“Well, we have to try now,” Case insists. “We can’t keep losing.”
I agree with that too.
He tends to the fire again. Pale orange embers dance and float away in the darkness.
Then he says, “I’m not usually such a dick.”
“Oh.” I pause. “I usually am.”
He snickers. “I figured that. But…me…not so much. It’s just been tough lately. I went through a breakup.”
A thread of discomfort travels through me. “We’re going to talk about women now?”
He checks at watch. “Well, it’s eleven o’clock and I’m not ready yet to get mauled by a bear while I sleep, so…yes, I guess we are.”
“You and Graham, huh?” I keep my tone casual.
“Yeah. We were together since the start of freshman year. Broke up this past June.” He bites his lip. “It’s really messed with my head.”
“What happened? She dump you or the other way around?” I’m selfishly eager to gain some insight into the breakup. I’d never ask Gigi, but Case is fair game.
“She dumped me,” he says flatly. “A week after she told me she loved me, no less.”
I wrinkle my forehead. I’ll admit, I’m not super adept at navigating the I-love-you landscape, but it seems odd that neither of them expressed that sentiment until more than a year into the relationship. Maybe that’s normal, though? I’ve never uttered those three words to a woman. For all I know, it takes a while for people to say it.
“I screwed up. And I honestly thought we’d be able to get past it, but she doesn’t trust me anymore, and it fucking kills, you know?”
I feel sympathy for the guy. Because there’s genuine pain in his voice.
Then I feel like a total ass. Because he has no idea my dick was inside her last night.
“I threw it all away,” he says in a sad, faraway voice. “Fuckin’ idiot.”
“You cheated on her?” I ask. I’m not the man who plays around with subtext.
He drops his head in his hands, groaning into his palms.
“Whatever. Yes. I cheated. And I don’t think she’s ever going to forgive me.” Another groan. “I don’t know what to do anymore. What am I supposed to do? I think she’s the one.”
If she were the one, he wouldn’t think it. He would know it.
And if she were the one, he wouldn’t have messed around with somebody else.
But I keep the thoughts to myself. I’m an asshole most of the time, but even I can’t kick a man when he’s down.
“So, yeah. I’ve been a prick lately,” he admits. “I don’t know how to let out all this frustration, you know? She’s pulling away from me. And I miss her. I’m constantly wondering where she is and what she’s doing.”
She’s fucking me, bro.
I keep that to myself too.