Jock Road (Jock Hard) - Sara Ney Page 0,10

playing football.

We’re opposites, he and I.

For whatever reason, the kid wouldn’t leave me alone when he was recruited and has been my sidekick since. He doesn’t always use the common sense God gave him, but man is he one loyal bastard. I rue the day someone tries to screw me over.

Dude has my back.

Fuck. I just said dude.

“Can you drop it for now?”

He grunts. “Fine.” Pauses. “But what if I put all this down on paper, just in case?”

“Do what you want—makes no difference to me.”

Still The Third Friday

Jackson

“Triple J, tell us about your angry little friend.”

“My what?”

I pretend I have no idea who McMillan is talking about though I know damn well he means that chick on the side of the road, the one whose food I took last week and who I pulled up behind tonight.

Tyson must have said something—since we live with a few guys on the team, it must have been at home when I was holed up in my room.

Awesome.

“Your friend.” Why is he saying it like that? It sounds creepy.

“She’s not my friend.” I lift two forty-pound weights off the rack and begin doing squats. “I don’t even know her name.”

“Who are we talking about?” Someone else butts in from off to my right—these guys are washwomen, fueled by gossip and carb-loading the night before a game.

“No one.” I grunt, bending my knees and going down as far as my legs will allow without falling. Standing. Squatting.

“Triple J has a girlfriend.”

“Shut the fuck up, Tyson.” I take back every nice thing I was thinking about him before—right now I need a sock to stick in his loud mouth.

“She was—what did you call it? Spitting mad at you?”

“What’d you do to her, buddy?” Another one of my teammates joins the conversation from out of nowhere, and I swear, these guys are worse than old biddies with their gossiping. Always need to be up someone’s ass with their meddling.

“Nothin’.” I’m trying to block them all out, but it’s like we’re having story time and they’ve all gathered ’round.

“He got all up in her grill—literally and figuratively,” Tyson informs them with authority—the factotum with all the details. “We came up with a game to play while we’re cruising in The Bull.”

The Bull—he must be talking about my truck.

“Would you stop?” I pause. The longer I stand here blabbing nonsense, the heavier the weights in my grip become. Fuck it’s heavy. Before I drop them completely, I manage to set them down and rise to my full height, the belt around my waist cinched and tightened. It supports my lower back, but it doesn’t prevent the sweat from dripping down my spine, down into my ass crack.

“He means there could be a game if he’d let himself have fun for once in his boring life.” Tyson cackles, garnering laughs from the rest of the lemmings.

“Tyson, give it a rest.”

“I can’t—it’s such a good idea.”

“What idea?” someone finally asks, and I sigh, unable to stop the momentum of Tyson’s foolish meddling.

“Enough!” I roar. “There’s no game! Me and the guys back home used to cruise the strip in town every weekend ’cause there wasn’t anything else to do, and I’ve been doin’ it here with Tyson because... You know I don’t party, and there ain’t anything else to do during the season. It makes me feel like I’m home.”

“Cruising the strip?” A rookie wrestler by the name of Griffin Torenson scratches behind his ear and looks up at me from the bench. “What strip? We have a strip?”

“You know—Jock Row or whatever y’all call it.” I pull a pair of gloves out of the pocket of my shorts and pull them on, one at a time, tightening them around the wrists. “It reminds me of home to drive it back and forth.”

When I say it out loud, it sounds dumb, and my face reddens, embarrassed.

“Awww, big guy has a boner for his hometown.”

Tyson slaps his hand on my shoulder as he passes by to hit the shower. “You homesick, Triple J?”

Holy shit, his tone is sincere. He’s not playing around.

I shrug his hand off. “No, I’m not homesick,” I scoff—even though I am, just a little. Who wouldn’t be? My Aunt Beth makes the best caramel apple pie, and the family on Mama’s side gets together every weekend for Sunday brunch and to watch football. I’m too fucking far away to ever visit, even a few times a semester.

So, fine. Okay. Maybe I do hanker for home more often