close together, as you did, and you’re not prepared for them, it can take you on a head trip.”
I panicked. “So, I’m crazy now?”
“No!” Her hands shot into the air again and she mumbled, “Could’ve been after enduring all of that, but no.” Trish’s voice was clearer when she answered. “Your brain is still intact.”
“How do you know?”
Trisha sat back in her chair and bit her fingernail. “Because you came in here trying to make sense of it.” Her eyes returned to me. “You’re fine, Tori. Just tell me you’re protecting yourself.”
“I am!”
“Are you on birth control—”
I jumped to my feet again and headed to the door. “Thanks for the chat, Trish.”
As I closed the door behind me, I heard her return, “Bye, Tori.”
“And I’m digging into those guts like Bubble Shooter,” Al murmured with a tense expression, reenacting it by thrusting his pelvis into the air. “She’s moaning, ‘Oh, big Al, your dick game. Your dick game!’ like a fucking porn star.” His eyes were closed, face tight.
I sat on a bench in the weight room on a break from training, cracking the hell up. I came over to say whaddup to my old crew and, somehow, we found ourselves in a cipher, shooting the shit.
“Get on with the story,” Ebony, a lady Panther on the basketball team, demanded. “You been telling this story for four minutes, and we know your ass don’t last that long.”
I fell back into Dre behind me, howling.
Al sucked his teeth, pausing in his sex position. “Shut the hell up, you girl. Anyway.” He continued air-humping. “So, I’m talking my shit. You like this big motherfucker, don’t you? She moaning hard. She tells me to go harder, and my ass give her what she asks for. Now, we both moaning. Then she scream my name, ‘Oh, Big Al! Oh, Big Al! Yes! Yes!’ Shit! Then I bust all up in her. When we were done, I fell out on the bed. Her ass rolled over to face me, and the bitch had the nerve to say, ‘You think I can get Ashton Spencer’s number now?’”
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” the group responded at the same time, laughing.
I grabbed my damn stomach, laughing so hard. Al loved promising girls a shot with me if they fucked him first.
“You, too?” Dre asked. “I had this girl from back at home do the same fucking thing!”
I couldn’t catch my breath, half my damn body hanging off the weight bench.
“Y’all need to stop,” Ebony chastised, laughing her damn self.
“Spencer!” My head whipped to one of the doors of the weight room. Standing in, midway through, was Trisha Gaskin. I tossed my chin her way, acknowledging her. “I need to talk to you.”
“Oh shit, Spence!” Dre whispered. “The fuck you did now?”
A few snickered.
Al whistled. “Yo, she looking vexed as hell!”
I chuckled as I stood and made my way over. “What’s up, Gaskin?”
Using her head, she pointed down the hall. Without a word, I paced that way.
“In Mark’s office,” she ordered randomly.
I ambled inside and, behind me, she closed the door as I turned to face her.
“Tori McNabb is important to this athletic program.”
My face tightened, confused as fuck. “Okay.”
“And her welfare here is largely my responsibility,” she continued.
“Okay.” My chin met the top of my chest.
“And you were asked to tutor last semester.”
I spread my legs wide and folded my arms over my chest. “Did I not do that?”
She scoffed, nose wide and forehead hiked. “Seems to me you were doing more than helping her learn about basic writing!”
“So, there’s a problem with two athletes in this program—or two students at BSU—being friends?”
“You have a girlfriend, Spencer.”
This shit was getting annoying as fuck. “No, I do not. And even if I did, would that mean I can’t be friends with a peer?”
She crossed her arms and shook her head. “Not the way you and Tori are!”
My heart began to fucking pound. I couldn’t tell right away why, though.
“Maybe we should call A. D. Jones in here for some interpretation, because I’m not getting the purpose of what I’m feeling like is a confrontation.” The bass in my voice couldn’t be helped. Fuck that. I didn’t answer to Trisha Gaskin! “What’s wrong with us being friends, Gaskin?”
She stepped closer into my person, too boldly. “You’re fucking her. That’s what’s wrong, Ashton!”
I hoped she didn’t sense my wincing. Trisha Gaskin gave me shit about Tori the beginning of last semester. I thought we were past that. This was the last thing I was expecting