time I watched them play, it looked like a video game. Everyone moved exactly how they were supposed to.”
Jansen rolled her eyes. “Matheson’s always been over-confident. You’d think with the Vipers’ record this season, he’d know better than to talk trash.”
I waved my hand at them. “Shh.”
“Don’t you guys know by now not to interrupt when Quinn’s watching the Vipers? Even the pre-game interviews are sacred.” The familiar voice preceded a head of light brown hair breaking out from around the bar’s center pillar. Alec walked down the bar, sliding a plate of food to someone as he moved, and came to stand in front of us. He leaned over the bar to give me a kiss on my cheek and turned around and flicked the television off.
“Hey!” I squeaked.
“Pipe down, shorty,” he grumbled back at me. “He’s saying the exact same thing he said last week and the week before that. There’s still ten minutes until kick-off. Socialize.” I tried to lift the remote and turn the TV back on, but Alec snatched the remote out of my hand. “Socialize. Ten minutes.”
“Ass,” I hissed.
“Good to see you, too.” He turned his attention to the others. “Hey, ladies!”
Alec was my brother, adoptive brother, to be more specific. We were best friends in school, and somewhere around middle school, Alec realized that his attraction to people wasn’t specific to women. He dated women, lots of them, but when his parents caught him making out with someone in their garage, it was his first boyfriend, Daniel. His parents were so livid that they kicked him out of their house that night. He showed up on my doorstep crying, and my parents took him in without a second thought. The day before we started high school, they adopted him formally, and he’d been my brother ever since.
I was drumming my fingers against the bar, not yet having received my drink to distract me, while Hollie and Kris were already deep into their beers. “Can you put the game on now? It’s starting.”
“I turned it off sixty seconds ago,” Alec responded. “Will you relax?” He put his elbows on the bar and bent over at the waist to put his head in his hands. “I’m happy to see you.”
My irritation at wanting to watch the game dissipated, and I smiled. “I’m happy to see you, too.”
“I drove today, so get tanked if you want. I can drive us home.”
Alec and I also live together. He opted out of college and moved into an apartment right after graduating high school, and when I graduated college, we upgraded to a two-bedroom in the same building. He wasn’t just my brother or my best friend, he was kind of my whole world. Probably the only thing I loved more than football.
“Good, I could use a few extra drinks. In fact, Sen, can you just get two of those mixed up for me?”
Sennica was in the midst of making my first Long Island and reached over without looking to grab a second glass. She held it up in the air, set it down, and went to work.
I did as told and socialized while I waited for my drinks, but soon I was an all-out brat. Alec finally scooped up the remote to turn the TV on and stuck out his tongue at me, a gesture I returned to him immediately.
The game started not long after that, and I tuned everything else out. The Montpelier Vipers were Montpelier’s only semi-pro team, only one of three in the entire state of Idaho. They had a pretty good record but had a wild horse for a captain and could let their arrogance get to them. That considered, they were still my favorite football team to watch play. I could get into college ball or the pros, but something about the fighting hunger that semi-pro teams had was exhilarating to me. They weren’t getting the six-figure paychecks, and the rules were much more strict than the pros, so at the end of the day, they were all there because they loved football.
Sometimes, I felt like my obsession with the sport isolated me, but when I watched the Vipers play, it was a nice reminder that there were people who thought like me not all that far away. I caught stadium games when I could, but the Widows’ practices usually got in the way. As much as I enjoyed seeing the Vipers play up close, it didn’t compare to playing myself, so when