Woke

18.)

Chris:

"You nervous?" Devon asked me.

We were in the gym locker room getting ready to go out and warm up for our first official game. I finished tying my shoes and shook my head.

"Nah, I love game days. Practice isn't the same as the real thing."

Devon started laughing as he pulled black Nike bands onto his wrists. "You better not be nervous about this. I meant about your date with Kiki tonight."

At the sound of her name, my heart annoyingly did a little leap. I cleared my throat. "Nah, I'm chill about that too."

"You a damn lie!" Devon laughed even harder. "It's okay to be nervous, man."

"I just don't know what she's expecting."

He clapped me on my back. "Clearly she's just expecting you to be yourself, cuz that's what she fell for. What y'all doing?"

I pulled a single black compression sleeve around my arm. "I convinced her mom to let her stay out late for the night, since I live next door. My parents have some weekend conference, so after the game's over, we're gonna head over to Buffalo Wild Wings to pick up some food and then spend the rest of the night at my house just chilling. Nothing fancy."

"That's wassup! You think she's gonna let you hit again? And yes, I do know about it-- no thanks to you saying shit. I could tell y'all fucked the moment you walked into practice the other day."

Wednesday afternoon came to my mind, and my lower region twitched ever so slightly. I bit the inside of my cheek and pushed those blissful memories away. "I'm not expecting that to happen. I just wanna kick it with her without all the tension. The connection has always been there, and I wanna see if it'll work out for us when we finally choose to explore it instead of fight it."

"Well isn't that just the sweetest damn thing." My jitters were replaced with irritation as I looked over and saw Eric leaning against one of the lockers. He had a smirk on his face that told me he'd been listening in on Devon and I's conversation the whole time.

Devon's expression turned sour. "It ain't ya damn business, bruh."

"Chill, man." Eric came over to us. "I'm just bonding with my teammates. So you did it, huh?"

"Did what?"

"You melted the Wa-- Ice Princess." He nudged me. "I knew you had it in you, bro. Was it good?"

I refused to answer him, so I untied and started to re-lace my sneaker. He didn't have any business trying to imagine Kiara like that in his head. That moment was mine and for me only.

Eric started to laugh. "Oh, I get it. She was too good! I mean that's not surprising. Have you seen that a--"

"I'm gonna need you to stop talking about her like that." Devon snapped.

"Hey, hey, relax." He gave us that careless smirk I always wanted to smack clean off his face. "If you don't wanna share, I get that. It's selfish, though. I've already told you how damn near everybody on the team wants a go. If she's finally offering, why keep it all to yourself?"

I was up before Eric could even finish his last sentence. Before I could drive my fist into his stupid jaw, Devon stepped in between us and pushed me back.

"Watch your fucking mouth, man!" I yelled, silencing the entire locker room. The other players turned to look at the altercation, unsure of where it was going to go.

"What're you gonna do?"

Before I could show him exactly what I was going to do, our coach came in and blew his whistle. "Everybody out to the gym to warm up!"