Thao lowered his cigarette while he listened, not once taking his eyes off me. His Marlboro was more ash than tobacco by the time I finished.
—Fuck Coach Johannsen, he said—which maybe doesn’t sound like the most eloquent response but was precisely what I needed to hear.
The ash fell from Thao’s cigarette and landed on the tip of his right shoe. I reached down to brush it off, then kept my hand on Thao’s foot and, heart juddering, slid my palm over his bare ankle, up his bare shin bone, working against the grain of his fine black leg hairs. Now it rested on the quad muscle, my thumb pressing into his taut, responsive flesh. The only way I managed to do any of this was by keeping my eyes on my hand, and Thao brought his thumb under my chin to raise my face to look at him. He slid his other hand around the back of my slightly sweaty head and brought his lips to mine. His tongue was stale from the cigarettes, but then again my mouth was cotton-dry from my nervousness, and soon his saliva became my own and the staleness became anything but.
My hand had been resting on his quad, and I slid it down the inside of his thigh to his crotch, but he caught me by the wrist and pulled his face back.
—Sloooow down, he said. Buy a girl a meal first.
—Are you hungry now?
He laughed.
—We should go. The gardens supposedly close at dusk.
We stood, and he reached his hand into his pants to tuck away his erection. He looked down at my shorts and saw I needed the same thing. He bit his lip and stepped up, plunging his hand into my shorts, maneuvering my cock to twelve o’clock. I’m shocked I didn’t come in his hand.
—The festival ends on Thursday, he said. How’s Friday?
—Friday is … Friday.
—No truer words have ever been spoken.
We padded back down the knoll and returned to the arboretum path. I wanted to hold his hand, but I was happy enough with the music of our shoes on the gravel.
—So she smiles and I turn to Chase, like ask him with my eyes and shit, “Did she just say what I think she did?” And Chase is so sauced he straight up turns to her and says, “You sayin’ you want us to run a train?”
—Buuuuuullshit.
Errol held his hand over his heart, looking to Chase for backup.
—It’s true, Chase said.
—All right, so what did she say?
—What did she say. Bitch looks me straight in the eye and goes, “All aboard.”
Players leaned back in their swivel chairs, laughing, embarrassed.
—The whole damn campus is in a pussy drought, Errol continued. So I’m tellin’ myself, share what wealth there is, son. But then I thought about what that shit actually requires. I’m fuckin’ her from behind, while I’m looking at Chase getting blown? I just couldn’t do it. I told her that and thought the deal was off. But this girl was a slut, yo. Bitch shrugged and said we could both still hit it. I went first, Chase after.
—McGerrin, you took sloppy seconds?!
—You get any pussy last night, O’Connor?
We were sitting in a lab in the basement of Romance Languages, a windowless space that resembled a telemarketing center. There was a carrel for each student, and each carrel was outfitted with a desk and desk chair, a desktop computer on which to take our exams, a headset for listening to verbal sections, and high walls on either side to prevent us from seeing others’ work. Mademoiselle Carter arrived just before the exam was set to begin. She was a young lecturer in the department and the crush of many teammates, with honey-brown hair she wore in a long braid down her back and a predilection for summer-battling tank tops and form-flattering skirts. She said bonjour and handed out sheets of scrap paper for us to use when, for example, we wanted to outline an essay. The clock turned to two, and we logged on to our computers to begin the test.
Reshawn and I sat in neighboring carrels. As always, he finished his exam first and exited the lab. I finished second, about ten minutes later. Walking out, I passed Errol and noticed he was looking through the contents of a little blue cloth pencil case he’d brought with him.
Reshawn waited for me in the quad’s spongy heat. We started for the Hay.
—Did you see Errol’s pencil case? he asked. He had a slip of paper in there with vocab words. I shrugged.
—It’s not like he’s the only player who cheats.
—That’s not the point.
He didn’t elaborate what “the point” was and fell quiet for the rest of the walk. I noticed he was doing this more lately, falling into unexpected silences, and when he resumed talking, what he said wouldn’t necessarily bear any relation to whatever he’d broken off saying.
We reached the players’ parking lot and I handed him my car keys—he was taking my Saturn back to the apartment, and I was heading to the locker room to dress for Skellie. We were about to part ways when he said:
—“Sealing the deal.”
—What?
—Those posters they have with my picture on it. It’s like they’re using me for bait. Fucking bait. And if I was bait for Errol, what kind of player
