Jansen rolled her eyes and smacked my hand away. “I don’t give a shit about her. At some point, someone has to knock her down a peg.”
Practice was over twenty minutes earlier than it was supposed to be because our scrimmage turned into a pissing match between one of our largest and one of our smallest players. Jansen was taller than average but still didn’t come close to Lila’s size, and Jansen was a hundred pounds soaking wet. When Lila stood her ground while Jansen was trying to run the ball, despite that I’d ordered her to do a moving play, Jansen decided to try and run straight through her. People didn’t run through Lila. There were two-hundred-fifty pound, seven-foot-tall men who had tried and failed, let alone a twig-like Jansen. Lila dug her feet in and lowered her shoulder, and Jansen crumpled against her like paper around a rock.
“You’ve gotta cut her,” Kris said, taking the gauze from my hand and returning it to Jansen’s face. Jansen tried to resist again, but Kris gave a motherly glare, and Jansen calmed. “She’s a danger to our team, and people are sick of having to get through her first to play some fucking football.”
“Even if we had enough people to cut her, she’s our powerhouse. She’s literally been the difference between a win and a loss for us on more than one occasion.” I looked up at Hollie, who was sitting cross-legged on the grass. “Back me up.”
“Sorry, cap,” Hollie replied. “Lila’s trouble. I’ll admit she’s got something special when it comes to the sport, but this team isn’t only about football. It’s about the relationship we all have. Even George and Max do better when she’s not here.”
I rubbed my head. It was starting to pound under my players’ scrutiny. “Well, what do you guys suggest? You wanna not play anymore? She’s our twelfth.”
Kris, Jansen, and Hollie went quiet. Hollie made an attempt, holding up a finger and opening her mouth to speak, but then she closed it back up and dropped her hand into her lap, so I continued. “That’s what I thought. Look, I don’t wanna fight with her every week, either, so if someone can bring me a stacked to shit tackle, I’d be more than happy to do a facelift. Now, can we please go drink? Because I’m not drinking, and that’s a real problem for me.”
I packed up our practice materials with Hollie’s help while Kris finished patching up Jansen, then we all piled into Hollie’s GMC. Montpelier wasn’t a large place, and most people drove for convenience’s sake. I only lived about a ten-minute walk from MontRec, so I didn’t even own a car. Kris probably also drove, as she actually lived just outside of Montpelier, but it was easiest to drive together. Hollie would bring Kris back after the game, and Jansen would either walk home or catch a ride with Kris.
Straight Street was Montpelier’s premier sports bar, by which I meant it was the closest one to MontRec and had a bartender that would slide us discounted drinks all night. We walked through the door, which announced our presence with a bell jingle, and the bartenders looked over.
The bar owner’s girlfriend, Sennica, saw us first. She was mixing a drink and smiled over at us. “Hey, Widows!”
A few people in the bar lifted their drinks at us. Only Straight Street’s regulars, who saw us often, would recognize us as football players. It was likely none of them had even seen our games, but Sennica knew us from my brother, Alec, and so we came to be known as the Black Widows, a group of women who like to drink a lot.
The bar was a giant rectangle situated in the center of the space, which had tables littered around two sides of it and a couple of pool tables, arcade games, and a dartboard on the other two. Flat screens were hung above the bar’s materials on the side of the rectangle, one on each side for the patrons to watch and enjoy. It had subtle smells of booze and cigarette smoke mixed with the smell of fried food from the small kitchen in the back.
“Hey, Sen.” I walked over to the bar and took a seat, and Jansen, Hollie, and Kris filed in next to me. “How’s it?”
“Oh, you know. Another day, another dollar.” She slid the drink she was making to one of the patrons on the bar perpendicular to where we were and came to stand directly in front of us. She saw Jansen’s face and winced. “Ow, that looks painful.”
“Cost of doing business,” Jansen replied. “May I please have one alcohol?”
Sennica laughed at Jansen’s phrasing. “Of course. Anything in particular?”
“As long as it tastes like liquor, I’m fine.”
Sennica nodded. “You got it. What about everyone else?”
“Just a beer for me. Miller Lite,” Hollie said.
Kris held up a hand. “Same.”
“I’ll have a Long Island,” I added, and Sennica laughed.
“Long day at practice?”
I nodded my head toward Jansen. “Is it that obvious?”
Sennica didn’t reply and instead moved to make our drinks. When she passed me by, going for some ingredient, she grabbed the remote from the TV we were facing and set it on the bar top. I grabbed it and quickly flicked through the channels to get to the channel where the Vipers would be kicking off any second. I heard a few of the bar patrons protest, but they were quickly shushed by those who knew us, and eventually, I landed on the channel. We were still a bit early thanks to Lila and Jansen’s antics, and a local news reporter was interviewing the Vipers’ captain and quarterback, Zeke Matheson. I pressed the button to turn it up enough for us to hear it, but not so much that it would drown out the music playing throughout the bar’s speakers.
“We’ve duked it out with this team before,” Zeke said, answering a question I hadn’t heard. “Minnesota has power, but they’re disorganized. We’re confident we’ll take home the victory today.”
“I don’t know what Minnesota he’s talking about,” Kris commented, sipping her beer. “Last 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.