“Close enough.” He tossed a replica of McClanahan’s girlfriend’s Homecoming dress on the grave.
Simon took a swig of his beer. “All I want to know is what that bitch looked like splattered all over the rocks.”
“We’ll never know,” Michael told him. “Only that when push came to shove, he did what he had to do. He sacrificed for the good of the team. For the family. When it comes down to it, would any of us do the same? He was a king.”
Not was a fucking king. Is a fucking king, because to us, he was a living, breathing part of this town.
“Give us the season,” Kai chanted, raising his beer.
“Remind us what’s necessary,” someone added.
And then everyone chimed in.
“For the team.”
“For the family.”
I moved the camera around the circle, taking everyone in.
“Give us the season,” they called out.
“Give us the season.”
And again.
And again.
Some poured a beer onto the grave, and all over her dress, the candles spread out in devotion flickering in the light breeze.
We didn’t explain this to anyone ever. It was kind of like the people who didn’t really believe in God but still went to church.
There was something to be said for tradition. Ritual.
It was good for the team.
The basketball team had been coming here for decades at the beginning of every season. We would never not come.
An hour later, a small bonfire burned inside the ruins of St. Killian’s, the keg already half-empty and laughter and shouting coming from down in the catacombs.
Damon sat in some dilapidated lawn chair, staring at the flames as two girls talked and kept an eye on him from near the sanctuary.
Waiting.
“I wish he’d gotten to grow up,” I said, tossing a stick into the fire. “I wonder what he’d be like now.”
“McClanahan?” Damon asked.
“Yeah.”
He waited, the flames glowing in his eyes. “He wouldn’t be special if he didn’t die.”
“He was special before that.” He was a captain, like Michael. He was a leader, selfless, a fighter…
No one really knew what happened that night.
“He wouldn’t be special,” Damon repeated. “Everyone changes. We all grow up.”
“Not me.”
He breathed out a laugh. “You’re going to have to be someone someday.”
“I’m going to be Indiana Jones.”
He just smiled, but kept his eyes on the fire. He never tried to drag me into reality as hard as Michael and Kai did. I had no clue what I wanted or who I wanted to be. I just wanted my people, and I wanted the girl of my dreams.
The girls giggled again, and Damon’s eyes flashed up, seeing them.
“Are you coming?” he sighed.
I followed his gaze, eyeing the legs and hair and how easy it would be to have some fun and get off, but…
“I don’t know,” I told him. “You ever think of doing this shit in the comfort of your bed?”
I was tired of playing in the catacombs, but Damon didn’t like to play alone. He needed me.
I liked someone needing me.
“Why does no one ever get to go into your room?” I asked. “Not me. Not Michael. Not Kai. Definitely no girls. Can’t we all go somewhere comfortable?”
“You wanna see my bed?” Damon teased.
“I’d like to make sure it’s not a coffin.”
He snorted, but still…he didn’t answer the question. What was he hiding in there anyway?
I looked up at the girls again, but my gaze went right through them like they weren’t even there.
I didn’t want that tonight. I didn’t want to play here.
I’d rather relive last night, even though all that girl and I did was fight.
I smiled to myself. She’d fallen asleep with her glasses on last night. I took them off. I loved the way her tie was always tightened half-assed, her cuffs were too long and never buttoned, and her skin was my fucking religion lately. Especially the skin on her neck.
I hated school, but I was dying for Monday. She was gone when I woke up this morning, and I wanted to see her look at me after last night.
Would anything have changed? Would the sharpness in her eyes have softened at all?
“You’re not good enough for her,” Damon said, breaking the silence.
I stared at him. How did he know what I was thinking?
“You’ll never be good enough for her,” he pointed out. “Best you hear it now.”
“A friend would help me get what I wanted,” I told him.
He fell silent, and I studied him.
“You don’t want me to have what I want, though,” I said. “You don’t want Michael or Kai to have what they want.”
“I shouldn’t have everything I want, either,” he argued. “Getting what you want risks losing what you already have, and nothing can come between us.” He looked up, meeting my eyes. “Nothing will be as perfect as this. I don’t like change.”
He turned away again, gazing into the fire.
“Michael is always in so much control,” he continued, his voice growing harder. “I’d love to show him what he really needs. I’d love to see Kai troubled and confused. Really fucking unhinged, so nothing I have can ever escape me. They act like they don’t need us. I wish they knew that they did.”
I knew what Damon did to sink his teeth into those around him.
“You wanna fuck me, too?” I said in a low voice, a soft smile tilting the corner of my mouth.
He grinned, still not looking at me.
But surprisingly, he replied, “Sometimes.”
I stilled.
“Sometimes I think about her watching us,” he went on. “I think she’d like it, but she’d hate that she liked it.”
With Damon, he didn’t see the person. He was attracted to control. Making people do things they wouldn’t normally do. It was all about the turn of the screw. Like a fish hook, he burrowed his way into heads and stayed there, long after he’d gone.
And his friends were the most valuable thing to him. He’d die for us, but the scary part was, that might not be the worst that could happen.
“She’ll never be to you what we are,” he told me, “because she’s too scared, too proud, and too boring.” He stopped and finally turned to me. “She’d never love you like you deserve, because she doesn’t respect you. You’re too shallow to her.”
And I felt my insides fold in on themselves, over and over, creating this hole in my gut, because I knew he was right, and fuck him.
What would she see in me?
And why the hell did I care? I was William Grayson III. The grandson of a senator. The best shooter on our basketball team, and she’ll be coming to my company in ten years, begging for a grant to fund her stupid theory on the viability of rooftop farms with their own micro-climates or some such shit.
I didn’t need her.
I dug my keys out of my pocket, not caring where Kai and Michael had disappeared to. Everyone would find their way home.
I turned around. “I gotta go.”
“Will.”
But I didn’t stop. Heading outside, I jumped into my truck and sped out of there, charging back onto the highway, and I didn’t care if that asshole pulled me over again.