She sighs. Then nods.
“We broke up.” She swipes a tear away, then straightens. “I gotta go. Sorry I bothered you.”
She lunges forward to envelop me in a hug, then runs off.
When I turn around, Jet is leaning against the opposite wall. He’s obviously been watching the entire interaction.
“It was cool what you did for her,” he says. “Did you know her boyfriend was a badass in martial arts before you tried to kick his ass, or after?”
“During,” I tell him, earning a laugh.
“Yo, Vic,” Trey calls out when I enter the workout room and jump on a treadmill. “You’ll have to ramp up your speed if you aspire to be half as fast as me.”
Trey and I always have competitions. I watch as he sets his speed faster than mine.
“I’ve been runnin’ all summer, bro,” I say, keeping up my pace. “You’re not gonna be the fastest on the team for long.” I set my speed to match his.
His answer is a hearty laugh as he ups his speed once again.
“Showoffs,” Ashtyn calls out from across the room as she bench-presses with her boyfriend and our quarterback, Derek, spotting her. She’s the kicker so she doesn’t need to have crazy developed arm strength, but she likes to push herself to the limit like me. That’s probably why we’re friends. We get each other… well, except for her relationship with Derek Fitzpatrick, aka “The Fitz.” I don’t get them at all. They argue all the time, and listening to them bicker like an old married couple drives me nuts.
“Rumor has it Cassidy wants you to ask her to homecoming,” Ashtyn tells me after she finishes her set and wipes her sweaty brow with a girly pink towel.
“Not happenin’.”
“You have to ask someone. You can’t just not go to homecoming our senior year, Vic.”
“Umm… yeah I can.”
She sighs. “Listen, Salazar, you’re going to homecoming whether you want to or not.”
“You weigh a buck twenty, tops,” I tell her. “You think you can force me to do anythin’?”
“Yes.” She pats me on the back. “And I want you to be happy.”
Happy? That’s a joke. I step off the treadmill and go to the water station.
She follows.
In a moment of weakness last year, I told Ashtyn I was in love with Monika. At first she laughed and thought I was kidding. But then she looked at the deadly serious expression on my face and knew it was true.
She’s the only one who knows besides my cousin Isabel, and both swore they wouldn’t tell anyone.
Ashtyn takes a gulp of water, then looks at me with pity written all over her face. “Ask someone to homecoming. Don’t you like anyone else even a little?”
Besides the one girl I can’t have?
“Nope.”
“All right, everyone,” Coach Dieter calls out in a booming voice. “Meet me on the field in full gear in exactly fifteen minutes. Whoever’s late is getting the pleasure of running extra laps. It’s almost ninety degrees out there, guys, so unless you want an abundance of sweat in your jock straps, you better be out there on time.”
Nobody wants extra laps in this heat, so we all rush to the locker room to put on our gear. Ash disappears into the girls locker room.
Trey’s locker is next to mine. He sighs as he stands in front of it.
“How should I ask Monika to homecoming?” he asks us. “I want to do something that’ll shock her in a good way.”
Oh, man. More homecoming talk? I’d rather talk about sweaty jockstraps at this point. Or poking needles in my eyes.
“Write HC on a cookie in frosting and call it a day,” Jet says.
“That’s been done, like, a bazillion times before,” Derek chimes in. “I’m gonna ask Ashtyn by writing it on one of the footballs tomorrow night. When she practices during the game, she’ll find it.”
“What if she doesn’t find it?” Jet says with a cocky grin. “What if our backup kicker, Jose Herrejon, finds it instead? You gonna go to homecoming with Jose?”
“Don’t worry. Leave the romantic shit to me. My plans never fail.” Derek gestures to Jet. “So what poor girl are you askin’, Jet?”
Jet wags his brows. “I was thinking about asking Bree. At least I know she’ll put out.”
I toss my cleat at him.
Jet tosses my cleat back, then looks in the mirror at the only thing he cares about besides his car: his hair. “Who are you gonna ask, Salazar?” he asks as he studies himself in the mirror and makes sure his hair is perfectly spiked. I don’t remind him that in two minutes he’ll have a helmet on that’ll squash all that hair.
“Nobody,” I say. “I’m not goin’.”
“We all have to go,” Trey says. “It’s tradition.”
“You can’t break tradition,” Jet agrees.
Trey holds a hand up. “Don’t worry, guys. I’ll figure out how to get our resident bachelor to go to homecoming, but give me some ideas on how to ask Monika. I swear I have so much shit going on, I can’t think straight.”
“Maybe you should stop taking all those AP classes and join the normal people in the regular classes, Trey,” Jet tells him. “Didn’t you get the memo that senior year is supposed to be a blowoff year?”
“Not when you’re trying to be valedictorian, dumbass,” Trey says.