Page 100 of Not Made to Last

Oscar’s face lights up on my screen, and I’m quick to answer it. “What’s up?”

“I need you to pick me up,” he whispers.

I’m already on my feet with my keys in my hand when I answer, “Where?”

There’s a water tower a couple of towns away, in the middle of a field, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Years back, someone cut a hole in the fence, and most weekends, kids around here find themselves at the field when nothing else is going on. I’ve done it dozens, if not hundreds, of times. For a while, cops, as well as surrounding residents, turned a blind eye to it… until some dickhead ruined it by wanting to give a Harry Houdini performance inside the tank.

Spoiler alert: he was no Houdini.

There’s usually a kid from West High who keeps a police scanner in his truck, so he’ll alert everyone before the cops get there. I guess he wasn’t there tonight, or if he was, the cops were too quick, because according to Oscar, he was too late to flee the scene but was able to hide out in a bush while the cops cruised around for a few minutes after.

When I get to the empty industrial parking lot that lines the fence into the field, I keep an eye out for Oscar. He’d gone therewith a couple of guys from the team, but they fled without him. I would bring it up at the next practice, but the fact is: if it was anyone but Oscar, I wouldn’t give a shit.

A figure appears a few feet ahead, and I slow my SUV to a stop and unwind the passenger side window. Oscar ducks, poking his head through the open window, and says, “I need your help.”

I shrug. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Oscar grimaces, looks at the bush behind him, then back at me. “I’m kind of maybe not alone.”

Delgado is fast asleep, on dirt ground, in a fetal position, and it takes everything in me not to be an immature asshole and snap a picture to post on Instagram for the world to see. It’s the least he deserves.

“I think his boys bailed on him,” Oscar explains. “But he was already out of it by the time I came across him.”

“Jesus.”

“I had to drag his ass from the field to here, and you know I lift, bruh, but that dude is one beefy motherfucker.”

I look from Dom to my car and back again. “I say we leave him.”

“Fuck you, Garrett,” Dom groans.

Oscar chuckles. “He has a point.”

Dominic is trashed—to the point he can’t even sit up straight. Even with the two of us helping him into the car—dead weight that’s alive enough to fight you off is an absolute bitch tomaneuver. We manage to slide him into the back seat, in the same fetal position we found him in, and off we go.

It doesn’t take long to get to Oscar’s neighborhood—the same one Dominic lives in—and when we’re only blocks away from his house, Oscar makes a call, puts it on speaker.

“Hello?” Liv answers in that sleepy, croaky voice, and I push aside memories of all the times I’ve heard that voice… when she was lying next to me, completely spent from the hours of pleasure we’d just endured.

Oscar breathes heavily into the phone before growling, “What are you wearing?”

“Dangit, Oscar, it’s the middle of the night,” Liv hisses, and it only makes Oscar chuckle.

“I have a package for you, but you’ll need to accept it at the front door.”

“Please don’t egg my house again,” she pleads. “It smelled for months after. I had to hire a pressure washer for the driveway.”

“No eggs,” he assures. “Just a six-foot-five Prince of Persia currently filled with enough alcohol to kill a small horse.”

Liv sighs before hanging up, and we pull up to the front of her house just as the porch light flicks on.

In unison, Oscar and I look between the seats at Dominic. “Yo, Dominator?” Oscar says, shaking him.

“Fuck you, too,” Dominic murmurs.

I lock eyes with Oscar. “Told you we should’ve left his ass there.”

“Yeah, but then Ollie would be all worried about him, and I like Ollie.”

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