Page 17 of Sweet Girl
Chapter Six
Van
All I can think about lately is seeing Kylah again during Thanksgiving break, even though I should want to spend time with Lyndsay.
My basketball pre-season began in early November with several non-conference games – both were away games and on the road. We lost both, mainly due to being down two of our good players. One was Cade Griffin, who’d been suspended due to his recent legal issues. The accounts of his arrest, sentencing and probation all came out in a press conference back in September, at which time, Coach Welby announced that Cade would be benched for the first three games of the season.
While some of the team was disappointed in him, as well as many of his supposed fans, I stuck behind him. I respected the hell out of him for taking accountability for his actions and turning things around. He’s a role model any young kid could easily look up to.
The other player we lost was Jeremy Munson, one of our junior forwards, who tested positive for anabolic steroids and is now suspended for the entire calendar year. Not only did he screw his scholarship, but he severely hamstrung us this season. Now our team’s balance is completely messed up.
Unfortunately, I can’t blame either Cade’s absence or Jeremy’s suspension for our loss last weekend. That one is entirely on me and was all my fault. I am the one who let everyone down – the coaches, the staff, the team, the fans. I got ejected from the game for a flagrant foul. I got in a fight with Jalen Hawkins.
I wasn’t in a good headspace going into the game that night to begin with. Right between the team warm-up and game time, I’d been talking on the phone with Lyndsay, who normally called to give me a pep talk and wish me luck.
Instead, she mentioned the one thing everyone dreads hearing when they’re in a relationship. The “we need to talk” announcement. Truthfully, I would have rather had darts thrown at my naked body or suffer an excruciating loss to UNC than to sit through the agonizing conversation about what I’m doing wrong in her eyes or how I don’t stack up anymore.
I know something’s going on with her. I just don’t know what’s changed or even when, but it has. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still the same people we were at the beginning of the semester. I know I haven’t changed.
Looking back now over the summer we spent together back home, I thought we had a great time together, like we always did. Or so I thought. The sex was still good, in my opinion, although it wasn’t as frantic as it was when we first began. I guess the old adage is true, everything can become routine if you let it. Maybe we were just too comfortable with one another and I didn’t give her the same level of attention as I did in the earlier years. In those days, we’d spend every waking hour together, as much time as we could. In the evenings, after our work days were done, we’d take a drive, go swimming in the lake near our house, and layout on blankets with our faces to the stars and talk.
That was then. This is now.
Since September, I’m lucky if I even talk to her once a week. At one point a few weeks back, I became so worried that something bad had happened to her because I hadn’t heard from her in over five days. I actually called her sister, Lara, to see if everything was okay. Lara seemed hesitant at first to discuss it, but made some lame excuse about Lyndsay’s school schedule and all the work she had to do.
Even at the time it didn’t sit right with me. I fumed for several days. It was on my list of things to talk about when I saw her over break. That was until my confrontation with Jalen on the basketball court.
Jalen and I, we go way back – since we were in traveling select basketball leagues back in our formative years. He now attends Rice University in Houston and is a rising All-Star who we all think will be drafted at the end of the season. We aren’t the best of friends, but we hang out whenever we’re in the same city.
Although we aren’t tight, it still makes our confrontation on the court disheartening. We’d just returned from halftime and started the second half, eighteen minutes to go. My team was down six points, but we were fired up after our halftime locker room pump up session.
A Rice player had just taken a shot and I’d rebounded, passing the ball swiftly to our point guard and captain, Carver. Sprinting down the court, I positioned myself outside the three-point line, allowing the remainder of the team to set up for one of our offensive plays, which Carver signaled with the verbal cue of “Eileen”. That meant that I was to head to the top of the key, receive the pass, and dribble it in to shoot and get the points under the basket.
As with any sport, there’s a fair share of taunts, jeers and trash talking. This game, in particular, was fueled with a lot of lip. Due to my easy-going nature, I normally let those comments slide. They’re only meant to get me ruffled so I lose focus.
I’d just received the pass from Scott, one of our forwards, and was dribbling it in, watching the shot clock, as Jalen stood guard in front of me.
“Yo, Van...saw your girl last weekend. You two not together anymore?”
Normally, I’m in the zone, and zingers about my mama or team don’t bother me. This one, though, had my attention snapping from the ball and basket to Jalen, my eyes narrowing at the audacity of what he was implying.
“What the fuck, bro?” I shout, noticing the clock is quickly dropping to under five seconds and I hear Coach yell from the sidelines to take the fucking shot. Keep in mind, I’ve been playing basketball since I was old enough to run. I know every diversion tactic there is on the court. And in that moment, I know Jalen is just trying to get in my head. But what he said next had me fucking losing it.
A smirk the size of the Rio Grande appears on Jalen’s face.
“Just calling it like I see it...since she was sucking Cody Leach’s dick and all, I figured you guys were over.”
It was then that I lost control of the ball and before I could recover from his comment, Jalen had swiped it from my hands and started dribbling it down to the opposite end of the court. The entire place erupted in an audible gasp, the sound a sleeping dragon might make upon waking to find his lair infiltrated.
My brain caught up with my body as I launched myself at Jalen, encircling him with my arms and tackling him to the floor. Yeah, not my finest hour. For a minute there I forgot I was a basketball player and not on a football team. That tackle would’ve been sick out on the grid iron.
The problem with this little attempt to stop him mid-court? In the game of basketball, a player cannot touch, grip or make physical contact with another player who has the ball. In this case, it’s considered an intentional foul.
However, it quickly turned into an all-out brawl, as the ball got jarred from his hands and I started wailing on him. All my frustration over what had been going on between me and Lyndsay over the last few months came out in a blur of punches, kicks and curses.
“What the fuck you say, motherfucker?”Jab. Kick. Punch.
Jalen squirmed underneath me, rocking left and right to try and protect his face from my fists, which was unleashing like a plane propeller.
