David checked out the crowd and saw Milena. He couldn’t remember if she’d ever done the cattle call after a game. He pointed at her.
“Come on, good-looking. Let’s get out of here.”
The Alpha Mu who he’d been teasing with his friends last week looked disappointed.
“I even have a friend with me,” she complained.
“Andres!” David called.
David watched as Andres benefited from David and left for the Baseball House with the two girls. At some point, he would get over being pissed about David sleeping with his sister.
When they reached his car, David opened the door for Milena. Once she was situated, he went around and got in the driver’s seat.
“This is a Porsche?” Milena asked.
“It is.”
“Are we going to the Baseball House?”
“We can if you want, but I thought we could grab a late bite and talk. I have school tomorrow, and I have a feeling that if we got started, I would never get to sleep.”
“You don’t want to just hook up?” she asked, confused.
“Like I said, we can if you want. I would rather we spent some time getting to know each other. If you decide you like me, we can figure out another time to go on a date,” David suggested.
“I thought the only reason you guys ... uh, never mind.”
“I didn’t think you were into that kind of stuff,” he said as he gave her his panty-dropping smile.
“No, I’m not. I just never knew a guy who didn’t try to get into my pants if he thought he had a shot.”
“I have a shot?!”
She turned about three shades of red.
“Settle down,” David said to reassure Milena. “Where do you want to go eat?”
“Garage Pizza is open 24 hours.”
They drove in silence after David used the voice commands to tell his navigation system where to take them. It was a drive. When they got close, the lady inside his GPS told David to turn left, so he flipped on the blinker and made the turn. Two blocks later, they were there.
When they sat down, they finally spoke again.
“What do you want?” David asked.
“I like their White pizza,” Milena said.
David looked at the menu, and it said it had no sauce. All the pizza had on it was cheese, garlic, and basil.
“That’s not pizza,” David complained.
“I can get something else,” Milena said, with her voice sounding worried.
“No, get what you want. I just can’t see it being real pizza if there’s no sauce on it.”
“You scared to try something new?”
He wasn’t falling for that. When the server returned with their drinks, David ordered a large White and a large Inferno. The latter came with hot sausage, jalapeno, pepperoncini, red onion, garlic, and crushed red pepper.
“That’s way too much food,” Milena worried.
“Good. That means we’ll have leftovers. Now that my roommate’s gone, I might get a slice for breakfast.”
Then they lapsed into silence again. David was someone who could either talk all night or be comfortable with silence. The problem was, this wasn’t the comfortable kind. He finally decided he’d better get to the bottom of what was worrying Milena.
“Why aren’t you talking my ear off? You are a girl, aren’t you?” David teased.
She got an exasperated look and then began to speak.
“Crystal is always saying what a bunch of man-whores the baseball team is. Then the girls give me reports of you going off with two or more girls for all kinds of wild orgies. Crystal told me that if I wanted to win you over, I would have to be good in bed. Otherwise, you would go off with one of those other girls the next time,” she shared and then petered out.
“You need to stop listening to Crystal,” David advised and then stopped himself. “Unless you really do rock in bed.”
Her face flushed an unusual shade of red.
“Hey, I’m just joking around,” he said to ease her mind.
“I know. You’ve never made an unwanted move on me. I just got to listening to the girls this weekend, and they gave me all kinds of advice on how to get your interest ... and ... uh ... shit. I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
“I like that you too,” David said.
It was as though the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. From that point, the conversation flowed, and David had a good time. Why wouldn’t he? Milena was his type. She was smart, funny, and if what she let slip was right, she was willing. The last part might have been his little brain thinking, but it wasn’t always wrong.
He did discover that White pizza was good. Still not real pizza, but he would eat it if forced to.
When he dropped her off at her sorority, they kissed. In a moment of stupidity, he let her take all the leftovers inside so she could be the food hero tonight. Pizza really wasn’t on his diet, but to give it to a cute girl? He was a total wimp.
Developmental Editors: XofDallas and Bud Ugly
Line / Copy Editors: Bud Ugly, TheMikeBomb, Zom, and Old Rotorhead
Last One Through: Bud Ugly
Chapter 42
David
The rest of the week, David had split his time at defensive end and middle linebacker.
Since they’d started wearing pads, David had been able to get physical. Coach Farrow had the defensive linemen practice against the offensive linemen in one-on-one drills. The two players who consistently beat their counterparts were David and Percy. Percy did it with brute force and incredible quickness for a man who was six-seven and weighed close to 300 pounds. David, on the other hand, was as slippery as an eel. Once he shed his block and got past his opponent, there weren’t any offensive linemen fast enough to keep up with him.
Coach Farrow loved David’s speed. He was one of those rare linebackers who could make tackles from sideline to sideline. Being a quarterback, he knew offenses. That gave him a unique perspective when trying to stop them. He instinctively knew where the ball was going and always seemed to be in the thick of it. In some ways, David reminded the coach of Lawrence Taylor, the Hall of Fame linebacker for the New York Giants.
On the offensive side of the ball, next year’s senior and junior backups, Travis and Jaden, were struggling. It wasn’t that they weren’t good quarterbacks; they’d been talented enough to receive scholarships to USC. Instead, their struggles exposed the Achilles heel of Coach Clayton’s coaching style. When a coach focused ninety percent of his staff’s coaching time on the starters, their backups didn’t develop.
Ridge had kept his word and had begun a whisper campaign. The results were twofold. First, articles started to crop up about the lack of player development at USC. They laid the charge squarely on Coach Clayton. While David appreciated that result, he worried that it would impact recruiting. Every high-level high school football player has dreams of playing in the NFL one day, and they knew that USC got more than its fair share drafted. But it might give a prospective recruit pause to know that if he wasn’t a starter, he might not get the coaching he needed for a chance to advance to the next level.
The other consequence was that questions were being asked as to why the best high school quarterback in the country just a year and a half ago was now playing defense. Coach Farrow, USC’s defensive coordinator, sang David’s praises. He said that he felt that with a year backing up, David could be a four-year starter on the defensive side of the ball—implying that he would be redshirted. Coach Clayton’s strategy was to remind the press that Matt was healing and would be back, and all worries would go away.