Page 10 of Expecting an Argument
I glanced at the family portrait hanging in the foyer, where little six-year-old me sat in my mom’s lap. My hair was plastered against my head with gel and I wore a baby blue outfit with puffy sleeves and a girly collar. Growing up, I had hated that Mom chose to immortalize that goofy look with an oil painting. Now, I was just happy to have a portrait of Mom’s smile where her eyes wrinkled in the corners—a smile that was now extinct.
The cigarette burn over my dad’s face was a less pleasant sight, but I kept the painting up anyway.
“I’m going to cook you the best Thanksgiving dinner of your life,” I said to Titus as I pulled up my bank app. “Half of the turkey in the fridge has your name on it, boy.”
With a few swipes, I sent my mom a thousand dollars and texted her,“Drinks are on me!”As soon as I hit send, I shoved my phone into the pocket of my sweatpants and headed to the bar in the media room.
I slammed my steel tumbler on the marble bartop and mixed a post-run cocktail of coconut water and lime juice. The cold prick of the first sip through the metal straw hit my tongue as I crashed onto the leather sectional and turned on the TV for some noise to fill the silence.
A five-person sports panel started playing and I groaned. Monday morning football broadcasts were for sports gamblers. I had already learned the hard way that I wasn’t lucky enough to gamble and it was already too late to save my fantasy football season, anyway.
I pulled out my phone and checked my fantasy stats—I was dead last. Chuck adding me to his fantasy league let me indulge in the illusion of having friends, but getting my ass kicked week after week wasn’t doing much to lift my spirits.
I couldn’t even beat Aunt Liz’s team, the“Pretty Ponies,”and I was damn sure she picked her players at random!
A sigh left my lips as my eyes settled on the TV. I had three days until the next football game, so what else did I have to do other than watch the panel?
I tossed the remote aside and took another sip of my drink. Titus settled on the floor near my feet.
“I’m telling you, Lindsay has no chance!” Lamont Odell emphasized to the other panelists. “Their win against Rocky Mountain College was solid, but their defense is too spotty for Plains State.”
Come on, Lamont. You haven’t been in the game for two decades. What do you know?
“And we all know the most explosive running backs come from Plains State,” said Perry Switzer.
The screen flipped to an old clip of a familiar player in an orange jersey sprinting toward the endzone.
“AND HE’S GONE!” the announcer cried. “He’s gone! Like lightning from the heavens, it’s TYSOOOOON COPELAND!”
I cursed under my breath. My metal cup clinked on the granite-top end table as I slammed it down.
“Before carrying the Stallions on his back in the national championship game,” Perry said, “Plains State University recruited Copeland from small-town Elren—where he madeevery single touchdownin the state title game his senior year.”
My hands scrambled across the leather cushions as I searched for the remote.
Don’t need to fucking remind me about the state title game, Perry. I was there.
The front page of the Sunday paper after the fateful game flashed through my mind. Some jackass had taken a picture of me as I was slumped over in defeat, the harsh lights from Fontaine Stadium highlighting my sweat-soaked hair. The headline read:“FONTAINE III DROPS THE BALL, OILERS LOSE STATE!”
A fucking lie. I never dropped the ball…I threw interceptions, the final one costing us the game. The same reporter that said I had a golden arm when we won the semi-finals had turned on me—said it was clear my head wasn’t in the game.
Of course, the reporter could only speculate. Despite how much he had pressed me for an interview afterward, I never let anyone in Elren know where my head actually was that night.
“It really does come down to recruiting, huh, Perry?” Lamont agreed.
Yeah, and the recruiters were at the game forme,but someone else got lucky instead.
I found the remote between two cushions. Just as I turned back to the screen to change the damn channel, more footage from the Plains State national championship win flashed across the screen.
Ashley Kouba, now Ashley Copeland, was in the stands bug-eyed and screaming after Tyson scored the final touchdown. She shook the girl next to her like a bobblehead, nearly strangling her in the frenzy of her excitement.
“Win aside,” said Ryan McElroy,“thatwas the moment that went viral.”
Lamont chuckled. “I even used that clip in the group chat last week.”
The show played the clip over and over and I couldn’t help but smile. The girl with her glasses falling off the end of her nose as Ashley gave her neck trauma was no random PSU student—it was Olivia Adams. The Crimson Knights had barely scraped by with a bowl win that year, but that clip had been the saving grace of an otherwise garbage season. Olivia had been such a smug little shit in high school that I had wanted to shake her like that myself.
She had annoyed everyone when her hand would be the first to shoot up after the teacher asked a question or when shestarted every sentence with “Did you know…?,” but her true colors came out senior year. After we took our semester finals before Christmas break, she had passed me in class rank after chasing it like a dog for the past three and a half years. She could have just taken the valedictorian title and just fucked off like a normal person, but Olivia was not a normal person. As soon as she was announced as valedictorian, she finally took off the good-girl mask and became a complete sadist.
