Page 92 of Disarm
If I want?? Who am I, your parole officer?
Go out, pretty boy.
You deserved this.
Have a drink WITH your team. Dad would love that.
Then call me when you’re back in your room. Deal?
Caleb
Deal. I miss you, you know.
Miguel
Miss you too.
Now go shower before your teammates stage an intervention.
“Look at this lovesick motherfucker,” Anderson cackles from two lockers down. “Smiling at his phone like someone texted him nudes.”
“Shut up,” I fire back, grinning despite myself, shoving the phone back in my bag. “Just a good game review.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Go scrub your sweaty asses, gentlemen. I want my beer, my fries, and hopefully some chick sucking my dick by the end of the night.”
The barthey pick is walking distance from the hotel—a place clearly designed for college kids and sad middle-aged dudes who lost big on the game. Neon signs, sticky floors, too-loud music. The air smells like spilled beer, fryer oil, and bad cologne.
Our whole team rolls in like a tide of navy and gold warm-ups. Heads turn. They always do when a bunch of tall guys in matching gear show up. A couple of UNR students give us side-eye. One guy in a Wolf Pack hoodie mutters something about “luck” as we pass.
I clock exits automatically. Of course I do. The bar, the bathrooms, the side door.
Miguel’s hoodie is a weight on my shoulders—literally. The dark blue one, the one he told me to take. It smells like his cologne and laundry detergent and faintly like weed. I pulled it on as soon as we got back to the hotel to change.
The guys commandeer two high-top tables near the back. Someone orders a round of beers before I can even pull my credit card out. One materializes in front of me, condensation beading on the glass.
“You good?” Anderson asks, already halfway through his first.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just… it’s been a while since I did this.”
“Then you’re overdue,” he says cheerfully, clinking his glass against mine. “To big nights, big shots, and you finally acting like you’re not on a monastery retreat every time we’re on the road.”
“You’re such an idiot,” I laugh, but I take a sip. It’s cheap beer, cold and fizzy, sitting heavy in my empty stomach.
It’s not bad.
It’s also not… dangerous. Not tonight. Not like those nights when my mother’s boyfriend would slam a bottle down and tell me to drink the “grown-up juice” and laugh when I choked.
This is… different.
For a while, it’s actually fun. The guys retell plays from the game like we didn’t all just live them, embellishing details and roasting each other. They reenact my three like it was from the logo instead of just behind the line. Someone pulls out their phone and shows me a shaky video from the stands where a UNR fan yells “MISS IT” right before I sink a free throw and the whole bar laughs.
I have another beer.
Then a third.
An hour’s gone by, my face is warm, my limbs loose, and the edges of my thoughts soft. The music is louder but less… intrusive. My body feels heavy in a not-horrible way. I text Miguel under the table with clumsy fingers.
Caleb
