Page 81 of Pucking Bad Boys

“Tucker knows better than to take my pizza.” I chuckle. “And so do the rest of the guys. Besides, most of them don’t like olives.”

“True,” she giggles. “Tucker hates olives.”

As if summoned by our mention of him, Tucker’s voice filters in from the backyard.

“Get her! No, you stupid fucker. Don’t let her get away.”

His yelling is met with laughter and a chant.

“Baety, Baety, Baety!”

“What’s going on?” We abandon our search for the paper plates and walk out to the backyard to check out the cause of all the commotion.

The scene that plays out in front of our eyes is as weird as it is hilarious.

Baety Swalls, Tucker’s rescue duck that has been officially adopted as our frat house’s mascot, is riding on top of a round vacuum cleaner robot.

Tucker, Colsen and Nash are chasing after her, but that robot is going pretty fast.

“Quack, quack!” Baety flaps her wings, balancing herself on top of the robot and dodging Nash’s dive to catch her.

“Careful!” Tucker snaps. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

The robot changes direction when Vaughn steps into its trajectory and barrels away from the group of bewildered hockey players, headed toward the pool.

“Shit, get her!” Tucker snaps.

“Easier said than done, Tuck,” Vaughn protests. “The robot detects us as obstacles and dodges us.”

Talia’s brother shakes his head. “We’re fucking hockey players. We should be faster than a duck on a vacuum robot.” He yells, running after Baety.

Everyone runs after him, and Talia and I follow suit, our curiosity peaked by the chaos we just witnessed.

We reach them just in time to see the robot catch against a tile that got cracked after the last rowdy party and create a noticeable bump in the otherwise neat pool area.

The robot capsizes throwing Baety into the pool like a feathered bullet.

“Quack!”

“Baety!” Tucker dives into the pool, swimming toward his duck.

Everyone is laughing except Tucker, who carries Baety out of the pool with a thunderous expression on his face. “What the fuck is wrong with you guys? If Baety had gotten hurt, I’d have had your asses. All of you.”

“Oh, come on, Tuck,” Davis, one of the sophomores, chuckles. “Don’t you think diving into the pool was a little excessive? Baety is a duck and last I checked, they can swim just fine.”

Oh, boy.

Thankfully Nash and Colsen grab Tucker before he can lunge at Davis.

“Baety can swim.” Tucker bites out, furious to the point that a vein is bulging on his forehead. “But she hasn’t learned her life skills from her duck family. You all know that when I found her a couple of months ago, she was a duckling. What if she had hit the concrete around the pool and gotten seriously hurt, huh?”

Daves flinches, looking repentant, but he doesn’t know when to shut up. “Ok, ok. Take a fucking chill pill, dude.”

“Oh, no,” Talia whispers at my side. “He didn’t just say that.”

Before the situation can escalate, I intervene. Technically, we’re at the Gamma House and Tucker is the frat president. But all the people involved in whatever was going on are Cove Knights, and as team captain, it’s my responsibility to make sure that this doesn’t turn into a brawl.

Don’t do anything to embarrass yourself and don’t do anything to embarrass the team. Is Coach Harrison’s golden rule, so if what happened falls into any of those two scenarios, I need to do damage control.