This summer, Lenny and I pulled some pranks on the freshmen, but Hudson gave me a disappointed father speech that hurt more than Grey leveling me on the field.
“What are you doing?” Corey asks, knocking his shoulder against mine as we head for the locker room an hour later. “You’ve been glued to your phone since dinner ended.”
“I’m looking up some ideas for a prank.”
Corey scoffs and closes his eyes as he shakes his head. “You missed a weight-lifting session and fell asleep watching tape this week. If you go after the freshmen again, Hudson’s going to kick your ass.”
Grey glances at us and then at Hudson as he rounds the corner.
“Whose ass am I kicking?” Hudson asks.
I scoff. “He’s still busy kissing Evelyn’s ass after the whole communication…” I look at Hudson. “What did you call it?”
“Fuck up,” he says.
I smirk. One of the reasons I respect Hudson so much as both my captain and friend is because he owns his mistakes. “That’s right. Fuck up.”
Hudson stops at his locker. “That doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass.” He peers over my shoulder at the website of prank ideas. “I had to pay off the janitors for your shaving cream prank. If you do something again, you have to clean up your own damn mess.”
“Relax. It’s not for the freshmen,” I tell him.
Corey raises his brow. “Soccer team?”
I shake my head. “My roommate, Hadley.”
Palmer grins. “You want to see if she’s the kind of girl who likes her hair pulled, aren’t you?”
“You’re such an asshole,” I tell him.
“Hadley’s who we met yesterday, right?” Hudson asks, ignoring Palmer’s comment.
I nod, scrolling down the list of pranks, searching for something tamer than super gluing everything in her bedroom in place, but a little more exciting than filling a doughnut box with vegetables.
“Tell me she fired the first shot,” Hudson says. “Because if you want to remain living there, you might need to pretend you’re not always an asshole, at least for a while.” He smirks.
Corey and Grey laugh.
“Freedom!” Lenny belts the word like he’s on the stage of a musical with a packed house, hands raised, and eyes closed. He stops beside me, hands bracketing my shoulders. “So when’s the first housewarming party?”
Grey scoffs. “You’re not going to last a full week.”
Lenny looks at me with raised brows. “You pissed off your sister already? Need me to go make up for it?” He ribs.
If I didn’t know Lenny was borderline afraid of Katie, from last year, when someone unknowingly hit on her, and she threatened to rip off their scrotum and feed it to them, I’d probably punch him. Instead, I shake my head. “Fuck off.”
Lenny smirks. “Party at your place tomorrow after the game, then?”
“It might be a little soon to roll out that welcome mat,” I say.
“Too soon? I thought this was one of the main perks of moving out?” Lenny’s challenging me, not just because he wants a place to party that doesn’t involve another sorority house, but also because we are often the conduits to each other’s worst ideas.
Grey shakes his head. “Not having a place for people to party is one of the perks of living in the dorm. Do you remember Pop’s house a few weeks ago?” he asks, referring to our defensive lineman that earned the nickname Pops after taking care of many of us freshman year when the lack of supervision and peer pressure led much of the team to make bad decisions that usually involved too much drinking. “Someone puked all over the goddamn floor.” Grey shakes his head again. “No thanks.” Pops doesn’t live off campus, but we’ve all been to his parent’s house countless times, as he often offers up the space for parties since they retired and bought a condo down in Florida. It’s twenty-five miles due north, set in an older neighborhood where the neighbors all know him by name and tolerate our bullshit a couple of times a month as long as no one parks in their yards.
“Party. Orgy. Deep fry a turkey on Thanksgiving…” I shrug. “The beauty of not living in the dorm is that I can do whatever in the hell I want to when I want to do it.”
“Payne,” Krueger, our offensive coordinator, calls my name from the doorway. I’d commend him and work toward knowing him better if I wasn’t so sure he was going to get canned soon. He’s rocking the boat, trying to make changes to our lineup, our playbook, and even our practices. It has Coach Peters looking for every excuse to fire him. He tips his head in the direction of his office.
“Busted,” Lenny sings.