Mismatched Compatibility (17)

Ethan:

We were warming up on our side of the court when Aaron came up to me and nodded towards the bleachers.

“I gotta say, Ethan,” he said, impressed. “You work fast.”

I frowned in confusion. I followed where he was looking at and saw Daniella, who was sitting between Dakota and Alyson. With her gorgeous face, blonde hair, and my jersey . . . She really stood out amongst the crowd.

I grinned real wide.

That's my girl.

“How'd you manage to convince her to wear that?” asked Sam in disbelief.

Yeah, I know. She's pretty snarky when she wants to be.

I shrugged. “I asked her.” Like I said, I didn't like complications. Life would be much better if people just made things simple.

“I'm in awe,” stated Luke, patting me on the back.

And I'm fucking way in too deep for my liking. But instead of bitching about it, I chose to do something. I asked her out. I'd like to think I did the right thing.

Damn, she was gonna mess me up good.

I didn't have a reply to Luke, so I just smirked. I continued to shoot hoops with the others. Thankfully, they dropped the subject. This was probably one of those rare occasions that I didn't like talking about myself.

“Have you seen these losers?” mentioned Nigel.

All heads turned to the direction where he was looking at. He was referring to the current MVHS Basketball varsity team on the other side of the court. They were warming up, too. But I caught a couple or more of them glancing our way a few times, like they were sneaking a look to check us out or something.

Fvcking pvssies.

“They're good,” remarked Sam.

“We're better,” I snorted.

“No way,” disagreed Aaron, frowning.

We all looked at him.

He grinned and added, “We're the best.”

That made us grin and chuckle, nodding our heads in approval. Only Luke seemed to shake his head in amusement at us. He faced Sam with an all-business-face.

“What's their play?”

Sam blinked for a moment at the sudden change of mood, but he quickly got over it. “Mostly offense. Crimson, the redhead,” he nodded to the lean-build redhead who was talking to Coach Buckley, “is their shooting guard. The kid's big on three point shots. Pretty quick, too. He's all around.”

“He the captain?” I guessed.

It wasn't rocket science. I heard the little bit of respect from Oz's voice when he spoke about him, even if it reeked of disgust. I still had to ask, though.

“Yeah,” confirmed Sam. “I heard he's a big fan of Aaron's.” He flashed a teasing smile on Aaron's way.

Aaron grinned. “He's got a good eye, then.”

We all laughed.

“Who else?” I asked Sam.

“Next is McKinley,” he answered. His eyes scanned the court, then stopped. “That one,” he said, pointing to a dude who kept glancing at us.

I studied him. Instantly, I got bad vibes from him.

I've known and met tons of different kinds of people. The Frat House was the perfect example. It taught me how to differentiate the safe people from dangerous ones just by studying their body language and movement of their eyes.

This McKinley kid was sharp, but he was trying to hide it.

“He's the small forward,” continued Sam. “He and Crimson are the main duo of the team. Basically, he gets the ball, passes it to Crimson, and Crimson scores. Another one to watch out for is Oakley. The big guy.”

We watched the biggest guy, standing at 6 feet 10 inches tall. Pretty wide on the shoulders. That was gonna be hard to get past to.

“I got him,” said Nigel confidently.

Nobody questioned him. The thing was, we didn't doubt it. He could take on the big guy. I had no problem doing it for the team, but I wanted to watch out for McKinley myself. I wasn't sure if he played by the rules.

Don't get me wrong, I know that I don't usually give a crap about the rules whatsoever. But when it comes to basketball, that's an entirely different matter. I love the game. I fucking live it.

Not to mention, Coach Buckley was a damn good coach. He taught us to respect the game so much, even the rules that came with it. With that in mind, I decided that this McKinley kid probably wouldn't do anything stupid.

I still had to watch out for him, though.

“Is that all?” made sure Aaron.

“They're tactical,” Sam informed us.

“But we're creative,” I pointed out, smirking.

They grinned. All of us exchanged knowing looks. No doubt we were all recalling those times that we made such ridiculous plays that the opposing team would get all confused and lost. See, the key to it was all about having fun.

God, I missed this.

For some reason, I wanted to look at Daniella again. So my eyes wandered to the bleachers to check on her. She was still there. But this time, she sat straighter as if she didn't care what people thought of her. Huh?

I looked around her and noticed that a lot of people seemed to be staring at her – and whispering. Not in a nice way. More like, in a judgmental way. Geez, just because she wore my jersey? Just because I wasn't known to commit, now people were gonna judge her because she wanted me?

People these days were nitpicking dickheads.

Then I thought . . . Shit. Did those stares bother her?

I was about to come over there when our eyes met, stopping me on my tracks. Her expression softened instantly upon seeing me, and she smiled.

Fuck, I think my heart just softened, too.

“You okay?” I mouthed to her.

Her smile grew wider. She pulled up one of her hands in a 'thumbs up' sign as she nodded at me.

“You sure?”

She giggled and nodded again.

How did she fucking manage to be cute and gorgeous at the same time? That wasn't fair. Even I couldn't pull that off.

“Okay.” I saluted her, winking at the same time.

“Good luck,” she mouthed back.

I smirked in answer. Then, I turned around and continued warming up. The balls went in the hoops out of habit, but my mind was on something else.

Even if I didn't want to admit it, I was looking forward to the carnival tonight. I wanted to spend more time with Daniella. Just us. I haven't felt this way since I was thirteen. But this time, it was more intense – more consuming.

“Is that your game face or your thinking face?”

I turned to see Aaron studying me.

“Game face,” I simply said.

“Liar.”

“Why ask, then?”

“I wanted to see if you had the guts to admit that your head isn't in the game,” he grinned teasingly.

“The game hasn't even started yet.”

Aaron opened his mouth to say something when Sam exclaimed, “Incoming!”

We turned to see what Sam was talking about. All eyes landed on Scout Crimson and a few his team who were walking toward us. They tried to act cool about it, but I could see that they were fidgeting some. Ha. Wimps.

The boys and I instinctively took a step closer to Aaron just as the other team neared us.

“Hi!” greeted Crimson, all smiles. “I'm Scout Crimson. These are my teammates, Finn McKinley, Reid Oakley, Cameron Woods, and Jay Lawley.”

We let him introduce his teammates, even though I knew for a fact that it was pointless because we wouldn't remember their names. Just the ones Sam mentioned earlier, anyway.

“Yo,” nodded Aaron. “I'm sure Coach already told you guys about us.”

That means no need for introductions on our part.

Crimson chuckled. “Yeah. Spoke highly of your class, actually.”

“Can't say the same about you,” I sneered, earning a few snickers.

“Being outdated comes with being old,” retorted McKinley, shrugging.

The corner of my lips twitched. Motherfucker called me fucking old. This shithead just dug his own grave. Big time.

“Or maybe you're just not that good,” I replied with ease, flashing him a mocking grin.

“Says the old dude,” he muttered.

This McKinley kid is seriously getting on my nerves. I'm gonna remind him who fucking owns the court, then I'm gonna shove the ball up his fucking ass. But that sounds gay so I'm not gonna do that last part.

“Finn,” scolded Crimson.

Shithead just looked away.

“Show some respect,” snapped Aaron coldly.

McKinley's eyes went to Aaron and he frowned. “I will if he does,” he said, nodding to me.

“Why the fuck would I respect you?” I scoffed, half-amused half-incredulous at the idea of what he wanted. “You haven't proven anything yet, punk. We were National Champs for three years in a row. You can't even get past the State Championships.”

I might not know all, but that much I knew about them.

That finally shut him up, making me smirk.

“Let's settle it on the game,” suggested Luke.

“Gladly,” I said, my smirk grew wider.

McKinley shook his head and went back to their side of the court, the others following close behind him. My forehead creased as I stared after them. Something wasn't right in the picture.

“I'm sorry about that,” Crimson told us. He looked sincere. “The pressure's getting to him. A lot went down last year, see.”

“Feud with the football team?” I guessed indifferently.

He looked at me as if he didn't expect me to say that.

“Yeah.”

Aaron groaned. “That shit's still going?”

“Apparently,” I nodded. “I ran into Oz earlier, told me a bit about it.”

Aaron's eyebrows shot up, as did the rest of the boys'. On the corner of my eye, I noticed Crimson studying me closely now. Something changed in his eyes when I mentioned Oz. I thought I saw a flash of anger there.

“Heard he made captain,” grinned Aaron, with pride in his eyes.

“Yeah, Oz is a monster on the field,” remarked Nigel, laughing.

“You watched him play?” asked Sam skeptically.

“Of course, dumbass. I'm not limited to basketball, man,” replied Nigel. He waved his hand dismissively, and added, “I've told you guys a thousand times. My cousin, Kurt, is on the football team with him.”

“Little Oz is stepping up,” smiled Luke.

I grinned along with them.

Thing was, we kinda watched Oz grow up. His older siblings were basically Mount Valley High School royalty when it came to popularity. That meant almost all the parties for the last decade or so were held at their house.

That kid had been going to high school parties long before we did. It made his eyes and mind open up pretty early than most kids his age. It also made him everyone's little brother, at least everyone on top of the hierarchy.

Let's not forget the fact that I've been friends with Annabelle, his sister, since I was in middle school.

“You know him,” stated Crimson casually.

Oh, he was still here.

“Yeah,” answered Aaron. “Why?”

Crimson hesitated and shook his head, before saying, “Nothing.” He sighed. “Game's about to start. Nice meeting y'all.” With that, he left.

“What was that about?” wondered Aaron, frowning in confusion.

“Kurt told me this thing between the teams has gone serious,” explained Nigel gravely. “He won't tell me the details, he just said that the whole team got suspended for the rest of the football season last school year.”

“Wow,” I breathed out.

“Yeah-huh,” nodded Nigel.

I remembered our bad encounter with the football team on our senior year. Ben Stanley threw a football at Dakota. She wore crutches for a month. Aaron went apeshit. That was scariest I've ever been of Aaron. I would never admit it, though.

Aaron clapped, breaking the silence.

“All right, that's enough drama for one day. We've got a game to play.”

And he went on to do his routine pep talk before the game. It had become a tradition already. We let him do it because it hypes us up for the game.

Man, I can't wait to play with my buddies again.

***

The plan worked.

Here's how it went down. By second half, we were way in the lead. The result was getting predictable and the crowd was getting bored.

Aaron reminded us that this was a charity game. People came for excitement. And we sure as hell ain't giving that to them. It wasn't our fault that the other team sucked. But of course, we also wanted to give them a good show for old times' sake.

So on the third quarter, we slacked off. We let the losers catch up to our score. I think only Coach and Crimson noticed, though. We let them do their thing until they were a point ahead of us.

There were times when I wanted to smack the grin off of McKinley's face and tell him that we were letting them score on purpose. But I decided that it was more fun if I let him hope then fucking crush it when we win in the end.

By fourth quarter, the tension was thick in the whole gym.

“Time to bring back our game, boys,” declared Aaron, grinning at us.

I glanced at Daniella on the bleachers. The expression on her face made me want to laugh. She was worried that we might lose. When she saw me looking, she instantly smiled at me and raised her fist as if to cheer me on.

It took all my will power not to go over there and kiss her.

Man, I have it bad.

The buzzer suddenly went off.

I nodded and gave Daniella a reassuring smile. I ignored Dakota's incredulous look and Alyson's giddy face. Why did Daniella have to sit with those two?

“Ethan,” called Luke.

“A'ight.”

Time to play.

_____________

Like I said, the moment I start updating this, it means I'm gonna update this regularly again. :)