Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (4 page)

I ran out onto the court. There was applause and some quiet booing. Our competitor’s fans were mad that they were going to lose yet another away game. The score was fifty-one to forty-three and they were winning. For now.

I went through the motions, keeping my game simple but fast. I just needed to stay ahead of the other guys and I would be okay. As soon as I got to the three, I would shoot, no hesitation. I caught the ball and dribbled it over to our hoop. I jumped into the air to make the shot and felt another guy thud into my back, taking me down with him. I lost the ball, and it rolled away out of my reach and his too.

The ref
had
to have seen that.

It was a hard foul. It was a
flagrant
fucking foul. The guy fucking
climbed
my back to stop me from making the shot. Barely seconds into the second half and the guy got the fucking whistle blown. If I wasn’t at one hundred percent before, I was now. I was fucking livid. Who was the little shit who thought they could
try
? I got up and looked at the ref, waiting for him to say something.

I had my back turned, but I didn’t have to see it to feel it. I felt something hard connect with my shoulder and then the sound of whatever it was hitting the ground. The shit that happened next happened like it was slow motion. I turned slowly and saw the red cup on the wood floor of the court. I looked up into the crowd. It was like the oaf
wanted
me to know it was him.

It was this kid in red. He was laughing and pointing with the guy next to him. I looked him in the eye, and when his finally met mine, I lost it. I lunged for the guy, taking off into the stands. I had gotten like, halfway there, just about to take those steps three at a time to get at the little fucker, but I felt someone grab me and pulled me back, then more hands. There must have been at least three of my teammates trying to pull me back from going after the kid—and that was how many it would take.

I was so fucking angry. I heard the jeering and booing from the crowd, feeling my teammates practically drag me back onto the court and onto the bench. I was fuming. I left the bench. I wasn’t going back in. There was no way the ref would let me after that anyway. He was lucky.
That little punk was lucky
. If I had gotten my hands on him, I would have made him swallow that fucking cup through his asshole.

Why the fuck?

Why did fans act like that when they came to games? For them, it's just another day watching a fucking game. It was fun or whatever, but this was my fucking
job
. I was at work, and their dumb asses were here trying to be funny. It wasn’t my fault his team was losing. If he was mad about that, he should have thrown shit at
them
.

I got to the lockers. I was too mad to sit down. I wanted to do something. I wanted to punch something or break something… or
someone
.

Everything had been going
great
. It had been fine. What the fuck.
Why
today and
why
now? I had been
great
for the last six months. Fuck. Were they going to suspend me again? Were they just going to
fire
me, trade me?

I had fucked up. I had fucked up, and I had let that shitbag kid get the best of me.
He
wasn’t the one who could be suspended from the league,
I
was. I was and the dumbass kid got to go home and talk about how he almost got beat up by Dante Rock at a Charlotte Yellow Jackets game.

The press would have a
field day
with this. The coach would have my fucking ass. It wasn’t as if I had actually managed to do anything, but still. The damage was done. They'd probably have me pay another fine again… shit. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money to pay a fine. I could afford it, but I didn’t want to fucking pay again for a fan being an asshole.

If they didn’t know how to act at basketball games, then they needed to stay the fuck home and watch the games on their damn televisions. Why was that so hard to understand? You didn’t do shit like that and just get away with it.

I remembered the last time something like this had happened. It had been
worse
then. I hadn’t actually gotten to punch the shithead who thought it was a good idea to chuck a fucking glass bottle through the air, but I
almost
had. Everyone had sort of swarmed then, and in the disruption, I had lost the guy. That one had been a little more serious. We were actually lucky that there hadn’t been a stampede and also that neither myself—nor any of the other players—had ended up beating on one of the fans and gotten arrested.

Nobody was arrested, but I was suspended. Eighteen fucking months off the court because some idiot wanted to play games with me. You didn’t come to my court, my fucking place of work, and act like a hoodlum. You could take that shit outside. It was just plain disrespectful to me and all the guys on the court who had a game to play. It was disrespectful to the fans, too, who were sitting in their seats and trying to enjoy the game.

I was so mad. I should have just stayed where I was or asked the ref for a timeout. The idiot had it coming, but it wasn’t he who would potentially get in trouble for this.
It was me
. My mind raced as I thought about what the hell I was going to say to the coach when he wanted an explanation. I didn’t want to get suspended again. He would understand why the fuck I got mad, right?

There was no way this shit wasn’t going to be all over YouTube by tomorrow. Ha. Tomorrow, who was I kidding? Later
tonight
even. It would be all over the news, too. I shut my eyes realizing something.

Quinn.

She had been there. She
was
the news. She was probably going to report on it. God. I had never had to think about the impressions I made on women, but I hated thinking this was the impression that Quinn would leave with of me. I was a dick, yeah. I knew that and she seemed to know that, too. There was the whole fact that she was a reporter, and now she
really
had no reason to write anything positive about me, but on the other hand, I didn’t want her to think I was just this angry maniac on the court.

Whether or not I actually
was
, was beside the point. It wasn’t about what was true. It was about what she thought, and there was no way she was thinking anything good at the moment. I had never read anything by her, but she must be a good writer if she was being paid to do it. The thought of reading the smear piece she was probably going to write about me at this point was a little bit exciting, not because I was masochistic, but because I liked the thought of her having to talk to me again. I had liked our little bit of banter on the court. She seemed tough, like she took no shit. I appreciated that. She wouldn’t spare me. She would let me have it.

Not all publicity was good publicity. Bad publicity was bad publicity, and I had it out the ass. It went in levels. There was some bad publicity that was
harmless
, like rumors about who I was or wasn’t fucking. There was nothing too damaging about that.

Then there was the shit like
this
. Especially when it was coming off what had happened last time. If I would really have to take a loss for this, it would probably be bigger and worse than the last one I had taken. How much time off? Two years? Three? How much money?

I hated it.
I hated this.

She would most likely be back here to talk to me. I didn’t want to talk to her. I couldn’t face her just yet. The game would be over soon. The other team had a lead on us. Were we going to win?
Did I care?

Some time passed before the locker room started filling up. I was getting changed back into my street clothes because, fuck this, I was out. The guys would likely be back in soon. I owed them something. Like a thank you or whatever, but I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see anybody. I wanted to go the fuck home and go the fuck to sleep, my hangover was still killing me.

If it hadn’t been for Troy, Dre, and the other guys, I could have been leaving here in a police car. I sighed, thinking I didn’t want to get into it just then. I would talk to them, the reporters, the coach, and Quinn tomorrow.
Tomorrow
. That was when.

They must have heard me thinking that I didn’t want to talk to them because just like that, in they started coming.

“Yo, Rock, what the
fuck
?” one of my teammates asked. His name was Troy Lees. He was the center. I started getting changed faster.

“Did we win?” I asked.

“
We
won.
You
decided to lose your shit and get kicked off again. What the
hell
happened?

“He threw a
cup
at me, man, what was I supposed to do?” I said to him.

“
Come on
, man, still?”

Yeah.
Still
.

I knew he understood, but he was still mad. I got why I would be mad, too. Troy and I were friends. I was friends with a lot of the guys on the team, but Troy and I were buddies. Like, I used to go see him when he was out with his injury and he would come to my place to hang out when I had been suspended. He was this big, black dude. He was pretty intimidating, but he was a cool guy. Unlike me, he had the whole wife-and-kids thing going on. All great people, but it wasn’t for me.

“Coach is going to have your ass for this,” he said. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to think about it.

“It was the kid’s fault; he started it.”

“Even if the guy gets banned, coach is likely going to want to do something to you. You’re lucky you didn’t take him out.”

Yeah. I
was
lucky.

I thanked him and the other guys for helping me out and stopping me from murdering that kid.

So I had a couple problems with my anger. Who didn’t, right? I was an athlete, where did anyone think all that aggression and on-court fights come from? That wasn’t a good excuse, and I knew it. I had just lost my temper on the wrong person, and now I had to get ready to take my fucking punishment.

Was it right of me, trying to get away before coach came by and saw me, or before the after-game interviews started? I sighed, thinking it was a bitch move. I was no bitch. I wasn’t a pussy. I could face a little criticism if that was what the coach wanted to give me. I could face another fine too, whatever he wanted.

The reporters would want to hear something, Quinn included. If I got to talk to the coach first, maybe he could close the post-game interviews for today, or at least for me. He would want to hear from me first. He wasn’t just going to throw me to the wolves and let them have at my corpse. There weren’t even that many. It wasn’t as if this was a final championship game or anything; it wouldn’t be all that hard to dodge the guys who were there. It wasn’t like I
had
to say something when one of them asked me a question. I could just politely decline to answer.

Fuck, what about Quinn though? She would be… disappointed. I could see it now. I didn’t think she was in love with me or anything when we had been talking on the court, but now she would hate me. I was surprised at how much her opinion of me mattered to me. We didn’t even know each other, but she felt like someone I wanted to impress.

It was
fine
. I would just talk to the coach when he showed up, and then I would leave. All the rest could be handled tomorrow by public relations. Quinn… I didn’t know what I would do about Quinn. Maybe I would talk to her and tell her it was all a misunderstanding and release a statement directly to her tomorrow.

“Hey, Troy, guys. That chick reporter, the one with the brown hair, don’t talk to her,” I said.

“If she’s a reporter, we have to tell her something, Dante,” Troy said to me.