o o o
Seventeen wins in a row later, Dave could feel the alcohol practically bubbling in his veins. It felt a little like doing a somersault underwater and then coming up really quickly, your head spinning and sending a warm tingle down your spine. Dave, it turned out, was prodigiously good at flip cup. He’d yet to fail at flipping a cup over. Every time it was his turn, he’d swallow the beer down in a second or two, and with one deft move of his hand, the cup would be upside down on the table without so much as a wobble.
Vince was nearly in hysterics, throwing a meaty arm around Dave’s neck, high-fiving everyone in the vicinity with his other hand, yelling about them being the world champions until no one else wanted to play them.
He and Vince walked outside without discussion, as if they were magnetically drawn to the fresh air. Dave looked around for Julia, wanting her to be nearby, longing to just exchange stupid jokes back and forth like they’d been doing for so long. He was going to break away and look for her, but then he noticed the briskness of the air and the way everyone seemed to be smiling and he took a seat with Vince on a bench.
“How come we’ve never hung out before, Dave?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. He burped, then chuckled at the thought of two dudes drinking beers and burping together. “Probably ’cause of Julia,” he added. “I’m usually trying to spend my time with her.”
“I’ve always wondered, are you two dating?”
“Nah. Just friends,” Dave said, a line he was used to delivering with as little emotion as possible, as if he were a spy trying not to be discovered.
Vince crushed his beer can in his hand and placed it by his feet. He put his hands on his knees—smaller hands than Dave would have expected from someone Vince’s size. “Since the truth serum known as Keystone Light is coursing through my veins, I’m gonna open up a bit here. You ready for it?”
“I’m ready,” Dave said, wondering what Julia would make of the conversation.
“You can handle it? Peering deep into my soul?”
“To be honest, right now it kind of feels like I can peer into everyone’s soul.”
“That sounds pretty scary to me,” Vince said with a smile. He ran a hand over his head, which was shaved recently, only the thinnest layer of fuzz starting to show through. “I am so in love,” he groaned, putting his elbows on his knees and slouching over. “Two years, man. She’s like some sickness I can’t get rid of.”
“Who?”
“Carly,” he said quietly, though no one was paying enough attention to them to hear. “She’s all I think about.” Vince looked so sad all of a sudden.
“Does she know?”
“I was always waiting for the right time to tell her, then she met some guy from Pacific Beach. At one of our games, no less. She’s been dating him for over a year, and I’ve barely been able to sleep since. I wake up at four a.m. thinking of things to say to her, and I repeat them to myself until my alarm goes off and it’s time to go to school to stop myself from saying it.”
Dave made a little hum of agreement in the back of his throat. Inside the house, people were taking pictures of themselves on their phones, making faces, kissing each other on the cheek. Their eyes were glazed over, and everyone seemed to be either shouting across the room or whispering into someone else’s ear. He couldn’t remember who Carly was. “You could tell her anyway. Just to get it off your chest.”