Until Now (Not Yet #2) Read Online Free

crush, nutsack. I just want to know her effing name, and she won’t tell me. It’s driving me crazy.” I dragged my fingers through my messy hair and finished my beer in one gulp.
    “Where’d you meet her?” Damian asked.
    Jon folded his hands behind his head and smirked. “She’s a waitress at a diner. She’s a knockout redhead. And she isn’t buying what our man is selling.”
    Damian laughed too loud and too long for my liking. I smacked the back of his head. The last thing I needed was my dad, coach, or my annoying brothers and sisters figuring out that anything was distracting me from playing ball this fall.
    But they wouldn’t. Because there were no distractions. There was only football.
     
    ***
     
    FIVE HOURS LATER Damian was passed out in my room, and Jon and I were well past shit-faced. I threw the controller of our Xbox down on the table and fell back against the couch. “Fuck, I’m drunk.”
    Jon laughed through half-mast eyes that didn’t seem to be focusing. “Me too. Isn’t it great?”
    “Not in the morning it won’t be. Especially when we have sprints at seven o’clock.”
    Jon threw me a can of beer, and I popped it open. “We’re this far gone, let’s have one more.” He opened his can and held it up in salute.
    I saluted him back with a belch. My phone buzzed, and I read the screen with one eye closed. I found closing the one eye steadied my eyesight when I was inebriated. “Christ. It’s Steph again.”
    Jon sat up in his recliner. “Steph’s been calling?”
    I tossed the phone to the side. “Only since she heard I might go pro.” Stephanie Romley had been my on-again, off-again high school girlfriend. We were mostly off, leaving me plenty of time to hook up with interested females, but Stephanie and I tended to go to dances and other important events together. We were in the Homecoming Court from freshman to senior year and Prom King and Queen. We were never anything serious, but she was hot, easy, and wild as fuck. Now that she got wind of my money and fame potential, she was up my ass sideways.
    “Gold digger. Seriously though, you’re gonna have to be on the lookout for users. Girls are going to do anything they can to get with you in hopes of becoming an NFL trophy wife.”
    I took a long gulp of my beer. “I’m not the smartest, but even I can see through that plan. Never gonna happen.”
    Jon grabbed a handful of corn chips and shoved them in his mouth. How the hell was that guy still hungry? Sure, we burned a ton of calories each day in football, but Jon was always eating. Non-fucking-stop. I think he’d polished off twenty pierogies at dinner, and that was nasty no matter how good my mama made them.
    “You can still lose it all. Look at Landon,” he mumbled around half-chewed chips.
    I sat up, placing my beer on the coffee table, and rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. “You don’t think that runs through my head all the time? Jesus, man. He fucked up so big. He could be sitting here with us right now.” I slammed back the last of my beer. “But he chose a girl over football at IU with you and me. I would never be that dumb. I’d never lose my career over a chick.”
    “Bros before hoes.” Jon laughed.
    And football above all.
     
    ***
     
    I RAN MY fingers through my wet hair. Mission accomplished. I didn’t puke after my workout this morning, and that was achieved by pure luck. I felt like dog shit when I woke up, but luckily Damian did not. Coach said he did fine during his interview, which for Coach was a rave review.
    Yes, Coach had told me football first, but I had a few vices. Number one was beer with the boys. As long as he never found out, what was the harm? I survived the workout and had time to grab a shower before my nine o’clock American Studies class.
    American Studies.
    The class was total bullshit, but if I could get an A analyzing How I Met Your Mother and Survivor , then I was all in.
    I walked up the steps to Ballantine Hall