My stupid dad is late for picking me up from practice again.
It’s dumb. I’m 18, and I should know how to drive, but I don’t. Normally, I’d just hitch a ride with one of my friends, but I waited too long and I don’t have a way to call them or any quarters to use the payphone. It’s Oregon, so normally I can handle a little rain, but it’s so nasty out that I’m not sure I can make the five mile trek home in this weather. The last couple of times, my dad forgot he was picking me up in the first place. I’m just waiting under the track field’s overpass, waiting to see if he’ll remember this time.
It’s, if I had to guess, 6:30. It’s going to be pitch black soon, no sign of my dad.
I get to my feet and stick my paws in my coat. I start kicking the brick wall in boredom. In the distance, the lights of the stadium are still on, illuminating all of the rain. Maybe if the guy who turns off the lights for the night comes by, I can ask to use his phone. Or maybe there’s one in the snack shack. I go to see if the door budges, but it doesn’t move. I kick it once then again, but there’s nothing.
“Hey,” a low voice barks. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I turn around, ready to bolt into the rain. I don’t when I see that Greg is standing there.
“Naaahhh,” he smiles. “I’m just kidding.”
Greg – or more properly Assistant Coach Gregory – has been with the Midlands High track and field team since he was the star of it seven years ago. All of the guys like him because he’s not afraid to swear in front of us or comment on whose girlfriends are better than them, unlike Coach Hawkins who is decidedly no nonsense. It does make you wonder why Greg has never been promoted to coach himself.
It’s always been a point of interest to me that he tries so hard at – and succeeds at – fitting in with the rest of us. He’s only 25, but if you weren’t looking, you could confuse him for another senior. In fact, Coach Hawkins has yelled at him multiple times for being on his phone, then sheepishly apologized when he realized he wasn’t a student. He was dating a girl at the local community college last year – I don’t know if that’s still true. On another day my dad abandoned me here, I saw him vaping in his car in the parking lot. I look at Greg with his nose ring and his big coat and his vape and even though he’s the assistant coach, he feels like my friend.
Like… something more.
It’s just a stupid high school crush. Nothing that something more would ever come out of, lest the rest of the guys razz him for the rest of the season, but something I wish for a lot.
“Hi, Assistant Coach Gregory,” I say.
“Hi, Bench Warmer LJ,” he responds. “Seriously though, what are you doing? It’s like seven?”
“I’m trying to find a phone. What are you doing?”
“Vaping? I can’t vape?”
“We can’t vape. You can vape.”
“Oh, please. Vaping is the least of what you guys are doing.”
“Can I borrow your phone?”
“OK. Don’t look through it. That’s where I keep my nudey pics.”
I definitely flush at that, and he can definitely see it because of the bright stadium lighting. I know we banter, but he’s never said anything like that before. What does he know? Did he stay after just for me?
I take his phone from his paw and turn around so he can’t see me blush.
“Hey! No snooping!”
“I promise I wasn’t. I’m just calling my stupid dad.”
“Okaaaay.”
I dial his number and hold it up to my ear. Behind me, a plume of cherry vape smoke fills the underpass. It rings a dozen times then goes to voicemail. I don’t even bother leaving one.
“Yo,” Greg says. “What’s up?”
“My dad is MIA.”
“Fuck off. You need a ride home?”
“Oh…” I put my paw on my muzzle. “Umm… um, no.”
“Are you just gonna sit here in the rain?”
“The reservation’s all the way across town.”
“Yeah, bro, I know. I’ll drive you.”
“It’s no bother?”
“I mean, it’s a bother, but you’re on the team, so.” He actually rolls his eyes at me, but he’s grinning while he does it. “Plus, I need someone to warm the passenger seat of my car.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Sure. Come with me.”
I follow him out to the empty parking lot. The air is so misty I can barely make out 20 feet in front of me. Greg doesn’t seem bothered at all by the rain. We end up at his old truck and he climbs into the front. I don’t realize what I’m supposed to do until he knocks on the glass and makes a face at me, then I climb in.
His car smells like a toxic cherry and the passenger’s seat is covered in big gulp cups. He shovels them to the floor as I sit down. I don’t realize just how cold I am until the heat comes on and my paws aren’t shaking anymore.
“Jeez,” he says, reaching over the cupholder and holding my paw for a second. “You were so cold.”
I’m so caught off guard by him grabbing my paw that I have no response.
“You wanna just sit here and warm up for a second?”
“Yeah. That would be nice.”
“Bet.”
We watch the rain buffet the windshield, and with the heat fogging the bottom up, we can barely see outside. No one would be able to see in here, that’s for sure. And then, I think, it starts hailing, because the soft hum of the rain turns into hard clanking.
Greg opens the door and looks outside. “Shit. That’s crazy. You were just going to sit there?”
“And wait for my dad.”
“Is he here?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.” He bites his lip. “Dads are assholes, alright? They let you down again and again and again and they tell you they’re going to be there for you only to do it all over again.”
“Buzzkill,” I respond.
“I might be a buzzkill, but at least I got played in high school. Daaaaamn.”
We both laugh. This is what I’ve wanted for so long, not to be watching Greg from the sidelines (literally), to get 30 seconds to banter with him after practice before he leaves, but to sit with him. To be his passenger.
“Yeah, sorry about the mess, by the way. I haven’t had anyone sitting there in a while.”
I know what I want to respond, but I’m unsure if it’s appropriate. It’s the easy kind of question I wouldn’t bat an eye at asking one of my friends, but he’s the assistant coach, not my friend. Given what he’s been saying to me, though… maybe I can ask it.
“You broke up with your girlfriend, right?”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”
I back off. “Sorry.”
“No no, wait. Are you and your buddies talking about me?”
“Um… yeah, kind of.”
“Who told you we broke up?”
“I kind of just observed it.”
“Oh, it’s you.”
“I just saw that she’d be in your car sometimes or be with you sometimes and then she wasn’t anymore.”
“That’s crazy.” He looks forward and chuckles. “Bench Warmer’s watching me, huh?”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
He unbuckles his seatbelt and shifts to me, literally turns his whole body to me in the seat. He’s looking right at me, smiling. “So. How’s your girlfriend, huh?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I was talking about your paws.”
“Oh, fuck off!”
He guffaws. “Nah, I’m just kidding. See, I know you don’t have a girlfriend either.”
“Yeah, but I’m one of the only guys who doesn’t have a girlfriend so you, like, know.”
“Just two guys with no girlfriends, sitting in a car in the rain.”
That comment makes my heart start racing. I feel like everything before – the touching, the nudey pics, the paw comments – everything before could just be banter.
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” I retort, the same comment he made before.
He grins. “Nothin’, nothin’.”
Then he puts his paw to his crotch. He’s not groping himself, necessarily, but it seems like such a deliberate motion, like he’s trying to direct my gaze down there. I, of course, look, and his grin only grows wider.
“You feeling nice and warm?”
“I could be warmer.” That’s a lie. It’s hot in this car and we’re both in our jackets. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” It’s quiet for a moment, just the patter of hail against the roof. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinking?”
“What are you thinking?”
And then he does it. He slowly unzips the zipper of his jeans, giving me enough time to punch him and run if I was going to. I don’t. He grabs his cock through the fly and wriggles it out. The thing is huge and pink and it points straight up.
“Fuck,” slips out of my mouth.
He grins. “How ‘bout it, Bench Warmer?”
