Page 3 of Rent a Bad Boy

Somebody attached a video taken from the stands at some point this season. There’s a guy in a green and gold jersey absolutely leveling another player so hard, the entire section gasps in unison.

He is one scary motherfucker, and I respect it, someone writes under the video, followed by no fewer than four skull emojis.

I play the clip again. Then again, after that.

There’s something almost hypnotic about it. Not the violence, exactly. I’m not the kind of person who likes watching people get hurt. The first time I ever watched one of those funniest video shows, I burst out crying when somebody took a bad fall. The audience was laughing, and I was weeping.

It’s not the violence that keeps me watching. It’s the guy inflicting it. He’s just... calm. He doesn’t celebrate or anything. He just gets up, looks at the guy he flattened, then walks back to his side of the field like nothing happened. Meanwhile, the dude is still on his back, lights out.

One scary motherfucker.

What if I could hire somebody like him?

Not to hurt anyone, obviously. God, no. Just to exist near the HOA board in a way that suggests he might. A guy with the kind of vibe that would make Christine from the board decide she has better things to worry about than a bunch of chickens.

It’s a ridiculous idea. I’m completely aware of that. I don’t know this person. I don’t know if he’s even a real option for the kind of thing I’m apparently considering, which is, to be clear, not actually a real category of service that exists—at least, as far as I know.

It doesn’t stop me from searching his name. Everett Stone. Linebacker, number 52. Junior. There’s a photo of him with his helmet off. He’s dead-eyed and unsmiling. He’s also kind of handsome in a scary, dangerous sort of way. His eyes look almost black. Heavy brows. A head full of unruly black hair that matches the stubble on his cheeks and jaw. Do I stare at it longer than necessary? Maybe.

What does a person wear to a football game? I genuinely have no idea, but I’m going to have to find out, because Cardinal Oaks is threatening my babies. Grandma’s joke about hiring muscle won’t stop rattling around in my skull, and there happens to be a guy named Everett Stone who breaks jaws like it’s nothing.

I need to see him in action for myself.

So tonight, for the first time in my entire college career, I’m going to a football game.

Those chickens had better know how much I love them.

2

EVERETT

There’s a sound a guy makes when he’s hit just right. It’s not a yell, exactly. It’s lower than that. Something that comes out of his chest before his brain even figures out what happened.

I’ve heard it nine times tonight. Every single time, something in me settled. Just a little. Just enough that I noticed it.

It’s been a hell of a long two weeks, let’s just put it that way. I’ve needed this.

Number 14 made that sound in the third quarter when I put him on his back so hard his helmet bounced. The ref threw a flag and pretty much lost his mind, but I gave zero shits. I wasn’t even sure what the flag was for. Unnecessary roughness, probably, except I hit him exactly where I meant to, square in the chest. Totally legal. It’s not my fault he crumbled like a house of cards.

The flag didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was that for one entire second, my head was completely empty.

That’s the only time it’s ever quiet in there. When I’m hitting somebody.

The suspension taught me that the hard way. Two games I spent sitting in the stands in street clothes, watching guys who weren’t half as good as me jog onto a field I should’ve been standing on, all because I broke Jake Maxwell’s jaw after he made a smartass comment in the parking lot post-game. I’m not going to pretend I feel bad about it. He’s an asshole who got what was coming to him.

That doesn’t mean I liked missing two weeks of the only thing that keeps me from caving in on myself.

People like to ask me why I hit so hard. Coaches, mostly, in that tone they use when they’re trying to sound concerned instead of annoyed. Like there’s some simple answer they can write down on a clipboard. There isn’t. I grew up in a house where the only thing predictable was how fast things could go bad. Somewhere along the way, I figured out that hitting something—a heavy bag, a guy across the line of scrimmage, a guy in a parking lot who thinks he can talk to me however he wants—is the only thing that ever actually makes the noise in my head go quiet. Football gives me a legal version of that.

Then there are the less-than-legal ways I deal with my anger issues.

Tonight has made up for those two missed games. Four sacks, two forced fumbles. One hit so clean the whole student section actually went quiet for a second before they lost their minds. We’re winning 31 to 10, and I’ve spent the whole fourth quarter low-key disappointed there isn’t more time on the clock. More guys to hit.

The final whistle blows. Just like that, it’s over, and my head starts filling back up with all the shit it usually carries around. Coach’s voice in my ear about cleaning up my temper. My dad’s voice, the one I haven’t actually heard in three years but somehow still rents space in my skull, telling me I’m going to end up exactly like him if I don’t watch it. The reminder that one more suspension and my scholarship, aka the only thing standing between me and a future of absolutely nothing, goes away for good.

It’s all back, fighting for attention, but I don’t get to think about any of it for long. Not once the field floods.

They always do this after a blowout win. Fans pour out of the stands the second the clock hits zero and the whistle blows. They swarm us, slapping backs, screaming my number like it means something. A guy I don’t know throws both arms around my neck and yells something about how I’m a legend. I unwind his arms and give him a much gentler shove than instinct tells me to. My body’s still running hot, my blood’s still up, and there’s nowhere left to put any of it.