”No, it’s okay. You did the right thing calling me.” Well I still wasn’t convinced that was true but… if it were Harlow calling me because she needed a ride home after drinking too much, I would have gotten her without thinking twice about it. Hell, if any of the girls on the team felt desperate enough to call me for a ride home, I would have been there. We were a team. That’s what you did. When you played on a team with people who held grudges against each other, it was a lot harder than it needed to be.
Sigh.
“All right.” I eyed Kulti and tried to guess how much he weighed. If I could throw him over my shoulder I could probably carry him out, but that wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous. I tapped on his arm, then I tapped on his arm some more. Nothing. Next, I shook his arm. Nada. “Hey you, wake up,” I said, shaking him some more.
And still nothing.
I sighed. “Help me carry him out to the car.”
Marc didn’t even blink; he just nodded.
For a moment I thought about whether his tab was open or not, and then I decided he could figure it out in the morning when he was sober.
“Ready?”
Marc and I dragged my coach across the seat and got him to the end of the bench. Squatting down, I peeled the arm that was plastered to the table and lifted the heavy weight to put it over my shoulders. Over the top of Kulti’s head, I watched Marc do the same thing.
How did I always let myself get dragged into this crap?
“Ready?”
At the count of three, we stood up. Well, Marc and I stood up, and Jesus Christ. I was used to people jumping on top of me, but it was never deadweight. It was also never someone almost a foot taller leaning up against me.
I huffed and I heard Marc make a light grunting sound. He was used to lugging around bags of soil, grass seed and mulch, so that said something. Somehow we managed to circle around and slowly make our way toward the door. I ignored the patrons that were watching us, interested and disapproving at the same time. Whatever. Keeping my eyes forward, I focused on making sure to take as much of Kulti’s weight as I could to save Marc the hassle. My rear passenger door was unlocked and we slowly finagled the big man into the seat, letting him slump over onto his side.
Good enough.
I rubbed at my eyebrow with the back of my hand, closing the door with my hip at the same time. “I tried to call Coach Gardner, but he hasn’t answered, so I’m not sure whether to take him back to my place or take him to a hotel, I guess.”
He gave me this look that said ‘good point.’ “Are you going to stay with him?”
Stay with him? I glanced in the backseat and shrugged. “I don’t know. You think I should?”
Marc lifted his shoulders too, looking into the car as well. “If it was you I was picking up, I’d say yes because it’s you. If it was Simon, I’d pretend I dropped the call because he’s a grown man that shouldn’t have gotten messed up.”
I understood his point. He’d heard me tell him day after day that I hadn’t spoken much with my coach. “I’ll figure it out, I guess.”
“You need any help?”
He didn’t go out often, and I realized he’d already gone above and beyond by calling me. I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I can get him in somewhere.”
“Call me if you need me though, okay?” he asked.
I reached forward and pulled at his shirt cuff. “I will. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He grinned, taking a step back. “See you.”
“Goodnight,” I called after him before getting in my car and watching him go back inside the bar.
A single rough snore from the backseat reminded me of the treasure I had there. What in the hell was I going to do with him? Take him home?
It didn’t even take me five seconds to decide that was a shitty idea.
I didn’t know him. He wasn’t my friend. How weird would that be for him to wake up on my sofa in an apartment of a player he’d spoken to once?
One quick search on my phone later and the input of my credit card information, and I was driving down the dark dead streets toward the closest hotel. It took five minutes to get to the chain hotel, another fifteen minutes to check in because my discount reservation hadn’t gone through yet, and then I was back at the car, eyeing what had to be close to two hundred pounds sprawled out on my backseat.
Thank God for squats and deadlifts.
It took a whole bunch of huffing and puffing, breaking out into a sweat, slapping at his cheek in hopes of reviving him futilely, and dropping the F-word every five seconds before I had his arm over my shoulders, my arm around his waist, and a barely conscious man trudging along besides me.