Moore and I dragged Jax Echlin along the far side of the bar, but he collapsed onto the floor after only a few steps.
Wasn’t that just how these things always work?
We scooped our team captain off the floor and continued past the bar and into a dining room type of area beyond the bar section. Bystanders watched us march through from their tables like they’d never before been subjected to such a scene. I didn’t give a shit what they thought. I didn’t give a shit about much of anything else, truth be told. All I gave a shit about was escaping the Colter Bay Grill with no cuffs clamped onto my wrists.
I found two glass doors in the restaurant’s back corner. When I pushed down the metal bar, it refused to budge.
“Son of a bitch!” I said.
Wasn’t that just my luck in this situation?
I couldn’t give up, though. I threw my body up against the second door, expecting it to be as much of a bastard as the first, but I got it wrong. The door flew open, and I landed on the concrete, which seemed just lovely after the time spent getting acquainted with the barroom tile.
Worse, the still half-conscious Jax Echlin landed on top of me, knocking my wind out.
Good thing Moore pulled him off me, so I could regain my feet quickly enough, but we took another spill over some tables and chairs in the patio area outside. Jax Echlin wound up on the ground yet again. We scooped him up once more before running again but met an iron fence after only a few steps.
Thank God this was only a small fence, probably meant to separate patio diners from sidewalk traffic. I hurdled it with no trouble. Jax, on the other hand, presented plenty of trouble. Moore scooped him up and I helped haul him over the fence. Then Moore hopped over, and we raced up Delaware Avenue to my car.
Not that we were out of the woods or anything. Hell, no. The cops would’ve met us at the other side of the restaurant had they really wanted to. Or more of Buffalo’s finest might’ve arrived on the scene. No surprise given the nature of the situation.
When we crossed the street, we narrowly avoided being struck by not one but two oncoming cars. At that moment, I found the silver lining in having a car flatten us. Don’t laugh. I didn’t exactly feel like a million bucks after that incident. You face the humiliation we did and see if you wouldn’t rather have a Chevrolet logo stamped on your chest than live with it.
Anyway, we scrambled up the opposite sidewalk until we reached my car. We poured ourselves inside, and I fired up the engine right away. I didn’t hang a right onto Allen Street, though. The cops would see us for sure—and you know how that would go. They might’ve caught us anyway. I didn’t know. I’dnever run from the cops before. I’d never taken a motherfucker of a punch like that either.
Anyway, I pulled a ginormous U-turn, dodging an oncoming car, and floored the gas pedal as my car rocketed toward North Street.
“What the fuck happened in there?” Jax Echlin sounded his most coherent yet but still slurred his words a little.
“We got our asses kicked,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jax. Just chill out, okay? I’ve got to get us out of here first and then we’ll talk.”
Our team captain fell silent, thank God. Any more of that and I would’ve had to explain thathe’dgotten his ass kicked, not me. Yeah, I’d taken a motherfucker of a fist, and almost certainly broken my nose, but I hadn’t needed to be carried out of the bar, for Christ’s sake.
A sharp turn through a roundabout at the end of Porter Avenue threw Jax and Moore against the door because none of us had taken the time to buckle up. Soon, I merged onto the Interstate 1-90, bound for Buffalo’s Westside.
When I glanced into the rearview mirror, I saw my nose had swollen like crazy. Jax still sounded like a zombie, and Moore’s shirt had nearly been torn right off. This had been a rivalry before, but the Colter Bay Grill incident escalated our animosity to the next level.
This meant war.
4
JAKOB
“Ican’t tell you how embarrassed and ashamed I feel of each and every one of you right now.”
Coach Hardison stood at the front of the team room, arms practically glued to his sides, eyes darting at us. He paused after that sentence, letting us drink up the silence, as if for emphasis. I would’ve felt nervous as hell any other time, biting my fingernails even, but couldn’t now. Not with a swollen hand to nurse. The others were also a little worse for wear after that scuffle, but they seemed to wear it as a badge of honor.
“Do any of you have the slightest idea how serious what you did really is?”
Another round of silence came, challenged only by the buzzing of the fluorescent lights above us.
“You know, I would’ve had this talk with all of you yesterday, before the game even began, but I didn’t even know there was an altercation until about an hour before faceoff. Maybe I should’ve known, though. The antics between you two teams seem to get stupider and stupider every year.”
He peered down at my red, swollen right hand as if it presented a smoking gun. I tucked my hand away like I could hide it from him at this point.
