Once a Nerd Ch. 11 - Sex Stories

Once a Nerd Ch. 11

... halfheartedly tuned into. My reappearance doesn't go unnoticed, and it takes fifteen minutes to extricate myself from the inquisition.

I answer with God's honest truth: "Scoring a date."

Sam, however, is very,very unhappy about the group outing I've forced on him, and to get through it, he orders a whiskey neat as soon as his ass hits the chair. The air about him is that of a soaked, pissed-off cat forced into a tub. From the few trips we took over the summer, I know he likes sushi and Japanese cuisine in general, so I've brought us to an intimate sushi-ya downtown with the square footage of a crackerjack box. If either Casey or I stood up too suddenly, there's a risk of our heads punching a hole out of the ceiling tile. Now, the million dollar question:

Is it literally the most awkward meal had since the fucking Last Supper?

If I'm at the table, someone's talking aboutsomething. At first, it's Casey and I sticking to the safest, easiest topic—the game, or football in general. He's...different than he was before, more guarded against me. I realize it's because he already knows about Sam and I, somehow, and that suits me just fine. It's easier to build a house on a foundation already laid. I'm sat across from him, John to his left. Sam's on my right, sulking into the rim of his drink. But, the more he drinks, the more he loosens up. When he finally laughs, an invisible weight lifts from the table. Soon, conversation flows through a wide array of topics as ...

... naturally as snow capping a mountain eventually melts and trickles into the sea.

Sam's more outgoing than he realizes, as he turns John into a regular Chatty Cathy. They find the intersection of their respective majors, and currently, Sam's lamenting something called 'the Violinist in the Metro': "It'sheartbreaking, isn't it? You can't blame the passerbyers as much as you'd blame—"

"—the framework of society." John picks up the sentence, shaking his head. "It says less about beauty's ability to transcend banality, more about this...mechanism we've developed to tune out anything that's unproductive. In a place like that,everyone's got somewhere to be, something to do, and it's been browbeaten into us that—"

"—you can't just stop and smell the roses!" Sam finishes, popping a salmon roll in his mouth. Then, simultaneously down to the syllable, they sigh:

"Capitalism."

Meanwhile, Casey's regaling me with the story of how he tore his meniscus in the middle of a game against Stanford. He described it as an uncomfortable pop, but no immediate pain. It was misdiagnosed as a bone bruise, and he actually finished out the rest of the season with some wildly impressive numbers:ninety tackles, six pass deflections, and three interceptions.

"Shit, I bet your draft stock was high, man."

Casey wobbles his hand through the air in a 'so-so' gesture. "It was alright, but that was somethin' like...a reality check. I love playing the game, but I didn't have that mentality where it's ...