A Destined Fling

chapter five

"Martin! Get your head in the damn game!" Coach Hill yelled at him when he missed another 3 pointer. It was an early morning on Wednesday and Rashir was irritated. He wasn't doing as well as usual on the court and Coach yelling at him wasn't fucking helping.

"Fucking chill old man," He said out loud, not meaning to. He saw the coach's nose flare with anger before Nico crowded his vision.

"We'll be back inna minute Coach, he just needs a water break." Nico gave the coach a sheepish smile, trying to save his best friend's ass. He grabbed a fistful of Rashir's jersey and dragged him out of the gym. When they got to the locker room he let go of Rashir and pushed him onto one of the benches. "What the hell is wrong witchu?" He looked at him with concern. Rashir rarely had off days, he was always focused.

"Nothing bruh, can we just go back out there? I'm good now," He sighed when he saw Mateo come in, wiping his forehead with sweat.

""No we cannot, why the fuck is you cussing out coach? You know that man don't play." Nico shook his head at him and leaned against one of the lockers. "Whatever yo problem is, you need to fucking fix it 'cause you messing wit' the whole team." Rashir pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a groan.

"There is nothing wrong wit' me, so leave me the fuck alone." He cussed at them. Nico and Mateo didn't know that his dad had called him last night and it had been fucking with his head since. He was constantly being pressured into being one of the best and it got to him sometimes. He knew he had to do right by his family and make it to the NBA, he had scouts coming to his games all the time and they expressed their interest in him constantly. But sometimes, he just wanted to be a normal person. Having that type of spotlight on you got annoying at times. ESPN forever had his name in their mouths and he was always being posted on different shade rooms. Sometimes, he wished the world would just forget that he existed.

"Alright bro, but practice is almost over, y'all wanna come with me to the mall? I gotta exchange some stuff." Mateo looked at the both of them after watching their exchange. Mateo tended to diffuse situations between Nico and Rashir since both of them were hotheads and their arguments got heated.

"Yeah, I'll come," Nico replied and Rashir just nodded his head. Nico and Mateo went back out to the court but Rashir told them he would catch up with them in a second. He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket to check if Lourdes had followed him back on IG. Last night he decided he was tired of not knowing what to do around this girl and he went back to being bold. He went through Nico's following list and found his girlfriend who he knew was named Nala. After he found her, he scrolled through some of her pictures and found a picture with Lourdes, Gianna, and another girl whose name he didn't know of. He clicked on Lourdes's page and was annoyed when he saw it was private. When he requested to follow her, he figured she would accept it within the hour but it was the next day and he was still in her requests.

He shook his head and chucked, this girl was really going to give him a hard time. He put his phone back into his jacket and opened the door to go back to the gymnasium. He went up to his coach who was currently yelling at some freshman for losing the ball and cleared his throat, trying to apologize. "Hey, coach, my bad about earlier I wasn't in the right headspace." He apologized and waited for his coach's response. Coach Hill was a pretty tough man who had been coaching at UMD for over 25 years. The man was intimidating as hell, and never seemed to smile, Rashir noticed. When he first tried out for the team he thought it would be easy, but Coach Hill made him go through every single trial that there was. Coach never gave him any type of special treatment and treated the entire team equally, no matter their skill set.