Love and Loss

40. Good Pu$$y

5:56 pm
Los Angeles, CA
Cameron

"Come on! Think smart!" I yelled from the sidelines of the court, as the team scrimmaged during practice.

We had been back home a couple days now, so I decided to come to practice with Aiden today. I might've been out for the next two months but I was still going to be apart of this team no matter if I'm on or off the court.

"Let's go baby!" I cheered as Aiden scored a three pointer, right before the buzzer went out. He ran by where I was sitting on the side of the court, and started doing the griddy. "Hell nah, nigga. You a fool!" I laughed.

"More like goat." He grinned.

"That ego too high, my boy." I shook my head at him with a chuckle.

"Price! Go cooldown!" We both whipped our heads towards coach who was staring at us from across the court. "Mitchell! My office!"

Aiden looked over to me, sucking air through his teeth. "Good luck, man." He hit my shoulder before running over to where the rest of the team was doing cool down.

I took in a deep breath, before using my crutches to pull me from my seat. Once I was up, I slowly hopped my way over to his office, his door already left open for me.

My coach didn't know much about what happened besides what the blogs were saying, which wasn't really good. I knew when I came to practice I was going to have to have this talk with him, I just still wasn't prepared. Coach was a hard ass. He had his own list of personal rules he wanted us to follow and if we didn't he had a punishment already set up for us. Fuck, what the NBA got to say about it. He was gone handle it every time.

And let's just say, I broke a couple of those rules that night.

"Sit down." He told me as soon as I walked through his door. Doing as told, I took a seat on the other side of his desk as he closed the door to his office behind me.

As I leaned my crutches up against the chair next to me, he took a seat behind his desk, scrolling through his phone.

"Let me tell you a story," he started, only glancing at me for a moment. "It's a Saturday night, it's game day. We're gearing up to play against the Atlanta Hawks, in their home arena. Nerves are high, tension is thick on the court. There's twenty seconds left on the clock, the ball is in Murray's hand, and we need a miraculous save to win the game." He stops fiddling with his phone, and looks up at me. "You know what happens next?"

"I stole the ball from Murray?" I questioned.

"You stole the ball from Murray!" He clapped his hands together. "In seconds you ran the ball down the court, passed it to Aiden who scored a three, putting us in the lead just as the clock hit zero! It was a great game. You showed your ass out there. Price too. I left that game prepared to have a good ass night. I was high off pride for that win, my wife had just flown in and was waiting for me at the hotel. We had a couple drinks, music was playing, the vibes were just right." He closed his eyes with a smile almost as if he was there in this moment. I scrunched my face up in disgust, I was not tryna hear that shit.

"And then all of a sudden my phone buzzes. I was just going to ignore it, until it blew up again. And again. And again. And again. I mean you would think someone had died the way my phone was blowin up." He chuckled. "So I grab it and imagine my surprise when I open it and the first thing I see is this."

He held his phone up to me, a screenshot of an article from Sports Illustrated with the headline reading: NBA Lakers Point Guard Cameron Wright Allegedly Shot in Drunken Night Club Brawl in Atlanta.