Page 31 of Necessary Roughness

Sloane

I thought about my night with Logan all morning until the football game started at noon. Flushed with endorphins, I couldn’t have been in a better mood.

“The night before the game?” Bryson said after I told the twins about what had happened. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Who cares if it’s a good idea?” Jayden cut in. “Fuck whoever you want, whenever you want. That’s what college is for.”

“Easy for the queer nymphomaniac to say,” Bryson muttered.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I argued. “Logan was the one to suggest it to me. Besides, he said he couldn’t sleep. Coming over to my place helped take his mind off the game.”

“Taking his mind off the game is what I’m afraid of,” Bryson replied. “Gulf College has a new defensive end who has been destroying wide receivers this year. If Logan is distracted, it could get ugly.”

I turned my gaze down to the field, where the teams were lining up to start the game. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Bryson said. “You were only thinking about the fun you two were having.”

“UGH, can you stop being such a buzzkill?” Jayden said. “I don’t understand how the two of us can be so different even though we have identical genes.”

“You’re fraternal twins,” I pointed out. “Not identical.”

Jayden rolled his eyes dramatically. “I’m majoring in theater, not genetics. You can’t expect me to know everything .”

There was a rising roar from the crowd, swirling and filling the packed stadium, cresting at the moment of the kickoff. Our team got the ball first, and I grinned widely as Knox and Logan jogged out onto the field with the rest of the offense.

The first play was a pass to Logan. But just as the ball hit him in the chest, the star defender for Gulf College slammed into Logan like a semi-truck, knocking him onto his ass. The defender stood over Logan, staring down at him, before jogging back to the line.

Logan was slow to get up. Bryson glanced in my direction, but I ignored him.

They ran the ball on the next two plays, getting a first down.

Then Knox dropped back to throw the ball, once again targeting Logan.

This time, the tall wide receiver juked the defender and then leaped into the air, catching the ball one-handed.

He landed, spun to his left, avoiding the grasping arms of two more defenders.

“GO!” I screamed, my voice drowned out among the rest of the shouting student section. “GO LOGAN GO!”

The wide receiver easily sidestepped the final defender, gliding into the end zone like it was no big deal. He didn’t even celebrate; he just calmly placed the ball on the ground and jogged over to his teammates, who showered him with smacks on the helmet.

I glanced over at Bryson and raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t believe it!” Jayden said, hugging me and jumping up and down. “My friend has a magic vagina! MAGIC VAGINAAAAA!”

Several people turned to look at us, but I had long since stopped being embarrassed by anything Jayden said in public.

That touchdown pass set the tone for the rest of the game. Logan was able to neutralize Gulf College’s star defensive end, which made their entire defense collapse and opened up the running game. It was already a blowout at halftime, but the final score was an embarrassing 38 - 3.

“Glad our defense was able to shut them down,” Bryson said as we left the stadium. “Especially since Langford played like shit.”

“Langford? Roman Langford?” I asked, recognizing the name.

“Never seen him play so poorly,” Bryson said. “It was like having a big hole on the left side of our line. Good thing it didn’t matter since the rest of the defenders stepped up.”

I wondered about that, remembering the last time I had seen him when I was at their place.

“Logan, for sure ,” one sorority girl ahead of us was saying.

“You act like it’s an easy choice!” her friend replied.

“It is an easy choice! Logan’s taller than Knox. We would have tall, blonde babies. Five of them.”

“Knox is getting drafted in the first round,” the other girl argued. “Logan might not even play in the NFL.”

“You act like it’s an investment.”

“Isn’t it? If I’m going to be a stay at home mom, I’d rather do it with a millionaire rather than some guy making fifty grand a year!”

The two of them giggled together. Jayden nudged me and grinned.

I smiled back at him. If only they knew.

It was fun having a sexy little secret.

The guys invited me to a party at a sorority house that night. There was a line at the door to get in, with an annoyed-looking sorority girl sitting on a stool by the door checking IDs before letting people in.

“Here,” I said when I reached the front of the line.

She didn’t even glance at my driver’s license. “Party’s full.”

“What? No it’s not. You just let those guys in.”

“It’s too full for you ,” she replied. “We need more guys. You’re skewing the ratio.” She looked beyond me. “Next?”

“You don’t understand,” I argued. “I was invited by—”

“She’s with me,” came a deep, familiar voice. Roman emerged from a shadow on the front porch, a vape pen twirling between his fingers. “Come on in.”

The woman on the stool glared at me, but didn’t protest.

“Thanks,” I said while Roman led me inside the party, “but I was about to tell her that I was invited by Knox and Logan.”

“Good thing you didn’t,” Roman said over his shoulder. “Every girl here is trying to hook up with them. If they got a whiff of your deal with them, you’d be banned from every Greek party for the rest of the year.”

“I wasn’t going to tell them about our deal ,” I whispered back. “I was just going to say they invited me.”

“Don’t care,” he replied with no small amount of annoyance. “They’re back there. You’re welcome.”

He shouldered past me to return to the porch. I wanted to say something biting, but I was grateful for his help. He was probably just in a bad mood because he’d had a bad game today.

“SLOANE!” Logan shouted from the next room. “In here. We’re playing flip-cup and need another partner.”

I joined them in the living room, where a table had been erected surrounded by students with red solo cups full of beer.

I drew long looks from the men—most of whom seemed to be teammates of Logan and Knox—and even longer looks from the sorority girls who wondered why I had drawn such an enthusiastic greeting from Logan.

“Hope you brought your A-game,” Knox told me as I found a spot between them. “We’re getting our asses kicked.”

“I’m thirsty all right,” I said, letting my thigh rub up against Logan.

He made a soft noise that reminded me of our activities last night.

The game of flip cup involved chugging a beer, placing it on the edge of a table, and then hitting up from below to make it flip over and land upside-down.

It was a fast-paced game, and succeeded in getting me nice and tipsy.

Throughout the half-dozen games we played, sorority girls were constantly flirting with the football players around the table—especially Logan and Knox.

Both of them rejected the advances, or politely pretended not to notice why so many girls were leaning their breasts against their arms and asking them how to play.

After a while it started to annoy me, especially when the teams switched and I stepped aside to let some other people play, but obviously I couldn’t snap at the women in public without revealing too much.

Instead, I texted the guys between games even though we were only a few feet apart.

Me: There are a lot of skanks here for you to stick your dicks into.

Knox: Is that jealousy I detect? From Sloane Collins? It can’t be.

Me: No jealousy here. It’s just wild seeing women throw themselves at you every few minutes.

Logan: Don’t worry, the only skank I want to stick my dick into is you!

Me: Hey!

Knox: LOL

Logan: I meant that in the best possible way. You’re obviously not a skank.

Me: Arguable, since I’m getting fucked by two football players on the regular.

Knox: Not regular enough. I’m still mad your mom ruined our Thursday night.

Me: Same. That’s why I’m sitting out a few games: to make sure I’m sober enough for tonight.

Knox: Mmm. We going back to our place, or upstairs?

Me: Not here. I don’t want to worry about someone barging in on us. I’d rather have 100% of my focus on pleasing the two of you.

Logan: Well now my cock is harder than this table.

Knox: We can leave right after we finish this game.

Logan: Sorry for calling you a skank. I can come up with some other names if you’d prefer.

Me: Ohhh, something sexy like paramour?

Logan: I was thinking cock-sheath. Or dick-holster.

Me: lol that’s not as romantic as I expected.

Logan: Penis Storage Facility?

Me: Hmm, I like the sound of that. PSF for short. Feels like that creative writing class is paying off. You could be a writer.

Logan: If this whole football thing doesn’t pan out!

A new text message popped up on my phone, notifying me of a new alert on my student file. Normally I would have ignored it until tomorrow, but a growing sense of dread filled me. This wasn’t normal.

“Let me borrow that,” I said, snatching Logan’s phone from his hand and walking away until I found a somewhat-quiet spot in the laundry room.

I never heard the guys approach until Logan said, “Oh, so now you want a smart phone. I agreed to let you use my body as much as you want, but I didn’t think that deal extended to technology, too.”

“You okay?” Knox asked.

“I just received an alert in the student portal,” I said in disbelief. “Morgan, my roommate, has filed a formal complaint against me. She wants to take me to mediation next week!”

“For what?” Knox asked.

“Apparently she feels unsafe because of a visitor I had over recently.”

“What the fuck!” Logan said. “She was asleep when I came over last night, and I left before she woke up.”

Knox rounded on his friend. “You hooked up with Sloane last night?”

Logan ran a hand through his hair and grimaced. “I couldn’t sleep. Are you mad?”

“Kind of,” Knox said, although a half-smile spread across his lips. “I would’ve joined you.”

“On Thursday you were firm about not breaking curfew,” I pointed out.

“And I spent all of Thursday night and all day Friday wishing I had bent my rule a little,” Knox said. “We’re off-topic. Your roommate is taking you to mediation? What does that mean?”

“The mediator will assess her complaint,” I read from Logan’s phone. “And then further mediation or punishment will be prescribed? What the hell?”

Logan took his phone back from me, reading the page. “Oh damn. I fucked you so good you might get kicked out of school.”

“I won’t get expelled,” I said. “But I could be put on academic probation, or forced to move out.”

“Getting away from that psycho would be a win in my book,” Logan said.

“Except all the senior apartments are full. I’d probably be sent to one of the freshman dorms.” I shivered. Sharing a bathroom was bad, but sharing a bedroom was so much worse. Especially since I had a pressing need for privacy.

“I’ll worry about this tomorrow,” I said with a sigh. “How about you take me back to your place and take my mind off things?”

“Done,” Logan said, gulping down the rest of his beer and placing his red solo cup on top of the washer. “Let’s get out of here.”

But Knox was staring down at me with a curious expression on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“If this sounds crazy, then blame it on the beer,” Knox said slowly. “But why don’t you move in with us?”