Roselyn swatted him with a pompom and danced around to reach Lawrence. "You won!" she squeaked as she kissed Lawrence.
"It was a team effort."
"No, it wasn't. It was your brilliant throw that clinched it I saw it all. You were magnificent. Kiss me."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Alan grumbled. He ambled off toward the changing room.
Lawrence and Roselyn laughed at his departing back.
"Ugh, you're filthy," she complained suddenly. Streaks of cold, wet mud from his shirt had soaked into her halter. "Go and wash."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Be quick. It's freezing out here." She rubbed her arms and gave the dome's conditioning fans a suspicious glance. The school always lowered the temperature for rugby and soccer so the players wouldn't get too hot, but this felt as if the atmosphere had circumvented the inlet grids to blow straight in.
"Are you going to the party tonight?" Nadia asked. She was leaning against Vinnie, with his arm casually possessive around her waist. But it was Lawrence who was receiving her intent stare.
"Yeah, sure," he said, very careful to keep the tone neutral. Roselyn seemed to have some kind of telepathic ability when it came to detecting his thoughts on other girls. Not that he did have thoughts on other girls, of course. Funny thing was, for years not a single girl at Hilary Eyre High had shown any interest in him whatsoever; but now he had Roselyn he'd started to get definite signals. Not just from Nadia, either.
"See you later," Roselyn said. She turned, then bounded back. "One more kiss."
He obliged.
"So is she pregnant yet?" Alan asked in the locker room.
"What? Who?" Lawrence had showered, managing to grab someone else's shampoo. Now he was toweling his hair dry beside his locker.
"Roselyn."
"No!"
"So what's all the practice for?" Alan's question trailed off into his hiccup laugh.
"God, you're such a pervert."
"God? Ah, this would be Roselyn's God you've borrowed, would it?"
"Fuck off."
"Listen." Alan's voice rose in volume so he could appeal to the rest of the locker room. "Three times I asked if he was coming out for an evening last week. Every time," his voice became all whiny, "I can't, we have to study together."
"Which bit of her were you studying?" Rob shouted.
"Yeah." Nigel laughed. "Don't you know all the working parts yet?"
"Fuck off," Lawrence yelled at them, hoping he wasn't grinning too much. It was quite a prestige thing, having a girlfriend for so long that everyone knew for sure that the relationship was solidly physical.
"They're just jealous," Vinnie said. "Freaks without chicks."
Lawrence gave him a small bow. "Thank you." He liked Vinnie Carlton. The boy had arrived on Amethi only eighteen months ago, just after Roselyn's family. But already it was as if he'd been there forever. Lawrence had started getting pally with him around the same time he was reintegrating himself with his own peers. Vinnie didn't have any family in Templeton. His father was still back on Earth wrapping up contracts for his software business before flying out to live permanently on Amethi. As Vinnie was seventeen when he disembarked the starship, he was legally able to live without any guardian supervision. He had his own apartment, and some legal firm took care of his finances and other official stuff, such as getting him a place at school. Lawrence had been incredibly jealous of that apartment at first. But they had a lot in common—shared academic classes, both in the flight club (Vinnie had actually flown an aircraft back on Earth—he claimed), got roped into the same team games, enjoyed duking it out in the i's together. They even looked similar, though Lawrence's hair was a couple of shades lighter, and Vinnie's eyes were deep brown instead of gray green. "I think you're cousins," Roselyn had said once.
Lawrence laughed at that and said: "No way." Although a couple of months after they'd been hanging out together he did ask Vinnie about his family. That was when he discovered the Carltons were the ones who'd imported Halo Stars to Amethi. Which made Vinnie a seriously good person to know—he got the upgrades before anyone else. Not that Lawrence was playing the i's anything like as much as he used to. He simply didn't have the time these days.
"Alan, we've got to find you a girl before your mind goes into meltdown from hormone overload," Vinnie said. "You're getting worse every day. You are coming tonight, aren't you?"
"Course I am, this party was my goddamn idea, remember?"
Lawrence could remember Roselyn and Nadia saying the team should all go out together after the game to either celebrate or commiserate. He chose not to mention it at that point "We should ask a few extra girls along," Richard said.
The idea of Richard even knowing a few extra girls was also something Lawrence kept quiet about. Richard had been going steady with Barbara for ages. One extra girl, and she'd kill him.
"Don't you worry about me, mate," Alan said in his most annoyingly cocky voice. "I've got a foolproof system to get laid."
"What?" Nigel snorted. It was supposed to be contemptuous, but a small note of interest had crept in.
The changing room magically quietened down as the other guys in the team just happened to overhear Alan's brag. Not that any of them needed a system, but it never hurt to know.
"Simple," Alan said, delighted by his audience. "My mate, Steve, you remember him, the bright one that went to university last year? Yeah. Well, he swears this works; he does it all the time. You go into the party and look around to find the most beautiful girl there. Then you walk straight up to her and say: will you sleep with me tonight?"
There was a moment of silence as the rugby team absorbed this news.
"Crap."
"You asshole."
"That's such a bunch of shit"
A shoe thrown by a disbeliever hit Alan's leg. He yelped and searched around for the offender. "Hey, look, I'm not kidding around here," he exclaimed. "Steve says it works. He gets laid every weekend. Seriously."
"Oh yeah," John jeered. "And the most beautiful girl in the room takes one look at a toxic midget like you and just says yes."
"Well, maybe," Alan said. "If you get really lucky."
"I think I'll stick to the traditional method of giving her too much to drink," Lawrence muttered.
The noise level rose. People started getting dressed again.
"Hey, listen," Alan protested. "This is statistics. That's solid mathematics. It can't fail."
"But you just said this mythical supermodel was likely to turn you down," Nigel complained.
"So? Doesn't matter. You find the second-most-beautiful girl, and ask her the same thing. If she says no, you just keep moving along down the beauty scale until one of them says yes."
John's expression was pitying. "Alan, none of them are going to say yes. Not to that."
"Yes, they will. They're at the party for exactly the same reason we are. It's just that they're not as honest about it as we are."