Chapter Forty-Seven: Marcus

Caleb and I haven't had much time lately to do any talking about next year's football season, girls, or school or anything else. He's been dating Leigh since football season ended, so there's that, and, of course, I've had a lot of different girls on my arm, too, all year, so we haven't had much of a chance to connect.

Thursday, Caleb and I started talking during lunch, about our needing to get together and he asked if I'd be interested in riding home with him when his dad picked him up after my game Friday night. I could spend the night at his house, and we could watch Sports Center and an NBA game if a good one was on, and we could catch up a little. That it would be too late for him and Leigh to go out and probably the same would be true with me and Tameka. I didn't want to tell him that I needed permission from my parents to come to his house, so I said no sweat, that he could count on me riding home with him and spending the night. Later, I asked my parents if it would be okay and they said sure. They live in the same neighborhood as we do—he's just six houses down, and I could walk home in the morning.

After Caleb and I went downstairs to his family's rec room, we found a good NBA game on—the Mavs at Golden State—so we settled in to watch that. The first thing Caleb asked me was how many points did I drop Friday night, and I said 24, and he asked next how many treys I drained; it seemed like five, and I said, no, it was six, and we both laughed at that .that I was so hot that he could lose count of how many I poured in. "Man," he said, "you're even better at basketball than football," that "hoops might be your best sport after all."

I told him that Joshua had been saying the same thing, and normally, I don't like to admit that my big brother is right about anything, but maybe he was spot on about the basketball thing, and what did Caleb really think—should I mostly concentrate on basketball?

Caleb said, no, no, no, that he needed me as his go-to receiver next year, and he didn't see any reason in the world why I couldn't play both sports in high school and at a university, and if I was a two-sports star, then the recruiters would be fighting among themselves to offer me scholarships. Caleb next said maybe I shouldn't go to a school like Alabama because they usually didn't have much of a basketball team; maybe I should go to somewhere like Michigan State, or Florida State would be a good fit, too. I said I wouldn't mind going to Duke to play hoops, but their football team wasn't any good, and he agreed that Duke was out because of the football team not being much.

I asked Caleb what were his workout goals, and he said he wanted to gain ten pounds of muscle in his upper body and wanted to add a little more arm strength, but he really didn't think he needed much else—except for a better offensive line for next year. We both laughed at that, and, man, we both agreed that our offensive line sucked last year, that Paul, Ian, and Richard especially needed to bulk up and start playing with more intensity, but that we didn't know if those upper classmen had it in them.

I had to ask him about Leigh, and he said she was superhot, and those long legs of hers just drove him wild, and we both laughed at that, too. I said every one of my dates all year had been with Joshua and Jordan in the car, and I was sort of not so down with that anymore, because Jordan was super controlling and Joshua was always ready to butt in on my business, but it was still better than sitting in the backseat with some girl and one of my parents or the girl's mother or father driving and dropping us off somewhere. It was about that time that I brought up the subject of maybe me and Caleb doing some double dating; his mom has a van and maybe we could work out some sort of arrangement where Tameka's parents dropped her off at my house, and then Caleb's mom picked us up after she had picked up Leigh.

Caleb said that would be awesome, and we maybe could go out to a swanky restaurant next Saturday night and show Leigh and Tameka what it's like to date future pro athletes. All of that just sounded great to me, and I said I was down with it and that my parents gave me money to go out anywhere I wanted, and it would be great not to have Joshua and Jordan watching my every move for a change.

We then got serious about watching the game, and we watched Steph Curry just absolutely demolish the Mavs in the second half, and Caleb said I had a game that was very similar to Curry's, and I agreed. I'm going to keep that two-sport thing in college in mind.