“Hey Georgie, I got something you can help me out with,” Ty Lawson said.
Georgios Papagiannis looked down at his much smaller teammate and smiled naively. “Yes, I help you. What is it?”
Ty Lawson took out a wad of crumpled twenty-dollar bills from his pocket and held them out to the rookie. “I need you to go to Sactown Liquor over on J Street and get your pal Ty some bottles of whiskey.”
Georgios scowled and didn’t take the offered money. “You shouldn’t drink before game. That’s not right.”
“Come on man,” Ty whined, shoving the money into the Greek’s chest. “I just need a little something to get me going. That’s all. It’s not a big deal.”
“I can’t even buy alcohol. In America I am too young for it,” Georgios added.
Ty stomped his feet in frustration. “They’ll never card you, you’re too big. You just have to walk in, grab whatever off the shelf, then pay for it and leave. It’s easy.”
“Why don’t you go to buy the alcohol then?” Georgios asked.
Ty rolled his eyes. “It’s a long story, but the short version is I’m banned from every store that sells alcohol within a fifty mile radius of Sacramento.” Repeating this abbreviated version of his long arrest record made him wince internally, but he felt like he had successfully played it off to the rookie as only a minor infraction.
“Get somebody else then.”
“Nobody else will do it,” Ty admitted, feeling that familiar resentment against his other teammates. “They just tell me I’m an alkie and that I need help. Well, I’m NOT an alkie and the only help I need is somebody to go to the store and get me some whiskey because they’ll call the police if I even look in the windows of that place.”
Georgios shook his head. “Sorry man. It’s not right.” He turned and began to walk away.
Ty saw his one remaining chance for acquiring booze getting away from him, so he leapt forward and grabbed onto Georgio’s legs. “Just once, Georgie. Just this one time, get your friend Ty some drinks from the store.” But Georgios kept walking, ignoring the smaller man latched onto his legs, until Ty finally let go and lay there on the floor.
“Please,” he pleaded to no one. “Just one bottle. That’s all.” The weight of all his combined mistakes was crushing him, and soon, Ty was sobbing. It was never supposed to get out of control like this.