“Think about it, Coop!” I hear Saint yell and then a rustling sound in the background.Are the two of them actually wrestling for the phone? “Think about why you can’t sleep. She’s not just your employee, dummy. She’s a whole lot more.”
Sabrina lets out what sounds like a yelp laced with pleasure and then the phone goes dead.
I guess payroll is going to be late anyway.
Chapter Eleven
URSULA
Ipop my earbuds in and sift through my small cooler of goodies, pulling out an ice-cold Fiji Water and laying it on the back of my neck. It’s hot as hades outside, and I’m sitting on a scorching university bleacher at Nighthawks training camp, watching half-clothed men run plays, while I listen to the soundtrack ofMamma Mia.
There are sixteen training camp practices open to the public during the season. Fifteen are during the day and one is at night. Until my last day working for Coop, part of my job still includes attending them, because press is always here, and Coop doesn’t talk to the press. He says it’s a distraction, but it’s probably more like a phobia. A normal, arrogant, alpha ball player loves to talk about themselves to anyone who will listen. They love an audience. Not Coop.
“Hi, gorgeous.”
I pull my left earbud out.
“Hey, Jim.”
Jim McKinney is a local sports reporter in the city. He can’t be too much older than me, but he has made himself well known among the seasoned press pit reporters already. He’s extremely ambitious and persistent. I can always depend on him to ask me two things whenever I see him: for an opportunity at an exclusive interview with Coop and for a date.
“I see your guy is looking pretty good this year. Did he drop a couple of pounds?”
“I wouldn’t know. He looks the same to me.”
I crack open and chug down half of my bottled water while I watch Coop and Saint Stevenson run a few plays together. They both look a little tired today.
“How’s his hearing this season?”
“Same as it’s always been.”
Coop has partial hearing loss in his left ear. It’s the result of some sort of non-football related injury that happened when he was young. A time in his life that he prefers not to talk about. Unfortunately, journalists have reported lots of wild theories about how the hearing loss happened which is another reason why Coop won’t talk to them. One time a reporter wrote that the injury was due to an altercation between Coop and his dad when he was a kid. A total lie, which Coop’s dad had to deny for years—he’s a college football coach—and for which Coop has never forgiven the reporters.
“What does he think about the new guys on the team? They gave up a lot to acquire Parinzino. Is he meshing well with the other players?”
“Aren’t these questions for the coaching staff?”
“I think you would know better than any of the coaches.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“Nah, I think you’re holding out on me, Ursula, in more ways than one.”
He licks the corner of his lips, and I almost throw up a little in my mouth.
“I’ll give you one thing, Jim, you’re definitely persistent.”
“What?” He feigns innocence.
“You know I’m not going to reveal anything that Coop tells me, and to be honest with you, we don’t talk about what’s said in the locker room. It’s like Vegas in there. Whatever goes on in there stays in there.”
“I guess that makes sense, because football isn’t really his major priority anyway, right? You think he’ll retire soon?”
This is another running storyline that the press has continually tried to shove down fans’ throats as if it’s a fact when it isn’t. The media assumes that because football isn’t Coop’s primary source of income that it must not be as important to him as it is to other players. How soon they forget that football was first.
Coop comes from hard working people in Georgia that live, eat, poop, and breathe football. Nothing was handed to him. All the success he has built has come as a direct result of hard work and the wealth he first accumulated as a football player.
It’s a shame how if he makes one mistake on the field they blame it on the “distractions” in his life aka his empire: Dunkin’ Donut franchises, pizza shops, tattoo shops, movie theaters, and soon his new high school for boys.
