“You know my feelings about this. I’m not leaving Chester,” I cut him off.
I heard him grumbling but he didn’t argue. Though I knew he wanted to. “I’ll tell them no thanks then.” He wasn’t happy about it. Of course he wasn’t. A bigger paycheck for me meant a bigger paycheck for him.
But at the end of the day, I knew that Mo worked for me. And I called the shots.
“Sounds good.” I dropped the towel and pulled on my jeans.
“No, dumbass, it doesn’t sound good. It sounds like my number one client making a huge mistake,” Mo muttered angrily.
I laughed. “Stop being such a drama queen, Mo. Be happy with the ten percent you got from my contract re-up and stop whinging.”
“It’s not about the money, Lucas. I’m only thinking about how you can grow as a player,” Mo argued.
“And you’re so full of shit your eyes will turn brown.” The dressing room began to fill with my teammates. “I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.”
“Don’t forget you have the interview with Match of the Day magazine tomorrow. I’ll be at your place around 11:00. The reporter said they’d be there mid-day. Please be at top form for this. It’s huge for your public image. You’ve had a run of bad press recently that we need to counteract,” Mo reminded him, sounding more like a dad than any he’d ever experienced.
“A couple of articles talking about my run-ins with the fuzz is hardly bad press,” I replied dismissively.
“Don’t forget the front page story about you and that bird from the club last week. The one with the picture with your blurred out tackle,” Shane Given, the Irish prick, as we liked to call him, spoke up, obviously eavesdropping on my conversation.
“And the run of photos posted online of you half pissed at the pub last week,” Nick Dodd, our left wingback added.
“And then there’s the video that was trending on Twitter that had you calling some lady a bitch—” Martin Stone, the youngest on the team and new with the transfer window, began to say.
“Fuck off all of you,” I barked, getting annoyed. “I didn’t call the lady a bitch. I called the bell end she was with a bitch. The video was misleading,” I countered.
“Hardly bad press, huh?” Mo remarked.
I didn’t answer. There was no point.
“I’ll see you at eleven. You’d better be up, showered, and fucking rosy cheeked,” he warned.
I hung up the phone so I wouldn’t have to listen to anymore lecturing.
“What was that about?” Alan asked, standing bollocks naked after getting out of the shower. You lost all sense of modesty in a football dressing room.
“It was Mo harping on about this interview tomorrow.” I hadn’t told Alan about the interest from Liverpool. Even though it had been in the papers, I didn’t confirm it. Ego was a tricky thing on a team. Chester had its fair share of bullshit between players but at the moment we had a great balance of personalities that worked well. I didn’t want to upend it with talk of money.
“Our little Cinderella is finally getting his time at the ball,” Alan teased, pinching my ass cheek.
“Fuck off,” I growled, giving him a shove. He laughed, not taking my snarling seriously. Of all the guys on the team, I was closest to Alan.
Alan, like me, spent his childhood in a council flat. Though he hailed from southeast London. A year younger than me, he climbed the ladder faster than I had. He too was rough around the edges, with a quick temper, and an even quicker fist. He and I got into our fair share of trouble together. He was a partier of the worst sort and spent most weekends with his head in the toilet. He was a notorious womanizer, using his growing fame to the fullest.
But he was good people. I was one of the few that knew he had purchased his parents a new home in Essex. That he also made sure his brother’s school fees were covered. He also paid for the care home his grandmother recently moved into. He took care of those he loved, though it wasn’t something he broadcasted to the world.
“A bunch of us were thinking of hitting Rosie’s later, you want to come?” Alan asked, referring to one of the three nightclubs in Chester.
“I was actually thinking of just hitting the pub before heading home. I promised Mo I’d be fresh faced and shit,” I said, pulling the rest of my stuff from my locker and slamming it shut.
“You picking up Anna from uni?” he asked, finally wrapping a towel around his waist.
I frowned. “Uh, no. Why would I pick Anna up from school?” I didn’t understand why Alan was asking.
My teammate shrugged. “No reason, just thought she may come with you to the pub. Is she still going to your mum’s this weekend?”
What the fuck?
