“I’m recruiting volunteers.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“Maybe another time.” We had just reached the plane’s entrance and the end of my patience.
“Hey, neighbor,” she said when we discovered our seats were across the aisle from each other.
Gallantly, I placed her carry-on in the overhead compartment next to mine.
Finishing the task, I took a step back.
She didn’t hide the hungry look she had taken me with from head to toe. “Thanks. What can I do for you in return?”
I gave my white T-shirt a tug as it had hiked up and exposed my abdomen when I’d lifted her luggage. Admittedly, even after three months without my training routine I still kept in good shape.
“Be a good, quiet neighbor.” A grin spread on my lips as I took my seat.
She was actually my go-to type. The type who wouldn’t attach any strings. If I had been myself, she’d be on her beautiful knees in my cubicle helping me forget my sorrows after takeoff. But these days, I didn’t want anyone near me, not even for that.
“You sound American,” she said as the plane made its way on the runway.
“I’m an accent chameleon,” I said in my best British accent, acquired from my British mother.
She laughed and cast another look at her phone. “Google says you were born in the U.S., left at eight, returned Stateside at fifteen, then left again a few years later to shoot for stardom.”
I pressed my lips and hiked my eyebrows up in acknowledgment.
“It also says that you played in the best clubs of the English, German, Italian, and Spanish leagues. Can you do all of them?”
“I certainly tried to do all of them.” The flirty innuendo and smirk sprang out of me on their own.
Based on her kittenish chuckle and the hand she reached across the aisle and smoothed over my forearm, she understood.
Despite rejecting her, I was playing my part perfectly—the funny, flirty, fun, successful “player on and off the field,” as the tabloids dubbed me. Iwasa chameleon, adjusting to the audience and situation. Raised to do whatever it took to succeed, to fit in at the top. It had become my second nature.
My first.
My only.
I forgot what other nature I used to have. I didn’t know what it was like to be unsuccessful, unpopular, unwanted. To be banned from doing what I did best.
Which was probably why I had done my best to defy my doctors. When reports of my injury had taken on smaller and smaller real estate in newspapers and news sites, with nothing new to replace them because I wasn’t playing, I had lost my footing. And it wasn’t just a pun.
Staying in the limelight in some capacity had become crucial. I hadn’t been out of it in eighteen years. Being forgotten felt like an early death. My rapport with sports columnists and the media had proven itself time and again—ever since I had to build a high-profile image to compensate for my late entry into theprofessional league. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for cutting me off from the youth leagues at fifteen, right when all the clubs were scouting.)
Though my agent advised against it, I knew that romancing the media and feeding it what it wanted would work. And it did. They ate it up:
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Injured On The Field, Scoring Off It: “Wonder Wheaton” caught on camera coming out of a Soho nightclub. And he wasn’t alone.
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Benched for Injury, but still Kicking in Love Life!
Hot new pictures of Owen Wheaton partying and beating doctors’ bleakage.
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EXCLUSIVE: INJURY CAN’T STOP THIS PLAYER. OWEN “WONDER” WHEATON CONTINUES SCORING. And he’ll be doing it on the pitch soon enough!
