Chapter 1
Blaise
When I fall backward onto the surface of the water, it hits with all the force of a cornerback sneaking behind my guards to sack me mid-throw. But the sting is fleeting, and then I’m sinking, sinking, sinking, alone in the muffled quiet.
It’s like that sometimes behind the scrimmage line, a thousand pounds of human flesh and protective gear pushing me down, but my work is done, I am over. There’s nothing but me and my silence.
They told me not to open my eyes underwater. They said they didn’t want me to have bloodshot eyes. The contract was clear that airbrushing would happen, one of the photos from this spread is going on a billboard in Times Square, but they said my eyes have to be untouched. People will get suspicious if they catch that my eyes have been photoshopped.
People will think I showed up high or drunk to the photoshoot. The fact that I’ve never failed a single one of the thousand drug tests I’ve been subjected to and haven’t gotten worse than tipsy since my little uh-oh last year at the Wilmington Juggernauts’ inaugural Kickoff Gala won’t matter. I’m just trouble.
I open my eyes and stare up at the sun through five feet of water. Fuck it. I’m in a goddamn tee shirt like a nerd, for shit’s sake. What more do they want?
Up on the deck, they’re on a tight schedule. They’re waiting for me to surface. They’re always waiting for me to surface, always have been. Since the first day Gammy took me to the community pool, and the pasty white kids in their nerdy tee shirts said kids like me couldn’t swim, so I showed them how good I was at it. I was too little to understand they were bullying me, and they were too little to understand that the shit they regurgitated from their racist parents was racist bully shit. They thought I was going to drown in that pool, and then they were mad I didn’t because I made liars out of their parents.
So I swam from them as I swim now, rolling underwater and darting to the opposite end, just to feel that freedom. I was too behind from years of my parents not caring about me and too distracted by the world around me to pass even the easiest classes back then, but I could fucking swim. And I could run. And I could throw a ball with one hand and a fist with the other. And I could get away with crazy shit because Gammy felt sorry for me since I didn’t fit into my parents’ jet-setting lives.
I swim to the end of the pool, enjoying the feel of it on my freshly waxed body. Not that I waxed for this. In fact, the photographer made a comment about it, like it was a badchoice. But my days of pre-season freedom are about to end. I have this one last weekend to enjoy myself.
I’m not about to get in trouble for having a hairy ass tonight.
The moment I surface, the camera is back on me, snapping photos as I skim the surface, in no rush to exit the water. I hear theclick, click, clickof the shutter as though it’s right in my face, even though it’s yards away on the deck, and as much as I want to do laps, just ignore everything that’s going on and swim laps, I stare that camera down.
It stares right back at me, and as I make my way to the ladder at the deep end, the photographer walks steady steps backwards to capture me, but I don’t care about the photographer. She is nothing. Another blip in my life, another tool to use, another cog in the machine. It is only me and that camera, and I know what that camera wants.
I dip under the surface one last time, making sure that the water streams from me as I haul my weight up the ladder. It sluices down my face and runs out of my hair, ruining its natural shape, but that’s a problem for the hairstylist I scheduled for directly after this. My shirt — the stupidest shirt in all of humanity — and shorts cling to every muscle. The bright sunlight highlights every curve and bulge for the camera.
This is all I am, all the world wants from me. I’m a body. But I’m a perfect body, and few people can say that about themselves.
Once my feet hit the cement, I brave the Wilmington Jugs censorship hags’ wrath by lifting the hem of my soaked shirt, peeling it off my stomach to wipe some of the water off my face. I drop the shirt back down, and it adheres to me again. Honestly, the drenched white cotton might show off my abs better anyway. Let the camera get its fill.
From one of the shaded lounge chairs on the deck, Deb Barrows from SportSource Weekly clears her throat. “You had a tumultuous first year with the Wilmington Juggernauts. How do you feel about ending the season ten and seven?”
I shrug as I stroll to her, fully aware that the camera is now on my backside. “I feel like it’s a brand-new team and most of us have never played together before. The fact that we came out with a winning record is pretty fucking —freaking— good.”
“Sure, you weren’t all teammates before, but you and Gabe Shaunessy played together in both college and with the Colts, and how about Mel Cohen and Merrick Briggs? Do you think you should have connected better with them?”
It feels like a trap. Something meant to make me feel bad that we didn’t accomplish in our inaugural year what no other expansion has ever accomplished, either. I’m not falling for that trap. Words and I don’t get along, but numbers do. Stats do. The past does.
“Last year was my first year starting. Yeah, I’ve practiced with Cohen and Briggs for years, but Cohen and I had exactly seventeen minutes total on the field before the Jugs—ernauts,”I correct myself because man, do the higher-ups hate when we call the team the Jugs even though everyone else does, too. “Merrick and I played three games together back when Grovesnor had that emergency gall bladder surgery. But that was my rookie year.”
“You lost two of those three games.”
I snap a towel off the back of a lounge chair and scrub my face dry before shaking my hair out, deliberately tilting toward Deb Barrows so I can get her perfect make-up and her spiteful little tablet wet. “Yeah,welost two of those threegames.” I glance over my shoulder to where the camera has moved to, figuring this will be another good shot.
“This team cost a lot of money to put together. Rumor has it a lot more was paid under the table for you.”
“I know nothing about that.” Oh, all the money I got was legit. I’m the quarterback. It would have been more suspicious if theyhadn’tspent buckets of money on me. But a lot of palms had to be greased to get Gabe and me together.
I need Gabe. He’s the only reason I’m worth what I am. He’s the only center I’ve ever had who can cover up the shit I’d be fucking up otherwise.
“Do you think the team is worth what was paid to pull it together?”
“Absolutely.” I reach over my shoulders to start pulling this stupid goddamn shirt off, getting it halfway up before winking at the camera, saying, “Oops, I forgot,” and pulling it back down. I hope all these photos get in the column so the PR team can see how ridiculous it is to require I wear shirts. I swear, one photo of my naked ass, and it’s like the whole world explodes.
“Do you think you were worth what they paid for you?”
Well now, that’s the fucking question, isn’t it? Do I think I’m worth the money? Does management think I’m worth the money? What does it say about me that they spent nearly as much on two-time Super Bowl MVP Dom Morales to be my second-string, snatching him right out of retirement to stand sentinel, waiting for my first big fuck-up so they can drop me for him?
