1
Nixon
Couldyou come see me when you have a few minutes?
Teddy was funny if he thought I was sitting down here twiddling my thumbs. If he’d been anyone else, I’d have been pissed, but I knew the head coach didn’t summon me across the quad to his office unless there was something he wanted to talk about that couldn’t be freely discussed in the weight room.
Most of the time, he wanted me to stay down here, making sure none of the vets were slacking off. He was a much more frequent visitor to my office than I was to his.
Be right there, I typed out, cursing at the number of times I had to backspace and retype. Damn phones weren’t made for guys with meat hooks for hands.
“Listen up,” I yelled loud enough to be heard over the blaring music heavy on the bass and screeching, light on melody. I hated that shit, but the players loved it; if it motivated them to train a little harder, I could suffer. “Have to head up to Coach’s office. Do your best to not kill yourselves while I’m gone.”
After pulling one of my assistants aside to let him know I may or may not be back by the end of today’s training session, I headed up the hill to find Teddy. As much as we liked to give him shit about kicking back in his office waiting for everyone else to do the hard work, he was the type of leader more teams in the league needed. I had a hunch what had prompted him to summon me to his office, and frankly, I was surprised it’d taken this long.
“Come in,” Teddy called out as I raised my hand to knock on the closed office door. That was unusual. Normally, Teddy’s door was open, both literally and figuratively. Rather than invite me to sit down, Teddy grabbed his keys off the corner of his desk. “Your guys have a handle on things in the training room?”
“Of course,” I assured him.
“Good, because I need to get the hell out of here. You up for a late lunch?” I would’ve told him no, but the camera presence fromOutside the Pockethad everyone on edge. We were halfway through their filming schedule and the next four weeks couldn’t pass quick enough.
I couldn’t imagine how the players who’d been followed around prior to the start of camp felt about the constant scrutiny. I followed Teddy to the parking lot as we discussed where we wanted to eat and hopefully grab a beer.
We settled into a booth at the back of a local brewpub. While waiting for the server to take our orders, we discussed how the team was shaping up for the year and who we felt needed to put in a bit more effort if they wanted to make it past the first round of cuts in just over a week. For the most part, we were on the same page. That wasn’t surprising, since we had years of working together and I knew who to push harder before Teddy gave me his list.
Some would say that was a result of me having no life, but they were wrong about that. I had a damn good life, one I’d happily devoted to the game I’d once upon a time hoped to play. Unfortunately, when the doctors start throwing around words like “potential for paralysis” following a rough game and a nasty neck injury, those dreams fizzled fast.
“What are your thoughts on Kendricks?” Coach asked once both of us had pints in front of us.
I considered his question for a moment, because there was no doubt in my mind he was in for a banner year. He’d shaved a few hundredths of a second off his forty and his hands were quicker than I’d ever seen. It was like they were coated in some sort of substance, drawing in the football and holding it tight no matter what or who flew at him.
But Teddy wasn’t asking about his physical strength, not really.
“He’ll be fine,” I tried to reassure Coach. The truth was, I was nervous about his stability, only because I knew what it was like to bottle up emotions and box them away. Hell, over the years, I’d become the master of it. “He’s the first in the training room every morning, even beating the rookies. I think it’s starting to piss them off. They don’t realize he has as much as they do, if not more, to prove to everyone this year.”
Teddy’s eyebrows drew tight and he frowned as he sipped his beer. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
I cocked my head to the side, trying to figure out what he was thinking. Okay, so maybe Zach was overdoing it a bit, but that’s why I was keeping a close eye on him. If I thought he was risking injury, I’d kick his ass out of the weight room and insist he take some time off.
“Oh, come on. You’re a smart guy,” Teddy scolded when I was slow on the uptake. “He’s physically exhausting himself because that’s easier than thinking about the off-field drama that’s heading his way. I hate that there’s nothing we can do to keep this under wraps a while longer. I talked to the league, and they’re pissed off too, trying to claim we knew about this and didn’t say anything sooner. I’m worried that if we can’t find a way to slow him down, he’s going to burn out.”
“Not really sure what you want me to do about that.” I wasn’t a touchy-feely guy. Never had been, didn’t see a reason to change it now. I was the king of compartmentalization. When I was at work, the only thing I focused on was work. When I was home—okay, so when I was at home, I was still thinking about work, because I’d done a spectacular job of closing the box that stored my personal life, to the point it didn’t exist.
Still, in the twenty years I’d worked my way up through the training staff, I’d never been the guy players came to about their personal lives. They knew my response would be to tell them to do exactly what Zach was: get their asses back out on the floor and grind out another set.
As soon as Teddy let out a sigh, I knew the conversation was about to take a bad turn. I’d heard that sound from him before, typically when he was resigned to doing something he’d rather not. “I need you to talk to Lincoln Sims before his seminar.”
Shit. He could’ve asked me to do just about anything and I’d have happily done it. Zach was a good kid with a brilliant career in front of him, but this year it all hinged on how a show we had no control over decided to out him.
If I could get my hands on that weaselly little producer, I’d wrap them around his neck until he started to turn blue. He had some nerve, thinking their plan to create a compelling storyline out of a player’s private life was acceptable in any way.
But now, Teddy was asking me to reach out to a man I’d been hoping to avoid while he was in town. Being in the same room as Lincoln Sims was a threat to those carefully sealed and stacked boxes known as my life.
“Look, I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but you need to set that shit aside right now,” Teddy continued before I could object. “It won’t seem out of line for him to talk to Zach. Hell, the entire reason he’s coming in is to talk to these guys about finding a balance in their lives, which is something Zach’s sorely missing. But for that to happen, he needs to know what’s going on, and you’re the one who should tell him.”
Nothinghad happened between us, and maybe that was the problem. Linc and I grew close when I was part of the training staff for the Birmingham Bengals. Doing anything would’ve been highly inappropriate. Then I was offered the assistant strength and conditioning coach position in Wilmington and he was still down in Alabama.
We kept in touch, even pondering what our lives could’ve been like if not for football one night after too many drinks at an awards ceremony, but eventually, we drifted apart. That didn’t mean my dick didn’t perk right up when I saw him or heard his voice, it simply meant I steered clear rather than face all the reasons our friendship had fallen apart.
