Me: Come find me when you get home.
Colin: Will you be naked?
God, I wish.
Me: I don’t know. It’s a surprise.
Colin: I love surprises.
Me: Why do you turn every question into mental gymnastics?
Colin: I don’t want to answer them.
Me: Which one?
Colin: All of them. You’re kinda nosy.
Me: It’s not nosy when you care about someone.
Me: And I know something is wrong.
Colin: I gotta go. The man is ready for me.
I slammed my phone down again. I was fucked. So very fucked
The week leading up to our first pre-season game against Houston turned out to be a clusterfuck, starting with our conversation about his agent. He’d avoided my attempts to talk Sunday night, and by Tuesday, we only saw each other on the field.
Monday after practice, he left with Lucas to pick up the car he’d leased. When he came home with the most iconic American car ever made, a convertible Ford Mustang, he no longer needed me for transportation. He had gained his independence, whether I liked it or not.
The clusterfuck of a week continued with added responsibilities I normally would have thrived on. The defensivecoordinator asked for my input on players they were going to cut, which meant my normal routine was fucked.
My usual eight-hour day of workouts, meetings, and practice got extended to twelve. And as a result, by Thursday, I was irritable enough for Lennox to be concerned.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just more responsibility than usual.”
Lennox put his hands on my shoulders. “If it’s too much, tell Coach you need to back off. You don’t want to neglect your own conditioning and risk an injury.”
Rubbing a towel over my face as I sat at my stall, I tried to look at the bright side. “I know, but it’s only a few more weeks. I can handle it.”
My friend wasn’t buying it. “Everything okay with the Aussie?”
I snorted. “Yeah. It’s fine. Coach was right about him. He got the play down exceptionally fast and can read the offense well. But it’s the little things, like the rules, I worry about.”
Lennox grinned. “Who needs rules?”
“I do. And lots of them.”
What I didn’t share was how our conversation weighed heavily on my mind. The way his asshole agent had taken advantage of a nineteen-year-old kid infuriated me, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t let it go. The man’s impropriety bothered me so much that I asked my dad to check into the guy without divulging the intimate details. Maybe I was overstepping, but I wanted to rip that guy limb from limb.
Things came to a head the day before our first pre-season game. At our team meeting, Coach announced the starting roster for game one.
“Boyd, you’ll be running the offense. Lennox, I want you on the sideline on coms with Coach Riley.”
“Yes, sir,” Lennox replied, then shook Boyd by the shoulders.
“St. James, Kearney, you’ll both be starting. We need to get in as much practice as possible.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. We’ll be ready.”
