Shaking my head, I bite back my curse.Figures.A weight of helplessness settles over my shoulders. It’s a feeling I both hate and have grown accustomed to.
Coach knows I can’t go down this road. Going pro isn’t an option for me. It never has been. Never will be. I love the game. Would kill to go all the way and play professional. But playing professional football has never been in the cards. My family won’t allow it.
I drop my head into my hands. “Coach—“
“There’s no harm in hearing the man out,” he says, cutting me off. “It’s a conversation. Doesn’t have to be anything more. It’ll take an hour of your time and you’ll get a free meal out of it and yes. I know your family has more money than any one of you all can spend in a lifetime. You can buy your damn own meals.” He huffs. “But, son…” He waits until I lift my head and meet his gaze. “You’ve got a real shot at making something of yourself and going into the big leagues. A year early, no less. An opportunity like this only comes around once in a lifetime. For most, it doesn’t come around at all. Don’t throw away this chance at the futureyoudream about over the misguided belief of family obligations. You follow the path that fits you.” He stabs a finger at me from across the desk, his eyes full of expectation. “Not the one your parents laid out for you.”
Clenching my fists, I expel a ragged breath, allowing a kernel of hope to unfurl inside my chest.Fuck.I can’t believe I’m considering this.
Hope is a dangerous thing to have for someone like me. I thought I’d given up any semblance of the word years ago, but sitting here now …Shit.
I want to do what Coach is suggesting. Follow my own path. Chase my own dreams. I want to believe I have that option. But—Fuck it.
“A conversation.”
“Just a conversation,” he confirms.
“When?” My parents know my comings and goings. They take overbearing parents to the extreme, and while Coach may think there is no harm in a sit down with the owner of the Richland Royals, there is if my parents catch wind of it.
I negotiated a deal with them back when I was a freshman in high school. One I know they have every intention of holding me to.
If they had it their way, I’d have gone to Suncrest Academy for high school before transferring to one of the few HBCUs—historically black colleges and universities. It’s the path my younger sister is taking and the one I’ve fought like hell to avoid.
Freshman year, I made the case that Sun Valley High had a stronger football team than Suncrest Academy. A weak argument in their eyes given that the two ways of earning a living they vehemently despise for any young black man, let alone their son, is playing ball or making music.
According to my father, no son of his will stoop to the American stereotype of what makes a successful black man. We are better than ballers and rappers, and he did not build a name for himself as one of the country’s wealthiest men—notblack men—but one of the wealthiestmenin the nation, just to see his flesh and blood throw his legacy away to do something as insignificant as playing a game.
I made the argument nonetheless, reminding him that to be the best, you had to play and win against the best. Football might hold no value in his eyes, but I refused to play on a mediocre team. I would excel in everything I did. Including football. I even put together a speech detailing how playing football in high school was a strategic move on my part that directly benefited my future, explaining how it placed me in a position of power within our community.
Being a football player wouldn’t just make me popular. It’d make me revered. And not only by my fellow classmates but also by the school faculty and administrative staff. It’d also increase my profile and status with members of our community. People would come to recognize me and my name.
And they did.
Because after weeks of arguing my case, my father relented and gave me the green light to enroll at Sun Valley High. At the time, winning an argument against Richard Price was the biggest achievement of my life. And I was damn proud of myself.
Junior year when my father started talking about colleges, I made the same case.
And failed. Miserably.
To my father, there was no point in playing college ball when my time was better spent on my studies and learning more about the family business—Peretti and Price, a multi-billion dollar tech company.
Yes. Billion with a B.
Coach wasn’t exaggerating when he said my family has more money than they can spend in a lifetime. With money comes power, entitlement, and an overwhelming belief that you are always right.
My father has all three of these and he does a good job at surrounding himself with people who are too afraid to ever tell him he is wrong.
Thankfully, I’m not one of those people.
Things got heated and there were pockets of time where we refused to speak to each other.
The problem with my family that is unique from others, is that my parents have both the power and the financial means to back up any threat they make.
My father swore he would never let me play football in college. And I believed him.
My sister, Monique, took dance classes behind his back when we were in high school—another activity my parents detest, claiming no daughter of theirs would become some backup hussy for music videos—which is beside the point.
Mo was fifteen and wanted to take hip-hop classes to spend more time with her friends. She wasn’t out there shaking her ass for money or putting on some sleazy number with aspirations of dancing in some black light music video. Not that her intentions mattered. As he does with most things, our father turned her ambitions for dance into something it wasn’t.
