Page 3 of The Golden Receiver

But I didn’t need to be thinking about that right now. I needed to think about things that were more important, like the practice I was currently at. I was watching the running backs run routes through our defense. The wide receivers would be up next, and I needed to study what our defense was doing. I needed to figure out how they were moving, so I could make my way through them.

All watching them did was make it real clear that I didn’t belong there. Which was why I was starting to think that I had made a mistake. Everyone around me had some kind of supernatural enhancement. One of our running backs was part cat. Literally. I didn’t know what kind of cat he turned into, but you could see it in the way he ran. He was fast and agile. He could make his way through gaps I didn’t think anyone else could’ve. He was damn near impossible for the defense to catch.

And don’t get me started on the defensive players. Some of them were pretty much mountains, but they had super fucking strength and things like that. I’d gotten hit by a few of them, and they weren’t even going full strength. The colleges we were going to be playing were all monsters. How the fuck was I going to survive? Maybe this was why Coach Erikkson had to come recruiting at a shit hole college to find a human to pop on the roster.

I needed to step up my game if I was going to stand a chance at doing anything other than riding the bench. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to be riding the bench all season. I didn’t come to Creelin University for that. I came to play.

The running backs finished their drill, and Coach Shaw blew two short blasts of his whistle before shouting out to the wide receivers. I stood up and followed the other eight wide receivers on the roster over to where our position coach was standing, waiting to explain the drill. I somehow ended up standing next to Evander Hemmings. He was a sophomore, just like me. He’d been a backup the year before, coming in when the starters needed a break. I’d heard him chatting with some of the other guys on the team, and he was convinced he was going to not only get a starting role this year, but the starting role.

He was determined he was going to be wide receiver one, and well, if I had anything to say about it, he was going to be real disappointed. Of course, he had a few advantages I would never have. He was some kind of monster. I didn’t know what, exactly, because I didn’t know what the fuck half my team was. I didn’t know how one went around asking that politely. I had a feeling it was considered rude to just go up to someone and say what are you or anything like that. I just knew that Evander had some killer reflexes and a vertical jump that would make a basketball player quiver with envy.

And of course, he was the first person to run the drill. I watched as he took off running down the field, spinning around defenders and avoiding them like they weren’t even there. He looked over his shoulder a few times and the moment the ball was thrown in his direction, he was correcting his path. I didn’t know how he did it, but he met the ball exactly where our quarterback threw it. He jumped up a good five feet to grab it and landed smoothly. He managed another ten yards, evading one of the safeties who had come out of nowhere, before the position coach blew his whistle and called the drill to an end.

Everyone on the sideline erupted in applause, hooting and hollering as Evander came running back to us. His eyes were practically glowing beneath his helmet. They were an unnatural shade of amber. I noticed that when he got closer. He was almost wiggling with excitement as he threw the ball back to the quarterback.

Annoyingly, he sidled up next to me instead of any of his friends. That was a thing I’d noticed him doing since the first practice. Always standing near me like we were friends or something. And he had a bad habit of talking a million miles a minute no matter who he was talking to, even if they weren’t replying. Ask me how I know.

“What did you think of the route?” he asked as soon as he was next to me. “I thought we were doing a slant route, but the moment I saw the trajectory of the ball…” He trailed off when he noticed the fact that I was not listening. Guess he had some kind of awareness. “You should look out for that when it’s your turn.”

I nodded and turned my attention to the guy who was running the route now. He was a senior, but from what I heard, he wasn’t very good. If his run wasn’t good, then I might be fucked. He was fast as hell, but I noticed why he had never been much more than a kick returner on special teams the moment he located the ball. He had it right in his arms and somehow fumbled it. It fell to the ground, and one of the defenders landed straight on it.

Turnover.

I could do better than that, at least.

Another wide receiver ran before I got my turn. I did take into consideration what Evander said, but it didn’t matter. The quarterback threw a deep ball to me, and I took off running. Coach Erikkson was right about my speed. I might not have supernatural speed, not like some of my teammates, but I could get some distance and do some fancy footwork. I spun around one of the defenders to put some separation between me and him. I didn’t jump up to meet the ball, but I was right there when it landed. Unfortunately, the moment I had it cradled tight in my arms, one of the cornerbacks knocked me on my ass.

The only saving grace was I didn’t let the ball hit the turf. It was a fair catch.

Practice ended an hour later. I had sweat dripping from places I didn’t even know could sweat. I decided to forego the shower in the locker room. I had a perfectly good shower in my suite across campus, and in the morning, I’d have to share it with three other guys. I might as well take advantage of not having to fight for the shower while I had the chance.

Teagan was sitting on the couch in the common area when I got in. I gave him a nod in greeting and went straight back to my room. I grabbed a change of clothes, one of the only things I’d actually unpacked in the two weeks I’d been living there. Most of my other stuff was boxed up against the wall. I’d get to it eventually. It wasn’t like I’d brought much. Wasn’t like I needed much anyway.

My shower didn’t take all that long, and I had to remind myself that I had to take my shit out when I finished. Pops had got me a shower caddy to store all of it, and it had been abandoned on the sink in the shower area since my first night there. I knew Teagan had stuff all over the other sink too. We were going to have to get the suite cleaned up before our new roommates arrived in the morning.

Just another thing to add to my to-do list.

I gathered all my shower stuff right then, while I was thinking about it, and took it to my room. I didn’t know where the hell I was supposed to keep it, so I just put it on my desk. I’d figure it out later. Once I felt human again, I went out to the sitting area.

Teagan was still there, curled up like a cat on the sofa. The common area was full of our shit. We had a few things piled up on the table in the middle of the room. My gym shoes were kicked off by the door, and Teagan had a lot of his stuff laying around too. There were takeout containers sitting on a lot of the surfaces. I sighed. “Think we might need to clean this place up tonight,” I commented.

Teagan put down his phone and nodded. “I think so, too.”

“And the bathroom. Got my shower stuff out already.”

“I didn’t even think of that.” Teagan stood up and stretched. His dark eyes darted around the room. I wondered if he was doing inventory the way I just had, seeing the mess we’d made in the last week, and wondering how the hell we were supposed to get the cleanup started. “Do we have trash bags?”

“Think Pops tossed a box of them in one of my boxes. I can go check?”

“You do that, and I’ll go clean up my sink.”

His sink. Those were the kinds of words we weren’t going to be able to use the next day. I just hoped whoever we got roomed with was just as chill as Teagan was. If I got paired up with someone who had the same kind of energy as Evander Hemmings, then I was going to toss myself out the window. I had a hard enough time dealing with that on the field. I wasn’t about to deal with it in my room if I had a say in the matter. (I didn’t, but I liked to fool myself every now and then.)

I found the trash bags in the third box I looked in, and then Teagan and I got to work making the suite look habitable.

I was up with the sun the next morning. I liked to start every day with a workout, and just because we had people moving in didn’t mean I was going to suddenly start slacking on the things I needed to get done. I made my way to the gym in the student center. I preferred it to the one we used as a team. There were a few reasons for that. The biggest draw was that it had been nearly empty every time I’d gone there so far. That might change as the year progressed. The other draw was the fact that I wasn’t very likely to run into Evander Hemmings there.

I didn’t even know if he worked out in the mornings, outside of what the team required. I’d overheard him talking in the locker room, and I knew he hadn’t been staying on campus during summer training. He was local. I’d heard him mentioning a warehouse or something, but I didn’t pay much attention. It wasn’t my business. It was just hard not to hear him.