15 15 “Bolden said you met a girl.”
It’s a good thing I’m facedown on the massage table. That way Hunt can’t see me roll my eyes. He’s flipping pages on his clipboard, documenting the state of my assorted injuries and evaluating each of my other minor aches, those little time bombs that have yet to implode. Operative word being yet.
When the team massage therapist, Mikel, presses harder on my hamstring and drags his fist across the length of the muscle, discomfort ripples through my entire leg. Despite how much it hurts, pain is a gray scale, a measure of how bad I want to play versus how much my injury will allow. For now, my hamstring remains a manageable nuisance.
Another stroke of Mikel’s knuckles to the outside of my leg, the most painful area, and my leg twitches. He notes the reaction and, to my relief, dials back the pressure just enough that I don’t need to hold my breath anymore.
Mikel is built like one of our offensive linemen and he has an Eastern European accent so thick it’s nearly impossible to understand what he’s saying, but he doesn’t say much anyway. Before Mikel, our massage therapist was a retired French Canadian power lifter named Jacques. Before that, it was Sven the Swedish lumberjack. All huge guys with various accents and very little to say. Despite how hard we’ve campaigned Hunt to make this experience a little more enjoyable, we always end up with some version of Mikel—never a Michelle, Jacqueline, or Svetlana, with soft, dexterous hands and a subtle, but still sexy, accent.
“Bolden said she was different. But the right kind of different. I have no idea what that means. A jersey chaser with potential?”
Through the opening in the face cradle, I let out a grunt. “You and Bolden need to stop talking about me. Gossiping like two women over martinis. But, no, she’s definitely not a jersey chaser, with potential or otherwise.”
Mikel prompts me to turn over and when I do, Hunt has his clipboard clasped to his chest, observing as Mikel bends my leg in toward my abs, gauging my range of motion. Hunt’s eyes don’t shift as he speaks.
“Tell me about her. I’m curious, gotta admit.”
It seems my massage therapy session is quickly devolving into a psychotherapy session. Mikel presses my bent leg as far as he can until my body resists, which means it doesn’t go far. To distract myself from the tension, I think about how spectacularly bendy Whitney’s legs are, and words start to tumble out.
“She’s cool. Not a jersey chaser. She’s actually totally clueless about any of this.” I throw my arms wide to gesture at the training room, Hunt, me, Mikel—all of it.
“We’re nothing alike. She’s patient and funny and takes most stuff in stride, and enjoys pointing out how I’m none of those things. She owns an organic fruit orchard down southwest and looks exactly like you might expect an organic farmer to look. In a hot way. Nose ring, no makeup, but great skin, and a perfect body under super-casual clothes. Drives a beater Toyota and doesn’t hesitate to make it known how much she hates my fossil fuel–consuming Dodge.”
Hunt continues to jot a few things down in his notes, but there’s an amused expression on his face. He’s been married for thirty years and from what I can tell, happily. His wife is a pixie-tiny woman who smiles a lot, so much that I can’t imagine how a cantankerous guy like Hunt managed to keep her for so long. But it’s obvious he loves her, and more important, after all those years and raising three girls together, I’m pretty sure he still genuinely likes her—thinks she’s beautiful, loves to see her smile, and wants to keep her happy.
I get that now. The way a woman can be so goddam likable and gorgeous, you just want to try to be less of a jerk than you usually are and do whatever it takes to keep her happy. That’s all. OK, maybe I want to keep her naked, too. But happily naked.
Before I can remind myself to shut it, I keep talking.
“We’re definitely hot for each other, so we’ve got that for now, I guess. Not sure if we can be more. Two people so different might have a tough time making something last.” I shrug.
Hunt flips his papers, then pats an open hand to my shoulder as he turns to walk away.
“I don’t know, kid. I think it sounds like you just described the beginning of a hell of a love story.”
Seattle.
You couldn’t pay me to live here. It’s rainy and dreary, and the humidity that comes with it is hell on my joints. They can keep their coffee; I’ll take the three hundred–plus days of sunshine that Colorado has to offer. So, with my joints screaming and a Monday-night game against a team that’s hard to beat, this road trip won’t be over soon enough to suit me.
We spent the afternoon on their practice field and finished out our day with the standard media circus. After a shower and dinner, I’m settled in bed and looking forward to the brightest spot in my day. Calling Whitney. It’s a routine now: in the couple of weeks since she left Denver, I’ve dialed her up every night just before we both go to sleep.
She answers with a smile in her voice and the sound has the same effect it always does. A grin across my face, followed by my dick perking up to greet her. Whitney immediately asks about practice today, how I’m feeling about the game, so I don’t get the opportunity to indulge the one part of my anatomy that doesn’t care about football. Twenty minutes later, I realize that I’ve talked her ear off, analyzing this team and their defense to my captive—and likely bored stupid—audience.
“Sorry. I’m rambling. It’s just that we can’t move the ball very effectively and that drives me nuts.”
“It’s fine. But I honestly don’t understand how you guys can know all of this stuff about the other team and not be able to work around it. You said they do this 4–3 thing with the gaps. Can’t you just fill the gaps with other guys or something? More bodies would, like, neutralize what they’re doing, right?”
The question is both naïve and adorable, but more important, it’s obvious she was listening this whole time, through every rambling speech and sidetracked commentary of mine. I always assumed that a woman who knew nothing about the game would be impossible to have in my life for longer than one night because adding subtitles to everything I say would get tedious quickly. But even when she doesn’t understand, Whitney doesn’t need subtitles; she just listens harder. And I definitely want her for more than one night.
“Do you know how much I wish you were here with me right now?”
The truth of how much I miss her is hard to ignore after blurting out something like that. Inside, I wince. No matter how much I want her, or miss her, it’s no damn excuse for sounding that needy.
She laughs softly. “Wow. My question must be really dumb if that’s your response.”
I tell her it isn’t dumb but can’t say anything else. If I try to say more, I’ll end up babbling about all the things that are bearing down on me right now: my contract negotiations stalling out, the way my entire body hurts, the pressure that comes with a good season. It’s just over halfway through regular season and we’re sitting pretty in the standings, but staying on top is harder in some ways than clawing your way out of a losing streak.
On the road especially, everything is working against you. The lack of time and sleep, combined with constant change and stress. My body wants a release and my heart wants some respite—unfortunately, my brain knows the cure for both is more than a thousand miles away.
Her voice lowers. “You want me in your hotel room or what? You want to show me around Pike Place Market? Buy me a salmon?”
My heartbeat slows when I register the provocation in her voice and my first thought is the obvious. That I want to fuck her straight into the mattress for a few long, sweaty hours. Maybe that isn’t the best answer. I close my eyes and try to think of something less cock-centric to say.
But I can’t, because she’s breathing softly into the phone and that means I’m picturing her kneeling between my legs, making the same sounds as her mouth hovers right where I want it. That image makes my dick so hard, and so quickly, that it pisses me off.
All the quality time I’m spending with my right hand these days is making me more edgy, instead of less so. I’ve never been one of those guys who routinely jacks off; something about too much time spent that way feels a little pathetic. Either I found someone to take home or I did something more productive. Got in a workout, finished a project, fixed a meal. These days, I’m worried I’ll end up with carpal tunnel if I’m not careful, and I don’t need another injury, especially one that’s depressingly self-inflicted.
Whitney says my name, quietly, checking to see if I’m still here. I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “I’d love to have you in my hotel room, but that would never happen.”
“Why?”
“Because they treat us like we’re at church camp. No women in our rooms—no exceptions.”
“Not even wives?”
I snort. “It doesn’t matter. Once we’re back at the hotel, we’re on lockdown. Dinner, a shower, we can order one in-room movie on the team’s dime, and then lights-out.”
“But there can be relaxing benefits to a little alone time with someone. Might help you sleep and show up to the game with a clear head. Don’t they know that?”
Great. She’s alluding to sex and extolling the benefits of an orgasm. No hope for my cock now. I let one hand slide down and draw the heel of my hand across the front of my boxers.
“I’m sure they do. But they probably figure it’s far less complicated to just let us order porn with our free movie. Keep it simple.”
“Do you?”
Now she wants to chat about whether I use my movie for family-friendly options or some less so? Fuck it. I give up and take myself in hand and use a firm grip to stroke the entire length, exactly the way I like it. After a few passes, I let my fist come to work slowly over the head. A drop of pre-cum immediately beads up and I use it to slick over the underside. A low groan tumbles out when I focus pressure and friction on that spot. Whitney draws in a little gasp, because, yup, she’s figured out exactly what I’m doing.
“Sometimes. But not these days.”
“Why?” she asks.
Her voice is cautious, tempered by what sounds like nervousness. Why, I don’t know. She has to know that she’s why. Because Whitney is slowly becoming my default, for everything from the carnal to the comforting.
“My dick likes you best. He likes it when I picture you, think about how good you feel, how fucking wet you get. We don’t need anything else.”
She doesn’t give any indication that she’s offended. Instead, she lets out the hottest damn appreciative noise. A moan mixed with a murmur, the sound of savoring something she likes, and it’s enough to drive me right to the edge. I try to hold back by squeezing down almost painfully, staving off the climax I’m not ready for, because I want this to last a little longer. Then Whitney slays whatever control I thought I had with three whispered words.
“Are you close?”
I can’t answer her, because I’m not close, I’m there. Spilling into my hand at the sound of her voice, until I’m wrecked from coming so hard that my heart is threatening to thump out of my chest.
And if I’m not careful, the damn thing is going to thump its way right into Whitney’s hands.
The first plays of any game are the best. No other feeling in the world can mimic this one, because you take the field with only a hyperconscious state of awareness that sharpens every movement into hi-def and melds the cacophony of sounds around you into nothing but a low, muffled rumble. I’m loose and serene for those moments. Zen? Maybe. Football is my meditation—without it, I’m half the person I should be.
We bulldoze our way through to the second quarter, leading by fourteen. Coach calls a play that will put me in position and when I line up, I try to clear my mind of everything else, because if this goes the way it should, I’ll be waiting for a wide-open bomb. But waiting is the death of instinct, and catching a ball is best done by reflex. Nothing but white noise and muscle memory to guide you.
I run my route, but the ball doesn’t quite make it. It comes up just short, and desperation means I’m suddenly trying to outwit an inanimate object, along with the hulk of a cornerback who wants to hand me my ass.
I take a long leap, feel my fingers touch the ball. You can catch this one, my mind shouts. Lean forward, stretch every limb out, and grab it. Then plant one foot, just enough to pivot your body the direction you want to go.
Lies. All of it. The propaganda of hope, ego, and stupidity.
Instead, when my knee goes, I’m convinced the sound is loud enough to be deafening. But what I actually hear is for my ears alone. It’s the sound of my reality imploding. Because talk all you want about concussions; most of us don’t give a shit. But my knees? Fuck up my knees and you kill my career.
No one will remember this but me. The acute, painful, spirit-breaking moments that pass while I wait for Hunt, splayed out at the eight-yard line with my left leg pointing the wrong direction, my mind consciously cataloging every tiny thing that’s happening. Because if this is the last time I’m ever on the field, I want to remember every single second.
Fans think that game days define a career, that those moments make us who we are. But, for us—the players—there’s no difference.
In October or July, on a Tuesday morning or a Sunday afternoon, it doesn’t change a thing. We’re pro ball players no matter what. Every day, until your body or your heart can’t give another yard.