Chapter 23

Sam took another shower before he left his bedroom. He needed it to wake up before he apologized to King. He wasn’t sure if it should be a straight-up apology, or if maybe he should try something—like kiss him or something. They hadn’t kissed last night. That would show King that he was into him and that last night had just been a bad time for him. He’d still apologize, though, because the words meant something, too. He was nervous as hell about being the one to initiate it, but it was King, so it would all be okay.

“King?” he called out when he opened the bedroom door. The apartment was quiet. King was never quiet. He usually had the TV on or his music playing as he was banging around in the kitchen.

“King?” he said softly, pushing the door of the other bedroom open all the way. The bed was made up and there was no sign of King. Sam hurried to the kitchen. It was as empty as the bedroom. Sam quickly walked back to his bedroom and grabbed his phone. He saw a text from King.

Hey Sammy. Headed home to see the girls before we have to leave. I’ll see you at the stadium.

What the hell? King usually took Sam with him when he went home for any reason. Shit, was he that mad about last night? Sam sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the phone, wondering if he should apologize via text. That seemed uncool. The coward’s way out. He chewed his lip as he slowly typed a reply.

Hey. Just got your text. Missed you when I got up. Sounds good. See you there.

Okay, that was lame. But five more minutes of sitting there staring at it didn’t help him come up with anything better, so he finally hit Send with a ball of unease in his gut. With a sigh, he got up and had breakfast. He wasn’t going to be good for shit if he didn’t eat. He was going to work out before they left and he needed protein and carbs if he was going to make that happen.

“Hey, Tin’a,” King said, kissing his mom on the cheek as he entered the kitchen. “I’m hungry.”

“You always hungry,” she said. “Sit. I make panikeke.”

“Lapotopoto?” he asked, his mouth already watering for the traditional Samoan round pancakes.

“Phhff,” she said, waving at him. “Of course.” She smiled at him and began to grab ingredients from the pantry. “Where’s Sam?”

“He’s back at the apartment,” King said evasively. “Do we still have turkey bacon?”

“Your sister ate it all,” his mom said, standing there frowning at him, her hands on her hips. “Why didn’t Sam come?”

King shrugged. “I guess he had stuff to do.”

“Sam never has stuff to do that keeps him from coming to see me.” She huffed in disgust and turned back to the stove. “I’ll make extra for him. You bring them.”

“Okay, mom,” King said, relieved the conversation was over. He should have known better. His mom could ferret out a secret like a pro.

“You fighting?” she asked, turning on the heat and placing a pan of oil over it.

“No,” King said, grabbing the orange juice from the fridge. He unscrewed the top and began to drink from the jug. That usually set his mom off, and then she’d drop the questions about Sam.

“Ayyy!” she yelled. “Get a glass!” She came over and pinched his arm.

“Ow,” he said, rubbing it with a grin. “I’m going to drink it all, so no one has to drink after me, all right?” It was the same argument he’d been making for years.

“No glass, no panikeke,” she warned, wagging her finger.

“Okay, okay,” he said, grabbing a glass from the cabinet.

“Now,” she said, her back to him as she mixed the dough, “tell me what’s going on with Sam. Your sister says there’s a girl. That nurse from the hospital.”

“Which sister?” he asked, stalling.

“Lelei,” she said. “Talia doesn’t know yet.” She shook her head. “That girl. She’s no good for Sam. Too high-strung. That nurse, now she’s good. Nice and steady.”

“Yeah,” King said, sitting down dejectedly at the table. “Jane. She’s great.” Even his mom thought Sam and Jane should be together.

“You like her, too?” she asked. He looked over at her in surprise, but her back was still to him.

“Yeah, sure I like her,” King said carefully, trying not to give his feelings away.

“No,” his mom said impatiently. “Like her.” She turned around to face him, wiping her hands on her apron. When they’d first moved to Birmingham he’d taken her to a Williams-Sonoma store and she’d discovered aprons. She wore them every day now, even to the grocery store. She had a wardrobe of them. “Sam can’t have no girlfriend if you don’t like her, too. Right?”

“I said I like her,” King told her defensively.

She sighed, and gave him a knowing look. “Like you like Sam?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” King asked her. He grabbed the glass of juice and took a drink so he didn’t have to look at her.

“I mean that Sam is more than your best friend,” she told him with a bit of a disappointment in her voice. “You think I don’t know?”

“He’s not,” King lied. He winced at her look of censure. “I mean, maybe I want him to be, but he’s not ready for that.”

“He tell you that?” she asked, turning back to the stove. She turned the heat down on the oil and went back to mixing the dough.

“Not in so many words,” King said. “But you know he suffers from nightmares about Afghanistan.”

“Lots of soldiers do,” she said. “What does that have to do with you?”

“Just, you know, getting involved with me is more stress. He doesn’t need that. He needs Jane. She’s better for him.”

“It has to be one or the other?” she asked, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I met Cass and Beau and pretty Marian. I know that’s not true.”

King was shocked. “You want me to have a threesome?” he blurted out. She turned and smacked him on the arm with a spoon.

“I want you and Sam to be happy,” she corrected him. “With a nice girl. Jane is a nice girl, isn’t she?”

“Nice girls don’t have threesomes, Tin’a,” he told her. She frowned at him as she squeezed a ball of dough into the hot oil.

“So she’s not nice?” she asked.

“No,” King said. “I mean, yes, she’s very nice.” He sighed. “She’s having a really hard time accepting the fact that she wants to have a…” His mom glared at him over her shoulder. “That she wants to be with me and Sam,” he amended. “She worries about her reputation, the publicity. The press, you know.”

“The press,” she said in disgust. “They need to focus on real news.” His tin’a had a virulent dislike of the press because of some of the things they’d written about Rebels players. “She should only worry about the people that matter. What about her family?”

“I haven’t met them,” King said. “I know she’s pretty close to her parents and sees them every Sunday. Her brother died in Afghanistan.”

His mother gasped and grabbed her chest as she spun around to face him. “That poor girl,” she exclaimed. “We have them all over here, then.” She nodded as if it was a done deal.

“I don’t know, Tin’a,” he said, picking at a plastic tab on the juice bottle. “I was serious about Sam. I don’t think he’s ready for that kind of relationship. I don’t want to mess him up any more, you know? I have to think about what’s best for him and not just for me.”

“You are thinking too hard about what should be his decision, not yours,” she warned, waving the big spoon at him. “And her decision, too. You have her and Sam paired up and you don’t even know if that’s what they want, do you? Does she like you?”

“Yeah,” King admitted. “Yeah, she likes me. But she’s palagi. I thought you wanted me to marry a Samoan girl.”

His mom kept shaking her head. “I don’t care about that, just what’s inside. I’ve told you before, quit trying to run everyone’s life. If they screw up, they screw up. Then, lesson learned. But you don’t get to make the choice for them. You hear me?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “I hear you.”

They beat the Texans 6–3. It was a defensive battle from the opening coin toss. Sam had a good game. Not a great one, but better than his average performances last season. He’d played a solid game and he was pleased. Considering all the shit going on in his personal life he was a bit surprised his game had fallen into place so easily, even with the dream and the sex, and lack of sleep. But in the back of his mind he’d known the whole time that no matter how he played King and Jane didn’t care. They were going to be there for him. Hadn’t they already proven that? The question he was asking himself was, did they need to be? It was a lot to ask of anyone, and placed an added burden on them, as if trying to have an unconventional relationship wasn’t hard enough.

Sam really wanted to talk to King. They’d barely had time to say hello before the team meeting and Sam hadn’t wanted to bring anything up on the plane with all the guys around. Usually they shared a hotel room, which Sam had been looking forward to for several reasons, but then the coach had asked Sam to room with Mal Goodman and go over some last minute plays with him, and Sam couldn’t say no. So here they were, two days later, and Sam still hadn’t apologized. And King was acting like they hadn’t had sex two days ago, when that was practically all Sam could think about. King was pretending to sleep in the seat next to him on the plane home and Sam didn’t want to make a scene. But they were definitely going to talk later.

Mal was sitting across the aisle from Sam and he seemed pretty down on himself. He hadn’t had a good game. He’d royally screwed up one of the new plays, and it had resulted in a penalty and a lost down that had nearly cost them a field goal. Thank God for Nigel’s kicking ability. “Hey, Mal,” Sam said, determined to cheer him up. “Don’t be so down on yourself. We were all struggling a little with the new plays.”

“No you weren’t,” Mal said quietly. “Just me.”

Sam looked right and left to see if anyone else was listening. “Mal, have you talked to anyone about, you know, your reading issue?”

Mal looked up at him with wide eyes and looked around. He shook his head. “It’s why I been traded so many times,” he said quietly. “I can’t figure out the playbooks. This isn’t the first time.” Sam thought about that for a minute.

“Have you ever been tested?” he asked. “You know, to see if you have some kind of problem? Like dyslexia. They have stuff you can do to help with that.”

“What is it?” Mal asked, frowning.

“Well, when you look at words and letters, what your eyes see isn’t what your brain sees,” Sam said, trying to remember what he knew about it. “For some reason the message doesn’t get through properly. So all the words and letters get mixed up and turned around.”

“That happens to me,” Mal said in wonder. “But they all just said I was stupid.”

“Who’s ‘they all’?” Sam said, getting pissed off on Mal’s behalf.

“Teachers and stuff,” Mal said. “The people at the group home.”

Oh, shit. Mal was an orphan or something. Sam hadn’t known that. “Well, they’re wrong,” Sam said firmly. “If that’s what happens, it’s amazing how smart you have to be to have learned as much of the playbook as you have.”

“It takes me hours to figure it out,” Mal confessed.

“I’ll come over to your place and help you,” Sam offered. He pulled out his phone. “What’s your address? We can do it tomorrow night.” Mal looked worried. “Unless you already have plans,” Sam said. “We can do it another time.”

“No, no,” Mal said. “It’s just, my place isn’t so great.” He pulled out his phone and, after messing with it for a minute, turned it so Sam could see. “That’s my address,” he said. “I made the landlord put it in there.” Sam squinted at it.

“Are you sure that’s right?” he asked. He recited it and Mal nodded. “That’s not a great part of Birmingham, Mal,” he said.

“What the hell you living over there for, Mal?” King said, no longer pretending to be asleep. “What are the Rebels paying you?” He looked around. “Where’s DeShawn? Isn’t he the player rep?”

“No, no,” Mal said frantically, looking around. “The Rebels pay me good. But my agent, he takes a lot. For looking after me, you know?” Several other players were now listening to their conversation.

“How much is a lot?” King asked suspiciously.

“Like, seventy percent,” Mal said. “He said that was normal when they had to do so much for a guy like me. He lined up my apartment and helped me sign the lease and stuff.”

“What the fuck,” Dominique Reyes said angrily from the seat in front of Mal. He turned around and glared over the back of his seat. “What’s the motherfucker’s name? Seventy fucking percent from my boy? I don’t think so.” He stood up and hollered back in the plane, “DeShawn! Get your ass up here.” He turned back to Mal and grabbed his phone out of his hand. “Boy, you coming home with me. You ain’t living in no shack.”

Sam felt a little guilty seeing Mal’s look of horror at the situation their conversation had led to. Without thinking, he put his hand on Mal’s arm. He surprised himself with the move. He hadn’t casually touched anyone in years. The only people he’d willingly made contact with were King, Jane, and Carmina, not counting on the football field, and the occasional polite handshake. “Look, Mal, let us help you. What your agent is doing is wrong. And we’re going to get you some help for the reading, too, okay?” He smiled at Mal and Mal just nodded miserably.

“You’re pretty amazing,” King said quietly from beside Sam as Cass and DeShawn Brown, the players’ rep, sat down with Mal and discussed the situation with him.

“Not really,” Sam said with a shrug. “You saw the other guys. Once they found out what was happening they stepped up, too.”

“Yeah, but you bothered to find out what was going on. None of us did.” King sighed. “I admit I just thought he was slow. Now I feel like a total shit.”

“Hey,” Sam said, putting his hand on King’s arm. The contact was electric and they both froze, staring at each other. Sam cleared his throat and yanked his hand off, glancing around to see if anyone had seen it. “You’re pretty amazing, too,” he said to King. “You did the same thing for me, remember?”

“I had ulterior motives,” King said with a lopsided grin. Sam’s stomach flip-flopped.

“I’ve been waiting for the right time to apologize,” Sam said quietly. “I’d really like to talk about what happened when we get home.”

“That would probably be a good idea.”