“I said that I’m fucking okay,” I muttered, slurring my words. I set the bottle of Jameson down. Andy shook his head and grabbed the bottle to take a shot for himself.

“You’re acting delusional. As you’re ex-manager and best friend, I just want to say that I feel bad. I know some of this has to do with Kristoff,” Andy said.

I laughed loudly and picked up a football from the ground. I tossed it against one of my decorative ceramic pots. It shattered across the living room floor. “You see what I mean?” Andy asked. “I mention him, once and you go berserk. What’s wrong with you, man? Are you okay?”

Andy wasn’t my friend. He used to be my manager. He was practically the only one on this planet who’d still talk to me, but all it meant to him was the chance of me coming back. He wanted to be the first to steal the prize.

“It’s been years, Andy. This isn’t about Kristoff. This is about my career. I’m twenty-eight. How much time do I have left in this business, realistically? Five? Ten, at the most?” I asked.

I sat down and waited for his response. Andy hovered over me, shot glass in hand. He stumbled back as if my words were loaded with gunpowder and steel.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are five years not enough for you? You’d be making more than sixteen million dollars every year. That’s eighty million dollars in the long run,” Andy said.

I looked around at my pristine mansion. The white marble floors reflected beautifully against the sunlight. Renaissance paintings lined the hallway. I had everything I could have ever wanted. And still, I was unhappy.

“It’s not about the money. Is it, Andy?” I asked him, shielding my face by looking down at the floor. “It was never about the money. I played football because I loved the feeling it gave me. But then there were the ad campaigns. The magazine spreads. The fucking interviews where I was forced to play out a character for the fans. This world is a façade, man. I’m not cool with it anymore,” I said, feeling exhausted.

Andy reached for the remote and turned on the TV. “Don’t do that,” I said.

“No, I’m going to show you Sports Center right now. I want you to see what everyone is saying about you,” Andy said.

I knew exactly what he was going to show me. On the TV screen, I was yelling with rage at the paparazzi. I lobbed the man’s camera into the air. It hit the pavement and shattered into a hundred pieces. Andy paused the screen on my angry, red tomato face.

“That’s how the world will you remember you. Addison Matthews: Rageaholic. You’ll just be another sports star who lost his temper and threw his career down the toilet, all for absolutely nothing,” Andy said.

I sat back against the velvet chair and laughed, knowing that he was probably right. But what did I care? The choice had been made.

“I can’t take back what I did,” I said, shrugging. “I made a choice, and now I need to stick by that decision.”

“Do you want to hear my suggestion or not?” Andy asked.

My old manager looked honest, for once in his life. He sat in front of me, adjusting his black suit. His hair was combed perfectly to the side, and his beard was gruff but somehow calming. I nodded my head. “Yeah. Tell me,” I said.

“Take the season off. Come back in 2019, full swinging. Dude, you’re Addison motherfucking Matthews, the first player to question the Beta Rule of law around here. You’re celebrated in the community. You can’t stop now,” Andy said.

I hung my head. I felt so fucking lost. I didn’t want to walk back into their world. It was so fake that it made me ill.

On the other hand, I loved playing the sport. It was my life’s goal to become a football player. I didn’t expect to become a world-renowned quarterback, but I did work my ass off to get there.

I was throwing away that dream without having any backup plan in mind. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’m going to my parent’s cabin in the woods this weekend. That should clear my head, I guess.”

I knew what my parents were going to tell me. They were going to motivate me to get back in the game. They’d say that I was being too hard on myself. But once I hurt that other player on the field, I lost a massive part of myself. I didn’t know how to cope.

Andy stood up and hugged me platonically. “All I can say is that I hope the time away can help you,” Andy said. “You know how I feel, at least. I have a meeting soon, so I have to run. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I watched as he walked out the front door. I grabbed the bottle of Jameson and took another sip, grunting because I knew I didn’t need any more alcohol in my system. It wasn’t doing any good.

Andy encouraged the worst of me. I’d cut him out of my life if I had other people who cared about me. The fact was that I didn’t anymore.

As soon as Andy left, I called my parents. I heard my dad’s gruff voice. “Addison, my boy. How are you holding up today?” he asked.

“I’m hanging in there, dad,” I said. I never wanted to reveal my vulnerability to my parents. It always made me feel embarrassed because they were so damn “put together.”

The truth was that I envied my parents. I didn’t know how they lasted for so long without getting a divorce. They were perfect, and I felt like their damaged son.

“Well, try to put it past you for now. There’s no use dwelling on it for too long,” Dill said. “Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

I felt my stomach turn, but I took a deep breath and asked him very carefully, “Is everything okay with you guys?”

My dad’s burly laugh shook me out of my alarm. “Alpha, stop worrying so much about us. We’re not that old,” he said.

“I know. But I worry about you guys,” I said. “So, what’s going on? Let me guess. You want to get season passes for another friend.”

Suddenly, I could hear my omega father cooking in the background. He yelled out for Dill, “Darling, I need help with the pasta! Come here for a second!”

My dad sighed. “Son? I’ll see you this weekend, okay? We’ll talk then,” he said.

“Alright. Love you, pops,” I said. He said goodbye and hung up the phone.