The Cowboys made it to the NFC championship game that year, a result that even twelve months previously, no one even dared to dream of. We lost by three points but it was close and I knew it was beyond the owners expectations that we make it that far in my first year. I've lost football games before - not many - but I know how it feels to lose. That game didn't really feel like losing. It felt like getting somewhere early. I was aware, however, that it piled on the pressure to make it to - and win - the Superbowl next season or the one after that.

"Just enjoy right now, for what it is," Jess told me over the phone later that night as I sat alone in my living room, decompressing from the endless stream of congratulations and interviews after the game.

I'd been telling her that now I was expected to lead the team all the way the next season. She was, sensibly as always, advising me to live in the moment.

"And I've got a meeting with some guys from Keerok tomorrow. Barry won't shut up about it."

"Wow," Jess chuckled. "They don't waste any time, huh?"

"Well, no, but they're been trying to meet with me for a few months now. I don't even know why I've been putting it off. Too concentrated on the games, I suppose."

"How much are they offering? And are you going to build a giant vault to store all that money in, Kaden?"

"Dunno," I answered. "Barry seems to think it'll be more than twenty million. Crazy, huh? Just to sell some sneakers."

Jess sighed on the other end of the phone. "Damn, Kaden. Twenty million? That's not chump change, you know. Do you even have any plans for all this cash?"

I laughed. "No, not really. Just put it all in the bank, I suppose."

As it turned out, Keerok offered me thirty-two million dollars per year for a three-year extendable contract. I didn't ever consider turning it down - it basically seemed like free money. Film a few commercials, send a few tweets (and I didn't even have the login information to my official Twitter account - it was all handled by my ever-growing team of media managers), smile for the camera. But I did experience a strange desire to burst out laughing - really cracking up - during the meeting. I wanted to jump up on the table and scream: "THIRTY-TWO MILLION DOLLARS? TO SELL SHOES? ARE YOU CRAZY?!"

But Barry was there with me and he took all of those negotiations with a kind of deadly seriousness I usually assume is reserved for people who save lives or fly spaceships. When the deal was signed we went out to a steakhouse to celebrate.

"Well?" He asked, grinning as he chewed what was probably a fifty dollar mouthful of Kobe steak. "How does it feel to be rich?"

"You should have asked me that last year before I signed with the Cowboys - I've had some time to get used to it now."

"Yeah," Barry replied, "but this is just the beginning. There are other huge companies who would fight to the death with each other to sign you. If you play this right, man, you're going to have so much money you won't know what to do with it."

Barry was wearing one of his signature shiny gray suits. I watched a drop of blood drip from the steak on his fork onto his shirt, but he didn't notice. It was fitting in a way, there was something shark-like and predatory about him. It never even occurred to him that some people might not have 'making more money that I know what to do with' as their sole aim in life.

"And what do you mean by play it right?" I asked. "Just keep signing on the dotted line?"

"Yeah, that. And keep your nose clean, although you're doing a pretty good job of that, I must say. Are you asexual? Pining over some girl back in some hick town?"

I smiled and shook my head. "No, Barry," I replied, "I'm not asexual."

"What then? Some girl from high school? Why not that sweet-assed little redhead you're always talking to?"

"Jess is a friend," I told him. "And she has a boyfriend."

"So it is some girl from high school!"

I didn't respond to that and only noticed too late that Barry had been joking. The lack of response to the joke is what tipped him off to the fact that it was true.

"Aw Jesus, Barlow - really?! You know any man would kill to be in your shoes, right? Hell, I would kill to be in your shoes. You could stroll into a supermodel convention and pick 'em off the shelves like groceries, you know that, right? You're young, you look like Captain America and you've got enough goddamned money to buy the planet. You're giving me depression watching you piss it all away."

I rolled my eyes hard. "Piss it all away? What, because I don't fuck every girl I see? I led the goddamned team to the NFC final, man. You're being a little harsh."

Barry shrugged. "I'm just messin' with ya, Barlow. I do think it's fucking weird that you're doing the equivalent of standing in the middle of a dessert shop and starving yourself to death with regards to the pussy that gets throw at you, but whatever floats your boat, man. Anyway. Just don't get caught doing anything that isn't family friendly is what I'm saying. It's easy if you're not stupid about it, and you don't seem stupid."

"Thanks," I replied sarcastically, grinning. Barry was an animal. Good at his job, but a total animal. We were very different men but it didn't stop us being able to work together.

"And if you ever think of getting your little small-town girl to join you out here, talk to me first."

"Why?" I asked, cringing internally at the thought of Tasha meeting Barry - not that it was ever going to happen. I had a feeling he'd have a hand-shaped mark on his face within five minutes of that occurring.

"Because it's a little fucking lame, you know? I've seen this before with some of you sports guys, especially the ones from small towns. You always leave some girl behind and then carry a flame for her for years while better women walk past you on the street every second."

"I haven't met a better woman than her," I said, feeling my hackles rising slightly.

"See? That's exactly what I mean," Barry told me. "And sometimes they get these girls to marry them and then it just turns into a big shitshow."

"Why?" I asked again, sipping the scotch we'd ordered to accompany the steaks.

"Homely little girls from back in Bumfuck with no media training? Sorry, it doesn't work ninety-nine percent of the time, my man. You've got to get yourself a woman of the world, a woman who understand what it means to be a pro sportsman, you know?"

I laughed. "And by that, you mean a woman willing to put up with multiple pieces on the side, right?"

"Damn right. And she better have an ass you can bounce a quarter off, too."

I couldn't be bothered arguing with Barry. There was no point, he wasn't interested in women, not beyond what they could do for him at any given moment, anyway. Tasha would have thought him ridiculous and she would have been right - he was. He was also pretty harmless as long as you didn't take any of his proclamations about life seriously.

I accepted it a few weeks later when a famous sports magazine called me up with an interview and photo shoot request. I had to take it - promoting the team was part of the job, especially in the off-season - but I didn't mind. It was going to be a longer piece, not just the same old boring questions I get all the time. The photo shoot, though, ended up involving a world-renowned Dutch supermodel. They sent us out into the desert in swimwear to be photographed in ridiculous, yoga-like poses. It was hilarious. The photographer kept telling me to flex - and kept telling the model to arch her back or stick out her tits. Which she did gamely and with the patience of someone who is a)used to sticking out her tits and b)paid highly for doing so.

The interview itself was with a guy not much older than me who, right from the start, gave off a patronizing air that he didn't even bother to try and conceal. He thought I was a dumb jock. Maybe I was. It was my job not to get my back up, though. And, truthfully, he was probably just jealous. A foot shorter than me, chubby-faced and round-shouldered, he was one of those guys who needed to be smarter than the other guys in the room - the jocks - because he knew he couldn't compete physically.

He ended up asking me about how being drafted by the NFL and moving to Dallas had affected my 'relationships' - and we both knew that he didn't mean my relationships with family members.

"Most guys go crazy when they first get drafted," he told me somberly. "That doesn't seem to have affected you. Any reason why, Kaden?"

I shrugged, not willing to talk about my deep personal feelings with some random jackass. "Nah. I'm just concentrating on training, getting better, being the strongest I can be for my team. I know it's not the answer you want but it's the truth."

Afterward, when he was packing up to leave and we were off-the-record he turned to me as he fumbled his iPad into his backpack.

"You're probably killing it with the ladies, though, huh? I understand you don't want to talk about it - got that shiny new Keerok endorsement after all - but c'mon. You must be loving it."

I fixed him with a hard stare. "Actually, I meant what I said when I answered that question the first time - I'm just concentrating on my fitness and my game right now."

"Huh," he replied, getting ready to leave. "That's not what I hear."

"What?" I asked, after a couple of seconds had passed, long enough for his comment to sink in.

"I said that's not what I hear." He repeated.

"What have you heard?"

I wasn't worried. I was perfectly aware of the fact that I didn't get up to any of the shady shit with football groupies that my teammates did, but the reporter's smug tone bothered me. He threw me a coy little smile before walking out the door and turning back towards me to say one more thing before closing it behind him:

"I hear you don't know how to wrap it up, Barlow. Rookie mistake."

And then he was gone. I stood there in the cavernous foyer of my house for a few moments, wondering what the hell he was talking about. Not that it mattered. I knew exactly how many groupies I'd stuck it in without wrapping it up: zero.

Tasha didn't even occur to me. Not because she was the only one I'd ever been with without protection, but because she was miles away - not just physically but mentally, too. She inhabited a different universe. A universe in which jumped-up little pricks like that reporter didn't exist.

A few minutes later I got a text about a change in the off-season training schedule and forgot the interviewer's remarks. The post-season, after the glare of the media spotlight dulled a little, gave me time to start sorting out my life in Dallas. A couple of my teammates invited me to their houses to hang out, I played - and was hilariously bad at - my first game of golf and I hired a real estate agent to start showing me houses that were more to my taste. There was also the matter of my parents moving to Dallas, an idea they were still pondering. I added smaller, easily maintained, handicap-access houses to the list of properties I wanted to see, just in case.

By the time summer rolled around, I was regularly playing golf with a few teammates-turned-friends and was getting surprisingly good at it. Life wasn't perfect, but it was no longer bewildering and lonely - as it had been when I first arrived in Dallas. It was at one of those friend's houses that I found myself one night, drinking beer and sitting around his tastefully-lit pool.

"You boys need any more beers?" A female voice called out. "Snacks?"

"Nah, we're good," Jimmy - one of the linebackers for the Cowboys - called back.

"Damn," Adam - another teammate - chuckled. "Where'd you find her? I've never met a chick who knows how to leave me alone."

"Oh, she knows how to leave me alone. And I know how to leave her alone when she's got all her girlfriends over and they're getting their white wine on, you know?"

I knew where the conversation was headed. I knew what I was going to be asked before it was asked. And when it was I did what I always do and deflected.

"Concentrating on my game. Nothing against women or anything, they're just not what I'm focused on right now."

"Bullshit." Jimmy replied good-naturedly, echoed soon after by the rest of the guys.

"Concentrating on your game?" Adam asked. "That may fly with the media, man, but look around you. It's off-season and your pansy-ass has been playing just as much golf as the rest of us. 'Concentrating on your game' my ass."

"Leave him alone." That was Brandon, one of the physical therapy crew and, by that point, someone I considered a friend. "He's still holding out for some little chickie back in his hometown. Got it bad, too, I've seen him reject smoking hot women multiple times."

Ugh. I'd barely even mentioned Tasha to Brandon. But I guess once - or twice - had been enough. I sat back in my chair, preparing for the onslaught.

"Really?" Jimmy asked, looking at me. "Why not just fly her out here? Small town girls love living in the city."

"Yeah, uh," I started, knowing I had to pick my words carefully or be torn to shreds. "She's got a job. And family issues - her mother is pretty sick and they're kind of a tight unit."

"Bummer," Adam offered.

The roasting I was ready for didn't actually come. It was the first time I'd talked about Tasha for a long time but most of the guys seemed surprisingly sympathetic.

"So you weren't into the long-distance thing?"

"Actually, she wasn't into it."

There were noises of general disbelief all around me. It was Rob Jabowsky, another huge linebacker and not a guy I knew very well, who spoke up first.

"Really? She wasn't into it? You're one of the most famous guys in America, Kaden. You know how many chicks would claw each other's eyes out to get ten minutes with you?"

"Tasha's, uh, she's not like that. She's kind of a hard-ass, actually. Always has been, even back in high school."

"Ha, yeah, I hear that," Adam said. "There aren't many hard-assed women out there but those that are, man you cannot make them do shit they do not wanna do. I feel you, man."

There was general agreement that women like Tasha did exist, that they were rare, and that attempting to convince them to do things they weren't into was an exercise in futility. It was an odd feeling, talking about it - about her. I'd taken so much shit over my relationships with her, stretching all the way back to high school, really, that it surprised me to be shown so much understanding from a group of huge, overpaid, over-privileged jocks, just like me.

"Does she know how you feel?" Someone asked.

"I - I don't know. I think so. I mean, I told her a few times that I wanted her to come live with me but she always shot it down right away. Her family and everything."

"Yeah," Jimmy replied. "But does she know how you feel?"

That question took me back a little. "Well, I assume she does. I mean, you don't just invite someone to come live with you, or offer to pay off her family's debts, if you don't feel strongly about them, right?"

"I don't know, man. That's the thing about those hard-ass women. They're hardasses for a reason. They're covering something up, you know? They're scared of letting anyone in. I used to know a girl like that - pretty similar situation, actually. Most of the time it seemed like she didn't give a shit about me, but she admitted it to me once that she only acted like that because she was actually totally in love with me and it scared the shit out of her. And believe me, I went above and beyond for this girl. Bought her a car, took her on vacations, even offered to set her up in her own place when she said she didn't want to live with anyone. Turns out she never even realized how I felt. Not until it was too late, anyway."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Too late how?"

"She got married last year - even invited me to the wedding. Everyone got a little tipsy and she basically told me everything. Because she could by then, you know? She wasn't in love with me anymore - not that I ever knew she was - she'd just gotten married. She was safe. She only told me the truth because she was safe. It's weird, I wanted to be pissed at her, you know? Like, how could she not know? But she didn't. She's not a bad person - she never once asked me for money, I did all that shit myself - she was just super-protective of her heart. Hard childhood, you know? Fucked her up a little, made it almost impossible to believe that anyone could truly love for her. Honestly, man, sometimes it's the people who seem the most together who are just a big mess of emotions on the inside."

I grabbed a beer bottle off the table and took a long, hard swig as my mind reeled. I didn't know if I wanted to believe what Jimmy was saying or not. On the one hand, if that was Tasha's deal, then there was still - maybe - some hope, right? On the other hand, he didn't know Tasha. Nothing about her said 'vulnerable.' Even in the NFL, it was rare to meet people as absolutely focused and responsible as her. And my friends were trying to make me feel better, weren't they? Maybe Jimmy was embellishing a little, to that end.

"You should at least talk to her, man. Just call her up, tell her how you feel." Adam said, to general nods of approval from the rest of them.

"Yeah," Jimmy agreed. "If you lay your cards out on the table and she tells you to fuck off, at least you know. Then you can move on. Because that's what you have to do at some point. Move on. You've got the whole smorgasbord of primo American babes who would kill to get with you, Barlow. If you waste your time pining away for some chick who doesn't even want to, you're gonna regret it."

That night, I went home and stared at Tasha's number on my cell phone for a long time. I didn't call her, because I'd had too many beers and even I knew calling her up and slurring down the phone about how I felt wasn't going to go down well. But a little Google wouldn't hurt, I told myself. There was basically nothing to be found, though. She wasn't too active on social media, never had been - too busy. All I could find was a comment she'd left on a friend's Facebook page over a year previously and a photo of her on the website of the law office where she worked. I stared at that photo for a long time, softened by the alcohol into allowing myself to really experience how much I missed her.

But I didn't call her. It was late summer, the new season started in September. And why didn't I call her? Cowardice, probably. If you tell someone how you feel, they might tell you they don't feel the same way. As far as I was concerned, that was exactly what would happen. But my friends were right - I didn't know. I had to know. If I did, even if it was bad news, then maybe, maybe, I could finally put Natasha Greeley into that box in my head marked 'the past' and move on. I'd have to go see her.

Training was intense by then - daily - often two or three sessions with different coaches and trainers. I did have a block of three days, though, right before our first game. It had to be then. I booked the flight online, before I had time to pussy out, and then sat back, staring the receipt in my inbox. No backing down now.