A good workout helps me sweat away the tension, and by the time I arrive home, my morning moodiness is gone. Halfway in the door, my phone buzzes.

Did you see the news?

The text's from my brother.

Me: No

Knox: Joshua London got picked up last night for a DUI.

Oh shit. Josh London is a beast. Three hundred pounds but lightning fast. Teams are salivating over him.

I type with one hand.

Me: Is it out

Knox: No, but soon. Some “anon” agent is spilling tea on SM that he's a problem in the locker room and this won't be the last of the bad news about him

I hate those anonymous sources. They can say all the crap they want about a player and the player has no way of punching back. Any denial makes it look like you're hiding something.

Me: Sux tb him

Knox: No kidding. How'd the workout go? Weight?

Sigh. Even from Knox. Tiredly, I type out my response.

253

Knox sends me the thumbs up.

I get five more texts. All of them about London. Poor dude. Granted, asshole shouldn't drink and drive, but this is going to cost him several million dollars. Hope he enjoyed his night at the bar.

Remy voices my exact thoughts when I walk into our kitchen. “You hear about London? Fool boy just had his most expensive night out ever. If I don't hear that it involved bathing in Ace champagne while Victoria’s Secret models took turns sucking him off, I'm gonna be real disappointed.”

“Knox texted me. Is it out yet?”

“I haven't seen it on the news. I guess his coach must've called in a favor.” Remy leans against the counter and reads the incoming tweets on his phone.

“It's going to get out there.”

“I keep searching his name. Nothing's trending yet.”

I walk over to the fridge and pull out a bunch of ingredients for a smoothie. “Used to be that you'd be excited if you trended. These days it means you're dead or you did something wrong.”

“Truth, brother. Truth. How's the knee?”

I stifle my annoyance and pack the blender to the top. “Fine.”

“Hurts, huh?”

“I think it's phantom pain,” I tell him. “My knee's been fine since the Bowl game.”

“Funny how a championship is the best upper.”

“Good for our draft stock, too.”

We exchange a muted high-five.

“You're not putting enough sweetener in there. It's gonna taste like grass,” Remy observes.

“I'm not even supposed to have sweetener,” I grumble, but I squirt an extra serving of agave syrup into the blender.

Wyatt Majors, another lineman, ambles through. From the state of his hair, he just woke up.

I motion to the blender. “Want one?”

He grimaces. “How many vegetables have you stuck in there?”

“A few.”

“He shoved in a whole bag of baby spinach,” Remy volunteers.

“Pass. Since I'm not training for shit anymore, I'm going to eat like a normal person.”

After graduation, Wyatt's going to work at a construction company now that football is over. He strolls over to the cabinet and breaks open a bag of chips. My mouth waters.

“Asshole,” Remy mutters under his breath.

We sniff the air like goddamned junkies and then force our attention back on the blender.

“This stuff tastes better than it looks,” Remy says.

The green sludge swirls in the plastic container.

“Looks like cow puke,” Wyatt yells over his shoulder.

Man, our friend is an asshole. I turn the blender on high to drown out the sound of the crunch of the chips.

“How about the plastic wrap over Wyatt's toilet?” Remy hollers into my ear.

“Alwyn shares a room with him. We going to drag him down, too?” I yell back.

Remy strokes his chin.

“I hear you plotting something against me,” Wyatt shouts over the blender.

I shut it off. “No need to scream, bro. We're standing right here.”

Wyatt gives me the finger and shoves another handful of chips into his mouth.

I lick my lips. “That junk food is going to kill you.”

“Dude, you couldn't be more jealous if I was standing here with Miss America,” my friend taunts.

“Who is Miss America these days? Anyone hot? They all look pretty plastic-y to me,” I muse.

“She's a Latina and she's smoking,” Remy informs us. “You guys oughta watch those pageants. Hot chicks parading around in skin-tight dresses and bikinis. Only thing better is if they doused the girls with oil and had a little wrestling event.”

“You need to take that remote away from Nichole,” Wyatt says.

I pour the blended concoction into two glasses and hand Remy one. “He can't. She's already pissed at him because he bought that egg speaker.” The egg-shaped Bluetooth speaker set Remy back a cool three grand.

“Is that what was shaking the house last night?” Wyatt rolls his eyes.

“Boy, you have no idea how fine this girl is. She puts out four thousand watts of power and is coated with rose gold. She's so beautiful it brings a tear to my eye.” Remy sniffles and wipes away a non-existent tear.

“And you wonder why Nichole's mad,” I say.

“I gotta see this,” Wyatt says.

Remy eyes Wyatt's chip-coated fingers with mild disgust. “You're not getting in the door until you wash your hands.” As Wyatt shoves more chips in his mouth, Remy turns to me. “Heard your girl threw a pitcher of Bloody Marys in your face last night.”

“It was a glass of water and it was this morning. Where'd you hear that?” I gulp down my drink.

“Nichole heard it from somebody. You oughta be careful. One of your exes is gonna plant a story about you,” Remy cautions.

“They've all broken up with me,” I protest.

Remy looks up from his phone. Wyatt stops eating. Together they stare at me in disbelief.

“What?” I ask, feeling a mite defensive. “It's true.”

“It's true like the pool turning green after someone pisses in it is true,” Wyatt says.

“Hey, now, all of them knew I was here to play ball.” I scowl into the bottom of my empty glass. I never lied to a single girl.

Remy nods. “True. Lots of girls talk a good game, but once they're with you, it's always complaints about how you're missing things when they know you have to prepare. But”—he puts his phone down—“truth is that the bigwigs upstairs like to hear that you've settled down. Nothing gets them harder for a player than knowing you got a family and a mouth to feed. That way they know you aren't spending all your nights at the club or partying on some boat. Even if you didn't have a woman, you should lie and say you do.”

Every year at the combine, along with all the physical stuff, you're required to take exams that test your general intelligence, and then you interview with the general managers or presidents of operations. These folks are spending millions of dollars on you. They want every aspect of your life laid bare.

Remy's repeating the same thing Dana told me, so no doubt Remy's agent has given him the same lecture. The front office guys would like nothing more than to hear you're in a committed relationship to a girl you've known since you were five and that you plan to have three kids right away.

These things scream stable family man who is going to be a credit to the organization instead of reckless rookie who plans to spend his new millions on flashy cars, flashy women and bottles of Ace at the club.

“What are you planning on saying?” I ask Remy, because we spent an hour the other night looking for Nichole's ring after she screamed that she wouldn't fuck him if he was the last dick on earth.

“We're on again. She's all in. I think she can smell the money.”

“Frankly, I thought Rhyann would stick around for that,” I admit. Rhyann came on to me after Thanksgiving. She was pretty, polished, and came off fairly sophisticated. I figured she knew the score, but missing her birthday was apparently the last straw.

“Oh shit, it's out,” Remy says suddenly.

I hustle over to his side. He's swiping through the Josh London hashtag. The mentions aren't pretty.

But it's not the random fans on the internet that worry us. It's the sports reporters who chime in.

“Damn,” Remy whistles. “Out of the first round over a DUI?”

“That's one source.” I lay my hand over Remy's and force the phone down to the counter. “No point in reading any more of that. You're going to give yourself an ulcer.”

“I can't wait until the draft is over,” he confesses and flips the phone over because he's an addict and can't stop reading the bad news. “You should get yourself a girl.”

“In four weeks? Should I put up an ad on the SU connections site? ‘Wanted, girl who doesn't care if I ignore her for four weeks but will pretend to be madly in love with me so NFL execs will give me good grades at the combine.’”

“What about Ara?” Wyatt pipes up.

I stiffen. Her juicy ass and long legs flash in front of my eyes. “What about her?”

“She'd pretend for you. She's your best friend. Plus, she's smart and all so that would make them happy.”

“She'd laugh her face off if I even suggested it.” Plus, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. My dick would explode from want.

“Never know until you ask.”

My response to Wyatt is lost when the doorbell rings.

“You get it,” Remy begs us. “And if it's Nichole, I'm not home.”

With that, he runs upstairs.

“Coward,” Wyatt yells after him.

“Yup,” comes the cheerful response. Nichole has that boy by the balls.

“You heard the man—get the door.” I grab the blender and make a big show of cleaning up.

Wyatt huffs his exasperation but goes to see who's visiting. It's not one of our teammates. They'd walk in. Ara, too. So it's gotta be a girl.

A high-pitched voice reaches me. A high-pitched familiar voice. Oh, hell. I wipe my hands on the towel and go out to rescue Wyatt.