SHANE

 

May 3rd

Mad Batter Bakery

Los Angeles, CA

 

 

Once Colt stops playing ball and becomes an old man, this place is going to be the death of him. He’s a sugar addict marrying a baker. His marriage certificate will be his death sentence.

“Shane, man, you have to try one of these,” he tells me excitedly. He has his own apron here at Lilly’s bakery. It has his name on it and everything. He even went through a course with the city to get his food handler’s license so he could play here at the store without getting her shut down. Right now, he’s in the middle of making a donut filled with peanut butter, topped with Captain Crunch, and drizzled in caramel. It looks disgusting.

I shake my head at him. “No way. That looks like shit.”

“It looks like shit but it tastes like heaven.”

“We’re not selling those,” Lilly tells him plainly.

“That’s fine. More for me.”

She smiles at him as she squeezes by with a tray of buttery croissants ready for the oven. Now those look good. I plan on snagging at least three before I leave here this morning.

I’m in the back of the bakery with Colt and Lilly to watch them get ready for the store to open. I’m killing time because I wake up at four every morning without fail. I’m not supposed to be at the studio until seven, but I couldn’t sleep in so I’m killing time instead. I’m on the Kodiak’s clock no matter what. It’s how I live because football isn’t just my job. It’s my life.

Normally, I spring out of bed when my alarm goes off, but today I woke up slow. I stared at the ceiling with a sense of dread that I couldn’t place at first. Not until Sutton’s face drifted across my mind. Her eyes like lasers bore into mine angrily under the cartoonish colors in the club, instantly making me sluggish. That’s the other reason I’m here – to talk to Lilly about what happened with Sutton. The girl obviously hates me and I don’t know what to do about it. I want a woman’s opinion, but Colt is making it hard to have a conversation.

“I’m taking these to the team tomorrow morning,” he vows reverently, drizzling an extra layer of caramel over them.

“You can’t bring those to practice.”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Lowry. The guys have got to eat.”

“If anyone eats that before practice they’ll be puking on the field in the first hour. Do you think Coach is going to go easy on us the first day he gets us back on the field?”

“What are you talking about? You guys have been practicing since April,” Lilly comments.

Colt shakes his head. “We haven’t been practicing. Not yet. We’re only allowed strength conditioning, and it’s been optional. That’s why this son of a bitch was allowed to live it up in Washington while the rest of us were working our asses off.”

“You weren’t working your asses off.” I snag a plain donut from the pile Colt hasn’t assaulted yet. “We’re not allowed to.”

“So what’s the big deal about tomorrow?” Lilly asks curiously.

“Tomorrow is the first day of on-field workouts. We’ll basically be running for four hours straight. Still no football. Only training. And no rookies. They have their own training they’re going through.”

She shakes her head, wiping a stray hair away from her eyes with the back of her flour-coated hand. “I can never keep all of this straight.”

“It’s easy when it’s your life.”

“Some days it feels like we don’t take a shit unless the Commissioner tells us to,” Colt mutters.

I look at him, head down over his donuts in deep concentration, and I feel sick inside. The team has been sold and the new owners are moving us to Las Vegas, but Colt has decided not to go with us. His contract is up after this year, same as mine, and he’s decided not to renew. With anyone. He’ll retire at just twenty-five years old. It’s not uncommon. Football is a brutal game and it takes years off your body. Colt has an old knee injury from his college days that gives him trouble sometimes. Apparently more trouble than it’s worth, because he says it’s one of the main reasons he’s quitting.

I’m lucky. I’ve gone my entire career nearly unscathed. I’ve had a few broken fingers, a concussion, and a spasm in my back that took me down for three weeks, but other than that I’m healthy. I’m rock solid and ready to roll.

It just isn’t going to be the same. Not without Colt.

“Tell me again what happened with Sutton,” Lilly says to me as she hoists the bread into the oven. “You saw her dancing with some guy…”

“She was dancing with a dude at Carousel—”

“The gay bar?” Colt asks with a scowl.

I drop my hands impatiently on the counter. “Does everyone but Sam and me know that place is a gay bar?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

“You should have gone to 171.”

Lilly and I groan in unison.

Colt glances back and forth between us. “What? What’s wrong with 171?”

“Nothing, except we always go there,” Lilly complains.

“We don’t always go there.”

“If we’re not at 171, we’re at that dive you and Sloane are in love with,” I argue.

Colt smiles proudly. “Beer ‘N Burger. The Hotness and I found it on Yelp. It had the worst reviews in town.”

“It should. It’s a shithole.”

“You’re a shithole.”

“Anyway,” Lilly interrupts, physically stepping between us to get my attention. She leans back against the table where Colt is working his sugar wizardry, her arms crossing over her chest. “What happened with Sutton?”

“I saw her dancing with the dude. I joined the crowd watching them because they were good. When they finished, the guy ditched her to go suck the face off a redhead with sad boobs.”

“Hold on,” Lilly laughs. “How can a woman have sad boobs?”

“It’s a thing.”

“It is,” Colt agrees.

“But it’s not really relevant to the story.”

“Then why’d you bring it up?” Lilly demands.

“Why’d I bring up her hair color? It doesn’t matter either but you’re not getting hung up on that detail.”

“Alright, fine, it doesn’t matter, but we’re circling back to this later. I want to know how a woman can have sad boobs.”

“I’ll draw you a picture. I promise.”

“This story is taking forever,” Colt complains.

I sit forward in my chair. “We’re getting to the important part. The guy leaves, she’s alone, so I go to say hey. I tell her she danced really well. She says thanks. Landslide comes on. I ask her to dance.”

“Stevie Nicks or Dixie Chicks?” Colt asks.

“Who cares?”

“The guy from Kansas cares! Which was it?”

“Miley Cyrus.”

He rolls his eyes. “Lame.”

“Whatever. Anyway, she agreed to dance with me and we talked about the show. I asked her how hard it’s going to be for us being so different in height and everything. That’s when she got bitchy. She told me she didn’t want me as a partner. She wanted Colt.”

Colt chuckles smugly.

Lilly and I ignore him.

“Did she say why she didn’t want you?” she asks.

“Yeah, she said it’s because I’m violent.”

Lilly laughs. “What? For real?”

“Those were her words. She said they picked me purely based on the fact that I’m in the NFL and I’m ‘in trouble’.”

“In trouble with who?”

“I didn’t ask, but she said it was because of the fights.”

“Are you in trouble for the fights?”

“No! I paid my fines. I settled the lawsuit. I’m clean.”

“Huh,” Lilly muses quietly. “And she got angry at you?”

“She told me she doesn’t know me, she doesn’t trust me, and she doesn’t think we have what it takes to win. She basically shit in my face. That’s when I decided to bail on the conversation. I told her to have a great night and she stormed off. She left the club.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Colt whistles quietly. “I dodged a bullet on that one.”

“You know the part that really bothers me?” I ask, feeling the frustration from last night rise up in my chest, constricting it tightly. “I think she’s seriously afraid of me. She really thinks I’m one of these douchebags that goes around looking for a fight. She looks at me like I’m a grenade someone dropped into her hands and she has no idea if I’m live or not.”

Lilly frowns sympathetically. “She’s a small woman, Shane, and you are a very large man.”

“I’d never hurt her.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. I know that, but that’s because I know you. If I didn’t, if I just met you on the street after hearing all the rumors, I might not be so sure.”

“Great. What am I supposed to do about that if she’s already made up her mind about me?”

Lilly stands up straight, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t have an easy solution for that.”

“Well, damn,” I laugh.

“You just have to go ahead with the show and prove to her that you’re not a jerk. It’ll be easy. You’re a sweetheart.”

“Why is it up to me to win her over? She’s not exactly an angel herself.”

“You don’t have to like each other to work together,” Colt reminds me.

“But it’d be easier,” Lilly adds.

“You could always speed things up.”

“How?” I ask Colt.

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“So far, I’m not loving any of this shit.”

“You have to say you’re sorry.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Colt laments. “She’s upset. You apologize. It’s the only way it gets better.”

“Listen to the expert,” Lilly recommends.

“I’ve apologized for all kinds of shit I didn’t do.”

I stare at him in amazement. “That makes no damn sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. But you do have to do it.”

“Fuck!”

Lilly smiles at my annoyance before walking away to grab another tray of bread for the oven. They’ll be opening soon. It’s almost six, meaning I need to get going, but I don’t know if I want to. Not if it means I’m walking into a hostile situation where my only course of action is to surrender. It’s bullshit. The rules for being on this show are nothing like football. In football you kick each other’s ass all day and you’re friends the same night.

Football means never having to say you’re sorry.