TREY
February 26th
Magnolia Apartments
Los Angeles, CA
4.72 seconds.
Over the last four days, ten quarterbacks have already tested and drilled in the first group to attend the Combine, and so far 4.72 seconds is the fastest time any of them could run the 40 yard dash. Earlier today my roommate and center on the field, Cummings, clocked me at 4.64. My group leaves for the Combine tomorrow, and if I can hold onto that time I’ll be one of the fastest QBs to test.
“What else is left?” Cummings grunts, flopping down on the couch next to me.
I glance over, doing a double take. I groan in disgust. “Jesus, man, where are your pants?”
Cummings looks down at his stark white thighs protruding thick as tree trunks from his orange boxers. “I’m wearing underwear,” he protests.
“Barely.”
“This isn’t church. This is my apartment. I can wear what I want.”
“If I see your dick I’m punching it.”
“I’ll kick your ass if you do.”
He’s talking shit, but I’d hate to see it come to that. Cummings is six feet, five inches of pure mass. I’ve seen him mess up guys almost a hundred pounds heavier than me, and I have no desire to know what that feels like.
He nods to the TV. “Here comes Larkin.”
I turn back just in time to see Andre Larkin, a running back from Ohio State, step up to the line. He’s about to run the 40 and I have no doubt in my mind his time will be better than mine. Normally it wouldn’t bother me because he’s not a quarterback, but he and I have been neck and neck, bouncing back and forth around each other in the Draft projections for the number three and four slots, and if he’s made a strong appearance at the Combine these last four days he’s bound to leap frog me solidly into that number three slot. It shouldn’t feel like a big deal. It’s one slot, and if I make a strong appearance at the Combine when my turn comes, I’ll get that distance between us down to nothing again. Besides, I’ve been labeled as the number four pick before. But it’s a step back, and with my injury holding me down, any backslide feels like quicksand under my feet.
“He’s been killing it so far,” I admit grudgingly.
“He looks good. Tight.”
I flex my hand inside my splint, feeling a pinch in the joint on my index finger. “If you get a hard on, I’m leaving.”
“I might,” Cummings fires back shamelessly. “Look at that dude. I think he had calf implants.”
“He’s been at a Combine training camp since January. The agency sent him.”
His brow furrows. “Brad Ashford is his agent too, right?”
“Yeah.”
“He signed you and Larkin at the same time. Why didn’t he send you to camp?”
I look at him wryly, holding up my splint.
“Right, yeah,” he mumbles. “I forgot.”
Larkin takes his position. He waits for the call, then he’s off like a shot. Like a bullet out of a gun.
When they post his time, it’s no surprise.
4.58
“Fuck.”
Cummings looks at me sideways. “You know what you need to do.”
“Don’t say get laid. Don’t say get laid,” I chant quietly, my eyes on the TV. On that time. Tie a steak to my ass and let a lion loose behind me, and I still couldn’t run that fast.
“You need to get laid.”
I drop my head in defeat. “Let it go, dude.”
“You haven’t had a piece of trim in months! It’s fucked up.”
“I’m trying to focus.”
“You’re focusing yourself right back into virginity.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“If you don’t use your dick, it will fall off. Scientific fact, bro.”
I laugh. “I’m not taking scientific facts from a guy who failed chemistry.”
“Man, fuck you,” he barks angrily. “You know that professor had it in for me.”
“I know you tried to ask her out and she shut you down.”
“Yeah, and she was a bitch to me for the rest of the term.”
“Don’t tousle with a cougar if you can’t handle the claws.”
“Shut up,” he grumbles.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table. Amber eyes and chocolate hair.
I silence it without answering.
“They’re doing the shuttle run next,” I tell Cummings.
“What’s your time on that?”
“4.2.”
He hisses through his teeth. “Not great.”
“I know. It’s my worst test.”
“Do you wanna go run it again? See if you can shave your time down?”
My phone buzzes again. Same eyes. Same hair.
I give it the same answer. Silence.
“No. I’m taking today off, remember?”
“Then you should stop watching this. You’re torturing yourself.”
“I need to know what I’m up against,” I reply stubbornly.
“Your call, but you know what I think you should be doing.”
My phone dings with a new text message.
“And it’s her,” he adds, pointing to my phone. “Tish. You need to hit it and quit it before you get on the plane tomorrow. Get your head right, ‘cause you’re a mess right now.”
I flip my phone over, hiding her face. “I’m not a mess.”
“You’re jittery. You’re doing that thing you do when you can’t control shit. Same kind of crazy you got when you were waiting for the bowl games to start.”
I fall back into the couch with a sigh, running my left hand over my face. “Sex isn’t going to help that,” I lie.
“It couldn’t hurt.”
If only he knew how wrong he is.
It’s not that I don’t want to have sex. He has no fucking idea how bad I want to. Anything to get my head out of the space it’s in right now, but it won’t last. It won’t fix me. It’d be like a drug, a quick hit that will give me oblivion for an hour or so, but the world will be waiting for me on the other side. The anxiety will still be there, no matter what I do.
All I can do is wait and wonder, which is the thing that’s killing me. Being out of control isn’t my style. It makes me itchy. It makes me angry. Worst of all, it makes me stupid.
“Did you go to the bank today?” Cummings asks, changing the subject.
“Nah, not yet.”
“They’re closed by now. You still haven’t packed yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Dude.”
“I know,” I growl, proving him right. I’m wound too tight. I take a deep breath, slowing myself down. “I know,” I repeat more gently.
“How do you even cash a check that big?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I haven’t done it yet. I’m scared to walk in there and have them stare at me like I’m an idiot. Like I showed up with one of those big cardboard checks they hand out at golf tournaments or some shit. I’ve never had that kind of money before. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars is more money than a lot of people have had.” He laughs to himself in amazement. “And you didn’t even have to do shit for it.”
“Not yet, no.”
That’s the other reason I haven’t cashed the check from the Ashford Agency; I haven’t earned it yet. They gave it to me as an advance on future endorsement deals. Handed it to me like it was nothing on the day I signed with them, when I came into the office in the nicest clothes I own and felt like a peasant stepping inside the castle gates. Mr. Ashford was the one who greeted me. He was there in the lobby waiting for me, smiling. He’s always smiling. Old, white, rich, and sharp as a shark. He was intimidating the second he reached for my hand, but I guess that’s what I want; a guy who can walk into a room full of other old, white, rich sharks and make them squirm.
He sat me down with a lawyer and a bunch of other people I didn’t catch the names or titles of, and I felt like a pussy because all I could think was that I wished my mom was there. I felt alone and nervous signing my life away to these people in pleated everything in that stark white office. My skin had never felt darker. I’d never been more aware of the fact that I was only half white, like there was a divide between us that I could never cross, no matter how much money I made. Even if I made more than them, they’d still be richer somehow.
Even with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my pocket and the chance to draft for over a million dollars on the horizon, I still feel like the poor kid from Oahu with second hand clothes and nothing but an old football to play with.
“Fuck it,” I growl, reaching for my phone.
I bring up the text from Tish, but I don’t bother reading it. I tell her I’m coming over. She won’t argue. She never does, not with me.
I met her last year at a frat party, shared a bottle of Jack with her on the roof of the place, and by morning we were buddies, of every variety. She’s chill. Laid back and always down for a good time, but best of all she’s not easy. She’s not one of these groupies running around in the wake of the team giving it up for anyone with a jersey on their back. I’m the only guy she’s sleeping with on the team, though not the only guy at the school, but the team is what’s important to me. I share a lot with these guys. Probably too much. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to not dip my wick in the same well.
I put my phone in my pocket without waiting for a reply. I go to the bathroom, pull two condoms out of the top drawer, and leave the apartment with a fist bump from Cummings. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t ask. He knows where I’m going.
I’m a junkie going to my dealer. I’m getting my fix so I can sleep tonight. So I can shut down long enough to function.
It won’t last. I’ll feel worse when it’s over, but right now it doesn’t matter. As I climb into my truck in the fading light of the sunset, I don’t have much on my mind. I’m getting into the zone. I’m narrowing my focus to this and only this. To the game. To the smell of her perfume, the taste of her kiss. The feel of her skin under my hands; hot, taut, and wet. It’s like being in command of the field. It’s where I call the shots, where I feel in control.
Where I feel like a god.