Scott
“He’s gunning for your position,” Dillon, my wide receiver and current spotter, proclaimed as he helped add more weights to the rack.
I eyed him from under the metal bars and nodded my head.
We’d been working out for an hour and I was just starting to sweat.
I’d done two sets of reps already, two more and we’d move on to the next piece of equipment.
I could have forgone this today since I’d already done my penance in the lunges and back Y raises, but this particular exercise helped my throwing motion by strengthening my legs and kept my shoulders stable while adding rotational strength and flexibility throughout the season.
It was one of my least favorite workouts, but it was a necessity.
I nodded my head and replied with, “Yeah, I know.”
Dillon was talking about Dex Berger, my back-up quarterback who had been likened to Joe Montana and Peyton Manning by the media.
Dex was on the other end of the gym, chatting with Jess, Bruno, and Gerald, my center and two offensive tackles in that particular order.
“He’s pretty good,” Dillon said, watching my expression. Unlike me, Dillon’s resume in the NFL had already been filled with a Super Bowl and two AFC championship rings. He was on the heels of passing Jerry Rice’s record and he was my favorite person on the field.
His hands were magnets to my throws.
“He is.” I agreed, “He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.”
Dex was traded from the Vikings’ and from day one, it was clear that he wanted my place on the roster.
Don’t get me wrong, the guy was good. He was an aggressive quarterback; he often threw the ball with less than a yard of separation from the nearest defender. I’d played against him in his sophomore year of college when he sported the orange and white uniform for Clemson.
He had what it took to be a great quarterback, but he lacked the respect of his teammates because he talked so much trash.
Even now, the way he was chatting to my O-line, I had no doubt he was spewing garbage about me.
But I let the insults he directed my way roll off my shoulders.
You couldn’t be great in this league if your skin was carved out of marshmallow, all soft and jet-puffed. I’d dealt with so much smack and shit growing up in football and in life that there were only a handful of things that fazed me.
My father, who I’d been dodging calls from, still didn’t believe that I was meant to play ball.
It didn’t matter to him that I was number one in the draft.
The fact that I was exposing myself to what he called ‘harmful plays’ grated on his nerves and I knew he was just waiting for me to come home and say, “I want to quit football.”
I hadn’t had an episode in three years and my neuro said that it was good sign that it might not happen again.
I didn’t bother letting Dad know. I knew that the minute I left Dr. Jackson’s office, he was already texting my dad.
He and Dad became friends in college because they were in the same tennis club.
Tennis.
Fucking tennis.
I’d rather throw a ball than hit it with a racket.
Running around chasing a ball smaller than my dick was too comical for me.
I have mad respect for Federer and Nadal, but that shit ain’t me.
The first time my father placed a racket in my hands, I stomped on it and broke it.
I was four.
Even then, my young self couldn’t handle that absurdity.
Dr. Jackson was the reason I played for SDU. He was the top neurologist in Texas, but UCLA offered him a position he couldn’t refuse, so he moved to L.A. when I was a junior in high school.
My father imposed a condition on me. I could play ball as long as I made my medical appointments. So when Dr. Jackson moved, it was inevitable that I’d have to play in L.A. or somewhere near him.
UCLA and USC already had reliable QBs and while I could wait until they graduated, I wanted to play.
There were lots of D-1 football teams I could’ve picked, but SDU was closest to the next best thing. The football program fucking sucked, but after talking to Coach Mandela, I knew that he was willing to make a lot of changes to make it a topnotch team.
It helped that my best friend, Rikko, signed up for SDU, too. He said he liked being around the beach. The motherfucker couldn’t swim for his life, so he was outright lying.
He signed up for SDU because of me. Because no matter what shit we went through, we went through it together.
We were playing against his team in three weeks and while I knew he wasn’t gonna take it easy on us, Rikko would always be looking out for me, to see if I was showing signs of an impending seizure, or in medical terms, aura.
I pushed my body to the limits.
But I couldn’t push my brain as much as I wanted to.
While my body had tensile strength, my brain can only handle so much stress; it couldn’t stretch as far as the other quarterback in this room could.
My coaches knew about my condition, I’d gone through rounds and rounds of medical testing before one of the two football teams in Los Angeles selected me after waiting on my chair for eight minutes and twenty seven seconds on that fateful day of April 27th.
The Royals’ management team and coaches didn’t doubt that I could throw the ball.
They did, however, have concerns about my medical condition and they wanted to ascertain that when they gave me that twenty eight point two mil contract, along with a signing bonus of seventeen point two mil, that I wasn’t going to faint and collapse on the field.
I had never collapsed on the field.
I also wasn’t planning on doing so.
Ever.
But there was always a 0.012 chance that I could have another seizure, but that chance was something that the Royals were willing to overlook and because of that, I gave my all to the team.
Dex could spout all the shit he wanted, but as long as I held the title of this team’s quarterback, the noise he created would just be chatter and nonsense.
Dillon didn’t say anything more about Dex as he walked to the side to grab his water bottle, and started talking to Murrow, another wide receiver. No doubt he would be talking to him about how to grip the ball tighter, especially after it was loosened from his hands during practice by Titan, a defensive back, and caused a fumble.
My teammates milled around the gym, choosing their own poison to master, and as I started my run on the treadmill, I pressed the earbuds of my phone to my ears and let the sounds of Pharell fill my head.
Bridgette had started a playlist on my phone and it included him, and his music was pretty good.
As I started to run, I thought of Bridgette who was still in her class. She had a full day today.
But tonight, tonight she was all mine.
The thought of her made my athletic shorts feel snug, so I tried to focus my thoughts on next week’s game against Pittsburgh.
It wouldn’t do me any good to run with a boner.
Especially in a room filled with large bodies, sweat, and a guy who was clamoring for my position, and just waiting on me to fall.