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ONE
DALLAS
“I think I might be fucked.”
Shawn Holmes, the head coach of the D.C. Titans and one of the best football players of all time, barely glances up from the whiteboard he’s studying at his desk. I stand in the doorway of his office and wait for him to acknowledge me. After three long minutes, he finally lifts his head.
“If you didn’t kill anyone, steal anything, or say something derogatory or offensive, it’s salvageable.” He caps a purple dry erase marker and gives me his full attention. “What did you do Lansfield?”
“Come on, Coach.” I sit in the chair across from him and hold my daughter, June, on my lap. At four, she hates sitting still, so I bounce my knee up and down to keep her smiling. We already had one meltdown today, and I’d like to get through this afternoon without another. “You know I’d never get myself in trouble.”
“Debatable. I think you might give me the biggest headache out of everyone on the team. Don’t think I forgot about the time you gave my wife your jersey to wear to a game,” he says.
“Technicallyyou weren’t dating Lacey at the time, sotechnicallyI didn’t break any rules.” I grin when he rolls hiseyes. “It was years ago. You sleep next to her every night, and your PDA at the Super Bowl made more headlines than our win. Don’t tell me you’re still pissed about it.”
“I’m probably going to be pissed about it forever.”
“Wow,” I whisper in June’s ear, loud enough for him to hear me. “Mr. Shawn doesn’t know how to take a joke, June Bug. The old man really needs to lighten up.”
“You have five seconds to tell me what’s going on, or I’m kicking you out.”
“I need a nanny.”
“You have a nanny.”
“Ihada nanny,” I say.
“What happened to Tonya?”
“Gone.”
“Alicia?” he asks.
“Fired.”
“Brittany?”
“How the hell do you remember all of their names? I can barely keep track, and they worked for me. Brittany is sailing off into the sunset, but that one isn’t my fault. She’s following her boyfriend out west for his new job.”
“You’ve had so many nannies, I can mention any woman’s name, and chances are it’s probably someone you’ve hired,” Shawn says. “What does your lack of childcare have to do with me?”
Because I need help,I think.
A lot of fucking help.
I never thought I’d be a thirty-year-old Super Bowl champion with a four-year-old daughter, but here we are.
I guess that’s the thing about life: it’s fucking unpredictable.
I went from buying bottles of vodka to warming up bottles of milk.
Late nights at the club and enjoying the VIP section with my teammates turned into me sitting in a rocking chair with a newborn, trying to get her to fall asleep.
My credit card purchases changed from new TVs and a top-of-the-line grill to baby gates and pacifiers.
It’s been a learning curve. A painstaking process with mistakes and fuck ups and ten million lessons in humility and empathy.
But there’s also been a lot of good.
