“I think you should talk to him. Friend him up. Look out for him,” Sterling said as he picked up the beer the bartender had just set in front of him.
“What?” This was not what Nate was expecting. “Me? Why?”
“He could do worse than using you as a role model,” Sterling said.
“What about you?”
Sterling rolled his eyes. “He thinks I’m a grumpy old man.”
“Youarea grumpy old man,” Nate retorted fondly.
“Still your fucking elder,” Sterling teased back.
“So what, you think he’ll listen tome, because I’m younger? I doubt it.”
“I think he’ll listen to you because you’re going to become his friend,” Sterling said persuasively.
There were a lot of problems with that statement. “I don’t—”
“Think of what would’ve happened in that game today if he’d actually been in position to make a play on that ball, the one they scored the long touchdown on,” Sterling pointed out.
“We’d have still won,” Nate said. He did not want to spend a bunch of time and energy keeping up with Jordan’s twenty-one-year-old antics. Some guys got into the NFL and it was their first experience with money and fame and they went overboard.
Listening to Jordan boast about spending money in the champagne room of his favorite strip club pinged all of those for Nate.
“Yeah, but that’s not always going to be the case. You wanna win a Super Bowl?”
Nate rolled his eyes. “You mean, win another one? Yeah, of course I do.”
It had sucked to be traded away the summer after the Condors had done it. He’d understood why. But he hadn’tlikedit, despite Toronto becoming home in the last few years.
“Then you gotta figure Jordan out. We’re gonna need him.”
Nate sighed. So not only did he need to go out of his way to avoid a certain hockey player who kept hanging around, his mentor was giving him a pretty much impossible task. Control someone who didn’t want to be controlled. No, actually, it was worse than that. Sterling wanted him to convince Jordan that hewantedto be different than how he was.
“You’re good with the guys. You can do this,” Sterling said, clearly trying to pep talk him.
Nate was not nearly so optimistic. “He even here tonight?”
But Sterling just shrugged, like he’d passed the problem onto Nate and he was ready to be done with it.
As Sterling took off to shake hands and greet some of the other defensive guys—notably, Jordan was not among them—Nate tapped his fingers against the bar. Trying to figure out how he could approach this situation the best.
He was so deep in thought about the Jordan problem that he didn’t even notice when someone slid onto the barstool next to his.
And of course it was the last person he wanted to see.
“Hey,” Ramsey said, all easy and charming, like they didn’t both wish they could avoid the other.
“What do you want?” Nate asked flatly.
He hadn’t been in the mood before, now he really wasn’t in the mood.
“Ouch.” Ramsey grinned obnoxiously. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“In what universe would that be true?”
“The secret one, where deep down you’re obsessed with me and can’t leave me alone,” Ramsey said.
