She shook her head on a laugh, tucking her phone into her brown satchel purse. “Oh, goodness, sorry. I’m Giana Johnson.” She extended her hand for mine. “I’m an agent for some of the players here in Seattle.”
“Badass,” I said as I shook her hand.
“Says the woman who dazzles a stadium full of thousands of people every week.”
“Plenty of badassery to go around.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Do you live here in Seattle, then?”
“Oh, no. I live in Denver, actually. For now, anyway. Guess we’ll see where the League takes us next.” She waved her hand in the air with a laugh. “Married to a football player.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. Definitely didn’t see myself ending up here when I agreed to be his fake girlfriend to make my crush notice me.”
She laughed again, and my eyebrows shot up. “Uh… I feel like I need more details.”
“It’s a long story. Anyway, I was just here visiting some of my clients. Do you know Kyle Robbins and Braden Lock?”
My heart skipped in my chest. “I know Braden a little. As much as I can know him, being that we aren’t supposed to fraternize with the players.”
“Oh. Right. That.” Giana watched me for a moment, a mischievous gleam in her eyes like she knew something I didn’t. “Well, Kyle is a silly brute who’s kept me on my toes ever since Isigned him. Really since before then. We were friends in college. Braden, too. But he’s the easy one. Just so responsible andgood, you know?”
I nodded, unable to contain the disappointment in my sigh. “As responsible as they come.”
Giana tilted her head. “Ah, but he’s in a bad way today. Taking that loss on Sunday to heart.” She paused, biting her lower lip as she looked around like she wanted to make sure we were alone. “You should stop by and see him, see if you can cheer him up. He’s in the gym. Sulking. Brooding. Being very tragic about it.”
She shrugged, already turning to leave.
“It might be nice to have a friend right now.”
“We’re not friends,” I said to her back.
“Maybe you could start to be.”
“It’s kind of against the rules.”
She did a little spin into a backward walk, her skirt flaring. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Giana winked, then vanished down the hall, leaving me with a loaded gun and temptation curling tight around the trigger.
Braden
Tuesdays at the stadium were my favorite.
Most of the other players took full advantage of our one day off, spending time with their families or resting at home. But a few of us used the quiet, empty stadium to get in extra work. We hit the gym, watched film, ran drills — or, like me, punished ourselves for our performance the week before and did whatever we had to do to get out of the funk.
Presently, I was tucked in the small studio at the back of our team gym, sitting on a mat in the middle of the room with the lights off.
My eyes were closed, my breathing long and slow, hands resting easily on my knees as I tried to clear my mind.
There was a reason they called yoga and meditation a practice. It didn’t matter that I’d turned to these forms of stillness as a young adult, when my world stopped spinning the way I’d come to expect and I had to find a way to stay present when all I wanted was to disappear.
Years and years, I showed up on this mat. I moved through sun salutations. I breathed through flows. I stretched andreached and pushed. And, like right now, I sat. I sat in silence and breathed and tried to let my thoughts drift away like clouds in the sky.
Sometimes it was easy. Sometimes it was hard. But one thing remained constant — it was always helpful.
My sanctuary of silence was briefly interrupted by the opening of the door. It was quiet, just a little whoosh of cold air from the gym seeping in before the door shut again. I did my best to ignore it. Someone else was here to use the space and that was fine. Part of meditation was grounding yourself even in a world full of distractions, staying present when everything around you tried to tempt you otherwise.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
