Page 7 of Colliding with Ten

“What if he’s choking?”

“Find other staff.”

I laughed, and AJ laughed too.

I had no idea what I was doing or if I would make the final squad. I also didn’t know whether this choice would complicate everything as AJ feared. I just knew I wasn’t thinking about what I had lost anymore, only what I had gained.

2

THE GAME PLAN

THREE MONTHS LATER

LENNOX

Sunday night games in New York were always at the highest volume and intensity, fitting for a city that never stopped. The bus rolled up to the visitors’ gate a little after four, and the crowd outside was noisy. I liked that. Hostility sharpened my focus. Nas was in my ears. I kept the volume up. I didn’t need their yelling in my head before kickoff.

Across the aisle, Theo Stiles, my tight end, wore his hood, eyes shut, lips moving as if praying or having a private argument. Tre “Money” Banks, the running back, was shuffling a pack of cards and performing magic tricks. Our center, Eli Simmons, was watching film on his tablet with one earbud in and the other dangling. He was about to ask me the same question he had already asked twice at the hotel.

Jace Rockett sat two rows up beside Reggie Saint, running through the silent shorthand they’d invented back in training camp four years ago as my best wide receiver duo. Everyone called them Uno/Dos, for the numbers on their backs, and it fit how they played, too.

Jace turned around. He looked at me over my sunglasses and grinned. While other men got calm before games, Jace kept himself entertained. He leaned over the seat and said something I couldn’t hear over my music.

I lifted one side of my headphones. “What?”

“I said,” he repeated, louder, “you think New York knows we came here to ruin their night, or should we send an itinerary?”

Theo opened one eye. “Please don’t start.”

Jace ignored him. “I’m just saying, it’s rude to show up with a gift prior to a slaughter.”

Reggie jumped in. “The Trojans did it. Why can’t we?”

Tre chuckled, snapping a card against the deck.

I looked back out the window at the stadium, built to hold seventy thousand people.

“Don’t call it a slaughter,” I said.

Jace’s grin widened. “Oh, my bad. A planned destruction.”

I smiled. Reggie and Jace were as close as twins, though not related. Still, Jace was my friend in a way Reggie never was. Since college, Jace had been a brother to me.

Theo muttered, “You encourage him too much.”

No. I just knew my personnel. Jace played better loose. Theo played better irritated. Tre played better under pressure. Eli played best after asking questions, needing my reassurance that everything was ironed out. As the field general, my job was to know this.

This wasn’t what made highlights, but the results of this chemistry did. Hitting my receivers on deep routes where only they could touch the ball was built from months or years of understanding. As a quarterback, I studied everything to solve problems before they happened. That was not arrogance. If it sounded arrogant, it was because those saying it wanted to see my skills proven. Though I’d been proving it my entire life, I didn’t have the ring yet.

The bus turned toward the players’ entrance, and the noise engulfed us. Fans pressed behind barricades, packed shoulder to shoulder in purple and gold, yelling, flipping the bird, and holding signs for their New York Hawks. A man with a painted face screamed so hard his neck veins bulged.

When the bus doors opened, hot late-summer air rushed in. I stood and smoothed one hand down the front of my tailored blue jacket. I wore dark trousers, a navy shirt, a bronze silk tie, and a pocket square. My watch and sunglasses completed the look. The sunglasses helped my light blue eyes, which were sensitive to sunlight.

How I looked when I stepped off the bus mattered to me. Not as much as the game, but the image was part of the story. Give the cameras the story you wanted them to tell, or they’ll make up something else. In the first game of the season, I wanted them to write that Lennox Monroe arrived ready to win.

I put my noise-canceling headphones back on and stepped onto the pavement with my duffel in one hand. The boos came, but my face stayed neutral. Let them waste their energy.

Inside, the visitor tunnel was surrounded by concrete, with security staff on standby. The farther we got from the gate, the duller the growls became. That was when Eli fell into step beside me. I saw his mouth moving.