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“Katie Holmes? Like the actress, Katie Holmes.”
“Might make for a great conversation starter,” I said.
“I love it,” she said, chuckling. Her fingers went across the keys. “Katie Holmes, Journalist, Playboy Magazine.”
We both sat back to admire her handy work.
It looked like the real thing.
“Can you print a few cards for me?” I asked.
“Of course, Katie Holmes, hang on a second.”
She rolled her chair over to the printer station and opened a drawer to bring out a sheet of pre-cut card stock. She loaded the card stock into the printer and rolled back to the computer. “Is eight enough or will you need more?”
“With any luck, I’ll only need one,” I said.
“Luck and those tits will go a long way,” she said with a grin.
“Will you stop looking at my tits,” I said, playfully slapping her arm. The printer cranked out the sheet of cards and she rolled over and back to retrieve it.
“For what I’m doing for you, I should get to see those tits,” she said, separating the cards to make a neat stack. She held out the cards to me and raised one eyebrow. “Or at least touch them for a minute. Those are natural, right?”
“Yes, they are, thank you very much.” I took the stack of perfectly-forged business cards and put my hands on my hips. I stuck out my boobs and sighed.
“Fine, but make it quick. Katie Holmes has things to do.”
Sean
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I was on my hands and knees on the side of the practice field puking my guts out when Leon trotted over to make sure I was all right. I could hear him coming without looking up. His nearly four-hundred-pound frame seemed to shake the ground beneath my hands, like that T-Rex in Jurassic Park. I was glad he was on my side. I would have hated being on the receiving end of one of Leon Lewis’ hits.
“You all right, man?” he asked. His voice was deep and he always spoke in a lazy rhythm, making him sound like he was speaking in slow motion. “You need a medic? A Gatorade?”
“Naw, I’m fine,” I said, holding up a hand as my stomach finished emptying itself in the grass. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and rolled to my back. I put my hands on my stomach and stared up at the clear blue sky above me.
“You drank too much,” Leon said, dropping onto the ground next to me. He tugged the sweat towel from around his neck and tossed it over my face. “You gotta slow down man. You’re gonna burn yourself out.”
“I know,” I said, taking the damp towel that reeked of Leon’s stink and mopping the cold sweat from my face. “I gotta stop partying before a heavy practice week.”
It was just an excuse. Never mind that it was eighty-five degrees in October and the coach was pushing us hard to get ready for our next game with the Tigers. I’d never minded the heat and the tougher the practice, the better. I wasn’t puking because of practice. I was puking because I was still fucked up from the two-day victory party at my house, which broke up just a few hours ago.
“You gotta slow down, man,” Leon said. He put a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun and nodded at the field, where the players who weren’t puking were going through offensive drills. “Look at Matt Murphy. That motherfucker ain’t even sweating.”
I rolled my head to the side to look at Murphy. We were the same age, both came out of Clemson in the same AFL draft. Matt wasn’t on the sidelines, white as a sheet, sweating like a pig, purging the booze and pot and coke from his
system. Matt was the goddamn poster child for clean living, and it showed.
“Remember what a basket case Murphy was before he got married and had kids?” Leon asked. “That dude made you look like a lightweight when it came to drinking and partying.”
“What’s your point?” I asked, covering my face with the towel, ignoring its stench.
“He found a nice girl and settled down, got himself off the booze and coke, had a couple of kids, and look at him. He’ll be the fucking team MVP this year.”
“Clean living will do that to you,” I said, pushing up onto my elbows. “But clean living can also be pretty fucking boring.”
“Maybe boring wouldn’t be so bad if you had the right person to get bored with.” He said it quietly. He was staring at Murphy and slowly nodding his head. I knew something was up.
