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Mine was empty.
I sat on the bench, staring at the now clean locker. What did I have to show for my career? Over a decade in the league—I had broken a few records, made a hell of a lot of money, but I didn’t have a wife to go home to like Gideon. I didn’t have kids to cheer me on like Theo did. I was aging out of a young man’s game. Sure, I probably had a few more seasons left in me, but did I have the desire?
Fuck.
Did I even like football?
Nothing like a girl turning my life upside down to kick start an existential crisis.
I opened my wallet and pulled out the paint chip Wren had accidentally left at my penthouse the first day she came over to work. I had gone into the bedroom after she had been there and found it taped to the wall. It was a cool grayish brown—ironically, the color of a wren. She didn’t go with it for the walls. Instead, I saw it in the new bedding that covered the mattress she and I test-drove.
On the paint chip, she had scribbled a note to herself. #1 Pick.
I smiled at the paint chip, turning it over in my fingers for a moment before deciding to pin it inside my locker. Using my teeth, I tore a piece of white medical tape off the roll and stuck it to the wall. If I couldn’t have her photo up there to motivate me, at least I had something. Any piece of her was a piece that I couldn’t give back.
I told her that I was going to give her nothing less than everything I had, but truth be told, I needed Wren to give me all of her, too.
My phone vibrated. Instead of silencing it to enjoy a few more moments of solitude, I fumbled and connected the call.
“T.J.,” my dad said in a snappy bass. “It’s about time you answered me.”
Fuck my life.Should have looked at the damn caller ID. “What do you need, dad?”
“What?” he scoffed. “I can’t call and check on my son?”
“I mean, you could, but your previous pattern of behavior suggests otherwise.”
“Jada always answers my calls.”
That’s because Jada gets to live her own life, I thought to myself.
It had been a while since I’d had a conversation that consisted of more than a few texts with my little sister. She had sent me a message after Sunday’s game, telling me I did a good job and asking how the cheerleader was. Maybe I’d invite her to come see my new place. I couldn’t tell anyone in football circles the truth about Wren and I, but I could tell Jada. She knew how to keep a secret.
“I’m at the facilities right now. I can’t talk long.” It was a white lie, but I wasn’t bothered by it.
“Are you watching film? You should be watching film. If Williams and Tyson don’t have you boys in the meeting room watching film for at least three hours a day, then someone needs to whisper to the higher ups that they aren’t doing their jobs.”
My dad and his fucking obsession with watching game tapes. Probably because that’s how he spent his days as a retired hall of famer. Sitting down and critiquing others.
He was the literal definition of an armchair quarterback.
“You know that pass that Carmichael threw to you at the end of Sunday’s game was salvageable. Sure, he overthrew you and wasn’t taking the wind into consideration, but that’s no excuse. If you had been hitting the weight room and focusing on your quads like I’ve told you before, you’d have more height when you’re trying to catch a pass like that. You are focusing on your quads, right? You know, back in my day—”
I set the phone beside me as I finished piling the rest of my gear back into my locker. When dad started on the “back in my day” spiels, he wouldn’t take a breath for at least ten minutes.
I wondered what Wren was doing tonight. Well, actually, I knew what Wren was doing tonight. Nothing.
The director of the Ladies in Red had benched her for the week. Wren was pissed, but I knew that she was secretly relieved that she had time to not only recover from the concussion but rest her knee a little more.
Being seen together—even coming and going—wasn’t an option, and ever since the video of the tackle went viral, reporters had been camped outside my building. It was a good thing she had finished working in my condo before shit hit the fan. Her cover would have been blown faster than she could say, “Cluck yeah.”
Headlines painted us as star crossed lovers. It was rather inconvenient that neither of us could say we were dating someone else to take the pressure off the story of us. Wren didn’t say it out loud, but I knew she didn’t feel comfortable using the “I’m still getting over a breakup” line, though it would have eased some of the pressure.
When I finally pressed my phone back to my ear, my dad was just finishing up his monologue.
“It was my third—no… It was my fourth championship game that me and my receiver made that play happen. You should go back and watch the tape. You could stand to learn a thing or two. I’ll have your mom email you the clip. You should have the whole team watch it. That game was football 101—it doesn’t get any better than what me and my boys did on the field back then.”
“Yeah, look, dad—I gotta go.”
“Hold on a second, T.J. Did your mother tell you that Sam hasn’t been returning her messages? You really need to think about getting a new agent. If Sam isn’t returning basic messages to the family of her client, then who knows what she’s letting slip through the cracks.”
And on that note, I hung up.
