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She threw her drink in my face in the middle of dinner and then walked out for absolutely no reason at all except she was auditioning for a part in a miniseries and needed an action shot for her portfolio. She sure was fun.
Tyler Deal doesn’t appreciate the smirk on my face when I think about that night from years ago and the photo that wound up all over social media, but I’m honestly surprised he even looks up from his phone long enough to glare at me. I love the guy like a brother. Like a ten-year-my-senior, very rich, very snobby, very demanding diva of a brother, whose agency is on the Forbes list of the ten most powerful sports agencies in the world, who specializes in pro football, and whose slogan is, “All you need is a good Deal!”
He’s been my agent since I was a twenty-one-year-old, scared-shitless senior in college being drafted into the pros, moving across the country and away from my family. He became my family when mine couldn’t be there at all times, and he has indeed gotten me a lot of good deals throughout my career and done everything in his power to protect me. I trust him explicitly, but I honestly can’t tell you what color his eyes are, since he’s probably looked up from his phone twice in the fifteen years I’ve known him.
“And the redhead in New Orleans, who only slept with you so she could take a picture of you sleeping the next morning,” Tyler reminds me, head back down, tapping away on his phone, probably still arguing with my PR team as they continue denying all the interview requests that have been flooding in from the media over the last week.
I chuckle a little as I pull the band apart with both my hands above my head, then bend to one side.
“Amber Ellenburg, the reason you came up with the rule of no sleepovers.”
She posted a picture of my ass all over social media and then slashed all the pillows in my hotel room. But not before leaving me a note on the kitchen counter to call her again soon because she had a great time. I did not call her again soon.
“Can I just remind you that she did not show her crazy until the sun came up?” I add as I stand back up straight, then bend my body to the other side.
“That is literally how females work. It’s in their user manuals.” Tyler huffs, eyes still laser-focused on the screen of his phone.
I don’t know how he does it, but he can be having three different conversations on his phone while also having a conversation with me, and he still manages to make me feel like I’m the only important person in his life and his attention is 100 percent on me. This is why I pay him so much and why he showed up at our starting running back’s house at six this morning for a strategy meeting, where me and a few guys on the team had a scheduled workout.
“When was the last time a woman even let you touch her, Deal?”
“Don’t you still have a raging case of syphilis?”
“I wouldn’t fuck you with Craig’s dick!”
“Hey! Leave my dick out of this. What did he ever do to you?”
Tyler looks up from his phone for a record-breaking number of times this morning to flip off all of my teammates on the other side of the room, inserting their two cents into our conversation while they work out on various pieces of equipment.
“Why the fuck couldn’t we have this meeting in private?” Tyler complains loudly over the clanking and banging of weights and a few of my teammates now laughing, dicking around with each other, and dancing to “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift.
Yet another reason why I love my new teammates—they have the best workout playlists. I am not ashamed to admit that nothing gets me more pumped up during a workout than badass females belting out badass lyrics. This morning’s playlist included T-Swift, P!nk, some Alanis Morissette, and TLC, a few throwbacks from Janis Joplin and Joan Jett, with a short cardio break, dancing to Rhianna’s “Umbrella” in between deadlifts and planks.
“You’re the one who told me to plan as many OTAs as possible as soon as I touched down here in Virginia,” I remind him as I toss my resistance band into the basket by the mirror with a handful of other multicolored rubber bands, then scoop up my bottle of water I left on the ground.
During the offseason, the league has a lot of rules about when we can and can’t practice, and when we can and can’t use the facilities at the stadium. We are, however, required to have a lot of OTAs, or organized team activities, to promote bonding between the players until we have to report to training camp in July and are forced to spend every waking minute with each other. As the new leader of this team, and wanting nothing more than to finally have a family on the field after years of playing with a bunch of egos who only cared about themselves and their next paycheck, I’ve been all about planning these OTAs since I got here a few weeks ago, so we can get to know each other better. Where most teams strictly keep their OTAs all-business, like watching films and running drills, I make them more personal. We go out to eat together, we grocery shop together, we workout together, and we barbeque at each other’s houses together with our families.
