“I could probably lift it with my neck, you sonofabitch.”
“Naw man, you’re far away as hell. Thinking of some girl… And I bet you anything it’s not that Kinley chick. I know what that’s about. That’s about you staying on the team. And you should man, you should. But I don’t know if it’s worth it if you’re lying here with angry veins popping out your abnormally large-ass neck.”
I grunt again and shrug my shoulders while I lie in place. For the first time this summer, I’m longing to get the uniform on, to get out on the field and let everything else melt away. No Renata. No Kinley. No Eddie leaving messages on my phone with thinly veiled bribes and threats tacked onto the end of each of them.
Darius adds weight to each side and spots me as I lift more.
“Dammit,” I mutter again. My muscles tense and release, tense and release, and I fall into a rhythm as Darius stands over me. Next, we’re moving onto legs, each of us silent and lost in our own thoughts. I know what happens next in this whole thing, and it’s not pretty. It’s Renata and Kinley planning some other social event after a few carefully arranged dates—and then it’s engagement. That was the whole crux of this plan all along. I drive myself to extreme soreness, until all my muscles are aching and jumping and fatigued, thinking about Kinley and the way she smiles at me. It’s not a pretty smile, more like there’s nothing behind it. All emptiness and a mask of well-bred cuteness.
On our planned and escorted date the other night, she had leaned in to kiss me for the cameras. There was a flash, and her cool, dry kiss lingering on my lips for thirty seconds while the rest of the flashes went off around us. All these pictures, all this effort, just for the gossip magazines with their “Celebrities Are Just Like Us” features.
That kiss. It hadn’t been real, even though she tried to make it that way when we got into my Escalade and I drove her to the apartment she keeps in town. Her hand had been on my thigh, creeping upwards, and I shoved her away. That dry, sexless kiss had nothing like the power and heat I felt when I kissed Renata. Maybe some man might feel that way about her, someday. But that man isn’t me—and I’m somehow caught up in this mess like it is supposed to be me.
Later, after Darius has made us both protein shakes that taste like straight up cardboard, I get into my Escalade and make my way home, feeling somehow defeated. I shouldn’t, I remind myself. I should instead feel triumphant. A raise is coming my way, and Renata has done exactly what she said she was going to do—she’s making sure I keep my job, and she’s doing it with a carefully crafted story that my fans can’t help but love.
“Everyone loves a prodigal son, returned to the homeland or whatever shit,” I mumble, pulling my car into the driveway in front of the house. My house. The one I meant to share with her.
I kick myself for not telling her more the night of the party. There she was, lips parted, looking up at me and expecting me to say anything but what I did—something that might redeem me in her eyes. She wanted that redemption just as badly as I did. And I had to go and remember my brother’s words.
You don’t tell any living soul about the deal we made. Especially not her. We won’t be beholden to anyone else as long as I’m living.
How much weight do his words bear after all this time? And why should I listen to a man who made a deal about my life, a deal without my consent, anyway? What were all of his words worth back then if I’m still paying for my parents’ mistakes and his after all this time?
“Nothing,” I grumble. “None of it’s worth a damn thing.”
Maybe I would have told her, too—if it weren’t her daddy on the other end of the deal.
You go on and let her go, son. You know you and that brother of yours won’t amount to nothin.’ So you get on out of this town and let her shine while you follow some dream that won’t amount to shit in the end.
More than once, I had hoped he’d caught one of my games on TV. I hoped he’d seen me drafted into his beloved home team, that he’d seen me save the team more than once. He probably had, but I never heard a word of it if he did. And still, his words linger in my mind.
I don’t want her to have the same feeling about her own father, the man who raised her, the man who was always on her side.
It could be that she needs to know a little more of the story. I sigh. I could tell her if she stayed around longer than five minutes. But ever since that kiss, she’s high-tailed it whenever I enter the room.
When I enter the house, it’s eerily quiet. Wingate isn’t there, watching Sports Center. And there’s none of the usual hustle and bustle that goes on in my house—women waking up from boozy naps, or partiers finding stashes of my hidden booze. Instead of turning the TV on to drown out the buzz in my brain, I walk to the back deck and look out at the guest house. Renata is sitting on the porch with her laptop, legs bare, red high-heeled sandals on. Her fingernails and toenails glint bright orange in the sun, and she’s wearing a very short skirt with a bright orange v-neck top that perfectly matches her toenails and shows off her cleavage to boot.