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  “From who?”

  He ignores the question completely. “Why did they disagree with you about Kurtis?”

  “For the same reason I think you’re about to. They said he’s standoffish with the press.”

  “That’s being generous. He doesn’t acknowledge the press.”

  “I think his story could be worth telling.”

  “Which story?”

  “Does he have more than one?”

  “Every good man does. Which one are you planning on telling the world?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Coach Allen sighs. “Do you know the most efficient way to make someone want something?”

  “Tell them they can’t have it,” I answer immediately. I see where this is going.

  “Exactly.” He lays the list down on his desk. “Kurtis has become his own worst enemy dodging the press the way he does. He almost makes a show of it, an act of defiance. It makes them hunt him harder than they should.”

  “Are you saying we can’t spotlight him?”

  “I’m not allowed to say that. But what if I said this instead; there’s not the story there that everyone thinks. It’s nothing but a man and his own demons. His own struggles with himself. If I told you that, if I promised you there’s nothing worth finding, would you take him off your list?”

  “No.”

  Coach Allen nods solemnly. “I thought so. But do me one favor. Give a little peace of mind to an old man.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you find what you’re digging for and it’s not what you expected, do the decent thing.”

  I hesitate, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t know that we have the same definition of ‘decent’.”

  “I don’t either,” he admits, handing back my list. “But I have hope.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KURTIS

  April 18th

  The DAK Agency

  Los Angeles, CA

  It’s surreal watching myself on tape. I used to love it, but lately I’m neutral at best. Most times when someone is showing you a video of yourself playing they’re either the media looking for your reaction, a coach looking to rail you for making a mistake, or a groupie riding your dick while they watch you dismantle a defense. While one of those scenarios is more appealing than the others, I don’t completely enjoy any of them.

  Today isn’t bad, though. Sitting in my agent’s office on the couch drinking beers and watching my rookie highlight reel, just passing the time. Hanging out. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stay, though. It’s weird. Not because Hollis is my agent and not because I’m almost certain he’s gay. It’s weird because I haven’t done it in so long. I’m not used to it.

  I never knew you could forget how to have a friend.

  “Watch this. Watch this.” Hollis hits my arm with the back of his hand, his eyes on the TV and a smile on his lips. “This is my favorite part. Watch.”

  I point to the TV with the brown neck of my beer. “You know I lived it, right? I know what’s going to happen.”

  “Shut up. This is the best part.”

  I take a drink, watching with him. He’s right. This move is the one that got me on the ESPN highlight montage for the first and last time.

  I catch the ball cleanly, one of the few decisive passes Diaz ever threw. I make a thirty-three yard run into the end zone. Then I drop the ball, square my stance, and do a back flip. And another. It’s not easy in a helmet and pads. They mess with your perception and your orientation. I could have fallen flat on my face and been humiliated in front of thousands of fans. The thought never crossed my mind, though. I probably could have used a little humility back then. I definitely deserved the flag the flips drew.

  Excessive celebration. I took the penalty with pride.

  Only a few months after that I was traded away to the Montana Miners. I was stripped from this field where I felt at home for the first time in my life, and it was done at my own request. That kid flipping across the turf never saw it coming. Neither did the rest of the world.

  I was key to the Kodiak offense, but in Montana I never meshed. They never figured out how to use me to anyone’s advantage. Their quarterback was worse than Diaz and the team didn’t take to me very well. I didn’t help any. At that point I wasn’t in a place to take to them either. I rode the pine for almost two years, keeping to myself, closing myself off. I cut ties with everyone in California except for Hollis. I ditched everyone back home in Jersey, not that there was much of anyone to keep in touch with.

  Hollis pauses the video. It freezes on a blurry image of Coach Allen, his lips curled in either a smile or a grimace.

  “You ready to talk about it?”

  I put my beer down on the black coffee table. It sits soundly, half-full and sweaty with condensation that pools at its base. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I grunt.

  He hoists himself off the couch. From his desk he grabs a stack of papers before taking up post on the other side of the coffee table. He slaps a photo down in front of me. It’s a black and white of a tattooed, baby-faced Bieber.

  “Justin Bieber has done it.”

  I frown at him. “That’s how you’re trying to sell me on this? With Justin-fucking-Bieber?”

  He lays another black and white down. “Mark Wahlberg did it.” Another photo comes down. “Jamie Dornan did it.” Another. “Kellan Lutz did it.”

  “The Twilight guy?”

  “How do you know he’s from Twilight?”

  “You can’t bait me with that shit, Hollis.”

  “No, seriously, man,” he insists. “How did you know he’s from Twilight? Have you seen the movies?”

  I pause, looking up at him with a blank expression that gives nothing away. Hollis reads the truth anyway, the perceptive son of a bitch.

  He chuckles triumphantly. “Yes! That is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I remind him deeply.

  “You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face. Your sparkly, glittery face.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Which team, Kurtis? Edward or Jacob?”

  “Kendrick.”

  Hollis frowns. “What?”

  “Anna Kendrick,” I explain clearly. “She’s why I watched it.”

  “She’s barely in it.”

  “I’d watch her and her chest read the label of a shampoo bottle. I don’t care what she’s doing. She’s hot.”

  “You’re making this less fun for me,” he complains.

  I shrug. “You wanted the truth. Don’t ask if you can’t handle it.”

  “I’m going to pretend you’re team Edward and move on.”

  “I wish that pasty bastard had been staked in the first ten minutes.”

  “Jesus, dude, can’t you let me have anything?!”

  I pick up the picture of Lutz, carefully tearing it in two. “No vampires. No Biebers.”

  “You’re ignoring Dornan and Wahlberg on purpose.”

  “I’m looking at actors and singers. I’m an athlete, man.” I push the remaining photos back across the table. “I don’t belong with these pretty boys.”

  Hollis smiles to himself. He goes back to his desk for a blank manila folder. “I knew you would do this. You think I wasn’t prepared?”

  “I think you’ll do anything to make sure I don’t back out of the deal.”

  “You signed a contract with Calvin Klein. There is no backing out.” He tosses down three new monochromatic images in front of me. Glistening men in their underwear glare up at me. “Freddie Ljungberg; Swedish soccer player. Hidetoshi Nakata; Japanese soccer player. Fernando Verdasco; Spanish tennis player. Actors, athletes, musicians. It doesn’t matter what type of celebrity, just as long as they’re good looking, and I hate to break it to you, Kurtis, but you’re hot. Just ask any woman in the world. You’re going to have to deal with that. Maybe even embrace it, because that ‘pretty boy’ face of yours is going to get you paid.”
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br />   “There’s gotta be a better way to do this.”

  “Not one that pays this well. The more shit like this we do, the faster we rebuild the coffers.”

  I look away from the images, my eyes finding an escape in the window overlooking nothing. The tip of a barren tree. A bland building across the street.

  This place is a far cry from the sleek offices Hollis used to work in at the Ashford Agency. One day he decided to leave that wolf behind and work as his own man. I couldn’t fault him for wanting control of his life, so I followed him as he took this step down. I stuck with him the way he stuck with me.

  Brad Ashford owns the entire twenty-eighth floor of a building parked in the middle of the madness. Dead center downtown, it boasts views from every side. Every window. I was blown away by it when I was a kid fresh out of college. I thought when I stepped out of the elevator into that pristine office that I had made it somewhere. That it was the first step up in my meteoric rise through the NFL. I had no idea what was waiting for me. I was too young, too naïve, to know that the higher you climb, the farther you fall. All I was thinking when I sat down to sign my contracts with four of my ‘friends’ standing close behind me, making me feel like a baller, was that I had arrived. That I was going somewhere.

  If I could go back to that moment and change just one thing, it would be everything.

  Life doesn’t play that way, though. If you told a younger me that he’d one day take a paycheck to be photographed in his underwear and put on display in front of the entire country, he’d draw his own blood to sign that contract. Same way I expected Colt Avery would do, but he turned it down. The guy who can’t get enough of the limelight said no to being on a billboard in Time’s Square. All for the love of a woman.

  People change, I guess.

  “You want me to kill the deal?” Hollis offers reluctantly.

  My heart leaps into my throat for a thousand reasons. Because I want him to kill it. Because I know he can’t. Because I know I shouldn’t.

  Because I have to pay for my sins, even if it’s in my underwear.

  “No, forget it. I’ll do it,” I tell him deeply, standing to go to the window, turning my back on the exit. “Talk to me about the documentary thing. What does it mean that I’m being spotlighted?”

  “It’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re one of the people they’re focusing on. They want interviews. They’ll show your highlights.” In the glass I see his reflection gesture to the TV. “They’ll show that play we just watched, that’s for sure.”

  “Can they follow me?”

  “Anywhere you go in the name of the NFL, they’ll be there.”

  “But not my house. Not this office.”

  “No. Not unless you invite them.”

  I look over my shoulder at him. “Will you invite them here?”

  “Not in a million years.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, of course, man.”

  “What can they ask me about? Just football?”

  His hesitation weighs heavy in the room before he answers, “Anything. They can ask you anything.”

  My chest feels tight. Compressed like I’m cramped in my own body. Like six feet, three inches isn’t enough space to comfortably hold all of me and my shit inside. I packed everything in years ago, the day I left Los Angeles, and I’ve been filling the space with more secrets, more lies, every day. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t right, but neither is what I did. What we did.

  “I’m sorry,” Hollis tells me, real regret in his tone.

  He has nothing to be sorry for, but the words still come easy to him. Genuine and uncomplicated.

  I feel a hard stab of jealousy in my gut.

  “There are a lot of guys on the team,” I argue, with him and myself. “All of them with better stories than mine. I’ll lay low like I always do. They’ll pass right over me.”

  “All of the other guys have stories that have already been told. Secrets that are already out. That’s not what these people are going to be looking for. Don’t get comfortable thinking you can hide behind Colt’s engagement and Andreas’ divorce. You’re notorious for being distant with the press and that smacks of a good story looking to be uncovered. These people are going to be gunning for you.”

  I immediately think of Harper. I’ve tried to train myself not to. I started the same day I met her, the moment Coach told me who she is, what she’s doing here. He told me I’m on her list. He warned me that she’s got me in her sights. It should piss me off, push me into defense, but it doesn’t happen. That’s what annoys me the most. The thought of her should run my blood cold the way every other journalist does, but instead I’m sweating. I’m breathing deeper, steadier, and I’m thinking about her lips. Her legs. That ass.

  I can’t be like this. I’m a grown ass man. I can’t crush on a girl like a damn teenager. I need to get it together. I need to lock this mess down.

  “Unless they get information from you or me,” I warn Hollis, “they won’t find anything. Not legally.”

  “They won’t get it from me.”

  I stare at my reflection in the window; ghostly skin and dark eyes stare empty back at me. “They sure as shit won’t get anything from me.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  HARPER

  April 28th

  Charles Windt Stadium

  Los Angeles, CA

  ‘The war room’ sounds more dramatic than it looks. I’m not sure what I expected when we were granted access for the Draft, but the big, drab office with orange carpet is not it. It’s full of white square tables cluttered with computers and telephones, white boards on every wall scrawled maniacally with stats and names on them. Men are dressed in suits and ties, their coats cast over the back of big leather chairs that squeak and groan as they’re turned anxiously. The men sit stone faced as they wait and wait.

  And wait.

  We’ve been filming for over three hours and nothing has happened, not here in this office. The coaching staff watches the screens broadcasting the Draft live to the nation. Carmen Kelly is there in Chicago interviewing athletes exiting the stage after they’ve been chosen. She’s a handsome older woman in her early forties with shining auburn hair and impossibly plump lips. Fifteen years ago she was a model dating one of the Greenbay Packers. She ended up on camera cheering for him in the stands and the world fell in love with her. The next game they asked her in the announcer’s booth, presumably to be eye candy with a laughable lack of knowledge about the sport. They should have done their homework on her before bringing her into the box. They would have found out she grew up with the Ravens in her blood.

  That afternoon in the box she stole the show, going toe to toe with the men surrounding her and even schooling one on a misquoted statistic. I have to admit, I respect her for her knowledge and dedication. Not just to the game of football but the politics involved in this entire process, starting from the day these boys set foot on the college field and following them into their retirements.

  I respect her, but that doesn’t mean I have to like working with her. She’s like a set of training wheels they’ve slapped on me. I know how to ride. I don’t need her breathing down my neck, double checking my work. Talking non-stop about the interviews she’s done and the experience she has.

  But now even she’s gone silent as we sit and wait. And wait. The Kodiak’s turn is coming, though. They’re number twenty-eight in the Draft selection, and the Broncos just took a defensive player at number twenty-six. Something has to happen soon.

  I wonder if nothing is all they’re getting in Foxborough as well. As the Super Bowl winners last year, the Patriots are dead last at number thirty-four in the Draft selection. Derrick finally made contact last week. He e-mailed Travis with their schedule and a message asking that I call him. Travis asked if there was a problem he needed help with but he never got a reply. So Derrick never got his phone call.

  Boos filter through the televisions, filling the room. The NFL commissioner is tak
ing the stage.

  “With the twenty-seventh pick in the NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears select… Arlo Frank. Center. Michigan State.”

  Men all over the room hum in agreement. Apparently that was a good move? On the TV I watch as a broad chested Hispanic man takes the stage, smiling almost shyly. He embraces the commissioner who hands him a jersey with his name on the back. They smile for the cameras and the crowd. Thousands of fans have gathered at the stadium in Chicago to watch these players take their places on teams, and the Bears section goes wild as Frank is sent on his way off stage to be swarmed by the media. He’ll tell them how happy he is, how it feels to be selected, then he’ll be shipped off to his new team where they’re waiting to celebrate with him. There’s a party waiting here in Los Angeles on the other side of the complex. The whole team, the cheerleaders, the owners, the entire staff. Caterers and a band. I think the mayor is here, or at least he was three hours ago when this all started.

  Kurtis is out there, somewhere. I very much doubt he’s still looking for my number.

  On television the commissioner accepts another round of boos before raising his hand for quiet.

  “With the twenty-eighth pick of the NFL Draft, the Los Angeles Kodiaks are now on the clock.”

  On the other side of the room a black clock with ominous red numbers syncs to ten minutes. The men all watch silently as it holds for several beats before ticking down to nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven.

  Les is next to me filming it and I think at least there’s something happening there. At least there’s movement, even if it’s only from a clock.

  What the hell are these guys waiting for?

  “Is there any more coffee?” Hue, their offensive coordinator asks, stretching his arms up over his head.

  Pete, the special teams coach, shakes his head. “No, it’s gone. We need a fresh pot.”

  Hue glances around the room full of men before his eyes fall on me. They stop just a second too long, a tiny hesitation, but it’s enough.

  I shake my head at him minutely.