“Coach! Coach!”
I turned, setting my cup of Gatorade down on the folding table just in time to save it before I was run over by three eight-year-old kids in full padding. I scooped one up under my arm while the other two collided with my legs, their little hands around my waist.
“Did you see that?!” Keon said, pointing back at the field. His helmet was a bit too big for him and his head wobbled with the weight of it when he looked back up at me. “I hit him with the stiff arm, just like you said!”
“Did not!” Jordan combatted, releasing his grip on my waist only long enough to shove Keon backward a bit.
“Did, too!”
“I tripped.”
“Yeah, because I pushed you. With my stiff arm.”
“Yeah, but I tackled you, Keon,” the little tyke under my arm pointed out, wiggling until I set him back down. “So that stiff arm doesn’t really matter.”
“I got twenty yards!” Keon combatted.
“Nuh-uh!” the other two said in unison, then they were all fighting, and I chuckled, bending until I was down on one knee and at their level.
“Alright, alright,” I said, grabbing two of them by their shoulders. I gave them each a look until they quieted. “Keon, that was a damn good run. You should be proud of it.”
Keon beamed.
“But,” I added quickly. “There’s a difference in someone who thinks he’s good and someone who knows it — the main one being that when you know it, you don’t need to brag about it.”
“Yeah, Keon,” Jordan said, crossing his arms.
“And Jordan, that was some great defense out there, but don’t be too proud to admit when you could have done better. Why do you think Keon was able to shove you off so easily with that stiff arm?”
Jordan looked down at his cleats. “Because I didn’t wrap him up.”
“You didn’t wrap him up,” I echoed.
“But I did!” Mason beamed.
I swiveled until my eyes were on him. “Twenty yards later.”
That quieted them all, though Keon wore a smirk.
“Look,” I said, pulling them all in a bit closer. “You all did good. But you all could have done better. And I hate to break it to you, but that’s football. In fact, that’s football on a good day. Most of the time, you’ll make mistakes that you know you shouldn’t make, and then you have to dust yourself off and get right back on the line for the next play.”
I pushed my finger into Keon’s chest.
“The most important thing is that you stay humble, remember why you love this game, and put your team above your own personal stats. Instead of ragging on each other, cheer each other on. Jordan, that was a hell of a run Keon had, wasn’t it?”
Jordan smiled at Keon, nudging his shoulder. “Yeah.”
“Yeah. And, Mason, you wouldn’t have been able to take Keon down if Jordan hadn’t slowed him with that attempted tackle, huh?”
“Probably not. He’s so fast,” Mason said.
“And it was a great tackle,” Keon said to Mason before I could prompt him. “You really wrapped me up, I couldn’t break it even if I wanted to.”
“See?” I said, thumping each of them playfully. “Now that’s what makes you stronger as a player and team right there.”
Coach Henderson’s shadow washed over the four of us, and I stood to join him as he nodded toward the field. “Alright, you three, back out there.”
“Yes, Coach!” they said in unison, and then they were jogging back out to play, laughing to each other instead of fighting.
Coach Henderson was the head coach of the Pee Wee team I’d been assisting him with since my sophomore year at North Boston University. It started as an accident, really — just me stuck on campus over the summer and bored, looking for something to do that wasn’t conditioning. That was about all we could do during the summer without breaking the rules of college ball. There were no real practices until fall camp.
Henderson had seen how antsy I was and offered me this unpaid job — one I took without thinking twice.
“They’re going to miss you next year,” he commented as the kids lined up for another play.
“Ah, most of them will be moving on to the next level, anyway,” I said. “And those who aren’t won’t be thinking of me.”
“You’d be surprised. You’ve really made an impact with these kids.” He paused, shaking his head. “Though I find you giving them advice on being humble quite comical.”
“Hey, I’m as humble as they come,” I said defensively.
“Right. What was it you said in that interview after the championship game last year?” He tapped his chin. “Oh, that’s right. I’ve broken two school records in my three years here, and by the time I leave, I’ll break them all.”
I blinked. “What? That’s just facts. NBU has never had a running back like me and you know it.”
He smirked and shook his head, clamping a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe just practice a bit of what you preach, eh, kid?”
I shrugged him off, but smiled, because maybe he was right. Maybe I could use a slice of humble pie on my plate now and then. But that just wasn’t how I rolled. For me, the key to success had always been cockiness.
Play like hell. Rub it in every defender’s face when they can’t stop me. And remind anyone who asks that I’m the best there’s ever been.
It didn’t matter if it was true or not. When you said something enough, you started to believe it. And when you believed it, you became it.
Those were my father’s words, and I held them like a creed.
My dad, Nick Parkinson, was and still is the best receiver to have ever played at Southern Alabama University. He was also a beast in the NFL until an injury ended his career, but not before he’d made enough cash and connections to set up a place for him in the sport forever. Now, while he spent most of his time as a commentator on television or an advisor for young players, he lived out the rest of his dream through me.
When Coach blew the final whistle of practice, I helped pack up before hitting the gym on campus. Some of my teammates slacked during the summer, only showing up for the bare minimum of what was required of them. But I wouldn’t be caught dead doing the same.
Summer was what separated the good from the great, the college athletes from the ones who would go pro. I used every bit of my time working toward my ultimate goal.
To play in the NFL, just like my dad.
I was drenched in sweat by the time I climbed in my car to head to my campus home — affectionately known as The Snake Pit. It was the team house, bought in the 80s and passed on through generations and generations of players. It was home base, the house we partied at when we won and strategized at when we lost. It was old and decrepit and — now that our responsible, clean, and organized quarterback had graduated and gone pro — a lot messier than it used to be.
But it was home.
As I drove, one arm on the steering wheel and the other hanging out my driver side window, I soaked in the warmth of summer, the feeling this particular summer brought me. It was the last one of my school career, one final summer before senior year at North Boston University.
Before my final year of college ball.
We were champs now, coming off one of the hottest seasons in our school history. Going into the start of the season with that number one rank would be sweet, but it would also mean we had a target on our back — one I had full plans to make impossible to hit.
On the backend of the blissful, exciting feeling this summer brought me, there was a dark edge, a bottomless pit that would gladly swallow me up if I stopped running long enough to let it. It was an abyss created by a girl years ago, an endless hole left in the very center of who I was after the one and only person I’d ever felt a genuine connection to in my life ghosted me.
And I didn’t even know her name.
I swallowed, shifting in the driver seat and taking my opposite hand to the wheel. Thoughts of that summer always made me squirm. I couldn’t even remember who I was back then, and yet I knew that the realest I’d ever been with anyone, at any point in my life, was that summer.
With a stranger I met playing video games online.
It was so cliché and embarrassing that I’d never spoken it out loud to anyone. I couldn’t. I had a reputation for being a playboy, a smart ass, a clown, a powerhouse, a fucking star. I loved that role. I created that role for myself. And I knew if I ever admitted to anyone what had happened that summer in high school, I’d become the joke itself instead of the jokester.
No, it’d go to the grave with me.
And if I didn’t ever learn to fucking let it go, it might be what puts me in said grave.
Whenever that darkness crept into my mind, I was always tempted to succumb to it. Part of me thought it might bring relief, to just slip into the unending spiral of questions that assaulted me seven years ago and begged for me to let them back in every day since.
I could beat myself up for an eternity wondering what went wrong, what I did, what happened. I could dive headfirst into anxiety that something bad had happened to her, that she had been kidnapped or sent to a boarding school by her parents or, the worst possibility, that she was dead.
I didn’t know her name, but I knew her.
I knew the way she laughed when she was exhausted from staying up all night with me. I knew she never backed down from any challenge. I knew she was unapologetically and fearlessly herself, no matter what her parents or friends or anyone else thought. I knew she was funny, and adorable, and cool as hell. She played video games, for fuck’s sake.
And I knew she knew me, at the most vulnerable and honest level, and she liked me. She cared about me.
Or maybe she didn’t.
Maybe she never did.
Maybe she wasn’t a kid like me at all. Maybe she was some weird creep living in her parents’ basement at the age of thirty pretending to be a teenager so she could prey on young boys.
Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true. But sometimes it made me feel better to pretend that was the case, because the alternative was that she had just… left me.
And I’d never know why.
One quick shake of my head sent the shadow of all those thoughts scurrying away as I turned onto my street. I let out a heavy sigh as I pulled into the driveway, hopping out and grabbing my duffle bag out of the trunk. I slung it over my shoulder, locked my car with a click of the key fob, and was ready to head inside and take a shower before sitting down for a round of video games with my roommates.
But a glance across the street stopped me in my tracks.
Mary Silver stood in her yard with her hands hanging on her full, enticing hips, her gaze fixed on her house while some stocky older guy in a grimy t-shirt and worn jeans rattled on beside her. I could only see her profile, but I noticed how her brows were furrowed, how she was gnawing the corner of her plump bottom lip.
Mary had moved into that old house across the street from us last year — along with Julep Lee, our coach’s daughter and, now, our previous quarterback’s fiancée. Holden and Julep pretending like they didn’t like each other provided many nights where Mary joined her roommate here at The Snake Pit for parties, and every time she walked through our front door, I ached with the need to touch her.
I couldn’t help it.
Esa gata se vé riquísima.
The girl was fine.
I was used to being surrounded by a certain kind of female — cheerleaders, athletes, sorority girls. But none of them looked like Mary. Where they were typically lean and toned, Mary was curvy and soft, with thighs and hips and breasts that called to me as if she were Aphrodite reincarnated. She was covered in tattoos, the ink sprawling her skin from her neck to her ankles, and she had more piercings than I had touchdowns last season.
I’d been immediately intrigued by her from the moment I first saw her.
I’d also been immediately shut down.
She was immune to my charm, to the cocky lines I delivered with ease that usually had girls falling at my feet and, more often than not, dragging me to the nearest bedroom.
No, Mary seemed vexed by my very existence.
Naturally, that made me want her even more.
I watched as she shook her head, her long, golden hair gleaming in the sunlight as she did. Whatever was happening with Bob the Builder there by her side, it wasn’t good.
It also wasn’t any of my business.
But that didn’t stop me from dropping my duffle bag on the ground by my car and walking across the street.
