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This town isn’t big enough for the two of us.
CHAPTER 6: LINCOLN
She slides onto a stool at the bar, and she sits by herself chatting up the bartender. I remember that about her—her ability to be able to talk to just about anyone. It’s probably only a small part of what led her into reporting.
It was something we shared in common. We could go to a gathering together and chat up anybody in the room even as teenagers. Between her way of captivating people and my charm, others were drawn to us.
But we didn’t want to talk to anybody else. We only wanted to talk to each other.
Until we didn’t. Until we couldn’t. Until everything changed and we were both forced to choose sides.
We were teenagers. She was fifteen. I was seventeen. The choice wasn’t really ours to make at all, not at those ripe young ages. But sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if we’d been just a few years older.
I keep my head down as I finish my drink, but my eyes are drawn to her as memories seem to wash over me.
It was only one time.
But it was the time. Her first. My first.
Have I had better sex than that first time over the course of the last two decades? Sure. Of course.
But nothing has ever compared to the way I felt.
That’s something that doesn’t go away with time. That’s something you can’t compare. I was in love with her—or at least I thought I was as a teenager. I thought she was my future. She knew I was on track to play in college, and she understood the game from a perspective my other friends and classmates just didn’t.
None of them had fathers still playing in the league. A handful of kids we knew had fathers who were retired, but our fathers both had us when they were young.
We were the exception, and it pushed us even closer together.
My dad married my mom the summer before he went to college because she was pregnant. They were high school sweethearts, and she gave up her dreams and aspirations of a career to stay home with me.
The Baileys had a similar story. Joseph and Joanna met in a communications class in college, and one drunken night after celebrating a big win where Joseph scored a pick six his sophomore year, he knocked her up. The two ended up getting married the day after their college graduation.
I stop ruminating on the past when the attractive woman who has been bringing my drinks over hands me the check. I sign it while she waits, and before I slide it over to her, she asks, “So did they offer you the job?”
Considering the location of this joint, I’m not surprised by the question. Surely those who frequent this place are big fans, and I would imagine the staff is, too.
“Still waiting,” I admit, and I flash her the smile that’s easily bedded women just like her in the past.
She blushes, and I can tell by the way she’s gazing at me that if I was in the mood for a quick fuck, she’d be game.
But today, that’s not on the agenda. It’s time to get over to Jack’s office and see what fate has in store for me.
I walk right past Jolene on my way out the door, but she’s facing the bar and none the wiser that I was even here.
I think about glancing back at her—more out of curiosity than anything else, to see how kind time has been to her versus the filtered and photoshopped images of her online, not that I’ve looked—but I don’t.
I have to keep my focus about me.
I can’t let a girl like her distract me from what I’m doing here.
Or her tits.
If there’s anything my father ingrained in me over the years, it’s that drive. That focus.
He let a woman distract him. Sure, she’s my mother, but he didn’t hold back from telling me not to make the same mistakes he did…namely, to have a kid right out of high school when the NFL is calling.
When your father says that to you and he’s talking specifically about you, you take it to heart.
