AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Someone whistled. A couple of other players in the locker room laughed quietly. But they sure as fuck weren’t laughing atme.
They knew better.
Richards was new to the team, a postseason transfer from Las Vegas, and it was clear he thought I was being a stodgy old fart who only wanted to ruin hisfun. But in the past week, the flashy player had already made tabloid headlines for his over-the-top goodbye party in Vegas, where he was photographed leaving withthreewomen, who departed his hotel room the following morning with smudged makeup, tangled hair, and shit-eating grins on their faces.
Those same women shouted from the social media rooftops about the shopping sprees and cars he’d promised them.
In making conversation with his new teammates, he’d mentioned that, despite how much he got paid, he always felt like he was broke.
Richards, as it turned out, was a dumbass.
And anyone who’d played with me knew I didn’t tolerate dumbasses on my team.
When I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms over my chest, and leveled him with my infamous glare, he let out an uncomfortable laugh.
But I wasn’t done.
“You don’t believe me,” I said. “That’s fine. Spend all that money on stupid shit and stupid parties and people who don’t care about you,and see how many people respect you for it. Maybe you have more fun than I do, Richards.” Slowly, I cocked an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m jealous?”
He swallowed, pink slowly climbing up his cheeks. “No.”
“Fucking right, I’m not jealous. Wanna know why? Because everyone in this locker room respects me. They’ll fight for me, because they know I’ve always,alwaysfought for them. You walk out onto that field your first game here, when the lights are blinding and the fans are screaming and the fireworks are filling the sky, and the men lining up next to you are the only thing that matters. It’s just us in that uniform; we put our bodies through hell every week to play a game, because it’s the life we want more than anything. But all the glitz and the money and the sex ... it’s meaningless at the end of your life, I promise.”
My chest started tightening at the end of my little speech, and the locker room went quiet around us. Richards looked down at the floor, suitably chastened.
Once I was able to swallow past the lump in my throat, I continued. “I know you don’t know me well, but that’ll change. Every week, every day, we’ll be right here, and you’ll find your place on this team. In this family. And we’ll always want our family taken care of, even if that means you say the hard shit, yeah?”
And fucking hell, my voice almost cracked at the end.
Richards looked up. “Yeah.”
I exhaled slowly. “Good. I’m not saying you can’t have fun. We’ve all blown off steam from time to time. But don’t be an idiot about it.”
He gave me a slow nod. The locker room filled with noise again, with low conversation and occasional laughter. Even though it was the offseason, with a couple of months to go before training camp started, we were all at the facilities just about every day, putting in our time in the weight room. On the field for conditioning. Meeting with our coaches.
But more than that—as the hushed sounds in the room reminded me—we’d been there grieving together.
Richards cleared his throat before he walked away. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said. “I know I came to the team ... after. But I saw it on the news.”
After.
My chest went tight again, like someone had jammed a great bloody fist underneath my ribs and pulled on a crank that I didn’t know existed. My bones creaked with the force of it, and I had to take a long, deep breath before I could speak.
“Chris was a damn good football player,” I managed. “But he was an even better friend. The best husband and father. And every guy you see in here,” I said, gesturing to the players in the room, “they lost someone, same as me. And we didn’t just lose Chris. We lost his wife too. Their daughter lost both her parents.” I held his gaze unflinchingly. “One stupid mistake—someone having a bit too muchfunbefore they got in their car—and we lost part of our family here. Remember that when you go around bragging about the fun you think we should have. We’ve all lost a bit of our taste for it the last couple weeks.”
Luckily for Richards, he was intelligent enough not to take what I said personally.
“Got it,” he said quietly. He nodded again, this time with a touch more deference, and moved over to his locker. I turned to mine, staring at the one to its right.
Chris’s locker.
His bag was still in it. His practice jersey. A picture taped at the back of him and Amie and Mira.
I’d looked for her at the wake, but it seemed they’d kept her away, because she hadn’t been at the funeral either. Probably for the best, given that she was less than three years old. I didn’t even know how aware she was of the way her world had been rocked.
It had been hard enough formeto sit there, shoulder to shoulder with my teammates, and we were fucking adults.
As my eyes burned a hole in the belongings none of us could bring ourselves to remove, a heavy hand settled on my shoulder.
