Page 6
My phone rings, and I groan when I see it’s my agent. Clicking the answer button, I greet him, but he ignores it and gets straight to business.
“You are viral again. Apparently, this time they are calling you Choo-Choo Cross. You were photographed being cozied up with six women at the club last week. One of them being the ex-wife of another football player from your team!”
I drop onto my bed and rub my eyes. “I didn’t sleep with any of them.”
They all came up to me asking for a picture while I was out with an old friend from college. It lasted about five minutes before they walked away.
“Doesn’t matter. People who look at the photo will think so. Perception is reality, Caleb. This is the third time you’ve gone viral for something stupid.” He’s right. Football players are put on a pedestal. The whole country tunes in to watch us play. Kids look up to us, therefore, our image as players is crucial.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Your actions are making your sponsors concerned. You need to show them you are serious about your career and this team, or you risk losing them all. You need to show them you are stable and not some playboy.” He takes a deep breath. “Do you want to be the next Walter Payton, or do you want to be some guy who played football for a couple of years and won a Super Bowl once because his sponsors dropped him and his career went down the drain after that?”
I want to be the best. To prove that I’m worth it. He knows that.
I sigh. “How do I fix this?”
“Get a girlfriend or something. I don’t know. But fix this. Fast.”
The last thing I want is a girlfriend. I want to focus on my career, not go on dates. Going out is my in-between to let off steam. But I only do it during the off-season and pre-season. I keep my head straight during the regular season. Football is everything to me. I can’t fuck this up.
“I will,” I reply begrudgingly.
“Good. Talk to you soon.” Then, he clicks off.
Fuck. How am I going to find someone I can trust to be my girlfriend so quickly?
3
Josephine
“There’s only one way this ends, kids,” my dad shouts from the other side of the dark battlefield. “Either I win—”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it! Either you win, or you die!” Caleb shouts back with an eye roll at me. A snort erupts from me. I know he is still bitter about losing our plank challenge.
“For fucks sake. Like father, like daughter,” he mutters, looking around the wall protecting us from my battle-hungry parents.
Laser tag is the perfect game for this family. Doesn’t require contact and is played from a safe distance. This is important because when we tried to do a contact game like go-karts…well, let’s just say we were banned.
“On my signal, we approach the enemy's territory from the left. Watch my six.”
I raise a brow. “Do you hear yourself right now?”
He gives me a look. “JJ, babe. Do you want to win or question how I sound?”
“Win.”
“Then watch my six.”
I mockingly salute him. “Roger that.”
He ignores me and moves forward, both of us crouched low with fingers on our fake weapon’s trigger.
Our laser tag session comes with different games for two hours, and I am drenched in sweat from all the running around.
This round, the goal is for Caleb and I to collect clues in the enemy's territory in order to use them to disarm the bomb in our territory before the clock runs out. If a player gets shot, we are required to go back to our home base and revive.
The kicker is that our enemy does not have a bomb, so their only goal is to kill us. Thankfully, the dark room and huge maze-like structures make it hard to spot someone. If we disarm the bomb before time runs out, we win. If we don’t, they win.
