Page 107 of Necessary Roughness
Back in the kitchen, Roman said, “Pancakes are burning,” but I was totally focused on the quarterback.
Knox rubbed at an eye with his fist and scanned the papers. Then his whole body tensed at once.
“It’s from Troy.” His eyes flicked up to meet mine. “He’s suing me.”
46
Sloane
“Thefuck?”Logan asked.
“Why is Troy suingyou?”I demanded. My heart was pounding in my temple, making it hard to think. “You didn’t do anything!”
In the kitchen, Roman stood very still while watching us.
“He says…” Knox’s eyes scanned the documents. “He claims I pushed him down, allowing my teammate to beat him up.”
“That’s not even close to what happened!” I said.
Knox flipped the page, then held it up for us to see. “They have a photograph.” The photo must have been taken from someone else at the party, and showed Knox standing between Troy and Roman, with one palm pressed against Troy’s chest.
“You’re trying to break up the fight!” I argued. “That still image doesn’t show what really happened!”
“I don’t understand,” Logan said, one hand shoved into his hair. “Roman is the one who beat the shit out of him. Why is he suing Knox?”
“Because,” Roman said quietly from the kitchen, “Knox might be a millionaire in six months.”
It sunk in for me just as it did for the others. Knox was going to receive a very large signing bonus after the NFL draft, somewhere between five andthirtymillion dollars. He would get that just for signing with a team, before ever playing in a single game.
“Fuck,” Logan said.
“Fuck is an understatement.” Knox sat on the back of the couch and stared off. “This lawsuit is going to affect my draft appeal. Teams might be afraid to sign me.” He waved the documents in the air. “He’s trying to pump me for money, but this is going to damage just howmuchmoney I receive!”
“He probably wants you to settle out of court,” I suggested. “I mean, I’m not a lawyer or anything, but that seems like the goal, right? Because if this goes to court, he’ll never win. There’s tons of evidence showing you weren’t a participant in the fight!”
I glanced toward Roman, but he was hanging his head. His emotions couldn’t have been more obvious even if he had a giant neon sign over his head that said, “Guilt and shame.”
“You can’t settle,” Logan insisted. “Don’t give that piece of shit a single dime. Right, Sloane?”
I nodded, but I didn’t know what else we could do.
“Our first hearing with a judge is three weeks from now,” Knox read out loud for us. “Maybe he’ll throw it out. Summary judgment or whatever.”
“They’d better,” Logan said. His hands were balled into fists. “At least it’s after the conference championship.”
I sniffed the air, remembered my pancakes, and rushed back into the kitchen.
The week dragged on, fueled by the cluster of bad moods in the house. Roman tackled his classwork with a quiet sense offatalism, like his fate was out of his hands. Knox was brooding. Logan was the only one who was anywhere close to his normal self, but he kept trying to cheer the rest of us up—and failed every attempt.
“I just hate seeing them down,” he told me one night while I slept in his bed. “I don’t know what to do.”
The mood in the house continued into the next day. Roman appealed his academic suspension, and his hearing was scheduled for next week. Like the coach had said during his visit, that meant Roman would get to play in the final game of the season on Saturday. The game was against the worst school in the conference, a team that had only won a single game all year. The result of the game didn’treallymatter since we had already earned a spot in the conference championship the following week, but there was a lot of pride on the line. My three lovers all needed a win to boost their spirits, and this game was the last thing standing in their way of a perfect season.
The morning of the game, as the guys packed their gear and prepared to leave, Knox took me aside. “I got something for you.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, secretly excited by the prospect of a gift from one of my boyfriends.
He handed me a laminated football ticket. “Is this for today’s game?” I asked. “I already have my student ticket.”
