Page 26 of It Happened on a Sunday
No pop stars or poorly crafted texts.
No sold-out stadiums, except for football games. And no stress over the fact that, once again, I’m going up against a quarterback I’ve idolized since I was thirteen years old. Hunter fucking Browning.
Today isn’t about Hunter, though. It’s about me and the playbook. Me and the game. Me and theball.
I hit the warm-up room and do a quick three miles on the treadmill as plays from last year’s Super Bowl run through my mind. I go over the Lightning’s most successful defensive formations, one after another. Then I visualize myself evading them, including that damn zone blitz they like to throw in around the third quarter when they’re down a touchdown.
I do a few stretches just to make sure everything’s nice andloose as I head down the hall to the locker room. A quick glance at my watch tells me I should have another half an hour or so before the others start straggling in. But as I pull open the door to the locker room, I find Marquis already there.
My best friend is the best left tackle in the business, and judging from the look on his face, he’s been waiting for me. “What’s up, man? You ready for this?” I ask as I drop my bag on the padded bench in front of my locker.
“Thought I’d ask you that,” he answers. “You’ve been off the past couple of days. Is it just nerves or something else?”
“Off?” I repeat, more than a little insulted. “My throws have been as tight as—”
“I’m not talking about your arm.” He narrows his eyes at me. “We’ve been friends since Cal, man. You think I don’t know when you’re in your head about something?”
I don’t have an answer to that, mostly because he’s right. I am in my head. That’s why I’m here more than three hours early, doing all that visualization stuff the team therapist taught me. So I can try to get the fuck out of it.
Marquis knows me well enough to recognize that silence means acquiescence, so instead of backing off, he decides to push. “So, you worried about Hunter or something? Because—no shit—you’re better than him.”
“I wouldn’t say that, but no. I’m not worried about losing to the Lightning.” They’ll have to break both my arms on this field today before I let that happen.
“Family?” he asks. The inner edges of his brows meld together as worry takes over. We’ve been friends long enough that my family is his family and vice versa. “Your abuela’s okay? No one’s bothering your sis?”
By “sis,” he means Lucia, and by “no one,” he means her asshole of an ex-boyfriend. He helped me set up the two of them during our junior year, and I know he takes the shit show theirrelationship turned into almost as personally as I do. “Lucia’s fine. She’s dating a guy from her law school and seems really happy.”
“That’s good.” He nods. “That’s real good. So who is she?”
Now it’s my brows that scrunch together. “What makes you think there’s a woman?”
Marquis appears surprised for a second, but then he shrugs. “Okay, who is he, then?”
“That’s not what I meant.” I shoot him a look.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not judging. I’m just saying, if it was work, you’d tell me. The family’s fine, and it can’t be money, since you’re rich as fuck now. That leaves romance. So, who are they?”
Ah, screw it. I can’t do any worse with his advice than I’ve done already.“She,” I finally say with a resigned shake of my head. “And I’m pretty sure who she is is part of the problem.”
He goes from looking triumphant to confused in the space of a second. “Okay, I’m good, man, but I’m not that good. You’re going to have to give me a little more to go on if you want my help.”
I’m not sure there’s anything he can do to help, but I catch him up anyway, because clearly I’m not doing too hot on my own.
“Sloane Walker?” he yelps halfway through the story.
“Yeah.”
“TheSloane Walker? The singer?”
“Yes, dude. The singer.” Maybe this was a bad idea after all.
He looks dubious. “The one with a bunch of dead boyfriends? That Sloane Walker?”
“Two,” I interrupt. “She hastwodead boyfriends, not a bunch.”
“Becausethatmakes it better.” He shakes his head. “You sure you’re not auditioning to be Dead Guy Number Three?”
“Pretty damn sure, Marquis.” It’s a shitty thing to say, and I know I sound as pissed off as I feel, even before he holds hishands up.
