Sacked (Gridiron #1) (3 page)

“Do you need to ask that? Aren’t we in this together? Do you want your brother to fail? Aren’t you already responsible for the fact he wasted two years at that awful two year school out West? He only has two years of eligibility left. What if he doesn’t start this year?”

The list of horribles goes on. I tune her out and pull up the course catalog. The descriptions do sound reading/writing intensive. I bet he’ll have to write papers. He can memorize facts and do math problems in his head, but analysis of facts, reasoned conclusions that can’t be expressed in digits, are damn hard for him.

Then she pulls out the big guns.

“Need I remind you that your father and I write the checks for your tuition, or did you get a scholarship that we don’t know about?”

Masters asked me if I loved football, and the real answer is sometimes. Because while I can’t deny the glory of it, the game holds me hostage—or will until Jack graduates.

Frustration and hurt crowd out all the good feelings of this morning. When I ran the campus this morning, I thought about how it would be a new start for me. I found what appears to be an awesome roommate in Riley.

I’d make good friends, work on courses designed to help me get a good job out of college. Maybe I’d find the man I would marry. At the very least, I could find someone to watch movies with and kiss on Valentine’s Day.

On impulse, I’d run by Union Stadium to see where Jack would play, and when the gate hung slightly open and no one was around, I crept inside. It was so silent and so beautiful that I climbed to the very top and pretended that I was cheering on my brother and enjoying everything I loved about the game—the feats of physical strength, the excitement of the battle, the romance of it all.

Then Knox Masters came in, running fast like an arrow shot from a crossbow, straight and beautiful in motion. We’d flirted. We’d shared secrets. And after we’d run across the turf, I felt so…joyous in the moment.

Only to come home to this.

“I’m on it, Mom.”

“You’ll go right now?” It’s more a command than a question.

“Right now. I’m leaving as we speak.”

She sighs, but it’s not relief she’s feeling, but regret that she had to spend so much time talking me into something I should have agreed to do the minute I heard about it. Hell, I should have prevented it from happening.

“Thank you, dear. I hope your move went well. Don’t tell me about it now. Call me after you enroll in those classes.” She hangs up.

I stare at the phone. “Love you, too.”

I look up the administrative hours on the website and see I can’t actually talk to anyone for an hour. I have enough time to shower, change, and eat breakfast.

In the kitchen, I find Riley pouring milk over a bowl of cereal.

“Captain Crunch or Fruit Loops?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder at me.

“My mom told me that my scar looked ugly and I should eat less so I didn’t show it to the world.”

“So Cocoa Puffs with chocolate milk.” She sets both boxes back into the cupboard and brings out slow death by sugar.

I shake my head. “I can’t. I ate your Fruit Loops yesterday and nearly went into diabetic shock by noon. I don’t know how you do it. You are all of five feet nothing, eat like a horse, and weigh less than a hundred soaking wet.”

She grins and flexes. “I’m small but mighty and need this nectar of the gods to keep me going. It fuels my metabolism.”

“That’s not how metabolism works.” I grab a bagel and pop it into the toaster. “Sugar slows down your metabolism and—”

Riley holds up a hand. “You can stop right there. I don’t want to hear your nutritionist-in-training truths. I’ve eaten this kind of cereal all my life and I can’t stop now. It’d be a cruel shock to my system.”

“I thought I told you I was an English major.” Technically, I planned to write for a living—grant applications, speeches, reports. After years of writing for Jack, I figured I might as well put my experience to good use.

“Oh, you did, but all the groceries you’ve bought are healthy stuff.” Riley pours herself a giant bowl of cereal and drenches it with her chocolate soy milk. My teeth ache watching her eat, but if eating sugary things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is her worst trait, she’ll be the best roommate ever. “So what are your plans for today? My family is still in town if you want to hang out with us. I apologize in advance for my younger sister, Rachel. She’s at that awkward age between knowing it all and knowing nothing. Plus, we can’t have her anywhere near your hot brother or she may try to hump him.”

“After that convincing invitation, I’ll pass. No offense.” I’d met Rachel yesterday, and she acted every bit as sullen as Riley describes. “But thanks for the warning regarding Jack. I’m glad you seem to be immune. My roommate at junior college desperately wanted in the pants of a football player. I tried to warn her that so many of the players are one and done. That’s how they get the label
player.
”

“I’m not saying I’m immune, but I’m not dating my roommate’s brother. There lies madness.” She stabs her spoon at me to punctuate her point. “Besides, I’ve had my eye on this guy from my advanced economics last year. He was adorable and, according to his Facebook status, he’s still single.”

“Booyah,” I say and give her a high five.

“What about you? You into the football players?”

“No. I dated one in high school and that was enough for me.” That’s a bad memory I don’t want to revisit. It’s the source of so much guilt, which is why I shouldn’t have lingered in the stadium to flirt with Masters, and why I left before I could fall under the spell of his easy charisma. “I don’t know what I want, but it’s not a jock. I mean, I know football players are all different, but their focus is the same—winning, whether it’s on the field or off.”

“Yeah,” Riley sighs. “It’s the same everywhere. Most of the guys I’ve met just want to hook up.”

“I think I’d marry the first guy who hit on me in the bookstore.”

We share a commiserating sigh.

“That’s not a bad idea,” she says between giant bites of chocolate cereal.

My phone rings again. “Jeez. It’s like Grand Central in here.” But I pick up when I see Jack’s face.

“Hey, Jack. We were just talking about you.”

“About how awesome I am? That would be my topic of choice, too.”

“How about you’re not as interesting as an econ major.”

Riley winks at me and gives me another high five. “Sorry, Jack,” she yells. “You have too much body fat for me.”

“What?” he says, instantly outraged. “You tell your roommate my body fat is 8%. In no world is that too much.”

“Apparently it is in Riley’s world.” Riley gulps down the last of her cereal and heads back into her bedroom while I hit my own room to get ready to face administration.

“Your roommate needs a little education, Ellie Bellie.”

“First, do not call me that, and second, no dating the roommates.” I rifle through my closet to find an outfit that says I’m a serious student. I think that means a skirt and a button down shirt. I find a navy pencil skirt that looks like it belongs in my mother’s closet and a white Oxford shirt.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Look, are you having dinner with me tonight? You blew me off last time to have dinner with your roommate, so you kind of owe me.”

“I can’t. I’m going over to the learning center to meet with the director. She can’t make time for me until after six. You should come with.” For one of my classes I’m writing a mock grant, and I chose the Agrippa Learning Center, a nonprofit that specializes in helping at risk kids who have learning disabilities.

“No, thanks. Why are you going now? Classes haven’t started.”

“I wanted to get a jump on things. Are you sure you don’t want to come with? It’s a cool place.”

Maybe you’d get inspired by seeing some kids working through their disabilities.
They seemed so bright, interesting, and courageous. I wish Jack could see that, but he refused. As though even going near a center like that would make people think him dumb.

“Ellie, you told me it was painted the color of piss-yellow and smelled about the same.”

“I might have exaggerated.”

“Yeah, still not interested. You’re having dinner with me tomorrow then.”

Tomorrow would be Thursday. Did he have a team dinner then? I’d like to avoid the football team as much as possible. “I’ll think about it.”

“Either you come willingly or I’ll send the offensive line to carry you over,” he threatens.

“I said I’d think about it.”

“Too bad. It’s happening,” he says cheerfully. “Gotta run. Love you, Ellie Bellie. See you tomorrow at six.”

And for the second time before the clock even rolls to nine in the morning, someone in my family hangs up on me.

I
’d convinced
myself at some point, maybe senior year of high school or maybe my first year at Western, that going without sex made me a better player. That belief had held me in good stead for years. Whenever I felt like wavering, I reminded myself that the pursuit of my dreams was more important than screwing some girl I wouldn’t remember after I’d moved on. So it surprises me a little that while I can’t get the brunette from the stadium out of my head, I’m sharper than ever.

This morning’s scrimmage feels like I’m playing
Madden
on easy mode. I see everything JR “Ace” Anderson, our quarterback, will do before he does it. I’m reading the shifts in the offensive line as if I was in their huddle. Coach takes me out after the tenth series.

“Save some of that for the game,” he orders. “Besides, you’re killing Ace’s confidence. Go do the ladder. You can work on your footwork and get rid of some of that goddamned energy without demoralizing half your team.”

“Yes, Coach.” I give him a cocky salute and go off to run through the string ladder set up between the twenty and third yard lines opposite the line of scrimmage. There I do multiple sets of agility exercises—the centipede, the Icky Shuffle, the Riverdance—and the whole time I have brown eyes in my head watching me, clapping for me to go faster and harder.

It’s another sign.

I didn’t get her name or her phone number, but I’m not worried. A girl who puts on her running shoes before dawn cracks the sky has to know where the gym is. I’ll find her. I have zero doubt of that.

After our two-hour morning practice, Coach spends twenty minutes telling us the ways we can get suspended in the weekend before our opening kickoff. Too much boozing, missing curfew. If we want a goddamned lobster tail for dinner, he’d prefer we called him instead of sneaking one out of Kroger’s under our workout gear.

“Don’t disappoint me, men,” he ends, and then waves us off.

Despite the size, the newly laid carpet, and the fresh veneer on the mahogany lockers, the locker room still stinks of sweaty balls and swamp ass. The smell of home. I grin to myself.

“You’re in a good mood.” Harry “Hammer” Wright drops onto the wooden seat and starts stripping off his gear. Hammer’s a good natured southern boy, with a torso covered in ink and a quick smile for everyone.

I lean to the side to avoid being hit with his jersey. He has no sense of personal space. “We had a good workout.”

Hammer is a prime example of why I always thought being single while chasing my NFL goals made a whole lot of sense. I’d watched other guys play shitiful games because their personal life was a mess. Their girlfriend cheated on them or maybe he got caught with his pants down.

Hammer is single because his last girlfriend caught him with some out-of-town babe. After a night game, we’d drank with a few of the locals and Hammer decided one of them needed consoling—with his dick. His girlfriend drove up and surprised him at the team hotel. She succeeded with her surprise, but it ended with a lot of screaming, a little hair pulling, and a call to security to get to the two girls escorted from the premises.

Hammer got a lecture from Coach and me about keeping it in his pants on away games.

“Easy for you to say, Masters,” Hammer whined at the time. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re missing.”

“Get your nutsack under control or your hammer time will be on the bench,” I told him.

“You’re not human,” he called as I walked away. “It ain’t right for you to be denying yourself like that.”

Hammer’s about the only one who gets away with talking to me like that. We roomed together during our freshman year and I spent a hell of a lot of time listening to him lay pipe in his bed. Nothing about Hammer’s casual sexual encounters made me believe I missed anything. Sometimes they didn’t take more than fifteen minutes before he hustled them out the door so he could play a round of
Madden
.

Then some guys got kicked off the team after they’d videotaped themselves getting a blowjob race. It had all been consensual and the football team weren’t the only Western athletes represented in the six-person video, but it’d looked bad. Real bad.

And the guys had seemed more interested in showing off for the camera than the fact that someone sucked their dicks. I’ve taken more satisfying dumps than the blowjobs those fuckups got.

Nothing had convinced me that my decision to save my athletic skills for the field was wrong…until now.

“Hey, Masters. I know the dinner’s supposed to be team only, but my sister just moved in and I haven’t seen her in two months since two-a-days started. Do you mind if she comes to dinner?” Jack Campbell stops by my locker. He’s a newbie—a transfer from a top tier juco—and by the effort he’s put forth this summer, a potential difference maker. As a bonus, he’s not an asshole.

“I guess that’s okay. She’s not a jock chaser, right?”

Hammer snorts. “Yeah, Campbell, we got rules and standards. Only tens at the table. Your sister a ten?”

“Did this become
Deliverance
country and I didn’t notice?” Campbell shoots back. He’s not an asshole
and
he’s got some balls. “Maybe where you come from, you spend long hours deciding whether your sister is fuckable, but I prefer to do that outside my immediate family tree.”

“You’re good with first cousins, right?” Hammer says in a serious tone, but I know he’s still fucking with Campbell. We’re not allowed to haze anymore, so we have to get our digs in where we can.

“Yeah, first cousins are fair game.” They exchange fist bumps. Sick fuckers, I grin. Sick fuckers, but
my
sick fuckers.

“But, seriously, what’s she look like?” Hammer presses.

“You better tell him or he won’t stop asking until dinner tonight. You don’t want that kind of headache.” I throw my sweaty jock and work out gear in the laundry and grab my towel to cover my junk. The locker room got renovated over the off-season and now the showers are on the other side of the building. The team rules require us to cover up with towels because there’s a hallway in between. Genius design, boys.

Campbell rolls his eyes. “She’s about five foot eight. Long brown hair. Works out, although she needs to be careful, because she blew out her right knee in eighth grade. Uneven surfaces are a bitch for her.”

I stop and backtrack. Tall and athletic with a right knee injury? “What happened in eighth grade?”

“She was playing flag football. A douchebag with an inferiority complex and bad technique took her down. He ended up crushing her right knee.”

“Man that sucks.” Hammer shudders. “No more talk about that. Bad juju for the locker room.”

“I thought you had a brother named Eliot,” Jesse calls.

“Nah, my sister’s name is Eliot because my dad had naming rights.”

Tall and athletic with a right knee injury, and a boy’s name? She said it was different. It has to be her.

“Yeah, bring your sister to dinner.” The smile I turn on Campbell is so big he stumbles back. “It’s good for the team that we get to know your family.”

“Since when?” Hammer stands, buck ass naked. “I asked if you wanted to have dinner with me and my sister this summer, and you said no.”

“Your sister tried to molest me under the table during the family dinner at the Spring game,” I remind him.

“Someone’s got to punch your V-card, man. Might as well be my sister.”

“You know the rules,” Matty, another lineman, interrupts. He’s got dark eyebrows from his mother’s Columbian side that always makes him look serious. “No girlfriends. No sisters.”

“That’s a stupid ass rule. My sister is high quality WAG material,” Hammer protests. Hammer’s tried to get one of us to take his sister off his hands ever since he found out she was dating a twenty-five-year-old.

“Your sister is also underage.” I tighten my grip on the towel. I’d sat across from Hammer’s then seventeen-year-old sister, who had rubbed her foot against my dick the entire three-hour dinner. I ended up leaving my seat and standing for the last hour, citing a slight groin pull.

“You’re a virgin?”

We all swivel back to Campbell, who appears rooted to the spot.

“Yeah, man, but don’t bring that up at any parties.” Hammer rushes over and Campbell backs up so Hammer’s free-swinging dick doesn’t slap Campbell in the balls.

“You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.” It’s not a secret and I’m certainly not ashamed.

Hammer puts his arm around Campbell. “Jack Flash, you were fly out there today, but let me tell you a secret. You will get no pussy at a party this year if you bring up Masters’ V-card. All those sweet honeys rubbing against you on the dance floor will get it into their heads that we all want virtuous chicks. We don’t. We want to get laid.”

I roll my eyes. These guys haven’t spent a night without company since they stepped foot on campus.

“Don’t forget the line of girls who want to be the one to convince Masters to give it up,” Matty chirps.

“Yeah, man, it poisons the well. Don’t do it.” Hammer makes a gun with his fingers and points it at Jack, who appears dumbfounded by this information. Newbies. What can you do?

Laughing, I leave to take a shower while Campbell deals with the truth laid on him by the team.

When I get out, the reason for the new towel rule is standing in the hallway with her eyes pinned to the floor—Stella, one of the team managers, who happens to be the coach’s daughter.

“Coach wants you and Ace in his office now.”

“What for?” Ace comes up.

“Don’t know.” She doesn’t look at Ace and he pretends he’s not eating her up with his eyes. The whole situation between the two is pretty damn amusing, and as long as it doesn’t fuck up the season, that’s how it will remain.

I throw on a pair of cargo shorts and a Warriors T-shirt and shove my feet into a pair of flips. Ace leads the way into Coach’s office.

“Shut the door and sit down,” Coach orders.

As soon as our asses hit the hard plastic, he hands us each a sheet of paper.

“Here’s the list of the new guys. Twenty-six of them. Andersen, you’re in charge of the offense. Masters, the defense list is yours.”

I have ten guys on my list. These are mini leadership tests from Coach. He likes to see what we’re made of off the field. We’re set on defense, having lost only two senior starters last year.

Ace has the bigger task. Some of his guys, like Campbell, are expected to start and make an immediate impact. However, since they haven’t played together before, things like timing and chemistry, knowing what the other player is thinking about before he opens his mouth, will take work.

But they don’t have time. In college, we have very little room for error. One loss and we could be out of the national championship hunt before the season is even underway. Last year we lost in the first round of the playoffs because we couldn’t score. Ace needs to turn that around, like yesterday.

“Any issues we should know about?” I ask, tucking the list away. I already know my guys. I met them at spring camp and again when they arrived for summer term in June. For the most part they were good guys—young, eager, and hiding their homesickness under a thin sheen of bravado.

“Maurice Kim, Kaleb Shannon, and Jack Campbell all have academic issues. Make sure Campbell stays academically eligible. The other two we are redshirting, so spend less time on them. Andre Getty is already making noise about quitting. He could be a solid backup. If we can keep him, that’d be good for the team.”

“There are sixteen players on my list and a quarter of them are already problems?” Ace frowns and shakes his list a little.

Before Coach can tell him to nut up, I snatch a marker off the desk and rip Ace’s sheet from his hand. “I’ll take this one.”

I draw a heavy line through Campbell’s name and toss the marker on the table. “We done here?”

Coach nods. “Make sure they know to stay away from my daughter.”

“Of course.” Ace grabs his list of players and shoves it into his back pocket.

That’s when I know Ace is going to be all right during the season, because he doesn’t even flinch. If he can stay stone-faced and in control in front of Coach while secretly nailing the most off-limits girl on a campus of twenty-five thousand, then he’ll do fine as a starter.

I don’t really care who Ace is fucking. There are only a few important things in my life right now, and they start and end with winning the national championship. Ace could fuck a goat if he was into that, so long as he took care of the ball and showed some leadership on the offense.

“What do you think about Campbell?” Ace asks me as we walk toward the Playground, where Ace and I live with the other starters. As one of the team captains, I have a third floor apartment all to myself. Granted, the place is noisy as shit because eight other guys live in the two floors below me, but for the most part, it’s decent. When I need to get away, I put on my headphones and zone out. If I need company, I go downstairs and play a couple rounds of
Madden
or
Call of Duty
. It could be worse.

“Good guy. Hard worker. Has good hands. His routes could be shaper. Timing isn’t great with you, but it’s early. All you got to do is score three times.” I slap Ace on the back.

“That’s my objective? Three touchdowns?” he asks in disbelief.

“If we can’t hold every team to a couple of touchdowns this year, we don’t deserve to be in the playoffs, let alone hoist the trophy.” Last year we got lit up by a West Coast team. They scored on us at will and it felt fucking humiliating. I can still feel the sting of that loss today. At the end of that game, I vowed we’d never be caught with our pants down like that again.

“Noted. So what’s your interest in Campbell?”

I shrug. “Figured you had your hands full.”

He raises his chin slightly in disbelief, but doesn’t challenge me. We part ways at the Playground—him to his house and me to mine.

I’m not ready to show my cards yet. The team has a general rule: no sisters because it makes for a messy locker room. Ace screwing Coach’s daughter already meant bad news. But if push comes to shove, I’d lay my claim. There are some things you are born knowing: Treat your mother with respect. Family comes first. Bringing down a quarterback is as close to a religious experience as a boy can get. When you meet the girl who’ll be sitting on the front porch holding your hand when you’re eighty, you don’t let a thing like cool dismissive looks, big brothers, or fucking rules stand in your way.