Tackled (Alpha Ballers #1) (4 page)

“All I want to do is play football!” Nah, that wasn’t quite true. All I wanted to do was play football and live the life of a football player.

And I was so good at it. From the minute my parents signed me up I was scoring touchdowns, taking every single team I played on as far as we were allowed to go. My room was full of football trophies, enough that my sisters were getting tired of having them around the house.

But would my mother get rid of any of them? Not on your life, she just kept finding the right ways to move them around the house, so that when we needed a surface for something, one would appear as if by magic.

The weight of how much I had let my family down washed over me for the first time. What had I done? And all for just a little bit of partying? All just to flip the world off and tell them they couldn’t control me?

Was any of this worth it? Here I was, one of the biggest draft prospects in the last decade, and I was practically shut out of pro football because I liked to drink and fuck around with girls who wanted nothing more than to get me naked.

How fair was that?

What was I gonna do with my life now? I mean, yeah, I had a degree from one of the best schools in the world, I could find a job and make ends meet with no problem.

But that wasn’t football. Football was everything I was, everything I had been for as long as I could remember, and now it was all gone. Just like that, like a puff of smoke, gone in an instant.

What would I do with myself now? What would my family say when I went home? Of course by now they would know what was going on. I had my phone on silent, but I knew that if I turned on the screen I’d see a bunch of missed calls and messages from them.

I couldn’t face any of that right now. I didn’t want to talk to them, I didn’t want to see them, I just wanted to hide out here where no one could see my shame while I figured out what to do next.

I had to figure out a way to get into the league somehow. I had to figure out how to get onto a team so they could see what I could do. I felt it in my bounds - once a team put me on the field and threw the ball in my direction none of this off the field nonsense would matter.

That was all I needed to do.

I realized I was mumbling all this to myself in the relative silence of the hall I’d stopped in. I looked up and around as if noticing the place for the first time, and ran my hands over some exposed furniture stacked against the wall while straining to hear the draft as the commissioner announced the first pick.

Fuck.

I was supposed to be that first pick.

And now I was nothing.

I balled my hands up into fists, and I was looking for a clean surface to punch, when a voice stopped me.

“You don’t want to do that.”

I whipped around as I heard her say my name. “Drake?”

The girl from before, near the door. The one who looked familiar. What was she doing here?

I felt the anger boiling up in me, all the rage from what had just happened to me. Before I had been focusing it inwardly on myself, but now suddenly I had a target in front of me.

“Drake Rollins - Lily Pearson, Boston Globe. Anything you’d like to say to us?”

A fucking interview? She wanted to interview me? At a time like this, she wanted a fucking quote? “Did you follow me?!”

She looked a little scared. Good. “I did, yes.”

“Why?”

“I just wanted to give you a chance to say whatever you wanted on the record.”

“Why the fuck would I want to say anything to a reporter?”

She stepped forward, her hands up. “You’ve just been through something traumatic, so I figured you would have something to say about it.”

Where did I know this girl from? She looked super familiar, even if she was dressed like a journalist. Of course, journalists had been hounding me for years, coming to all my games, trying to find me after practice for a statement, but this girl looked too young for all of that. I could not place where I knew her from, though, and it was starting to bother me.

Oh shit. It was Lily, Lily from Cal. The girl I had wanted ever since I had met her back in school. I had stayed away from her as best I could, then. I realized as soon as I met her that I wasn’t good enough for her. Not yet. Sure, I could catch touchdowns, but I didn’t think I could be the right man for her - she was different, not like all the other girls, the ones who threw themselves at me.

Any other time and I’d be more focused on trying to get into her pants. Even now, with all I had going on, it still didn’t sound like a bad idea.

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t really want to talk about it right now.” I expected her to leave at that.

“That’s fine.” She didn’t leave. She just kept on staring at me like that, with those big beautiful eyes of hers. Lily looked different, but more grown up, more mature, but I would know her anywhere. It was shocking to me that it had taken me this long to recognize her.

I could taste the bile in my throat. I was so angry at the world for doing this to me. Here I was, so great at doing this one thing, and they weren’t letting me do it on the biggest stage of all.

The commissioner must have announced another pick, because the crowd went wild enough that I could hear it even down this long hallway, away from the cheering fans.

“Those fans should be cheering for me right now. I’m the one who earned this, I’m the one who spent every day in the gym or on the practice field. This should be the best day of my life.”

Whatever this journalist was, she didn’t say anything. She just kept on looking at me. “But instead, I’m hiding out like this with you. How is that fucking right?”

“Some would say you did this to yourself.”

“Fuck off. Yeah, so I like to have fun, but I’ve never missed a practice, and I’ve never missed a game. And you know that I can ball. So why aren’t they letting me?”

“Maybe because no one thinks they can trust you? Because they don’t want the headache that comes with you being on the team?”

“Who the fuck cares what I’m like off the field as long as I make the play when it’s game time? It’s a business. Scoring and winning games is all that matters. And I do that better than any of those fuckers.”

By now I was thrashing wildly about the room, caught up in my anger, boiling over with rage. How dare they take this away from me? How dare they keep the teams from drafting me?

Lily changed direction. “What’re you going to do now?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. I didn’t have any time to think, not yet. The tears finally came as I realized that now I had more time than anything else.

“Why don’t they want me?” I broke down, unable to hold it in any longer. “I’m really good at playing football. That’s all I want to do, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. And I’m really good at it.”

The reporter came closer. “So why won’t they let me play? That’s all I really want to. Just let me play…”

She looked at me, the most beautiful girl had seen in a long time, if ever, and then she turned to her side and whispered, “turn off the camera.”

It was then that I noticed that there was someone else they are with us, the guy with the camera.

Oh shit.

I had to get out of here.

This shit was gonna hit big.

CHAPTER 05 - LILY

Earlier that day, 8 hours before the draft…

I didn’t need my alarm this morning. Normally I’d be forced awake by its angry peals, calls to wake up and face the day whether I would like to or not, because guess what? The day was already here! Normally I’d pull myself out of bed, and try unsuccessfully to wipe the sleep from my bleary eyes as I walked to the bathroom, wincing as my feet touched the cold floor and ‘helped’ me wake up faster. Thanks, floor, I knew I could count on you to, you know, be floor and all.

Not today. Nope, not today. This morning I was wide awake when it was still dark out. And I was also, you know, not in my own apartment. I looked over at the shiny hotel alarm clock just after I had woken up, and saw that it wasn’t even considering going off for another almost three hours. I preferred my own alarm clock at home - I’d had it since I was seven, and each and every one of the random sounds it put out was near and dear to me.

Why was today different from any other day, besides being in a hotel rather than my own place? Was it my first day on the job? Nope, that was last week, and even last week waking up three hours early was a little much. Nah, last week I’d greeted my alarm clock’s steady but piercing drone after thirty minutes of tossing and turning in bed. My first day at work last week, with all the trials and tribulations that firsts like that always brought, was a cakewalk compared to what today was gonna be like, I could already tell.

For today, today was draft day. Yeah, that’s right, draft day. The biggest day of the year for football fans the world over. No, not the Kevin Costner movie no one saw. The real thing. The day when the fortunes of each of the 32 professional football teams changed forever.

And it happened once a year! Literally christmas for football fans. The league had moved the draft back to May, from its original place in April, probably to get out from under the shadow of the basketball playoffs. One thing the league was good at was figuring out the right timing for things. Football had become a year round sport, despite real games only being played in September through the first weekend of February.

People talked about it endlessly. Water coolers around the world were hubs for football talk, strategies, exultations and anger. Of course, that was before the internet showed up and gave people an entirely new place to argue about football in between sharing selfies and watching porn.

It was a wonderful time to be alive.

And for me, it was a wonderful time to finally finish my journalism degree and get out into the world, ready to cover whatever they threw at me.

And just my luck, I’d gotten my dream job assignment as beat reporter for the Boston Globe, covering the New England Patriots. It wasn’t every day that you got to write about your favorite team growing up for a living!

I’d been pinching myself every hour or so since I’d gotten the news last month. The Patriots! Of all the teams to cover, I got to stay in Massachusetts and follow the team around the country?

Dream job right here. I still couldn’t believe that I had gotten it over all the other people that definitely wanted it. I mean, I had a great background in journalism, and I’d written about sports all through college, but I didn’t have nearly as much real world experience as I’m sure other applicants had. I still didn’t know quite what had gotten me the job over them, but so far I hadn’t found the right way to ask that question. And I wasn’t sure if I really wanted the answer.

The Patriots! As a girl from a small town in New England, they were my team, through and through. Everyone at school when I was growing up had Patriots gear, though the Celtics were a little more popular at the time. I liked basketball, but football was my first sporting love.

I couldn’t remember the number of times I’d sat with my father and watched Patriots games as a kid. He was a huge fan despite all the ups and downs the team had gone through over the years. We went to a few games, but even back then they were a little too expensive for us. Plus, it was way more fun for us to camp out in the living room and watch side by side, me on the couch and my dad in his favorite lounge chair. My mother, who wasn’t into sports at all, had always made us snacks and let us eat lunch and dinner in the living room on game days. It was a really big deal.

Those Sundays watching the Patriots with him were some of my fondest memories.

In fact, when I found out I got the Globe job covering the Patriots, I hadn’t called my friends first, hometown or college - I’d called my dad. I hadn’t told him that I was even in consideration for the gig, cause I didn’t want to get his hopes up in case I didn’t get it, but he’d been overjoyed to hear that his little girl was going to be following his favorite football team around the country. I hadn’t gotten a chance to see him since I got the job, but I couldn’t wait to.

Finally, the alarm decided to do its thing and I had no choice but to get up and start getting ready if I wanted to get to Radio City Music Hall on time. New York City! I’d arrived yesterday and promptly tired myself out walking all around, my eyes wide open and practically climbing out of my head trying to take it all in.

Of course, that was purely on the surface level. If we got a little deeper, to where sports allegiances lived, I hated New York City with a burning passion stronger than anything I’d ever felt for a boy.

New York City had two professional football teams, though only one of them should really be considered one, I liked to say to anyone who would listen. The Jets were the typical second team in a big city - their fans constantly groused about being passed over while their terrible team continued to languish in the basement.

The Giants, though, they were another story. The Giants had destroyed perfection, and not through any skill or talent, but because of sheer luck. And for that, the Giants should never win another game again.

Yikes, I could feel my bile rising as I started to get into my internal Giants monologue. No time for that, Lily, big day ahead! Just because this was New York City doesn’t mean I didn’t have to represent New England and my team.

I got into the shower, loving the fact that hot water was instantly at my beck and call. This was pure luxury…even though it could hardly be considered such. Tough times at newspapers and media outlets around the country meant I totally missed the days when journalists would get to live it up while covering cool events like the draft. Now it was a Howard Johnson’s, and a continental breakfast if we were lucky. Still, the nearly-unlimited hot water did make it tough for me to complain at the moment.

After I showered and toweled myself off, I got out and stood in front of the mirror, carefully collecting all the pieces of paper I’d taped to it last night.
 

Last minute research - I’d been memorizing team stats and draft needs for today. I knew that covering sports was typically, and by that I meant historically, a man’s field. Any women who were involved were usually just eye candy.