He rushes towards me without warning, his fist cocked back, ready to swing at me.
I don’t need to get into a fight with my brother, not before the first game of the season.
I dodge him easily. He’s probably coked up, angry and aggressive, and his reflexes are shot from years of drinking hard.
He comes back at me, already swinging. I don’t have any choice but to swing at him myself. I go for the quickest end to this stupid conflict. I uppercut him in the stomach, saving most of my strength. I want him to be able to drive away from here. I don’t want to be caring for him all day.
The punch takes all the wind out of him.
He doubles over in pain, but I can see by the look in his face that he’ll be fine.
“Asshole,” he mutters, breathless, getting back in his van.
I watch him as he peels off the best the van can do and drives down the street.
Shit, that didn’t go well.
I stand here in the street and think about what the hell just happened. I can’t believe Jack is still up to his old shit. There’s no way I’m going to mention this to my parents. It would seriously break their hearts.
I know I’m nothing like Jack, but seeing that he hasn’t settled down at all really makes me stop to think. About half of the guys on the team have wives and kids, and the other half are living in a state of perpetual adolescence, getting drunk all the time and trying to pick up every chick they see at the bar. Which state am I in? Maybe it’s time to settle down. Maybe it’s time I start a family.
This makes my thoughts turn to Lia. She could be the one…
Maybe she is.
I have the feeling when I think about her, as if my chest is light.
Plus, she makes my cock twinge and grow, just thinking about her.
Maybe it’s time I tell her that I’m getting serious about her.
But that’s crazy. We’ve still barely spent any time together.
Well, there’s a chance to get to know her better after the game.
I head back inside. I shake my head briefly, like a wet dog, to get all these thoughts to go away. I’ve got to, as we say in the business, get my head in the game.
There’s no point in going over the plays more, though. I know them inside and out. There isn’t anyone on the team who’s studied them more than me.
That’s the way it should be.
I am the quarterback after all.
The whole game is riding on me. Riding on my abilities. Riding on my ability to think on my feet. Riding on my strength and my accuracy.
I swing my arms around me, in order to limber up a little. It might help things if I went for a quick, easy jog. I don’t want to get too tired out before the game.
It is tomorrow, after all.
Coach wants us to rest the whole day, but I just don’t have the stomach for that.
I swing my arms again, moving them back and forth, trying to get the blood flowing. My theory is that you’ve got to move it or lose it.
There’s a twinge of pain in my shoulder.
I ignore it and keep swinging my shoulders.
Maybe I’d better do just a few pushups. I’m feeling kind of cold, as if my body hasn’t warmed up completely. There’s nothing like a set of pushups to get me feeling better.
I drop to the floor quickly and bang out twenty in just a few seconds. No one, and I mean no one, can crank out pushups as fast as I can.
I’m not done with the set yet, but my shoulder starts to hurt. The pain flares through it, radiating down my arm and also towards my back.
Shit, this isn’t good.
It’s my right shoulder. My right arm is everything. It’s my whole career.
What’s a quarterback without his throwing arm? It’s only my second professional season. I can’t hit the bench this early in my career. I’ll be toast. Who knows how long it’ll take me to recover from this. Some guys go out and they never come back onto the field. Some guys go out and don’t come back until the season is over, and then they’re never the same again. Like I say, you’ve got to move it or lose it. I’ve got to keep throwing or else the ability, this weird gift I have to throw the ball farther and more accurately than anyone else, might disappear, float away in the air like little particles of dust.
I stand back up, try swinging my shoulder, and the pain flares through it.
Shit. Game’s tomorrow.
20
Lia
The tickets were waiting for me at the call office. I’ve never even been to a sporting event before. Never been to a football game, and I certainly have never been to a professional game before.
I’m surprised at just how many people are here. It’s a huge crowd, and a simply massive fancy stadium. I feel kind of dumb. I mean, I knew there was money in football, but I guess I didn’t realize just how much.
Shane must really be raking it in.
I’ve left Will with Jane again, who swears she doesn’t mind. He’s feeling a lot better, and just has one more day of the antibiotic. He’s started, funnily enough, to really like the flavor. And he was disappointed when I told him that he’s not going to be able to take it any more.
He asked me why he can’t just take it everyday, saying that it’ll keep him from getting sick. I tried to explain to him how antibiotic resistance works, and that it’s not a good idea to take it all the time. That was when Jane was there, arriving to take care of him for today. “Actually,” she told me. “Resistance to antibiotics is something that happens to the population at large, not to individuals.”
How the hell does she know that? Whatever, I know it’s not a good idea to take antibiotics continuously. It’s funny, but sometimes Will has me questioning some of the basic facts I know about life. Soon he’ll get to that stage where he’s asking questions all the time. Although I’m not exactly sure when that happens. I remember being about five years old and repeatedly asking my mom, “why,” about any subject that I could possibly think of, no matter how crazy or trivial it was.
A security guard ushers me through the rows and rows of people. I follow him, and he just keeps leading me farther and farther down, closer to the field.
“Wow,” I say, thanking him, and sitting down in my plastic bucket seat. “I’m really close, I guess.”
“You sure are honey,” says a woman next to me. “These are the best seats in the whole place.”
She’s decked out in football gear. She’s got a team hat, a team sweatshirt, and even a boots on her feet with the team name on it. She’s wearing something that looks like a pendant necklace with the team name…
“Nice,” I say. “This’ll be a good way to see my first football game then.”
A couple people turn their heads to look at me. I guess it’s sensible to go to your first football game or something. Or maybe it’s unusual to have such good seats for your first football game.
“Your first game? Are you serious?” The woman’s jaw completely drops.
“Yup,” I say, shrugging my shoulders and settling farther back into my seat.
“Wow, you sure got lucky with the seats. How’d you get them. Are you some famous actress or something?”
“Oh, no,” I say, laughing. “I work at a restaurant. Well, used to. I just quit.”
“Wait, you’re not a football fan and you’re not some celebrity. I don’t get it.”
“Oh,” I say. “My son’s… I mean, this guy I’m seeing is playing today.”
“You know one of the players?”
She just keeps looking more and more shocked by the minute.
I nod my head.
“Which one?”
She’s hanging on every word I’m saying, desperate for the next one.
“Shane…” I start to say. I don’t even get to his last name before she shrieks in excitement.
“Oh my god!” she says. “I can’t believe it!”
I just nod my head, not really knowing what to say.
I guess I was pretty naïve
in not realizing that this would have this kind of reaction.
“He’s gorgeous!” says the woman. “He’s incredible… And he plays so well…”
I don’t really know where to go with this conversation, so I’m relieved to see that the game is starting.
The woman, I can tell, wants to know everything about Shane, down to the type of toothpaste he uses. But fortunately for me she’s even more interested in seeing the game in front of us.
It’s hard for me to concentrate on the game. For one thing, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I don’t understand the rules to this game at all.
Before I know it, the players are lining up on the field.
I spot Shane.
He looks hot, muscular. Even more muscular than normal, with his big football pads covering his body. His tight pants show off his ass perfectly, muscular and round, completely gorgeous. I want to sink my teeth into one of his cheeks and take a bite out of it. Ha, I crack myself up. Not a literal bite. A figurative one. And I don’t really want to do that. But you get the idea.
In reality, I want that ass to be powering piston-like motions from his cock, as he pummels it into me. That’s what a good ass means to us women, I guess, that there’s power and thrust behind a cock. Who knows, maybe it’s something else entirely.
The game has started. Shane’s got the ball and he seems to be looking for someone to throw it to…
My mind wanders back to when Shane fucked me in the car, when I rode him and when he gave me head, the best head of my entire life. It was the best sex I’ve ever had, something completely mind-blowing, something like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.
I can feel myself getting wet in my pants. How embarrassing. At least no one’s looking there. And it’s not like it’s going to go through my jeans or anything.
Everyone is concentrating on the game while I’m daydreaming about Shane slamming his cock into me.
The pass is complete, from what I can tell.
People are cheering.
Something’s happened.
I’ve been letting my mind wander too much…
“Oh shit!” says the woman next to me. “Damn!”
She sounds upset, as if something bad happened.
“What happened?” I ask her, nudging her with my elbow.
I figure it’s just something like a botched play or something. Or maybe someone dropped the ball and she’s upset about it.
Frankly, I want Shane to win, but just because it’s Shane.
I wouldn’t care about the team at all if Shane wasn’t on it.
“He’s hurt!” says the woman next to me.
“Who?”
“Your man! Shane!”
That’s not good.
“What happened?” I say, worried, nudging her again, but she’s too preoccupied with following what’s happening on the field to notice me anymore.
I manage to find Shane on the field. It’s not like he’s being dragged off anywhere on a stretcher, but he’s holding his shoulder in a funny way.
I remember back in college, the way we met initially was that I was supposed to help him with his shoulder problems.
I figured that by now, with all the best sports doctors in the country aiding him, he’d have figured out his shoulder problems.
Right shoulders are probably pretty important for a quarterback, right?
21
Shane
We lost.
A crushing defeat. The first game of the season, and we lost.
The scene in the locker room after the game is not a good one. Coach stands there surveying everyone with beady eyes. The guys mope around and get changed slowly. Some sit there slumped forward on the benches. Hardly anyone speaks, and the only sound is the movement of the squeaky locker doors on their hinges.
People shoot me glances. They wonder what happened.
My shoulder froze up, that’s what happened.
I thought I could keep going. I tried to power through it, but it wasn’t any good. I tried to make the pass, but my shoulder froze up in the middle of it, and I missed by a ridiculous margin.
My shoulder got injured in college. That’s how I met Lia. Gradually, the pain just sort of went away. Occasionally, I’d have a minor flare up. But I ignored it. I guess I didn’t really get it treated. I mean, sure, I did the exercises that the physical therapists told me to do, but it never really felt “fixed.”
Today on the field was the worst it’s ever felt.
Fuck.
This could be the end of my whole career.
I get changed as quickly as I can and I make a point of avoiding coach on the way out.
It’s only until I’m in the parking lot that I remember that Lia was here today.
Shit, she saw me at my absolutele worst.
I grab my cell phone and give her a call.
“Hey!” she says, sounding excited.
“Hey,” I say. “You still here?”
“Yup,” she says.
We agree to meet at my car.
I get inside, since if I don’t, people are going to start to recognize me. The last thing I need right now is to be the focus of some bummer post-game tailgate party. Fans will want to know what happened, even though I think it should have been pretty obvious, the way I was massaging my shoulder before that one throw…
“Hey there!” says Lia.
“Hey,” I say.
She gets into the passenger’s seat next to me.
“What’s wrong?” she says.
“Didn’t you see me out there?” I say, shocked that she wouldn’t know what’s wrong.
“You looked great!” she says. “I’ve never seen a game before, it was incredible to be so close…”
I suddenly start to laugh.
“I get it now,” I say, trying to contain my laughter. “You’re really not a football fan, are you?”
“Um, not really.”
I give her a look.
“OK, not at all. I honestly had a hard time following what was going on most of the time.”
I laugh.
“We lost,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “That’s why the woman next to me wouldn’t even talk to me after the game, I guess.”
“Did she know that you knew me?”
“Yup.”
“That’s probably why. Fans are really not going to like me now that I botched the game for them.”
“Really? Don’t they understand that that sort of thing can happen to anyone.”
“Definitely not,” I say, laughing again.
Being with Lia makes the whole bummer of the lost game, the injured shoulder… it all just kinds of fades away. With her, it doesn’t seem so serious. It doesn’t feel like it even matters that much.
The important thing is that I’m with her. And how she makes me feel.
“That same woman mentioned something about you being injured,” says Lia. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” I say, explaining to her what happened. I tell her about the frozen shoulder.
“Wow,” says Lia. “And that made you miss that throw?”
I nod my head.
“I thought you would have gotten that old injury sorted out by now.”
“So you remember it?”
“Of course I remember it. That’s how we met. So long ago.”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” I say.
I tell her about the exercises I’ve been doing and what the physical therapists over the years have told me.
“Hmm,” she says, making a face like she’s thinking hard. “Something about this doesn’t seem quite right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, from what you’re telling me about your symptoms, you should have been able to resolve the problem, but it doesn’t sound like they were giving you the right exercises to do.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh, I don’t really know. It’s not like I’m a physical therapist or anything.”
&nbs
p; “That’s just because you didn’t have the money to go to school. It doesn’t mean you don’t have the ability to do it.”
She blushes. “I don’t really know what I’m talking about,” she says.
“Well, no one else has been able to help me. Why don’t you take a look at it?”
“You want me to look at it?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, but not here.”
“OK, let’s head to my house,” I say.
“Sounds good, but I’ve got to get my car.”
“Damn,” I say. “I wish we could travel together.”
“Aw, you’re going to miss me that much?” She says it in a funny and sarcastic kind of way.
“Nah,” I say, playing along with the joke. “I was hoping you could give me some road head after the big game.”
“In your dreams,” she says, flashing me a huge smile and getting out of the car. “I’ll follow you to your place. I don’t know where you live, remember?”
“Got it,” I say
I watch her walk away in the mirror. Her ass looks perfect as it swishes as she walks.
Damn, my shoulder is still hurting. The pain is flaring out down my arm. Maybe Lia can do something to help it. It’s worth a shot. Maybe she should have been the one to look at it back in college, instead of whoever it was. It’s not like they did it any good.
Then again, maybe it’s just a fucked shoulder. Maybe there’s no getting around the fact that it’s busted and there’s nothing to do about it. Some people just have crappy shoulders.
But it’s not like I’m feeling sorry for myself.
I was born to be a quarterback, and I know that.
I’ll get this figured out.
And if not, hey, I can always go to grad school for literature or something. Or become a mechanic. Or start racing motorcycles. There are a thousand interesting things to do, and some of them pay well, too.
If I can just get Lia with me… then the rest of it doesn’t even really matter.
Finally Lia shows up in her car. It’s an old beaten up car, quite different looking from the rest of the cars in the lot.
I smile when I see it, although I’m not sure why. I guess it reminds me of simpler times, back in college, when everyone drove cars like that. Well, everyone who didn’t have a ton of money coming in from their parents.
Quarterback's Baby: A Secret Baby Romance Page 12