by Love,Amy
“The most important question is, did you do it?”
“No. I didn’t. This interview is over now, right? That was all you needed to know?”
I heard a couple crew members laugh a little at that.
“These are very serious accusations, Dante.”
“They are. I am sorry that the woman, Grace, is in the situation that she is in, but I have nothing to do with it.”
“Are you calling her a liar?”
“No. She has the bruises. I saw it myself. I do believe that she has been abused by somebody. I don’t know who that person is, and I cannot own up to something that I didn’t do.”
“This isn’t the first time that an athlete has been accused of beating a woman.”
“I know. I never really got it. I got into sports to channel my aggression. These guys who take it out on their wives and girlfriends… I just don’t get it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean look at me,” he said. He was sitting back in his seat. “I’m almost seven feet tall and over two hundred pounds. If violence and menace could take a human form, this would be it.” There were a couple more laughs from the crew. “I just think it’s the worst way to assert yourself, you know. Maybe you’re mad, or you feel someone is trying to emasculate you, but beating a woman… that’s just low. It doesn’t prove you are a boss, or an alpha or anything. It just proves you’re a bully.”
“There are rumors that Grace Whitley may press charges,” I said.
He shrugged.
“If she does, then she does. I’ve said what I have to say, and if I have to, I’ll say it in front of a judge. too. I didn’t know that Grace Whitley was called that before you told me that here today. Besides, after the game, we have never met. It makes me sad that something happened to her, and I can understand why people would want to accuse me, or even want to believe it's me, whether or not they have proof, but frankly, Quinn, can I call you Quinn? Frankly, I think it's unacceptable to make those kinds of accusations unless they are true.”
“Are you saying we should not believe the victim in this case?” I challenged. I had gone completely off the script.
“You should always believe the victim… you just need to ask yourself in every situation, who the victim really is.”
I paused for a second. Wow. Even I had felt that one. Did he have someone help him with his defense, or was he an undercover wordsmith and I was just now finding out?
“One accusation is all it takes. How are you going to come back from this?”
“I don’t have to come back from anything. I’m guilty of many things, but this isn’t one of them. I’ve never hit a woman—and I never will. That is the truth, and I will repeat it as many times as I have to.”
“You know the public is your strongest critic. They are the ones who come to your games, support your team, and buy your jerseys.”
“They are. All I can give them is the truth.”
“What if that isn’t enough? There’s still a woman who was assaulted.”
He paused and sighed.
“I don’t know Grace Whitley, but I have known women in my life who have suffered abuse from men who were supposed to love them and protect them. It’s a societal problem and we have to create an environment where men don’t think it's okay to do that and women who are victims can receive support. That is why… I am going to donate a million dollars to the LA Mission Women’s Shelter. I think the one thing we can take from this—generally—is that there are people in crisis and there are assholes who attack women. We all need to be aware of that and do what we can to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.”
I was halfway expecting there to be an applause or something at that. The interview was done. That was all he had to say or needed to say. It was definitely one million dollars more than he needed to donate. I hadn’t been expecting that.
I was relieved that it was over and pleased. The man I had gotten to talk to, the Dante that I had interviewed had been like, probably the nearest thing to the true Dante that there was. The hoop-shooting Neanderthal was a part of him and the sensitive guy with a past was part of him too. Today in front of the camera, live and defending himself against the worst kind of slander, was like the two of those people combined. He had been a little bit cocky, but he had been serious and sensitive, too.
He had been generous on top of that. One million dollars. I didn’t know whether the public would think he was just trying to buy them off or be impressed. If nothing else, I hoped they would be impressed with how politely he had managed to tackle the allegations, defending himself without defaming Grace, even though it was likely something was really wrong somewhere.
There was a lot of hand shaking and pats on the back all around by the time the camera went off. I was still buzzing on the adrenalin when Pamela, Dante’s mom, came up to me.
“Quinn?” she said.
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.”
“Thank you so much for helping Dante speak his peace,” she said.
“It was what had to be done. He’s in a very difficult situation, one that could cost him his career, but in this case, no matter what the public wants to believe, he is actually innocent.”
“Violence towards women is something he feels strongly about,” she said. Was now a good time to tell her that I knew her entire backstory or not? I decided on “not” when Dante came up behind her and put an arm around her shoulders.
“You were great, Quinn,” he said.
“Me? I was just there so you weren’t alone in the frame. I think you did great. They’d be idiots not to believe you.”
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“Now…we wait.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dante
It was that time of the season again.
We were about to go on the road.
On the road really meant on various planes. This season was going to be different though because this time, I was going to have a babysitter. Quinn was coming, and I knew I was happy about it, but I didn’t really get why. I mean, I liked her; she was a nice girl. She was good at her job, and she had bailed me out of trouble with the entire country over that thing with the crazy woman who thought I had hit her.
Going on the road in the past for me had meant one thing. Pussy. Countrywide assorted pussy. Southern pussy. East Coast pussy. Any pussy you wanted. The girls who followed sports for the sake of knowing when we were coming to their town had always been the highlight of my time on the road.
Some guys didn’t get into it because they thought it got in the way of their game, but I was not one of them. Some of the guys who did take part had the girls’ phone numbers saved so they could call them ahead of time and let them know that they would be coming. I wasn’t one of them either. I didn’t double dip in LA, and there was no reason why I should have to do it on the road.
I had never had to. There were new girls all the time. It was great. Just the thought made me happy. This time, though, I wasn’t getting my dick wet, and it should have made me more upset than it did. The girls were good; the girls were fun, but they'd be there next season. It wasn’t that big a deal. This was just a short trip, four games only, but four games meant four stops. Four stops meant four different time zones and ready-and-willing women at every single one.
For the other guys, of course. I was still wearing my Quinn-enforced chastity belt. It was Quinn-enforced, but she had the keys. It had been opened twice already, and I was looking forward to the many more times that it would. Being on the road meant we would be in hotels. That meant beds. We would finally fuck on a bed, and I would finally see her naked. I couldn’t fucking wait. The women would be there next season, once she and I were done. It was all good.
I mean, she hadn’t turned me into a monk. It wasn’t an emergency. I was just taking it easy with her. She made me want to relax. She was low maintenance, and she was nice to have around. The conversations and interviews I�
�d had with her had done more for me than all the therapy I had and hadn’t had. Not to mention she was great for my career.
Whatever she did during her interviews, the way she talked or the way she looked at me or something was just like magic. I didn’t know what would come over me when she did it. It...she…just made me want to tell her stuff. She made me want to tell her everything because she looked at me and listened like she cared. She listened to me like she really gave a fuck. I felt like I could tell her what I had for breakfast that day, and she would listen like it mattered.
Once I started talking when I was with her, I didn’t want to stop. I just wanted to keep going because I knew she would keep listening. Was it sad that I had gotten to nearly thirty and I was this fucking closed off…still?
It was so easy being with her. I didn’t feel like I had to be funny, or I had to be cocky or impress her. I just had to be me. She didn’t want all that other shit. She entertained it, but it didn’t impress her. I had also hit her with thing after thing from my dark and ugly past and she still looked at me like I was the same guy. She didn’t care. Or she cared but didn’t let it change the way she thought about me. I really liked it. I appreciated her not bullshitting me. It was real, and in a world full of fake, it was good to have someone like that who didn’t look at you like you were the person you pretended to be and saw you for the person that you were.
It was the same with the girls, too. They wanted Dante Rock, the baller who was a hotshot and who could shoot free throws in his sleep. They wanted me to be cocky and arrogant, so I was. They didn’t ask for anything but free booze and some sex. I was willing to provide both those things but Quinn, even though we weren’t dating, didn’t just have sex with me and then leave.
We would always talk before, and maybe it was something we technically weren’t supposed to be doing, but it felt good. It didn’t feel draining and tiresome like it did sometimes with other girls. I liked the way she seemed to become another person when she was turned on. I loved the way she was when she was horny. She would moan my name, and she would beg me to fuck her harder and faster.
I would be sad when the whole interview thing ended. I was beginning to really like having her around. What would I have done without her interview on Inside the League?
The interview… I had thought I would be more nervous, but having her there with me, asking me the questions helped me calm the fuck down. It made it easier to believe that it was just the two of us and we were somewhere just talking, the way our interviews usually went.
I wondered what she would ask me next. Where would she want the interviews held? Her room? My room? Either would do. We just needed a room which locked. Our first stop was Houston. We had gotten to the city, slept our jet lag off, had a shoot around and played, winning by just four points, but it was still a win. Our road schedule was always hectic, but this stop was for two and a half days, so we had some time before we needed to start getting ready to head back onto the plane.
This sort of time, the downtime, was when I would get into it with the local chicks. I had no local chicks this time, but I did have Quinn. She had watched the game, shooting from the sidelines on her own camera. The guys all sort of scattered after the game to enjoy their free time. I asked Quinn whether she wanted to go out to dinner with me, because why not? I still wasn’t done thanking her for that killer interview, and I had the option not to eat alone if I didn’t want to. I looked somewhere up on the internet that was close enough to the hotel and wasn’t a steakhouse.
“This is nice,” she said, sitting in the seat that I pulled out for her. It was nice, but it was Houston nice, not LA nice. There were levels. That wasn’t to say that this place was a dump. It was just to say that there were places in LA that only served alcohol by the bottle and didn’t have prices on the menu because if you had to ask, then you couldn’t afford it. This place seemed to have pretty good reviews online, and it was a nice fusion place.
The crowd looked good, no kids running around making everyone hate their parents or anything. It was good. I saw a few people sort of look over our way. They probably recognized me, which was standard. If I really wanted to be anonymous, we would have gone to an Arby’s but… no. Just no. I know I came from the gutter, but I wasn’t in a hurry to go back. I didn’t mind a four-dollar turkey sandwich every now and then, but I wasn’t going to take Quinn there.
We could have stayed at the hotel and just eaten there, but that would be what everyone else was doing. They weren’t lucky enough to have a hot female companion to keep them company.
Well, that was sort of a lie. The single guys all called up their Houston girls, or the girls that they’d flown out to meet them in Houston, and they were most likely just doing their thing, but that wasn’t going to be me. First, because it couldn’t be. Quinn’s rule. Second, because I sort of didn’t even want it to be.
“Is a Wendy’s or MacDonald’s more your speed?” I teased her.
“Sometimes but not in this dress,” she said smiling. She had a really great dress on that made her ass look tremendous. Her ass was already tremendous, but the dress had this design thing going on in the back that made it look even better. It was a nice dress, but she would have looked cute if she just wore jeans and a shirt. I didn’t know if she ever even dressed like that because I hadn’t seen her dressed down once. Even her dressing down was dressed up. She had worn heels on the flight here, and she was probably wearing heels while watching the game, too. Her hair was down again, and this was definitely better than when it was up. Sexier. She looked more relaxed and less like she wanted to ruin my career.
“I would wait all year for them to get the McRib back on the menu,” I said, taking my seat across from her. A waiter hurried over to give us water and provide us with menus.
“Whenever I was at MacDonald’s, I would just get the nuggets and the apple pie,” she said.
“They're barely even made of real chicken.”
“But they were delicious after a night of drinking,” she said. I smiled, a little surprised by her admission. I wasn’t surprised that she drank sometimes, I knew that. I was thinking of ordering a bottle right then. What was surprising was how little we had talked about her. She was always asking me things. I was always the topic of conversation. She knew everything that I had never told anybody else, and all I really knew was her name and what her kisses tasted like.
How was this different from the relationships I usually had with women? It was always like this. She wasn’t trying to get saved or trying to start receiving child support checks from me, but she, like the women who surrounded me, knew all about me while I knew little about her. It made me a little mad that we had managed to get this far in our relationship… work relationship…without really getting to know each other.
I wanted to know about her. Who was she? I didn’t know because we were always talking about my boring ass.
Frankly, I was getting a little tired of hearing myself speak.
“You used to party hard in college?” I asked her.
“No. I mean, yeah, once in a while,” she said having some of her water. “I was a journalism major, which meant I used to write for the college paper. Nuggets and a double cheeseburger with no pickles or tomato were my late night order when I was finally leaving the office.”
“How were you in college?” I asked. The waiter came, and I asked Quinn whether she minded if I ordered for both of us. I went ahead and ordered us both the seafood ceviche to start, the steak for me and the duck for her for our main, and a bottle of their most expensive red wine.
“I was a nerd. I was interning all the time so that when I graduated I wouldn’t be starting from the bottom at whatever publication finally took me.”
“I’ve haven’t had a chance to use my degree yet,” I said.
“What’s it in?”
“Communications.”
“Hm. That must be why you killed that interview on Inside the League. Daniel and Jock have been telling
me that it was a huge success. The network ended up airing it three more times since the live airing.”
“Let’s not talk about that; we talk about me all the time. I want to know something about you.”
“What?” she asked.
“Where’d you grow up?”
“I was born and raised in LA,” she said.
“I bet Lakers fans hate you,” I said. She smiled.
“I was born to two Yellow Jacket fans. What was I supposed to do? Create a civil war in the household?”
“Why sports journalism? You could write about anything,” I said to her. The wine had come. She paused while the waiter filled our glasses.