UNTIL A WEEK AGO I'D SAY I was the luckiest guy in the state.
Good family? Check.
Good looks? Check.
Good-No! phenomenal reputation in football? Check.
I was the sicest player this entire region on the college field. With sic stats, thousands of fans and the respect of my fellow players. The old team Captain had been drafted for the professional field and after his departure. I had recently become the Captain of my University's football team. Unfortunately, the first thing I did to my reign was to become the Captain that collided and bit the dirt on the ground during our last big game.
The collision had knocked the ball right out of my gloved hands and landed me flat on my back with a fractured clavicle. Instantly losing my team the championship, our chance to finally win the game in over twenty years. Now, instead of taking them all to glory, I was at home, in bed. When the sun was blinding and high up in the sky.
Even after a week I still couldn't get that moment out of my head. When everything went silent, thousands of fans holding their breaths as I broke into a sprint for victory, determined to make that final hit. Determined to hit it for the fans, my coaches, my team, the Championship, the league ...until I tripped.
Until I tripped!
Until I fucking tripped on my own feet like some damn amateur and watched the ball in slo-mo as it slid from my usually skilled hands. A collective noise filled the stadium either for the ball dropping or for my injury. Either way that sound of doom hurt to hear, and I swear, it was a thousand times worse than the pain cutting through my collarbone.
"Then he stroked my dick and stuck it in his mouth under the table..."
Hmm? Naturally, I blinked back to reality at the word dick, because when talk turns to a guy's favourite body part. Crap memories bite the dust, at least temporarily "Wait, what?" I asked, adjusting myself to sit up in bed a little straighter.
"Nice of you to rejoin the conversation." My older brother, Joel joked, he had stopped by the house for his lunch break. To cheer me up with bad coffee and tales of his latest sexcapades.
I rotated my right shoulder, trying to stretch my upper back. The sling on my left arm was a royal pain in the ass. Several more weeks of going through this were going to kill me. "Were there any witnesses?" I asked as if I didn't believe his story because I didn't believe his story. "...because I know you're lying."
"Ah, hear that snark...you must be feeling better bro."
When I didn't answer right away, he gave me a big brother eyebrow raise, silently chastising me to fess up. "If you're thinking about lying to me. Don't, Miller men don't lie to Miller men."
I didn't want to lie to him but neither did I want to worry him. The pain had a habit of shooting up needles every time, but the doctor had told me clavicle fractures healed themselves after weeks or just a couple of months at max. He had even put my arm in a sling to immobilize it. The college had also hired a physiotherapist to visit regularly so to help me practice a passive range of motion exercises all meant to accelerate the healing. All of it hurt but it had to be either that or surgery in an OR.
Wince.
"Wentworth?" Joel probed, and rose a single thick brow so high it hid beneath his perfectly styled dark fringe, "...talk to me?"
"Pain's still kicking me shitless," I replied honestly, fighting a grimace. "Nothing a Miller man can't handle. Right?" I finished with a joke.
Joel's forehead creased even more with worry but thankfully he plastered on a plastic smile, nervously fixed the lapels of his Tom Ford blazer and agreed. "Ye, It's only been a week, let's give it time and see."
I lifted my Starbucks cup off the coffee table to finish the terrible but warm brew. A shot of pain where my neck connects to my shoulder reminded me it had truly only been a week. "Fuck it feels like it's been longer though. I hate sitting around doing nothing." I groaned laying down the coffee back on the table.
"Come with us to the restaurant tonight," Joel suggested, brushing strands of sleek dark hair from my face.
"Your soui chef?" I smiled in question, trying to make him see that he had nothing to worry about since I could joke through the pain.
"Off the menu, he got himself a boyfriend now."
"Damn," I feigned disappointment then tried again "I never pegged him for the type to commit, you sure he has a boyfriend?"
Joel laughed, shooting up to his fullest height and walked to my closet. "That's what everyone said about me before I scooped up a husband of my own. Now catch..." Joel threw me the first shirt he saw in my there. "...or do you need help putting it on before we go?" He teased.
I laughed catching it with my good arm. "I'm not in the mood to go out."
The doorbell rang once, reminding me our mom had said she'd stop by the house. The house was a monstrosity that we all lived in and had been in the family for centuries. We, being my parents, my high school-aged sister who lived in the wing opposite of mine and me, the college football star. Joel had moved out the very minute he slipped a ring on his husband's finger. I'd also moved out into the dorms during my freshman year in college but ever since my injury, the entire family had insisted on me moving back in.
Mom let herself in without waiting for a response. "I hope everybody is decent!"
"Up here!" Joel called back and I groaned.
"Boys!" Mom entered face first, wearing her signature bright smile and carrying a Cavalier King Charles in a snake print Birkin.
"Is that a puppy?" Joel asked excitement all over his lit blue eyes.
Mom didn't reply right away since she'd gotten distracted by her phone after it dinged. Either with a meme from dad, her sisters, messages from her women empowerment groups or with messages from one of her 'ballplayer mom groups'.
"Oh it's a puppy." Joel started to coo over the ruby and white fluffy thing anyway. "You're a cute puppy, yesh yesh a cute puppy.." on and on he went playing with it until he came back to normal and asked mom. "Why do you have a pup mom? And why is it in your Birkin?"
Mom finally took her eyes off the poor iPhone, looked at him and then smiled a scary mom smile. When she cast her eyes slightly to the left to look at me, my heart knew it before she said it. "No No No." I hastily jumped off the bed and started backing away before she even said it.
But she started walking towards me despite my backing away. "Oh shush I got it for you baby, you're just so lonely darling." she stopped walking.
"What he needs is a boyfriend or a girlfriend, not a high maintenance pet," Joel said, to my rescue. All the while playing with the fluffy ears of the bi-coloured pup.
"Your brother can barely take care of himself let alone a partner. A pet is just the thing he needs if he's ever going to learn how to take care of someone else." She shooed the puppy from Joel's hands to my direction. "And besides The Bleacher's blog is due for another end of season coverage on college players. This puppy will help with your optics."
"What wrong with my optics now?"
Mom began to preach, "How many times do I have to tell you, boys? Perception is reality and just by last year's coverage you look like such a loser..."
"A loser!!" Joel and I exclaimed at the same time.
That only made mom place her hands on her waist and defiantly repeat. "Yes. A loser. That article made it seem as if football is your Alpha and Omega. That kind of dedication ould've impressed scouts a couple of years ago, but this is the millennial and the league doesn't care about just that anymore these days. You need to come across as a revenue centre and to be that you need to become a total package. That means giving an uplift of some sort to your social life, show these sponsors that you're a marketing powerhouse. You can do that by posting a little more on TikTok, making more friends..."
"Ok ok, I got it." I said, having become used to her saying this. It wasn't the first time she was bringing up my by-product marketing stock Portfolio and it was then it occurred to me that it wouldn't be the last. So I decided to make a compromise. ".... I'll pick up more hours at the Zero youth league? The kids there are mad talented but they aren't in good schools. So to attract sponsors and agents they post a lot of their work on social media. I normally don't let them but for my optics, how about I let them post me with them. By effect my social life and social media presence will be catered to, through them. Will that do it for you?"
I'm pretty sure that was a solid plan, two birds one stone. I don't think mom appreciated it though because she chose to ignore it and instead say, "I didn't hear anything about making more friends in there?"
Joel snickered and retreated into the closet, I shook my good shoulder and stood straighter to stretch as I answered her. "I have enough friends."
"You have three friends Wentworth. One of them was recruited to the league miles from here, the other one is your brother. So actually it's two, you my darling you have two friends."
"Fair enough but that's a secondary issue, do we have a deal on Zero's youth league?"
"No." She hummed, tapping her chin. "I'll call your Coach, maybe he can come up with something less stuffy. Now tsk tsk tsk." She called the pup. "...go say hi to daddy over there."
Not a second later the puppy came to stand beside my right foot. Waggling its tail, tongue out as though it were me in the family it belonged to. "Oh hell no!" I rebuked, trying to shed it from the foot it was hugging.
"Cavaliers ranked 19th for intelligence in dog breeds. You'll thank me." Mom sang to explain how the pup easily obeyed as she walked to my tv stand to switch on the thing on the wall. She played with the remote until she changed from Fox Sports to some floozy gossip channel, where three reporters were discussing celebrity scandals and all that nonsense.
Joel came back from the closet he'd disappeared to, "it's true what mom was saying about the optics, the firm I work for has clients that...."
"Again." Mom bounced on the couch gasping at her form of news, effectively making Joel forget the rest of his sentence. She shook her head in disapproval at what she was seeing on the tv. "Look at this ill-bred child!" She waved her silicon manicured hand at the tv.
Plastered on the screen was a high definition picture of the Nation's current problem. A twenty-one-year-old college footballer with a gold rizzler blunt hanging off his wet lips. His white shirt deliberately unbuttoned to show off his neck Cuban jewels. Also leaving on display bedroom marks dotted all over his light blemish-free skin. Most likely left by the small guy with distressed jeans under his right arm or the other guy with a rainbow pouch under his left inked arm or someone completely different than the people in the shot with him.
This was nothing new, it hardly counted as news anymore because this particular college player headlined almost every gossip site on a weekly basis. For all of his nightmare hookups and that was off the college field. On the field, reports were that he was lazy and not a team player. There was nothing of substance or to be respected of him even though the Bleacher's report had been comparing our field skill for three years now.
"Seeing as you're the last of my children yet to marry, keep this in mind Wentworth." Mom pointed a finger at the screen. "Do not bring home a girl or a boy who's body is for everybody like this Acosta boy."
"You ain't gotta worry." Joel promised on my behalf, the looked at me knowingly around a smug smirk. "Still not in the mood to go out?"
"Promise me." Mom demanded.
"Promise what?"
"That you won't bring home a..."
"Ok," I rolled my eyes cutting the rest of her sentence and simultaneously turning to walk away from her neurosis.
"Wentworth, baby? Should you be going out with that arm?"
I kept walking anyway. Away from my own bedroom, to the bathroom. Finally changing into that random shirt Joel had picked out for me to go out in and maybe try to make some friends or something.
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