Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
The man could have two bar stools, and his shoulders might still be touching me.
Well, not really. He wasn’t quite that big, but the man definitely wasn’t small.
If my sisters were here, they’d all be making jokes about whether or not his upper body matched his lower body, and they wouldn’t be meaning his legs, that was for sure.
Sadly, I’d been around my sisters for so long, that their bad thoughts were rubbing off on me.
All I could think about was whether his hands were anything to go by.
Seriously, though, the man could wrap his entire hand around a beer bottle, and his fingers were overlapping.
The closer I studied the bottle, the more my thoughts raced.
“There was this one time,” he said as he took a swig of his beer. “That I was at my first post-game NFL win.”
I gave him all my attention then.
“I was twenty-two, my mom had Briley for the weekend, and I was free to be a twenty-two-year-old.” He tapped the lip of his beer bottle against his lips as he sighed. “I got drunk and started flirting with this gaggle of women, and my teammates were egging me on, urging me to ‘go for it.’ But that night Titus had gotten fouled really hard and had been taken to the emergency room for X-rays to make sure that he didn’t hurt anything. He hadn’t, and he came back with a limp to find me not in my room. When he called me to find out where I was, I told him I was down in the lobby, about to hook up with the most beautiful ladies in the room.”
“Oh, boy,” I snickered. “Were they prostitutes?”
“Worse,” he winced. “They were men. Gay men that had really long hair, and talked softly like women. Somehow, we’d wound up in a gay bar and the guys thought it’d be funny to haze the new guy since he was usually with his best friend for backup. Titus got down there, realized how shit-faced I was, and took me up to our shared room. The next morning, thousands of pictures started to show up, and a fuckin’ newsletter went out detailing the encounter and how Slone was now ‘questioning his sexuality.’” He tipped his beer up and finished it, and that’s when I realized he wasn’t drinking at all. He was having a root beer. “That’s why I don’t drink anymore.”
I snorted.
“Nothing against gay men—because good for them following what they know they want—but seriously. I like vagina. The smell. The taste. The woman it’s attached to.” His eyes came to me.
“Why are you telling me this?” I wondered.
Because it felt like a statement.
Like maybe he was trying to hint at something that I should be picking up on by now.
I sat my drink down and stared at it.
“Do you have a problem with other people drinking?” I asked curiously.
He was already shaking his head. “No. In fact, I encourage everyone that’s around me to act normally—sometimes it’s really nice to be looked at like I’m just a normal everyday guy, not some football player that has millions and doesn’t drink because he’s scared.”
I frowned. “I wouldn’t say that you’re scared. More like cautious.”
“Overly cautious,” he allowed, placing the bottle to his lips and downing the rest of the contents. “People think I freak out too much. The kids. Their being recorded freaks me the fuck out. And I really fuckin’ hate when the guys on the team give me shit for not drinking, when most of them are the reason that I don’t. Then there’s the constant bullshit I take from some of them because they don’t have the same perks that I have with my daughter coming to games with us… Every year I consider quitting, then I decide to give it one more year so I can win the Super Bowl. But then we get knocked out in the first round, and I wonder why I agreed to play another year.”
I felt my stomach tighten at the thought of him hating his job.
What kind of life would that be?
Oh wait, I lived it myself.
“Have you ever considered looking for a trade?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Except my contract holds me there. Then I think about leaving Titus behind, or the town that I grew up in, and I stay.”
“Does Titus like it there?” I wondered.
He leaned forward and placed his glass on the table in front of us before saying, “I think Titus needs the consistency right now. His daughter was a huge surprise to him, and he’s still recovering from that. Not that he dislikes being a parent or anything.”
I waved Slone off. “I knew that wasn’t what you meant.”
“Plus”—Slone smiled then—“Titus has a thing for a girl we graduated with. I think he’s holding out hope that if he hangs around the area, she’ll finally see that they’re made for each other.”