Rookie Mistake (10 page)

Miles Chevrolet and Cadillac

Los Angeles, CA

Sloane helps me check out a brand new Chevy Colorado. It’s red. It has leather seats, satellite radio, and Wi-Fi. That shit blows my mind. My old truck didn’t even have air conditioning. This one is pulling music from satellites in outer space.

I feel weird getting behind the wheel for the first time. I almost back out, almost tell the sales guy to forget it, but Sloane hops in the passenger seat and sits there looking like money, like she belongs, and when she casts me that playful smile of hers, I wonder if I don’t belong too. It’s at least worth giving it a shot.

“Take it for a spin,” the old guy tells me, closing my door for me like a valet. He’s clearly not going with us, a fact that I don’t understand at all. “Take your time. Enjoy the afternoon. See how she feels.”

I run my thumb over the key fob in my palm. It’s beginning to sweat. “Just around the block or…”

“Take it on the freeway at least,” Sloane suggests. “You want to know how it accelerates.”

The guy taps my door twice as a send off. He’s already backing away. “Like I said, enjoy the afternoon. Call us if you’re going to keep it overnight.”

“What the fuck is happening?” I whisper to Sloane. “What’s to stop us from stealing this thing?”

“Morals?”

“Seriously though.”

She chuckles as she snaps her seatbelt over her chest. “He photocopied my driver’s license while you were checking out the colors. They know who has the car. Plus it has a GPS tracker chip so you can find it if it does get stolen. Don’t worry about it. Just drive it.”

“I already feel like I’m stealing it.”

“They want you to feel like it’s yours. That’s why they don’t go with you. They want you to get comfortable in it, so get comfortable. Adjust the seat, change the radio presets. Take us for a long drive, Trey. Relax. Enjoy yourself.”

I gently put the key in the ignition. When I turn it over the truck rumbles to life, throaty and easy like it’s singing. “How far should I go?”

She leans back, lowering her big black sunglasses over her eyes. “Until you’re happy.”

I take us to the ocean. I drive as far and as hard up against the California coastline as I can get, as close to Hawaii as the land will allow. Sloane rolls down her window to let the ocean in. She changes the music on the radio from contemporary pop to a classic rock station and leaves it there as we weave our way north up the Pacific Coast highway. It takes almost an hour to find Malibu.

“Should we turn back?” I ask her.

“Are you happy yet?” she replies.

I keep going.

I drive until we lose the ocean, diverted inland at Oxnard, led up to Ventura where we cut west and find it again. Blue and green and glistening in the fading afternoon sun. It’ll be on fire soon. I don’t want to miss that.

Thirty minutes later I pull off at a viewpoint on the outskirts of a tiny town called Isla Azul. Several cars are parked by the access path to the beach. None of them are very new. None of them are very shiny. All of them have a roof rack on top, perfect for surf boards. I park the very new, very shiny truck far away from them on the other side of the lot where there’s a food truck serving tacos and warm Fanta. Sloane and I take our orders to a gray picnic table at the base of a wind-bent tree. She sits next to me, shoulder to shoulder, her hair blowing long and free behind her. We watch the surfers out in the water as we eat.

“Are you any good at it?” she asks.

“At surfing?”

She wipes a bit of guac off her lip with a thin brown napkin. “Yeah.”

“Wow. Just because I’m from Hawaii, I know how to surf, huh?”

“Do you not?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What
is
the point?”

“Your assumptions. That’s a stereotype. Next thing you know you’ll be asking me if I know how to hula and roast a pig in the sand.”

Sloane pauses, silently chewing on her picadillo and my indignation. “You know how to do all of that, don’t you?”

I grin into my drink. “I know how to do everything.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I am, yeah. But I’m a happy asshole.”

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a small smile on her lips.

“I’m glad.”

When we’re done eating and the blazing sun has been extinguished in the cool waters of the Pacific, Sloane calls the dealership to tell them we’ll be bringing the car back first thing in the morning.

“Are you going to buy it?” she asks as we climb back inside.

I look out the windshield at the water turning dark. Some of the surfers are still out, the serious ones. The crazy ones. Others are coming back in and latching their boards to the roof of their cars.

I ask Sloane, “Do you know how to surf?”

“Badly, but yes.”

“Do you want to get better?”

“Are you offering to teach me?”

“I’m asking you to go with me.”

She considers the sky before agreeing, “Yes.”

“Do you think a couple boards would fit in the bed of this truck?”

“I think most of the inventory for a small surf shop would fit in the bed of this truck.”

I turn the key, making the engine growl. “Then I’d be an idiot not to buy it.”

I take her home. It takes hours. It feels like minutes. She invites me up to her apartment and we drink beers on the balcony of her condo in the dark, looking out silently over the glittering Los Angeles skyline. It’s different from the ocean, but it’s still beautiful in its own way. In ways that are growing on me.

I hug her goodbye when I go. She smells like sea salt. Like home.

In the morning I take her with me to buy the truck. It takes longer than I expected, but she stays with me the entire time. It reminds me of the day in the Ashford Agency when I signed my life away and wished I hadn’t been alone, because this time I’m not. She doesn’t say or do anything other than sit there beside me, but it’s enough. It’s what I need. It’s what I’ve been missing.

I’ve talked to her every day since then. Every afternoon I get a text from her, checking in to make sure I’m not sitting around watching Sports Center. I make sure that I’m not because I promised her I’d try.

Can I check ESPN?
I plead.

No.

NFL.com?

No!

FOX Sports?

Do you even know what a media blackout is?

It seems self-explanatory.

It does, doesn’t it?
she replies. Her sarcasm is heavy even through text.

CBS Sports?

Get a hobby!

This is my hobby!

Bugging me?!

Following sports! Playing sports!

Obsessing over sports.

It’s how you get good at it.

Well, I need to get good at my job, so…

Sloane.

Silence.

Sloane.

Silence.

Sloane.

OH MY GOD!

Our conversations go back and forth this way well into the evening. They always end with us having dinner. She doesn’t expense it the agency anymore. One night she even lets me pay.

Some nights we go back to her place for a beer and the view. Other nights that feels too dangerous. Nights when we’ve been in a corner booth for two hours laughing and talking shit about people we shouldn’t be talking about. When we sit too close for too long. Those are the nights when I tell her goodbye on the sidewalk. I don’t hug her. I don’t touch her if I can help it, because once I start I’m not sure I can stop.

She’s busy during the day. She’s working hard, taking lunches and meetings all day as we get closer to the Draft. She’s scouting other teams, making more connections. Giving me a fall back in the second round. She’s more worried about the Kodiaks situation than she’s letting on, but I feel better knowing she’s on top of it. I’m calmer than I have been in ages.

I’m also conflicted as hell.

We’re spending all of this time together, I crave her like a drug, but we’re coming to a point where the talking and the laughing isn’t enough. I want to have sex with her again. And again. And again. But I know I can’t. I remind myself of that every time she smiles and it makes my stomach drop. I have to be careful because there’s too much at stake for both of us. We’re already toeing the line, pushing our luck, but I can’t stop because I can’t sleep without her. Her voice is my new music.

It sounds sweet, but when you get real about it, we’re basically a clusterfuck.

Normally if I have a problem, I take it to my mom. Maybe my dad. But not this one. I can’t talk to them about this because I can’t tell them what I’ve done. That’s an awkward conversation none of us want to have. The guys are worthless because they’ll only tell me to fuck her again. There’s really only one other person on the planet I respect enough to ask their opinion.

“Coach Reagan.”

He turns from the white board he was pouring over, smiling when he sees me.

“Trey, what are you doing here this late?”

“I came to talk to you, if that’s okay?”

“Of course it is. What about? Graduation?”

“No, I’m all set.”

“What time is your ceremony?”

“Two in the afternoon on the tenth.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

He caps his red marker, studying me. “If it’s not a question about commencement, what can I help you with?”

I search the large office just to be sure we’re alone. No one is sitting in the corners with a playbook. No one is hunched behind his computer. With the season over the place is a ghost town. One I’m haunting by being here.

I close the door behind me as I take a steadying breath. “I might have done something stupid.”

“How stupid?”

I meet his eyes head on. “I had sex with my agent.”

Coach Reagan pulls nervously on the bill of his hat until it all but covers his weathered green eyes. “I hope you mean you slept with your agent’s daughter.”

“Yeah. I do. I did.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I know.”

“Did you use protection?”

“Yeah, of course. I always do.”

“You knew it was wrong to sleep with her, you took the time to put on a condom, and you didn’t stop yourself? Trey, you’re smarter than that.”

I swallow thickly. “I was panicking.”

I can see his body sag slightly, weighed down by the secret he’s kept for four years. He’s lied for me. He’s pretended and covered for me, never letting on to a soul that the prize pony the world was salivating over was lame.

“You need to see a doctor, Trey,” he says tiredly. He folds his arms over his chest, shaking his head. “It’s not getting any better.”

“If I see a doctor for it, I’m done for. My career is over.”

“You can’t keep going like this. I shouldn’t have helped you hide it as long as I did.”

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

“I don’t know that it was right. I’ll always wonder if I did right by you.”

“Coach, I’m fine. I—“

“The pressure in the NFL is only going to get worse,” he interrupts angrily. “Your attacks will only get worse, and I’m worried someday I’m going to see a news story about you saying that you went on a bender, got coked out of your mind trying to find an escape, and you wrapped your truck around a tree. And I’ll always wish I had done things differently.”

I square my shoulders, my jaw tensing painfully. “I won’t. I wouldn’t have things any other way. I wouldn’t be in the Draft if you hadn’t hidden this for me, and if I don’t draft I can’t take care of my family. Everything depends on this.”

He shakes his head again, his shadowed eyes sad. “It’s too much pressure for a kid. All of it, it’s too much to put on any of you.”

“Well, it’s too late now,” I tell him hotly.

Coach Reagan sighs in glum agreement. “You’re right. And that’s exactly what I’ll say to you about Sloane. It’s too late now.”