Chapter 5

Monday night, Shane was pacing the three feet of tight pile carpet in front of his locker. Uniform unblemished and brand new, he was trying to tone out the voices in his head. He knew he wouldn't play, but that didn't mean the game would be unexciting.

Leonard Washington was in the locker to his left. The giant man had headphones over his ears. Shane couldn't make out the music, but Leonard wasn't moving to any rhythm. The lineman's eyes were steeled, and a grimace was turning his lips.

"What's his routine," Shane said to Nelson Jones, the running back in the locker to his right.

"Dude's wife puts crap ass heavy metal in his iPod for game day," Jones said in a smooth deep voice.

"What the hell for?"

"Cause it pisses me off," Leonard offered, tossing the music player into his locker with a snap. "Shitty ass music that I have to listen too because I needs to be angry. Fuckin defenses fault I gotta do this shit."

"Make 'em pay!" The other linemen began to pipe in.

A boiling fervor enveloped the linemen, and Shane felt out of place. He wasn't going to play unless tragedy struck, so he felt odd participating. Out of frustration, he slammed the door on his locker when they turned and filed out to the field.

Placing his helmet under the bench was the last time he touched it during the game. Xavier Daniels ran the offense in all four quarters. Chicago managed to keep the game close enough that Coach never pulled Xavier, and Xavier kept the offense firing so well that the game was never truly in question either.

At the end of the game, Shane's uniform was one of two that never saw action. Gerald Hardy, a rookie running back, was in the same boat. Sighing, when he was ready to leave five minutes after they got to the locker room, Shane changed into a shirt and tie, and headed into the hallway. He ran right into a flock of reporters.

Ambushed with questions, Shane was held up for almost fifteen minutes. Only Xavier coming through the locker room door turned their focus. His questions were pretty basic; Shane figured they were just fishing for a sound byte, or a mistake on his part.

Shaking his head, he walked through the bowels of the arena to get his truck from player parking and head home. He'd just made a little more than sixty thousand dollars, and he hadn't done anything but talk to the quarterbacks coach two or three times.

Having a Monday night game on the east coast meant that it was well after midnight when Shane made it back home. Not feeling up to anything, he sent Valerie a text message asking if she would be in town soon, and collapsed on his bed. He was going to have to be at the training facility by noon for tape review for Sunday.

Tuesday morning was another protein shake, this time mint green, a staggering walk to his truck, and a bleary drive to the facility. Tom was already there, and clasped him on the shoulder.

"Good win, no injuries, and back to work the next morning," Tom said. "Doesn't get much better man."

"The shake wasn't too bad this morning." Shane wasn't fully alert yet, and Tom walked with him toward the video review room.

"I ground a bunch of espresso beans into it. You'll be kickin like kung foo in no time."

Making a note to avoid Tom for at least two hours after getting out of bed, Shane stepped into the video room, and found Xavier already sitting in there. They nodded to one another as Xavier rewound a tape and watched a Philadelphia linebacker scamper through St Louis's linemen to pick up a hard sack.

"That guy's a damned problem," Xavier said.

Watching it again, Shane saw the explosive way the linebacker picked up speed and knifed through the line before the blockers could get a hand on him. He was fast and smart. Just before the snap, he had recognized the line coverage, and edged himself laterally to run between guard and center. That's when Shane saw something.

"X, got any tape on his other blitzes?"

Xavier just nodded and fast forwarded to a shot of the linebacker, who turned out to be Paul Barry, bursting through from the other side and only just missing the sack before St Louis's quarterback pitched the ball away incomplete.

"What about coverage, got him dropping back?"

Rolling his eyes, Xavier found another DVD and exchanged it. Soon they were seeing Barry tipping passes and destroying receivers that came over the middle.

"Got him," Shane said quietly.

"What?"

"We got him," he said again. "Watch his right foot when he sets up. If he's on a blitz, he turns it almost parallel to the line of scrimmage. In coverage he keeps it straight."

"No he doesn't," Xavier protested, but he was already exchanging the DVD again. "Nobody would let him get this far without shutting shit like that down."

Barry was a rookie like Shane, but unlike a quarterback, could be coached to start in his first season. He'd gotten a sack and ten tackles in his first real game that Sunday, and was a news sensation.

"Son of a bitch," Xavier said. "He's gotta be getting a shit ton of yelling for that in practice."

"It still showed up at game time thought."

"Won't for the whole season, we might get the fucker on it this week though."

After that Xavier moved his seat closer to Shane, and was engaging him in every tape, asking for thoughts and timing recommendations. When the entire offense made it to the room a half hour later, they had covered Philadelphia's three star defenders.

In the weight room, Shane got paired up with Orlando Gustavo, the receiver who'd caught one of his preseason passes. Tom was working the room like the conductor in an orchestra, and chains were clinking in everyone's ears.

Gustavo liked to curse his weights in thick Spanish. It amused Shane, who spoke nothing but English, to try and divine what he was saying. The workout went fast, and Shane didn't realize until he was in the shower, how much he'd put his body through. He still had to down a puce looking liquid that tasted vaguely of strawberry after it.

By six he was back in the truck with Tom, meandering to the apartment exhausted. Once there, Tom set out his notebooks on the dining table, and started going to them.

"You gonna breathe some time?" Shane asked.

"Too much to do, workouts for particular positions, tailored to a guy's strengths, his weaknesses, his injury profile. It's gotta be perfect."

Shane just shook his head and was going to say something about hot fires burning out the fastest when his cell phone chirped.

"Hello," he said, moving to his bedroom for the call.

"Ohio," Valerie said. "Got dinner plans?"

Ten minutes later, he was pulling the jacket of one of his new suits on, and heading to the street to hail a cab. He was excited to be heading to dinner, and the cab put him right at the front door of Smith and Wollensky's. It was a red meat night according to Tom, and Shane planned to take advantage.

"There you are," Valerie said when he was led to the private room she was in. "Thanks for coming on short notice."

"I don't think you do anything that isn't short notice."

When the hostess left, Valerie kissed him on the lips for the briefest of seconds, and they sat down. Weight left his shoulders the instant he looked at her. Complicated as she was, complicated as he was the relationship with her was one thing he wasn't confused about.

He didn't know truly what they were destined for, but he was grateful they were together now. Her breasts, which he could see and feel in his mind just like the previous week when he'd had her in his apartment, were pressing the front of her silken blue shirt.

"Shane?" The sharpness in her tone pulled him back to reality.

"Huh?"

He was embarrassed to get caught doting like that. Turning his face and trying to get a gulp of water to stall, Shane managed to quell it.

"I've been trying to get started for a few minutes," She said.

"Started what?"

"I've been trying to say something," she said. Her hands were fidgeting on the table cloth and her eyes moved from one focus to the next. "I'm not sure I'm very good at this, but with all the screw us I've had before, I want to get this right."

"Oh," was all he could say. She had invited him to lower the boom on him. His spoon found its way into his hand, and he began squeezing it while feeling used. Did she really get him into bed and then decide to walk away?

"Look, I've been on newspapers and tabloids since I was sixteen with my relationships," she said. "And it's not all wrong either."

Making contact between his eyes and her sparkling green eyes, Shane caught a hint of mischief.

"I like to have fun, I also have to work disgusting hours, catch planes in the middle of the night, and sacrifice most of my free time for my job," Valerie said, her body was relaxed now that she was building up a head of steam. "Sound like anyone else in this room?"

"Where are you going with this?" Shane thought that the beginning sounded like a dump, but the middle was more promising.

"I don't want to tie you down."

"What?"

"For Christ's sake do I have to say it?"

"Say what?"

"Fuck Ohio," she was getting flustered, and amused at the same time. "I'm going to be gone a lot. Even when you're in the off season, and I don't want to lose you."

"Okay..."

"So if you want to be with me," Valerie said with a grin. "Don't worry about having fun with anyone else too."

"You want me to get laid?"

For some reason Shane was picturing his mother and father having this conversation. The virtual conversation wasn't going well. In one replay his father stormed out, in another his mother threw a dinner plate. They fought in all of them.

Valerie moved her chair to the side near him instead of across the table. Her knee touched his when she sat again, and she took his right hand in both of hers.

"You confuse me Ohio. Not directly, but I had it pretty simple before I met you. If I wanted sex I went out and got laid. Nothing permanent, and nothing twice. But I want you more than that."

"So ... then we're together."

"I can't do that. You're going to have women throwing panties at you and giving you sexual pressure everywhere you go," she said. "I don't know if I can handle that, or if I can wait for months to see you without getting laid myself."

"Why are you telling me this? We've only been together once."

"Because if I wait, I can see it in your eyes, you'll be in too deep to think about it."

She was right. If he'd let himself form the position of her and him as an item on his own, she'd have never gotten anywhere. Since she was dropping it on him now though, it was sinking in.

"So you think it'll be easy to just not worry about infidelity?" Shane was thinking about it. Every jock known to man had screwed up a relationship. His own had been sophomore year in college.

"I want to keep seeing you. I actually want to see where you and I end up." She looked down at the table. "That's the wrinkle in my way of life. But for your body I want priority, I don't need it exclusively."

"What about your body?" Shane leaned away from her. The damn Winters family never ceased to surprise him; it was like walking into a room of trip wires with moon boots on. "If we get serious I don't know if I can handle hearing about you with some dude."