Page 1 of The Way We Touch
1
Logan
“So you want to fuck another man.” I lift the tumbler of whiskey, jaw tight, despite the casual smile on my lips.
“Of course, that’s the first place you’d go.” The cool blonde sitting across from me crosses her mile-long legs, leaning them to the side beneath the table like a giraffe.
I admit, they were the first things I noticed about her. I’m a legs guy.
“Must you always be so cocky?” she continues. “Maybe if you acted like you cared once in a while, I wouldn’t have to expand our repertoire.”
“I prefer only one dick at the party.”
“That dick being you?” She tilts her head to the side.
“Always.” Stated with my usual bravado, my calculated cool.
A light laugh slips from her glossy-red lips, but it’s insincere.
Natalia van Norse is a six-foot, size zero supermodel with fake tits. Later, I learned she’s also an author and a Midtown influencer, which pretty much makes her a U.S. influencer.
Tonight she’s wearing a black dress covered in star-shaped sequins to match the décor of the restaurant, and her platinum hair is swept into an elegant twist off her neck complete with tiny gold stars scattered across the crown.
She’s picture-perfect, ready to document the grand opening of Galileo’s, the hottest new restaurant on West 53rd Street, which I was invited to attend. I’m invited to attend pretty much every opening, charity gala, red carpet affair.
I’d tossed the invitation aside, but she insisted we make an appearance.
The menu sounded like a prank, and I wasn’t in the mood for camera flashes blinding me all the way inside as soon as our car pulled up at the door. But I acquiesced, and here we are.
The host whisked us away to a private alcove off the main dining room, and now we’re nestled at a gilded table where midnight-blue velvet curtains separate us from the other, less-sought-after guests.
“You’re so provincial, Logan, I swear, it’s hard to believe you’ve lived in New York for eight years.”
“I didn’t know not wanting to share my bed was considered provincial.”
I almost said my girlfriend, but that term hasn’t felt right in a long time.
“And what about what I want?”
I roll a star-topped toothpick between my fingers thinking about the first time I saw this woman. I was out with Garrett Bradford, offensive lineman and my best friend, on our last free night before the start of the regular season.
I approached her purely out of ego. With her height and style and reputation, I decided she was the type of woman “Lightning” Logan Murphy should have on his arm.
Logan Murphy, star wide receiver for the New Jersey Pirates, most completed passes in last year’s season, and on track to win the very first MVP trophy ever awarded to a wide receiver in history—if the sports commentators are to be believed.
Our relationship was rocky from the start.
She was promoting her book of essays, and I liked to read. However, when I discovered her book was actually a collection of essays about how the modeling industry only cared about her body, I made the mistake of questioning the premise.
Isn’t being a model and complaining people only care about your looks the same as me being a football star and complaining people only care about my athleticism?
Sure, I graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in communications, motivated by the fact that my father owns all the sports radio stations on the AM dial from El Paso to Jefferson City, but nobody gives a shit about any of that when the ball is second and goal in the fourth quarter with ten seconds left in the game.
I’m simply a player who’d better catch that fucking pigskin and get it across the line.
Then online sports betting exploded, and I was dehumanized even more.
The last time a dickhead cursed me out in the comments section, threatening my life because I fucked up a measly twenty-dollar parlay by simply doing my job, i.e., winning, I turned over all my social media accounts to a handler.