Page 106 of Free Agent

“Ohhh, okay,” he chuckled. “So this is what we’re doing?”

“What do you mean, is this what we’re doing?” I asked. “Tatum, you literally just said it yourself for the whole world to hear. I’m the homie. We’re just vibing. That’s it and that’s all.”

“Okay, here we go. So you’re finally admitting that you’re mad?”

“I’m not mad. I’m just… on my free agent shit like you advised, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I haven’t signed any contracts, so I’m doing the healthy thing and speaking to other teams.”

He let out a huff. “So you interested in a contract now?”

“I don’t even fully know what the fuck this analogy means, so sure, I guess,” I answered, flustered.

“Noted,” he said.

“Good,” I countered.

Was it though?

“You have a good time on your date.”

“I’m sure I will.”

“Man, you know what? Good night, Rori.”

“Good night.”

With that, I hung up the phone.

Heart racing, even though I wasn’t sure why.

Bothered, but I wasn’t sure why.

What I was sure of, was that this exact achy feeling, this stress and drama, was exactly what I did not need in my life.

And it was better for it to happen now than when I was even further in my state of delusion about where I stood with Tatum.

SEVENTEEN

TATUM

Rori had me fucked up.

The most fucked up I could possibly be.

More fucked up than anyone had ever had me before.

And there wasn’t much I could do except stew about it, until I could get my ass to Blackwood.

First though, I had practice, a “voluntary” session with the new rookies we’d picked up in the draft. Before I needed to drive up a mountain to save my marriage I’d actually been looking forward to this.

Now, it was one more thing keeping me from making a necessary point.

It didn’t help that when I arrived at the practice field, it was crawling with fans and press, all wanting to get their first judgmental looks at the new class, supposedly. It quickly turned into heckling the vets about last season’s performances, that mistake in the wild card game, and whatever current public-facing dramas they had going on.

One particularly bold asshole had an oversized printout of Monty’s face he started brandishing as soon as I came out.