“Eight… nine… ten… come on, you *, one more. One more!”
I growl in the back of my throat as my muscles convulse under the weight of the bar on my chest. It’s two hundred and twenty-five pounds of steel weighing down on me. The same weight they had at the Draft that I wasn’t asked to lift. The same weight I pushed here at UCLA on Pro Day. Ten was as many as I could manage before my body gave out. I won’t be happy with anything less than eleven today. Tomorrow it will be twelve.
“Come on, come, come on,” Folk chants, wiggling his fingers eagerly under the bar as it slowly starts to rise. “Do it, bitch! Do it!”
Sweat streams down my face, dripping onto the floor. I yell from between my gritted teeth. I give it everything I have. I see stars in my vision. I feel myself getting faded, my peripheral going dark. I’m worried I’ll pass out or shit myself on the bench the way Defoe did last month.
And yet still I push. Still I strive.
I’m halfway there, my arms shaking. My right hand is screaming. Just a little farther. A little bit more…
“Ahhh!” I cry, pushing myself to the edge.
My arms straighten. I’m there. I made it.
I’m back.
“Yeah, Trey! Fuck yeah!”
Folk cheers me on as he helps me lay the bar down on the supports. I breathe out in a painful rush when the weight is gone. My arms collapse onto my chest, quivering uncontrollably.
Folk grips my shoulders, shaking me excitedly. “Good job, man. You killed it.”
I chuckle breathlessly. “You can do twenty-two reps. I almost died doing eleven.”
“And you can pull Grade A * any day of the week. We all got our strengths, baby.”
“I don’t get why you’re killing yourself,” Defoe calls from across the weight room. He’s sitting on his ass on the leg press watching Sports Center on the big flat screen. “The Combine is over, Pro Day is done, and you don’t have to worry about training camp until after the Draft.”
I groan, sitting up on the bench. “I’m getting ready.”
“You should be relaxing.”
“Yeah, I don’t do that very well,” I mumble.
“I’ll teach you.”
“You’ll teach him to be a fat ass,” Cummings snaps.
“He could use some weight on him. Make it harder to sack him.”
“If you did your job protecting him, he wouldn’t have to worry about being sacked.”
“He does his job,” I argue. “Remember that girl at the bar? The tall one with the red hair and the… the, uh… shit, what is it called?”
“A scrunchy,” Defoe reminds me proudly. He remembers.
I snap my fingers, pointing at him. “Yeah, that’s it. The scrunchy thing with my number on it. She wouldn’t get off my ass all night, and when she licked my ear on the dance floor Defoe was in there, man. He bounced her right out of that bar.”
“He banged her,” Cummings says, unimpressed with my story.
“What? No, he didn’t.”
“He did,” Folk confirms. “In your car.”
I scowl at Defoe. “You fucked that psycho in my truck?”
“I got her off your back, didn’t I?” he demands defensively.
Cummings snorts. “Yeah, and onto hers in his ride.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “You asshole.”
“What?” Defoe cries. “She was into it. I told her it was your truck and she got all excited. What was I supposed to do?”
“The bed or the cab?”
“Come on, Trey, don’t be pissed.”
“The bed or the cab?” I repeat clearly.
His shoulders slump. “The cab.”
“Asshole.”
“It was too cold for the bed!”
“You’re scrubbing my seats. Today.”
“It’s been months.”
“I don’t care. You’re doing it.”
“That truck is a piece of shit anyway. I don’t know why you’re getting so mad. Go buy a new one.”
“I’m with him on that,” Cummings agrees. “That beast is trash, Trey. You have the money. Go buy a new one.”
I ignore him and this argument that never ends. They all want me to blow through the money in a matter of hours buying a car, buying a house, buying all new clothes and watches. Folk has been on my ass to get a pimp cane every hour of every day for a week. I’m tempted to buy one just to beat him in the head with.
What I really want to do is send the money to my parents, at least part of it, but they won’t take anything. It’s driving me crazy. Not cash, not gifts, and not plane tickets to the Draft in two weeks. They said they’ll watch it the way they watched the Combine – on the TV in the breakroom at the hotel where my mom works the front desk. I’d rather they were here. I’d rather not be alone.