The stadium goes insane.
I rush through the crowd, smacking helmets and asses, congratulating the offensive line that spared me a sack. I hurry to the sidelines, meeting up with Matthews to slap his chest and tell him he killed it. He’s subdued even in victory, smiling mildly and slapping me back.
“Hell of a throw, man,” he tells me.
I laugh. “Hell of a catch! How’d you get open?”
“Skill.”
I laugh again, shuffling out of the way as the rest of the line jostles him, pouring praise over his humble head. He listens and smiles, removing his helmet to run his hand through his light hair, but his face is reserved. Everything about him carefully held inside.
He’s the hero of the play. The fans remember him from his rookie year when he blew the place up with one explosive play after another, and they’re losing their shit now that he’s back.
Still, it’s not his name on the lips of every fan leaning over the railings trying to talk to us. Trying to touch us. It never is, because since the day I was picked up by the Kodiaks there’s only one name being sung in the stands. Only one name on the back of jerseys selling out in every store in town.
Ashford Agency
Los Angeles, CA
Domata
27
His jersey stares at me in brilliant orange and yellow from across my office, signed and framed on my wall. It’s the one they gave him when he was drafted. The number was added later, but this is the jersey the Commissioner handed him on Draft day. The one photographed for all of the magazines and newspapers that went forward and spread the word that Trey Domata was the newest weapon in the Kodiak arsenal on the craziest, most emotional night of my life.
I couldn’t believe it when Trey brought it to me. I thought for sure he’d want to keep it for himself, but he said it meant a lot to him that I have it. He said he knew I’d keep it safe.
I told him I was going to sell it on eBay.
I negotiated his contract with him two weeks after the Draft, the day before he brought me the jersey. He signed for four years with the Kodiaks for twenty-two million and a bonus just shy of fifteen million.
Just like that, Trey Domata was a millionaire. And at ten percent, so was I.
I drove us out to the coast after he signed and we walked down to the beach, both of us dressed in dark suits and shining shoes that we left in the car. We sat in the sand together for hours watching the waves come in and roll out over and over again. He talked to me about Hawaii. About growing up a poor kid with a rich heritage and loving parents. He taught me how to say a few words in Hawaiian. I picked them up easily but pretended to struggle only to hear him repeat them over and over again in his deep voice that drifted on the warm wind.
I talked about L.A. About growing up a rich kid with no past and pretty parents. I told him about my sister. About how she was always gone, always running, always trying to find herself anywhere but here. I shivered when I admitted how much I missed her.
“Are you cold?”
“No,” I lied.
“You have goosebumps.”
“I’m fine.”
I don’t want to go home yet, I protested childishly.
He shrugged out of his suit jacket. It fell heavy and slick with the satin lining on my skin. He adjusted it, his arm around me for a bare moment, his large hands cupping my shoulders. I leaned into him. He gripped me tighter. He lingered too long, but not long enough. There was a strain between us as we sat together. A pull like the tide, forward and back, in and out, never ending. We wanted what we couldn’t have. We danced around it, getting too close and pulling away. Missing it when it was gone.
He released me, burying his hands in the sand. “I don’t have a reason to call you tomorrow.”
“No.”
“That sucks.”
“Yes.”
“What do we do now, Sloane?”
I buried my hand in the sand next to his. “We move on, Trey.”
He kissed my cheek in the car when we said goodnight. The next day he showed up with the jersey. We went to dinner afterward. He picked the place. He drove. He paid. It was as close to a date as we’d ever come, or would ever be again.
Two days later he leased an apartment on his own and e-mailed the new address to me with three grainy pictures of the small interior. It’s sparsely furnished. He only has two bath towels. I told him to stop being afraid of spending money and he said he probably never would. He didn’t invite me over, and I didn’t ask to see it.