Sacked (The Alpha Ballers#2)
Lucy Snow
CHAPTER 01 - LANCE
The club was loud. And I knew what loud sounded like. I had been in giant stadiums filled with people on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons in the fall for the last 10 years. Yeah, those were bigger than this club, but some of them also had a hundred thousand people in them, all making noise, all yelling and shouting.
All watching me play. So yeah, I knew what loud was.
This was loud on another level. Coupled with the low lights punctuated by lasers and murky smoke, the pounding bass and high trebles of the club was almost disorienting. I think I saw some people stagger back a couple steps as soon as they entered, when the wall of sound and the pulse of the club hit them all at once. It was almost funny to see them try and get reoriented, adjusted to the new baseline level of sound and light. Clubs were interesting like that - people came to them to be in strange environments, and do things with other people they wouldn’t dream of doing in the daylight.
AKA people came to the club to dance with their friends, drink a lot, and, if they were some combination of lucky, interesting, and interested, meet someone to take home with them for the night. I didn’t need a club like this to meet girls; I just went up and talked to them if I wanted to. Easier that way.
In fact, you couldn’t even really talk to anyone in a place like this. Talking here in the club meant shouting in someone’s ear and hoping they managed to get half of what you said, then trying to interpret their shouting back. There must have been subwoofers in the floor, because as the bass drum kicked, people vibrated, at least one I saw losing their balance. They must have had too much to drink.
Oh well, in a place like this, talking wasn’t necessary. Just touch up against someone, dance with them a bit, and then pair off, see if you liked having their tongue in your mouth and vice versa. At least, that was how it usually went for me.
Why again was I here?
Oh right, last night of the offseason for me. Tomorrow the real season began, and I’d have to say goodbye to clubs for the next 5, and hopefully 6, months. I swept my head around, taking the whole club in, suddenly unsure of how much I would miss it all. Of course, it would still be here in a few months, and so would the girls.
At least I could hear some great music here. People might not think it to look at me, but I was huge into EDM - it was all I listened to before games, when I needed to calm down and relax and get into the groove.
In fact I really shouldn’t be here at all. The season was just about to start, and I had a press conference first thing in the morning, the first time the media could ask me questions since the final roster cuts were announced. They would have some pretty direct questions for me, and I had to be on point, or they’d take whatever I said and run with it, making me, and even worse, the team, look bad in the process.
Needless to say I had no plans to say anything of substance to them.
That didn’t mean I wanted to stay out partying the night before; I still needed some sleep. But no, my buddies who weren’t in the league wanted me to come out one last time before the season started. They knew that once the games started counting, I wasn’t going anywhere near a club like this, not until February at the earliest.
So yeah, there was a small and rapidly closing window for me to let loose and have this kind of fun. I couldn’t really say no to these guys. It was so rare that I got to see them, and it would be a few months before it would really happen again.
That didn’t mean I was gonna have a lot of fun tonight. There wasn’t much for me here. Sure, I could meet a girl and take her home with me, but it would only be a short term thing.
Short term, as in tonight only.
Because starting tomorrow I didn’t have time for any more of that kind of fun. The season was on, and once that started I was all business. I was Lance Parker, starting quarterback for the New England Patriots. This season was gonna be make or break for me - I had to prove to the team that I was worthy of keeping the starting job and I had to do whatever I could to bring home a championship to New England.
That was all that mattered - not my personal life, nothing else but winning. I knew I could do it, I knew I could lead this team to where we needed to go. But I also knew I had to focus entirely on that. No distractions allowed.