Once the season started everything was a whirlwind, a maelstrom of never-ending activity. From the minute I woke up in the morning till the second my head hit the bed, my time was spoken for.
I knew some guys had families and that was totally cool, making sure they spent time with kids, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, other friends, etc, but not having most of those made everything so much easier during the season. That’s why living at the facility was so easy - I didn’t have time to enjoy myself in a real house or apartment, so why not cut down on the commute?
I didn’t know why more guys didn’t do it. Everyone else on the team looked at me like I was insane, but since I was the starting QB, they grudgingly had to accept it.
I settled back into the routine pretty quickly. Every morning I was up around dawn, getting in a little bit of a jog, something to get the joints moving. Breakfast at the cafeteria next, had to load up for the long haul till lunch.
After breakfast was morning practice, everyone still trying to wake up while the coaches yelled at us. Morning practices were more physical and less mental.
After that, meetings by position and film study till it was time for lunch. The meetings were lots of fun. We’d watch game film on a giant screen and the coaches would call out questions and look for answers from the players, analyzing what had gone wrong and right on each play, how things could have been done better.
Normally you’d have a room with a bunch of players in it all trying not to be called on, but the quarterbacks room just had 3 people in it - the coach, me, and Oliver Lee. And since Lee was the backup, every single question was pointed at me. Which made sense, because Oliver Lee would never get to play as long as a) I stayed healthy and b) I kept playing well.
So yeah, it was a tough room. After lunch in the cafeteria, there were more meetings till we had weight room time and afternoon practice.
Practice meant time on the field, in pads, squaring off against your teammates on the other side of the ball. Running routes, making plays, doing all the stuff you’d do in a real game except hurting other people.
After practice came more film study, dinner, and then whatever relaxation time you could muster with any energy you had left. Me, I sometimes watched a movie or read a book, but really I was thinking about football the entire time.
It was exhausting but also tons of fun. I loved the routine of it all.
Of course, in between all these things were sessions with the athletic staff. Stretching, yoga, massages, you name it, if it helped coordination, flexibility, strength, and recovery, the Patriots staff were willing to see if it would work for their players.
Which, for me, meant lots of time spent around Charlotte.
And as I expected, she didn’t make it easy on me. No, she looked more and more beautiful every time I came into her training room, and she never let me forget it. At first I thought she was just driving the point home, making me pay for not being willing to break my rule to try and date her, or at least see if we could get along like that.
But the more time I spent with her over the next couple weeks I realized that was just how she was. Charlotte was a genuinely sweet and caring person, and all the sexual attraction we had for each other was just layers and layers on top of that.
It was intoxicating and infuriating, being around her all that time. I dreaded going into the training room, but at the same time, when I was there I didn’t want to leave.
It was all I could do to keep it from affecting my play on the field, and to keep my teammates from knowing that was why I seemed a little off.
At times when I reclined on the athletic training table in her room as Charlotte worked on me, massaging my legs, I wondered how tough this was for her, whether she was adjusting OK to working with a guy she had slept with.
I mean, all I could think about when we were within 5 feet of each other was bending her over and shoving my cock into her, so I at least hoped she was thinking about the same thing. Charlotte never gave any indication that was on her mind too, though.
If I could figure out another way to be, a way to keep football in the front of my mind while also dating someone, I might have given it a shot, despite knowing that dating someone you see at work was a bad idea. I just couldn’t make that leap.
She was just perfect, though. When I looked at her and managed to get the lusty cobwebs out of my head for a few moments I discovered a woman who was funny, intelligent and witty; all the things I wanted in partner, none of which I ever found with the women I normally dated in the offseason.
It was refreshing, and terrible at the same time, to have someone so close to me multiple times a day, someone I wanted so badly touching me all the time, making me feel so good, helping me recover, and then…I couldn’t reciprocate.
It fucking sucked.