I ran down the corridor away from the stage, just as the music started and the announcers started talking. I hoped none of this would actually make the broadcast.
Or maybe, I thought for a second, people would go nuts and blow up twitter and Facebook, saying I should be allowed in. I knew for a fucking fact that any of those 32 teams would instantly get better if I was there.
So why were they stopping me? “Who wouldn’t want to get with this?” I shouted to no one in particular.
I didn’t pay any attention to the stuff lining the walls as I ran. There wasn’t anyone down this path, which was good, because I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. The big, strong, stoic Drake Rollins having trouble keeping the tears out of his eyes after getting embarrassed with all those cameras and reporters around.
Luckily I had been late in getting to the green room at all, because by the time I had arrived most of the crews were back getting ready for the main event. There was only that one crew left, with that girl…
That girl, she looked a little familiar. I didn’t get a good look at her, because hey, it was the rare time I had something a little more important on my mind than *, but if all this ended up better than it was going I might have to go and look her up some time soon.
Give her an exclusive interview with Drake Rollins in exchange for an exclusive interview of a different kind with whatever her name was. That was sounding more and more like a good plan as I turned it over in my head, provided I could figure out what to do about this draft thing.
I stopped running, finding a nook, still no one around, a place I could collect my thoughts. I didn’t find anything fancy, just a place where the sound from the draft starting wasn’t so loud. A place where I could think.
“All I want to do is play football!” Nah, that wasn’t quite true. All I wanted to do was play football and live the life of a football player.
And I was so good at it. From the minute my parents signed me up I was scoring touchdowns, taking every single team I played on as far as we were allowed to go. My room was full of football trophies, enough that my sisters were getting tired of having them around the house.
But would my mother get rid of any of them? Not on your life, she just kept finding the right ways to move them around the house, so that when we needed a surface for something, one would appear as if by magic.
The weight of how much I had let my family down washed over me for the first time. What had I done? And all for just a little bit of partying? All just to flip the world off and tell them they couldn’t control me?
Was any of this worth it? Here I was, one of the biggest draft prospects in the last decade, and I was practically shut out of pro football because I liked to drink and fuck around with girls who wanted nothing more than to get me naked.
How fair was that?
What was I gonna do with my life now? I mean, yeah, I had a degree from one of the best schools in the world, I could find a job and make ends meet with no problem.
But that wasn’t football. Football was everything I was, everything I had been for as long as I could remember, and now it was all gone. Just like that, like a puff of smoke, gone in an instant.
What would I do with myself now? What would my family say when I went home? Of course by now they would know what was going on. I had my phone on silent, but I knew that if I turned on the screen I’d see a bunch of missed calls and messages from them.
I couldn’t face any of that right now. I didn’t want to talk to them, I didn’t want to see them, I just wanted to hide out here where no one could see my shame while I figured out what to do next.
I had to figure out a way to get into the league somehow. I had to figure out how to get onto a team so they could see what I could do. I felt it in my bounds - once a team put me on the field and threw the ball in my direction none of this off the field nonsense would matter.
That was all I needed to do.
I realized I was mumbling all this to myself in the relative silence of the hall I’d stopped in. I looked up and around as if noticing the place for the first time, and ran my hands over some exposed furniture stacked against the wall while straining to hear the draft as the commissioner announced the first pick.
Fuck.
I was supposed to be that first pick.
And now I was nothing.
I balled my hands up into fists, and I was looking for a clean surface to punch, when a voice stopped me.
“You don’t want to do that.”
I whipped around as I heard her say my name. “Drake?”
The girl from before, near the door. The one who looked familiar. What was she doing here?
I felt the anger boiling up in me, all the rage from what had just happened to me. Before I had been focusing it inwardly on myself, but now suddenly I had a target in front of me.
“Drake Rollins - Lily Pearson, Boston Globe. Anything you’d like to say to us?”
A fucking interview? She wanted to interview me? At a time like this, she wanted a fucking quote? “Did you follow me?!”
She looked a little scared. Good. “I did, yes.”