Play Maker(4)

“There’s one next Thursday at 3:00pm.” I could probably do our laundry first thing in the morning and be home in time to have lunch with Mikey and then go to the movies. My days off were always our special day and I tried to get all my other things done early so I had time to spend with him.

“Ok.” His attention was focused on the pot boiling on the stove.

“Do you think they’re done?” I asked him.

“They look squishy,” he observed.

“They do,” I agreed. “Let’s get them out of the water and into the cheese!”

He giggled. “Into the cheese!”

I drained the noodles and emptied a packet of cheese into the bowl. Mikey stirred it for me and I divided our dinner into two bowls. Following my brother, I went into the living room with him and we took a seat on the couch. I handed him the remote.

“Tell me what’s happening,” I said, even though I had seen this episode half a dozen times. But Mikey’s recaps were always the best.

I leaned back in the couch as he launched into his description of the episode. While he told me all about Trenzalore and the logistics of Time Lord regeneration, I ate my cheesy noodles and felt completely and utterly at peace.





2





James





“You made the cover again!” Rick slapped the tabloid down on the bench in front of my locker. The photo was blurry, but had a baseball capped guy, brim down, walking out of a strip club with an extremely attractive, extremely young, scantily clad woman.

“Christ.” I grabbed the magazine, looking at the cover and then back at my teammate. “At least tell me she was eighteen,” I groaned, flipping through the tabloid. I skimmed the article, which had a few more choice photos, including one of the young woman wrapped around the guy like an octopus. “The Play Maker balances another,” the headline read. “Star footballer seen out on the town with a new paramour only one night after stepping out with model, Mariska Gratton. His lust will not be tamed!”

“Of course she was eighteen,” Rick snatched the magazine back. “What kind of bloke do you think I am?”

I bit my tongue on that. Rick was our keeper, number #25. He was also a divorced father of three who enjoyed the company of many, many ladies while the team was out on the road. A married father of three, who from certain angles bore an awfully close resemblance to #65. Me.

Rick rolled up the tabloid and shoved it in his back pocket, sauntering over to his locker to get ready for practice.

At least he was having a good time in the States. And it was pretty impressive considering we had only arrived yesterday. Most of us had checked into the hotel and crashed. Not Rick. His lust for partying would not be detained by jet lag. Even though I was the one they called the Play Maker, he was the one who really deserved the moniker. Who really worked for it.

My nickname had less to do with my skills on the field and more to do with my antics off. Antics that I could only take partial credit for. The night out with Mariska before we left for Los Angeles, yeah, that had been me. As had the week before with an aspiring actress named Cynthia…something. And the week before with that shopgirl from Harrods. But picking up women at strip clubs? Naw, that wasn’t my style at all. But that was Rick’s, through and through.

Of course, the tabloids couldn’t tell the difference between us. Guess all football players look the same to them. Even to the reporters that had followed us overseas. I tried not to take offense at the fact that I was taller and much more fit than my teammate, who was nearly ten years older then I was. But I couldn’t deny that in those photographs, taken from a distance, at night and with his face obscured, the mistake could be made.

And it was a mistake that Rick had been taking advantage of since I started on the team, and one I never really had a problem with. We were teammates, after all. Brothers, really. And brothers helped each other out. So he got to keep his affairs out of the papers – and away from his family – and I got a reputation that kept me knee deep in ladies’ knickers. The more the tabloids reported on me sleeping around, the more women became interested in joining the club. I had never had to work very hard to get a woman into bed, but now my reputation did most of the remaining work for me. Entering a bar, I could hear the whispers spread through the crowd, followed by a wave of interested female faces turned my way. I never was at a loss for female companionship. Women love a scoundrel, and I loved being one.

Though lately, I’d noticed a change in the kind of women that were interested in me. And that was also due to the tabloids. While my manwhore narrative sold papers, the articles started planting hints that settling down wasn’t such a bad idea either. The whole “wild man tamed” storyline that I had absolutely no interest in. Maybe Rick’s strip club escapades would put a damper on that idea. I stripped down and put on my uniform. Not that I had time to think about what gossip magazines wrote about me. It came with the territory, but I just had to accept it, I didn’t have to embrace it. The exhibition was coming up and I had a lot of other things to worry about. And speaking of other things to worry about.

“Oi.” Ethan, my manager and best mate, came barreling into the locker room, waving the exact same tabloid Rick had just shoved into my face.

“I already saw it,” I told him, pulling my uniform over my head.