Page 4 of The Americana Playbook

I got the sense there was some sort of jealousy thing Nick couldn’t get over when it came to Coach. I consider both of them on my team. Nick is my manager. He guides me on every business decision I’ve ever made. And even though I know I’ve got enough talent to make good money playing football, Nick has always made memoremoney. But Foller sure as hell taught me that football is never about money.

I grab the bottle of the lavender juice and spritz the space between us. “Go put your fuzzy socks on and go to bed. You’re stressing me out.”

He holds his hands up. “Listen, Fitz. You played well this season.Verywell. You’re maybe the most-liked player in the League. Let’s keep it that way. It will be hard to do if you end up a packaged deal with someone everyone’s pointing fingers at saying he’s a bad guy. I’m trying to keep you America’s Mr. Nice Guy.”

I roll my eyes. Another damn nickname. During my first professional game when I was a third-string quarterback, I fumbled the ball because I tripped over a defensive lineman who failed to tackle me. I was so nervous, I helped the guy up, apologizing, even though the clock was running and I should’ve jogged to the sideline. We won by three touchdowns.

BULLS FIND QB-1 IN AMERICA’S MR. NICE GUY.

To say I was fuckinglostwhen I first got to the League is an understatement. But I went back to my roots. I buckled down and took things seriously. I lived and breathed not just football, but preparation for greatness, exactly the way I was taught. Exactly the way I wascoached. The League was hard-pressed to find a quarterback better prepared than me.

These days, when I make headlines, there’s a stark difference.

CAPTAIN AMERICA LEADS REBELS WITH AN IRON ARM AND NO APOLOGIES.

Nick begins to walk to the door.

“Besides, I’d hate for you to get that tattoo covered up if it doesn’t work out long term with the Rebels.” He tosses a smirk over his shoulder that I meet with a grimace.

To Nick, it’s a joke. But there’s nothing funny for me about the tattoo he’s the only one who knows the meaning behind.

“I’m never drinking with you again.” I yank open the door.

“Just give it your all tomorrow, Fitzy. Heart and soul.”

Nick throwing a cheap shot at my tattoo doesn’t exactly inspire me to play with heart. After all, I got that tattoobecauseof my heart.

I try not to think about it too much, but man, it’s awfully quiet in this hotel room. And do you know what quiet does to me? Makes me fucking lonely.

It’s something I don’t often admit to anyone, not to Nick or my friends—and certainly not my mother. For someone who lives such aloudlife, you’d think I’d relish in the quiet moments. What people don’t know is that inside, I’m screaming.

And it’s not the kind of noise that can be muffled by just anything, or anyone.

My bare feet shuffle against the carpeted floor before I peek back at Nick’s basket. But I don’t go and pick up the mask or the bed perfume or whatever that shit is. I take one step closer and backhand the basket right to the floor, the contents sprawling out across the carpet.

Immediately, I feel better. I should’ve been a linebacker. Coach always joked about that, saying even though I was big and tall, it would be a waste of a good arm if I played anything other than quarterback. And I bought into that—into everything. There was conditioning and footwork before class, practice after school, weight training and film, and more coaching sessions. And that was only in high school. But as many things landed on my plate as a kid when it came to football, some things were taken away—like my best friend, Parker, who had no idea I was madly in love with her.

I didn’t lose Parker all at once, at least, not at first.

The truth is, I lost bits and pieces of her over time. I was too young to remember my Dad dying after he flipped his car over. But my mother always used to say was how thankful she was that it happened quickly. That’s because there’s nothing worse than losing someone you love slowly. You lose them looking for you, the tap of their fingers against your bedroom window late at night. You lose the strength of their smile, the magnitude of their laughter that was the soundtrack of your childhood. It’s one thing after another.

The thing is, unlike my dad—or Parker’s grandmother, whose death she struggled to cope with—some of Parker remained—the wild bits. She was, always a bit rebellious. But Parker in the after was more extreme, more reckless. And for that reason, Coach deemed her not just a distraction but a threat to my future because of her behavior at school, at least on the days she decided to show up. The same school we broke into the last night I saw her.

“There’s a fence for a reason,” I tell Parker. “To keep riffraff like us out.”

Parker grabs the links and lets out a laugh that’s too loud, considering we’re sneaking onto campus at night. “Riffraff? I thought we were rebels.”

“Same thing,” I offer.

“Not even close, Fitzy. But I guess with the clubhouse gone, we can rebrand.”

It was technically a treehouse Honey had built when Parker and her sister moved in full time after her father’s political career really kicked off when we were about to start Kindergarten. One day, when my ball went over the fence into the yard next door and was returned to me quickly, everything changed.

We played catch without talking that day. The next afternoon, Parker lifted a lose plank of the fence and asked me if I wanted to play on the same side. I crawled under, becoming a dirty mess, and soon enough was a regular in the Montgomery compound and a founding member of the Rebels Only club, established between the summers of first and second grade. It started off as a joke to keep Parker’s sister Madeline out of the treehouse. “Rebels only,” we’d call down to her as she tried to wrangle us inside. “No goody-two shoes allowed.”

I did whatever Parker did, which meant defying bedtime or coming in for dinner, digging holes where we were told not to—all the best kinds of childhood trouble that centered around our clubhouse that was disassembled almost a year ago after Parker’s parents inherited the home when Honey died and her mother deemed it an eyesore.

Everything changed a year ago today.

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