Page 17 of Scoring the Player
“I want an invite to the wedding.”
I keep it moving.
“You the man, bro,” Wes, always speaking on top of tens of thousands of people, whether it’s game time or not, hollers at me as I enter the locker room.
“For fuck’s sake.” I pick up the card attached to the gift basket in front of my locker.
“Tell him I get the cologne this time,” Johan demands, towering over the entire team at seven-foot-four.
“Nah, bruh, you got that old tequila last time,” Ussef fires back.
“It’saged,” Johan corrects, “And that’s only ’cause Jamie, the asshole, skipped my turn and stole the Hermés watch.”
Ever since my coming out article was published, this crap started rolling in from every dude who’s read it and wants to bone.
“One to ten. Pick,” I say, plucking a protein bar from Sid’s stash.
“Five,” Johan replies.
Ussef crosses his arms. “Eight.”
I nod to Johan.
“Yeah, boi!” He fists the air.
“Bullshit,” Ussef complains.
“It’s always five, bruh,” Johan replies, returning a middle finger.
“Yo,” Sid starts as he walks in, “you got dudes propositioning you on national TV now?” He stares at my chair. “And more gift baskets?”
“That one’s mine,” Johan says, swiping it up.
“Enough, Shane.” I glare at our PR cameraman.
He lowers the camera. “Sorry.”
I still don’t get why these gift baskets are interesting for theRoyals All-Accessseries, but Shane swears viewers eat this shit up.
“Bruh.” Sid scrunches his nose. “You need?—”
“A shower. Yeah, yeah. I’m going.” I polish off the protein bar.
“What Salem did was dope.” He drops his bag. “I can connect you with my jeweler if y’all skipping dating to go straight to the altar.”
“Drop it,” I grunt.
“Salem’s my homie, but he’s on my shit list,” Nick calls from across the room. “Cam’s dropping hella hints for me to propose on national TV.”
“What’s up?” Sid asks me, ignoring Nick.
“I got messed-up last night.”
“Because of Salem?” Sid’s gaze darts past me. “Ay, let’s give him some space. Johan, you stop recording too.”
“We don’t all got a half a billion followers,” he whines. “Let me have this.”
Three seconds of Sid staring at him, and he’s killing the feed.
