Page 9 of Fair Catch
She flicked me off, but before she could retort, a petite girl with wide doe eyes and crazy curly hair cleared her throat next to us.
“Um, sorry to interrupt,” she squeaked, adjusting her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “My name is Giana Jones. I’m the Public Relations Intern for the team.” She seemed to grow a few inches with that statement, her shoulders pulling back, and I couldn’t help but arch a brow.
Giana Jones.
She already had the name for a field side reporter.
“A few of the media outlets are requesting interviews with you,” she said.
Her mousy brown eyes were on me, and Riley smirked, clapping me on the shoulder. “Have fun with that, champ.”
“Oh, they, uh…” Giana said, offering a soft smile. “They actually would like to interview both of you.”
I returned Riley’s cocky smirk, though hers was gone now, slipping off her face like a sweaty palm on a wet football.
I leaned into her, voice low in her ear. “Enjoy talking about how tough it is being a girl for an hour.”
Her nose flared, but she ignored me, storming off toward the edge of the field where the media was gathered and already interviewing our other teammates.
Giana’s eyes grew wide, and she blinked at me before jogging off after Riley as I followed behind.
“Remember your media training,” Giana said to both of us. “We’ll have more practice time being on camera once camp is over, but for now, focus on being pleasant and succinct.”
She aimed that advice more at Riley, who plastered on her best fake smile before Giana led her to a tall white woman with Texas-big hair and a microphone at the ready.
I wanted to watch her, wanted to admire the way she so effortlessly shelled out memorable answers to every question she was asked while artfully dodging any that bordered on the line of sexist. I’d witnessed it time and again in high school, but I knew it would be even more impressive now that she had national eyes on her.
But as soon as she was set up and going, Giana waved for me to follow her and led me to my own reporter.
I wished I was as calm and collected as Riley, or as much of a showboat as Kyle — who was eating up every minute of the spotlight next to me. But this was a nightmare for me, questions fired at me too quickly, every word threading together to become a complex problem I couldn’t solve.
Calling on our training as much as I could, I found myself repeating the same sentiments over and over with every reporter.
We’re all stoked to be out here for our first day of camp. There’s an energy buzzing through all of us.
I’m just excited to show my talent and get a shot at my spot on the field.
We’ve got a lot of talented guys, it’ll be a tough camp, but a good season no matter what happens.
We’re ready to prove we deserve that national title.
No, I don’t have a comment on Riley Novo.
That last one was the most drilled on point from our media training, where the staff directed us to avoid any questions about having a girl on the team unless they were talking about her as a kicker — not a female.
Most of the reporters left looking more disappointed than satisfied after my interviews, but I didn’t care — I wasn’t here to give them a good story.
I was here to play.
And once I ran a few kick returns down the field for a touchdown, then they’d have their story.
Once Giana released me from media hell, I wiped my face with my towel, jogging off toward the cafeteria to use what little time I had left to scarf something down before we had to meet with the Special Teams Coach. But before I could even hit the locker room, Coach Sanders called out my name from where he was ducking into his office.
“Collins,” he said, not looking up from his iPad where he appeared to be going over play routes.
I stopped dead in my tracks, turning like a soldier reporting for duty. “Coach.”
“A word.”
That was all he said before disappearing inside his office and leaving the door open for me to follow.
Shit.
Riley
There was very rarely an occasion when getting called into the coach’s office was a good thing — especially provided it was day one of camp and there certainly hadn’t been enough time for him to have any sort of good news.
My stomach flipped with the anxiety of what it could be that he wanted, and that stress bloomed into a full field of freaked-out flowers when Zeke exited the office just as I was about to knock on the door.
His dark eyes locked on mine, and other than his mouth slightly tugging to the side and a shallow furrow of his brows, he gave nothing away, no indicator of what I was walking into. I couldn’t tell if he was giving me a subtle sign not to be worried, or a very obvious sign that I should be worried.
