I silence it without answering.
“They’re doing the shuttle run next,” I tell Cummings.
“What’s your time on that?”
“4.2.”
He hisses through his teeth. “Not great.”
“I know. It’s my worst test.”
“Do you wanna go run it again? See if you can shave your time down?”
My phone buzzes again. Same eyes. Same hair.
I give it the same answer. Silence.
“No. I’m taking today off, remember?”
“Then you should stop watching this. You’re torturing yourself.”
“I need to know what I’m up against,” I reply stubbornly.
“Your call, but you know what I think you should be doing.”
My phone dings with a new text message.
“And it’s her,” he adds, pointing to my phone. “Tish. You need to hit it and quit it before you get on the plane tomorrow. Get your head right, ‘cause you’re a mess right now.”
I flip my phone over, hiding her face. “I’m not a mess.”
“You’re jittery. You’re doing that thing you do when you can’t control shit. Same kind of crazy you got when you were waiting for the bowl games to start.”
I fall back into the couch with a sigh, running my left hand over my face. “Sex isn’t going to help that,” I lie.
“It couldn’t hurt.”
If only he knew how wrong he is.
It’s not that I don’t want to have sex. He has no fucking idea how bad I want to. Anything to get my head out of the space it’s in right now, but it won’t last. It won’t fix me. It’d be like a drug, a quick hit that will give me oblivion for an hour or so, but the world will be waiting for me on the other side. The anxiety will still be there, no matter what I do.
All I can do is wait and wonder, which is the thing that’s killing me. Being out of control isn’t my style. It makes me itchy. It makes me angry. Worst of all, it makes me stupid.
“Did you go to the bank today?” Cummings asks, changing the subject.
“Nah, not yet.”
“They’re closed by now. You still haven’t packed yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Dude.”
“I know,” I growl, proving him right. I’m wound too tight. I take a deep breath, slowing myself down. “I know,” I repeat more gently.
“How do you even cash a check that big?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I haven’t done it yet. I’m scared to walk in there and have them stare at me like I’m an idiot. Like I showed up with one of those big cardboard checks they hand out at golf tournaments or some shit. I’ve never had that kind of money before. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars is more money than a lot of people have had.” He laughs to himself in amazement. “And you didn’t even have to do shit for it.”
“Not yet, no.”
That’s the other reason I haven’t cashed the check from the Ashford Agency; I haven’t earned it yet. They gave it to me as an advance on future endorsement deals. Handed it to me like it was nothing on the day I signed with them, when I came into the office in the nicest clothes I own and felt like a peasant stepping inside the castle gates. Mr. Ashford was the one who greeted me. He was there in the lobby waiting for me, smiling. He’s always smiling. Old, white, rich, and sharp as a shark. He was intimidating the second he reached for my hand, but I guess that’s what I want; a guy who can walk into a room full of other old, white, rich sharks and make them squirm.
He sat me down with a lawyer and a bunch of other people I didn’t catch the names or titles of, and I felt like a * because all I could think was that I wished my mom was there. I felt alone and nervous signing my life away to these people in pleated everything in that stark white office. My skin had never felt darker. I’d never been more aware of the fact that I was only half white, like there was a divide between us that I could never cross, no matter how much money I made. Even if I made more than them, they’d still be richer somehow.
Even with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my pocket and the chance to draft for over a million dollars on the horizon, I still feel like the poor kid from Oahu with second hand clothes and nothing but an old football to play with.
“Fuck it,” I growl, reaching for my phone.
I bring up the text from Tish, but I don’t bother reading it. I tell her I’m coming over. She won’t argue. She never does, not with me.