Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
TYLER
“Hey, look who finally decided to show up.”
My teammate and friend, Renegades wide receiver Drew Ellicott, smirks at me as I slide into the chair across from him at a big table in the corner of the hotel restaurant. “Fuck off. We said breakfast at ten. It’s ten twenty. I’m not that late.”
He scans me up and down and snorts out a laugh. “Why do you look like a walking advertisement for the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce right now?”
I glance down at the black New Orleans sweats I’m wearing, along with a gray T-shirt that says Beign-Yay in black cursive with a silk-screened image of Café Du Monde below the words, and shrug.
“I didn’t exactly have…access to my clothes this morning aside from the champagne-drenched Super Bowl Champion shirt and, gross.
So, I had to do a little early morning shopping at the hotel gift shop.
It was this or a T-shirt with a cartoon crayfish on it that said Let’s Get Cray.
” I look back down at my T-shirt and grin. “I think I chose well.”
Drew studies me, calculating look in his eyes, and I resign myself to the forthcoming interrogation. “Why didn’t you have access to your clothes? Did you lose your hotel key or something? You know the front desk can just make you a new one.”
I roll my eyes. “No, can you please explain to me how hotels work? I only have a genius-level IQ, a photographic memory, and spend five months of the year on the road.”
“I always forget about the genius IQ.” My other good friend on the team, offensive lineman Cam Lowry, slides into an empty seat at the table and flashes me a shit-eating grin. “That doesn’t seem like something you should have.”
“Seriously, is this dunk on Tyler morning? I won us a Super Bowl yesterday, or have you forgotten already? Where’s the respect?”
Drew scoffs. “I’m pretty sure you can’t throw the ball and catch it. Want to try that again?”
I cross my arms over my chest and scowl, mainly because they expect me to.
I fucking love these guys. I’m lucky enough to have grown up with a huge family of my own, cousins who are my best friends, and friends who are as close to me as family, like Sophie.
But playing on the same team as Cam and Drew, the way they took me under their wing during my rookie season four years ago, has bonded us in a permanent, almost inexplicable way.
Growing up with four younger sisters, I didn’t really know what it was like to have brothers, but now I do because I have these guys.
“Fine, we won ourselves a Super Bowl. Where are Maddy, Ry, and Ethan?” I ask Cam.
His grin widens at the mention of his kids and his girlfriend Maddy, who also happens to be one of my and Sophie’s oldest and closest friends.
They got together earlier this season and made it official the day of the AFC Championship a couple weeks ago.
They’re perfect for each other, and after losing his wife when his son Ethan was a newborn baby, no one deserves happiness more than Cam does.
But watching the way he lights up talking about Maddy makes waking up with strange women in my bed feel even bleaker.
“They’ll be here in a few. They wanted to check out the gift shop.” He looks me up and down the same way Drew did a few minutes ago. “Looks like you already did that. What’s with the tourist attire?”
Drew barks out a laugh, leaning back in his chair. “I asked him the same question, but you showed up before he could answer.” He pins me with a look. “Now you can tell us both.”
I open my mouth, but before I can say anything, a server approaches with menus and a coffee pot. She pours us all coffee, and I dump milk and sugar into mine before taking a big sip. “There were girls in my bed,” I mumble, fortified enough from the caffeine hit to tell the truth.
“Like, girls, plural?” Cam asks, taking a sip of his own coffee.
“Unfortunately,” I grumble.
“I need more information.” Drew leans forward, elbows on the table and chin propped in his hand.
I sigh. “I don’t know how it happened. One minute we were at the club, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in my room at five this morning, a girl sleeping in my bed and another on the floor.”
Drew snickers. “You had a threesome? I’m shocked you could even get it up after all the alcohol you drank last night.”
I point to him. “You can fuck all the way off. I can always get it up. But I didn’t have a threesome. They were still dressed. So was I. I literally had a belt on.”
“Around your wrists?” Cam asks with a smirk.
I pin him with a glare. “No, asshole, not around my wrists. Around my damn waist where it belongs. Nothing happened, but I don’t know how the fuck they got there, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out, so I escaped and spent the rest of the night in Sophie’s room.
Then I didn’t want to go back to my room before breakfast in case they were still there, so I bought clothes at the gift shop and showered at Soph’s.
My boxers have an outline of the state of Louisiana right over my dick. ”
Cam laughs. Hard. “We’ll get back to the boxers later. You’re hiding from your one-night stand?”
“I doubt it can be considered a one-night stand if no one even got undressed. Fuck,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand down my face, the weight of last night suddenly feeling ridiculously heavy for some reason. “Am I going to end up as the subject of one of those Reddit Am I the Asshole threads?”
Now it’s Drew’s turn to laugh, and honestly, why am I even friends with these guys? “I’m pretty sure that’s not how Am I the Asshole? works. You have to be the one to start the thread. Tell your story and ask the people whether you’re the asshole.”
I consider that, looking between Cam and Drew. “I don’t need the internet when I have you guys. So, am I the asshole? I think maybe I am,” I say, without waiting for them to answer. “I don’t want to be this person.”
“What person, exactly?” Drew asks. When I look up, he’s studying me intently.
I blow out a breath, draining my coffee mug and giving the server a grateful smile when she appears to refill it.
I definitely need all the caffeine I can drink today.
“The athlete who wakes up with anonymous women in his bed. I didn’t think I was that person, but, well, my dick is dressed as Louisiana because I didn’t want to go back to my room.
I think I might be, like, ready for something serious.
Something real. Like you and Maddy have,” I say to Cam.
“But that’s hard when you’re, you know. Us.
” I wave a hand between the three of us.
“How do you know if someone wants you for you, or if they want athlete you?”
Drew hooks his arm over the back of his chair and gives me a lazy grin. “Don’t ask me. Serious, real, and I barely even have a passing acquaintance. Everyone wants athlete me, and that’s exactly the way I like it.”
I forgot for a minute who I was talking to. Drew probably had more than two anonymous women in his bed last night. He’s an unrepentant playboy and doesn’t seem the least bit interested in changing that. So, I focus my attention on Cam. “What about you? You got the girl and fell in love and shit.”
Cam shrugs. “The first night I met Maddy, she had no clue who I was.” Then a slow smile spreads over his face. “Worked out pretty well for me.”
I lean back, thinking over Cam’s words, the idea of meeting someone who doesn’t know I’m Tyler Hansley, current Pittsburgh Renegades quarterback and son of a former Renegades quarterback, becoming wildly appealing.
No more women hanging around just hoping to score with the quarterback.
No more having to feign interest when a woman flirts with me by telling me how many yards I threw for in the last game, as if my own stats aren’t already burned into my brain.
And definitely no more waking up in bed with women I don’t know and don’t remember bringing home. “How do I do what you did?”
“Luck?” Cam says with a shrug.
I blow a raspberry. “I think I’m going for something a little more concrete than luck. Come on guys, my love life depends on it.”
Cam laughs again. Asshole. “The love life you just decided you needed thirty seconds ago?”
I grin at him. “I’m a quarterback. Split-second decisions are my life. I don’t do prevarication. I decide what I want and then I go get it.”
“Just use fancy words like prevarication. You’ll have women falling at your feet in no time at all.”
I smirk at Drew. “Like I said, genius IQ. So where do I find these women who don’t know who I am and also are wowed by fancy words?”
Drew seems to give this some thought. “The other day, Jacobs told me about a dating app he’s on,” he says, referring to one of our defensive tackles.
“VibeCheck or something like that. It’s the newest hot thing.
Apparently, it’s all messages and shit until you decide to meet in person.
No pictures. You could do it like that.”
I consider that. “That’s kind of…brilliant actually.” I reach into my pocket and grab my phone, unlocking the screen. “VibeCheck, you said?”
Drew laughs. “Wait, you’re seriously doing this now?”
“Why not?” I ask. “Now is the best time because it’s now.”
“You don’t want to maybe…think about it a little more?”
Hitting the icon to download the app, I look up at Cam. “Now that doesn’t seem like something I would do, does it? Like I said, no prevarication,” I repeat, even though it’s not exactly the truth. Far from it, actually.
The truth is that I do prevaricate. A lot. But mostly just about football, and no one knows about that side of me. They know fun Tyler. Life of the party Tyler. Unbothered quarterback Tyler. Up for anything Tyler who is always smiling and lets life mostly roll off his shoulders.
That’s the way I like it.