5. Diego
I sankinto a fluffy pink beanbag chair on Rob’s living room floor. The tea party set in front of me didn’t distract me from the flood of notifications on my phone.
“This shit was supposed to die down,” I grumbled at yet another headline speculating about Zoey’s sudden silence.
“You can’t say ‘shit’,” Mila, Rob’s daughter, replied as she brushed out her doll’s hair in front of me. “Only daddy can say shit.”
She dropped the doll and her eyes widened as she turned in horror toward Rob.
“It’s fine,” Rob said with a wave of his hand. Unlike the rest of us, Rob got a free pass from sitting on the floor and playing tea party. “And Diego can say it, too. It’s an adult word.”
“It’s an adult word for adult conversations,” Noa, the Breaker’s center and Rob’s best friend, said as he carried a tiny tea set into the room, balancing the pale pastel cups and saucers on a metal tray. The set rattled as he lowered himself to the floor. The small pastel chairs around the table would never support his nearly 300 pounds of muscle, but he sat crisscross in front of the table with unnatural ease. “Some tea, my lady?”
Mila nodded, eyes alight, as Noa carefully poured “tea” into a cup.
“Mr. Salazar, would you like a cup?” Mila asked.
“I’d love a cup,” I said with a sigh, my eyes glued to my phone. I hadn’t planned to spend the afternoon playing tea with a six-year-old, but the gossip machine had been quiet and rather than die away, my breakup with Zoey had snowballed online. “There’s even a hashtag now. Diego Drama.”
Rob snorted, turning the page of the book in his hand. “They couldn’t come up with something more clever than that?”
“You’re not helping,” I said.
“No phones are allowed at the tea party,” Mila tapped my forearm.
“Diego Sycophant?” Noa said with a grin.
“Dickbag Salazar?” Rob countered.
“You’re not helping.” I pocketed my phone and picked up the green cup in front of me.
“I’ve got it! Diego Star-Fu—” Rob said.
“No name calling at my tea party!” Mila’s tiara wobbled on her head as she stood up from the table, glaring at her father.
He set down the book on his lap and looked at her with a chagrined smile. “Sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to interrupt your tea party.”
Mila glared at him as she sat back down. Noa poured the stuffed bear sitting to her right a cup of tea and inquired about the weather, which seemed to calm the kid down.
“But the whole thing is ridiculous,” Rob continued, voice lower this time. “What exactly were you supposed to gain dating Zoey? Tickets to the Oscars? Who cares?”
“Exactly.” I picked up a tiny ceramic teacup at Mila’s hard stare. “I could get to the Oscars, with or without Zoey.”
“Maybe don’t say that in an interview,” Noa said. “Besides, why are you tracking the hashtag? You know better.”
He had a point. The press had been a faint background noise in my career since college. A perpetual buzzing that never entirely stopped but didn’t bother me, either. Even when the coverage expanded to my dating life, I dated women savvy around the press and upfront about their limits. I tagged along on scheduled pap walks and “candid” dinner dates, accepting all the carefully curated “drama” from those dates.
But Zoey’s interview had invited a whole new type of scrutiny. Not about my gameplay or my romantic life, but about me. Who I was as a person. And most of it was pretty nasty.
Like a car wreck, I couldn’t force myself to look away. My earlier “controversies” had been tame: underage drinking, late night parties, and the occasional make-out session with a starlet. Nothing that lasted longer than a few days.
This just seemed to keep getting bigger. More messy.
“James wants to keep track of what’s going on online so we can come up with a game plan for how to stop the chatter before the season starts.”
Rob barked out a laugh. “Isn’t that what you pay him for? Why the hell are you tracking the hashtag?”
I turned away from Rob, focusing on Noa, the person I’d actually came to for advice. Rob had been an unpleasant addition, thanks to a standing tea party. Which, while annoying, was the reason I wanted to talk to Noa. He had a habit of not disappointing people.
“Can’t you just throw Trent under the bus? He’s the fu…” Rob paused mid-sentence, eyes gliding to his daughter. “He’s the duck up in this situation.”
“You don’t throw your teammates under the bus,” Noa said gravely. Mila mirrored his expression, shaking her head ominously as she stood with the bear’s teacup in her hand, carrying it to her father.
I’d certainly considered that tactic, but, then again, I’d also attended the media training days Rob skipped. Blaming someone else wouldn’t get me out of this mess. Only silence, time, and a highly targeted PR campaign could do that.
“Or maybe try dating someone who doesn’t have a movie deal?” Rob took a small sip from the teacup with a plastered on smile that looked unnatural on the linebacker’s face.
“Yeah, I don’t think dating is going to get me out of this mess. Besides, my track record with girlfriends during the regular season hasn’t been great.” I looked at Noa for support.
He shrugged. “It’s not the worst idea Rob’s come up with.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “But it’s not good. Can you imagine the optics? I break up with Zoey and a week later, there’s some other girl in her seat?”
“The type of woman I’m talking about couldn’t afford Zoey’s box seats,” Rob said.
“Not helpful. Besides, dating someone to prove I’m not a shitty boyfriend only makes me a doubly shitty boyfriend. It’s a dumb idea.”
“Hey, I’m just spit balling,” Rob shrugged, nonplussed by the insult. “You came to my house looking for advice.”
“Advice from Kweame, not you. He’s the only adult on the team.”
Rob closed his book with a frown. “I’m an adult.”
“Fine. An adult that gives good advice when it comes to dealing with the press.”
“The press love me.”
“No, the Norwalk Animal Shelter loves you. Everyone else thinks you’re a di—” I stopped short as Noa’s eyes widened, jetting to Mila. “You’re not very friendly.”
Rob’s ability to answer all post-game questions with a single word and a withering glare whittled down his interviews to a breezy three minutes. Unlike mine, which often dragged past the hour mark. He trained most of the press to be too terrified to ask him many questions. And the new ones, well, they learned quick enough.
“Daddy is friendly,” Mila piped up. “Well, to me, and Noa. Maybe not to you, Diego.”
She frowned sympathetically, leaning over the table to pat my knee. She had a point. Rob barely tolerated my presence, or anyone else’s, for that matter.
“Kweame, I need advice,” I said, diverting the conversation away from Rob and back to my problem. The entire reason I’d driven to Rob’s house.
“I say you lie low, keep your head down. This will pass. Just give it time.”
* * *
“We need to spin this.” James Easton placed two hands on his giant mahogany desk, his mouth set in a frown that miraculously didn’t mar his skin. “We’re getting calls from sponsors. Angry calls.”
James could handle Coach Simmons’ disappointment, but the second the real money got involved, he turned hot. Which is what I paid the man for. He’d taken a projected first-round draft pick and turned it into a hefty payday, though not only through my NFL contract but so many sponsorships that a fan could wear, eat, and drink only Diego Salazar branded products.
“I apologized to Zoey.”
He sighed, his arms straining against his custom-tailored suit as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But did she tell the press? Did she call back that reporter? No. She’s been radio silent.”
I shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Force her to put out a statement? I’m telling you, that won’t end how you want it to.”
He pushed himself away from his desk, trudging over to his rolling bar in the corner of the expansive office. He poured amber liquid out of a crystal decanter, notably not offering me a glass, and downed the drink in a single gulp. “This year is huge for us, Diego. Huge. The Breakers have a legitimate run at the Super Bowl. You’ve got some key contracts set to expire in October and we can leverage them into a much bigger deal this round. These are giant paychecks, and I don’t want you fucking them up with your personal life.”
I suppressed a snort. “Well, some of us need to have a personal life.”
He glared at me. And for all I knew, James had a family with seven kids. Or he lived alone in a high-rise apartment. For the last four years, he’d been on-call seemingly at all hours of the day and night with no personal obligations. I’d never heard so much as another voice on the other end of the line when I’d called him.
“I have a personal life, thank you. I’m just capable of keeping it separate from my professional life.” He stiffened, taking a breath before returning to his desk. He placed his fingertips on a plain brown manila envelope and slid it across the desk. “Now, I’ve taken this to our public relations firm for input and we came up with a list of ways to move the focus off your breakup and back onto the field.”
I leaned forward and took the envelope, ripping open the top and pulling out the three-prong-folder with a glossy front cover. I flipped through the article titles and gossip columns to the end. Scanning through the list of potential solutions, I stopped at the last. “A new girlfriend?”
“Not someone as flashy as Zoey. We don’t want to drum up any love triangle, revenge dating drama. Just someone who can crush the rumors…”
“That I date women for clout?” I rolled my eyes, closing the folder and setting it back on the desk. “Rob had the same suggestion. And I just had to have a tea party with his kid. What’d this firm cost?”
“Plenty, but there are a few good ones in there. If you’re positive Zoey won’t come back with a second interview, I say we just hire an online reputation management firm to drive down the worst of the stuff online. In a couple of weeks, it’ll be gone.”
“How much will that cost?”
James shrugged. “A lot to anyone else.”
I rubbed my eyebrow, wishing he’d had offered me a drink.
“How about this? We see where we are in a week. If you’re still center stage, I hire the firm. If it’s blown over, we don’t talk about this again and you get me to handle your next break up.” He sighed. “But I need you to keep yourself out of trouble this season. I’m taking on a few more clients and now that you’re an NFL veteran, I shouldn’t have to handhold you that much.”
“If you wanted an easy client, you should have taken on another Noa.”
“Noa doesn’t sign sponsorship deals like you, and you know it. And I’m not asking for me. I’m asking because I don’t want you getting traded next season.”
“Do you honestly think the team would allow that?”
James shrugged. “I’m not privy to those conversations. What I do know is that Coach Simmons has successfully rehabbed his image in the eyes of the owner and been given carte blanche to run the team as long as he keeps banking wins. And I know he’s been clear that it’s done as a team, not with single individuals. There are at least three top-tier college players coming into the next draft, and if he wanted to make a point, he would. So, unless you’re dying to test his influence or ready to relocate, I suggest you watch yourself this season.”
I gave James a fake salute and pushed myself out of my seat. “I’m on my best behavior. No parties. No drama.”
“No Trent!” James added.
“Except at practice. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s three in the afternoon. How much trouble could I get in?”
“You tell me.”