Chapter 15
Blaise
I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.
Don’t need anyone selling my shit to the sports gossip columns, not before I figure out how I’m handling this disaster without cluing Tilly in on what I’m doing until it’s too late for her to skip town with my mini-me and our money.
The internet saved my ass with the burping, and diaper changes are hit-and-miss, but I’m really getting the hang of this.
And even the worst of the diapers? Yeah, they’re a chance to take him in the shower with me, which is challenging but feels better to me than cleaning him in the sink tub like a dirty dish.
I don’t know what it is, but it’s right.
I’ve never felt so good about who I am as a person and where I fit into the world at a cellular level as I do just holding my son.
My son, despite Andy’s renewed insistence I get a paternity test, now that I’m not so overwhelmed anymore.
According to him, it doesn’t matter if my name went on the birth certificate that I smuggled away the moment it arrived in the mail, so Tilly wouldn’t see that I’m listed or that his full name is Donovan Orin Washington Sinclair.
Fine, I lied about having already done the paperwork when Tilly first woke up, so when I did do it, I included her dad’s name. But sure, I’ll get a blood test.
I’ve actually got a pretty good handle on the baby stuff. A better handle than I thought I’d have two weeks into fatherhood. What I’m completely messed up about is Tilly.
I know she’s an awful person, an absolute snake, and she’ll ruin my life all over again the second I give her a chance, but I keep forgetting.
I see her looking so goddamn happy while she’s nursing Donovan or so sad when she’s lost in her thoughts.
Or, shit, whenever she tries to move around the apartment, attempting to cook food or change Donovan or just clean herself up, aching and I swear feverish, sometimes holding onto her bonnet like it’s the only thing keeping her together and if I ever see whatever rat’s nest she probably has for hair underneath, she’ll expire.
All that stuff, just existing with her and tag-teaming Donovan, and I forget that I hate her.
Sometimes, I even forget that we’re not a couple, that she’s not a woman I fell in love with and married and had a kid with, that we’re not just in a rough spot right now because new babies are so exhausting it’s hard to remember that we’re more than Mom and Dad, we just gotta find our new happily ever after.
That the reason I’m sleeping on the sofa is she’s hurting on every level and needs space to herself as much as she needs me to take care of her.
She needs me.
But she’s a snake.
And today, I need to be a quarterback.
She’s sleeping fitfully, Donovan fussing next to her, when it’s time for me to start heading over to the stadium for the first day of mini-camp.
It’s a big day, the very first time the coaches really get to work on what the roster’s going to be.
Some of us are definites, but honestly? Even I’m questionable.
If I don’t look my best and show that I’m here to work, one of the greatest quarterbacks of the last decade is right there warming the spot for me on the bench.
The stadium’s a half-hour stroll, but I can make it in fifteen minutes if I run. The problem is Donovan isn’t going to be settled in fifteen minutes. Whatever he needs right now, it’s a half hour, minimum. And I swear Tilly’s running a fever.
She says she’s fine, that this is just part of the recovery from a C-section and mood swings are normal, too. I get that, but she’s not fine. The doctor told me to take care of them, and neither of them will get taken care of if I leave Donovan here.
The solution is obvious enough.
I put together a diaper bag.
I need to stretch on the walk over — Tilly’s shitty sofa is a bitch on my spine — which means I’m not in stroller territory.
I’m going to have to strap Donovan to my body.
But that will make it easier to feed him.
As long as there isn’t a diaper disaster, at least not until we get to the stadium, we’re good.
I got this. We don’t have a Take Your Kid to Work Day, so that kind of makes every day Take Your Kid to Work Day, right?
Sports reporters are gravitating around the team entrance that faces the training complex across the street, so I jog around to the stadium staff entrance on the opposite side.
No one would expect the head quarterback to walk in on the wrong side, strapped with a diaper bag and a baby. This is going to work.
I don’t expect the employee entrance to be blocked by a locked, unmanned gate, though, and the only reason I’m even able to get inside is a caterer who sneaks into the vestibule there for a smoke.
“Uhh, Mr. Sinclair?” His accent is so thick it makes me unsure if he’s questioning why I’m here or if I even exist.
“Can you let me in?” I ask. “My hands are full.”
I’ve got Donovan strapped down to me in a fancy sling I found in the stack of baby supplies Tilly has.
The sling is high-end — I looked it up online — and in a modern shape that makes it easier and way less intimidating than the scarf and set of metal rings that was apparently also a sling.
Plus, it’s set up so, once Donovan is tucked in, his great big head doesn’t bobble around on his tiny little neck and he can smush his cheek against my chest. He’s hugged so cleanly against me that I have full range of motion in my shoulders.
Obviously, no one’s going to be hiking a ball to me today, but I see no reason I can’t get a full day of passes in.
So, no, my hands are not full, but after a beat, the caterer nods and says, “I find security.”
It takes another five minutes to get someone who can actually open the gate.
By then, half a dozen staff is gawking and cooing at me — well, more so at Donovan — and I have to do some autographing to thank them for their assistance and agreement that Donovan is the handsomest little man they’ve ever seen.
I hoof it through the stadium, figuring that the jog will get my heart rate up enough that I can claim I wasn’t late, I was just doing cardio in another part of the stadium.
And I would have only been a couple minutes late except I got a little turned around.
This makes sense, since I’ve never been in this part of the stadium before.
It’s weird that we’re even at the stadium today instead of the training complex, but they’re doing some publicity stuff.
There are kids here from the local college.
Then I get hit with the stench of full diaper, so I also have to take a detour into one of the public restrooms, in which I find the baby changing station woefully ill-equipped and plan to bitch loudly about it.
Us dads deserve better than this. It’s been cleaned since the event they had here a couple days ago, and I swear I still smell the reek of piss and stale beer.
Poor little Donovan shouldn’t be smelling that.
It’s already bad enough he has to deal with diapers.
By the time we’ve done a diaper change as well as swapped out his outfit for something clean and covered with itty bitty footballs to match the theme of the day and I’ve done my best to tame the crazy tuft of jet black hair on his head, I’m twenty-five minutes late and players are starting to filter out onto the field with coaches and personal trainers.
I have no idea where I am in the stadium in relation to the locker room, at least not via an elevator or anything official, but it’s not like there’s anything stopping me from hopping down from the stands onto the sidelines.
When I reach the wall, Dominic Morales sees me and shakes his head in paternal disappointment before laughing and waving me to join him.
Then he cocks his head in confusion.
Then his eyes go wide.
Then he shouts as he, his personal trainer, and several others start running toward me.
That kind of sounds like there’s something terrible right behind me and they’re running over to protect me since I am the most valuable player, it says so right on the trophy, so I hop down quickly, landing cleanly albeit wobbily on the turf below.
The guys all stop running, and I look back up to see what it was I was running away from. I don’t see anything, though.
“What’s up?” I ask as everyone forms a circle around me.
“What . . . are you . . . doing?” Rydell Thompson asks between gusty breaths.
He’s not the biggest dude on the team, but he’s a lineman, and they’re just not the best runners in general.
I’ve spent years trying to get Gabe to motor, just in case I need to pass the ball off to him, but I guess at that point, it’s not about speed so much as it is the ability to keep moving forward when there’s a pile of guys hanging off you.
I look back at the wall I just jumped off. It’s a six-foot drop. I wince; stuff like that is what gets me in trouble. “Yeah, I guess I should have taken a better look before jumping down. I just got lost trying to get to the locker room and figured I could save some time.”
I feel like I’ve said enough to make it clear it wasn’t a stunt or anything, but they exchange looks that tell me I’m wrong.
“Oh, it’s not like I came in through our gate and got lost. I came in through the main gate to avoid the sports reporters so they wouldn’t gang up on Donovan. Did you guys see Donovan?” I grab his itty tiny hand and wave it at them in case they didn’t realize I have a baby in this sling.
“Did we . . . see . . . Donovan?” Morales asks slowly. Not winded, though.
There are the rare few quarterbacks who have made it to forty, but Morales won’t be one of them. Despite his stellar early career, he was dropped to second string at 32 and then sent to the Jugs as part of the expansion package.