Chapter Thirty-Five Los Angeles
The downfall of Piper Ashton story was already everywhere. He had avoided his phone and slept through most of Monday with the blinds closed.
When he finally got the courage to open social media, the first thing he saw was a troll post, Ashton gets an F for fucking failure.
The Times ran the headline, Ashton’s golden boy era burns. He slammed his laptop. He knew he had to focus on the L.A.-Seattle game and get Atlanta out of his head. He was trying to get his head back into the thing that always mattered, football.
The L.A.-Seattle game had been flagged all season.
It was the last week of the regular season.
It was going to decide the division. It was going to decide who was getting the last spot in the playoffs.
The networks had flexed the game to the Sunday night slot anticipating record ratings for the second meet up between Piper and Noah.
What the league had not known was that the two teams would both be 12-4, and that Piper Ashton would come into the game off a 0-28 loss to Atlanta that was all anyone was talking about right now. The conversation had switched from, Are Piper and Noah a thing to Is Piper in free fall.
The TV spot dropped in dramatic fashion. Tank had texted Piper a link, a thoughtful gesture, because by the time Piper opened the link of the spot, it had been playing on a loop for two days everywhere.
The spot ran for thirty seconds. A shot of Piper throwing.
A shot of Noah throwing. A shot of the rainstorm that was forecast for Sunday night in Seattle.
And then a slow-motion shot of Piper he didn’t remember, and figured it was AI generated, the ball leaving his hand in hard rain, cut against a matching shot of Noah in the pocket, same framing, same light, same hard rain.
The voiceover said: They’ve been waiting to destroy each other. Can they handle the storm?
***
Practice was not good, which seemed to be the trend in Piper’s flop era at that moment. An era that lasted one game, and fans were incapable of forgiving him for it.
Piper threw, his receivers caught, the tempo was decent, but he was not in it.
The offensive coordinator watched film with Piper in the afternoon. “Ashton, where’s your fucking head?” he said as he slammed his fist on the table.
Piper did not flinch, “I will get the job done, I promise.”
“Did you get treatment today for the rib injury?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Piper said.
“Good.”
The film session ended.
Tank cornered him in the weight room.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re lying, as usual.”
“I know.”
“You got enough to throw Sunday night?”
“I think I do,” Piper said, as his face turned to Tank.
“Okay. You got this, we got this. You know you are not alone out there. I have pressure to fucking catch the ball, just like you have pressure to throw it,” Tank said, as he wiped down the bench with a towel.
“Tank, I’m locked in. I promise.”
“Good. Fuck Seattle.” Tank smacked Piper on the ass and walked out of the weight room.
Piper looked up and managed a smile. “Fuck Seattle.”
***
Piper managed to finish a few more sets before his phone buzzed. He knew who he wanted it to be, and could not be, but it was Vivienne. He picked up on the second ring.
“Are you home?”
“At the gym, but I’ll be home in an hour.”
“I’m coming over,” she replied.
“Okay. What is going on?”
She hung up.
Oh shit Joan, we can’t take another distraction, but I guess when my flop era rains, it pours. Piper thought as he peeled off his sweat-soaked tank top. He had pushed himself to the limit in the weight room in an attempt to resurrect the old version of Piper, the golden boy.
***
Vivienne let herself in through the side gate with the code she knew by heart. She was in a gray Chanel blazer over a black tank, the uniform she wore to her office and also, Piper had learned, the uniform she wore to emergencies.
“Piper, something is coming.”
“Can I get a hello Piper or a hug before the fucking dramatics, Viv?”
“Just sit the fuck down. Something is coming this week, Piper. I am telling you because I need you ready for it.”
“Tell me.”
“A long time friend, a journalist called me, his name is Caleb Ward, you know him?”
“I do, great reporter,” Piper replied.
Vivienne looked at him. “He has been investigating you obsessively for fucking months.”
He paused. “About Noah?”
“Among other things.”
“Jayson?”
“Yes.”
“The money, the contract?” Piper froze.
“Yes, yes, all of it, yes. This man knows all of it, and there is something else.”
“What the fuck else can there be?”
He sat back on the stool across from her.
“He was sent several pictures of you and Noah doing your best private OnlyFans performance at The Beverly Hills Hotel. You both don’t know how curtains fucking work do you?” Vivienne asked as her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
Piper looked down at the floor, trying to process the magnitude of what he was hearing.
“He’s asking for an interview once it breaks.
Apparently the Jayson content is off limits because that asshole owns the publication Caleb works for, but these pictures are going to get out.
He claims he is holding on to them but he doesn’t know who sent them to him.
Piper, someone hired a private investigator to shoot these from a rooftop adjacent to The Beverly Hills Hotel. ”
“These can’t come out before Seattle. I need to win this game, Viv!”
“I don’t know when, and I can’t control when. This is going to blow up. We have to work on the angle. Your fans are not exactly rainbow-wearing friends of fucking Mary are they now?”
Piper took a breath.
“What do I need to do?”
“I need you to play on Sunday. I need you to play Sunday like you have no idea any of this is coming. I need you to not speak to anyone who isn’t me about this between now and Sunday night. I need you to ignore any messages you get from anyone else. Including...”
“Including...”
“…Noah.”
Piper looked at her.
“We aren’t speaking, Viv, Jayson forbade it. You saw the amended contract, didn’t you? Does he know this is coming?”
“I did, and I didn’t fully realize that you and Noah were in a relationship. We are not telling Noah, because he has a game to focus on.”
She took a breath.
“I’m sorry you had to end it because of this asshole. I have tried for years to get you to not re-sign this bullshit contract, but you dug your heels in every fucking time, Piper,” she said, embracing Piper as he stood there frozen.
“I need to focus on Seattle,” Piper said, changing the subject.
“Good, don’t fuck with me, Piper, no contact, don’t make me bring your mother to the game. That would overshadow the entire game, you know that.”
“You are such a bitch, bringing Donna into this.” They both laughed through the fear.
***
The rain storm started early in Seattle.
Piper watched the forecast clip on his phone while he ate breakfast. The meteorologist said a system moving in from the Pacific, sustained rainfall expected through Sunday evening, wind gusts of thirty miles per hour in the stadium.
The meteorologists were saying the storm was going to be nasty, which was fitting for the game of the season.
He finished his Lucky Charms, watched film for two hours, and then went for a run in the hills, which he almost never did, but his head needed to be cleared.
He avoided X or Instagram or TikTok which felt like a drug user going through withdrawal.
At nine p.m. the team bus was going to take him to LAX.
Piper was thinking, almost entirely about Noah Reyes, and he was not allowed to text him that he needed him, that they both were about to be outed on the most public stage after they played the game of the fucking season.