Chapter 6
PASS brEAKUP: DEFENDER KNOCKS DOWN A PASS.
Aweek after life as I planned it imploded, the girls and I exchanged hugs and kisses at the OKC airport. I boarded my flight for LA to catch a connection to Beijing while Christin and Emery headed back to the east coast and Amy returned to teaching summer school virtually.
Tilting my head back against the headrest, I give myself some grace and let myself grieve the boy I thought I knew. One who was my first everything—my first dance, my first kiss, my first love.
There’s a girl inside me who knows I’ll always grieve the way Bryce has tainted my memories.
But what keeps me on the knife’s edge of fury and sadness is that this isn’t the Bryce Parry I remember.
We grew up in a town so small that the only stoplight rarely worked.
It was the place where Friday night football rivaled church as a social event.
Bryce and I had little—hand-me-downs parlayed with dust-covered dreams—but somehow, he convinced me we could make something of it.
Of us.
We became inseparable—best friends first, then something more in high school.
Even when two kids from nowhere could have experienced the world, I believed we had already made it.
But it’s funny how two people who grow up in the same life together can diverge on the road of life they’re supposed to travel together.
I didn’t spend the time before I left for China crying over the man who spewed such filth. I mourned the boy who carried my books, walked me home, and made me believe that love could grow out of the cracks of the small-town life we left behind.
But to Bryce? I was just another play in a game I had no rule book to follow other than the knowledge that he would always have his bro code—a sacrosanct bond between teammates.
I witnessed it firsthand when his teammates were hurt or sick, during births, deaths, and marriages.
In fact, I was looking forward to being wrapped in its warm embrace.
Until it turned on me the night I overheard his putrid words.
However, I was shocked to find out that someone viciously exposed Bryce’s precious bro code as a toxic wasteland after I returned from China.
While I photographed Danuba, where watchtowers still stand as pillars of strength as far back as 300 years old, when no one dreamt of things like social media, the world was casting aspersions on the Oklahoma Lightning.
Upon booting my phone the moment my plane touched down at LAX, my girls’ group chat exploded:
Amy:
Shit has hit the fan.
Emery:
The entire conversation you overheard is on social media—duck and hide.
Christin:
Minus the part where Bryce said such lies about your looks, of course.
Me:
Just touched down. What do you mean?
Each sent me to a different website to realize my humiliation had been exposed to the entire world, not by Bryce, but by someone else—a woman I barely knew—who took mortal offense on my behalf.
The rookie’s girlfriend—who he had been dating since his freshman year at USC—visited shortly after my ex-fiancé demonstrated he wasn’t just a pro quarterback but an Olympic-level douchebag.
The rookie had his phone up as he surreptitiously recorded the men he used to watch on any given Sunday.
His intent wasn’t malicious. He intended to show it off to his buddies—a twisted humble brag that showed him he was part of the team’s inner circle, that they felt comfortable talking shit around him.
It screwed them hugely.
Everything he said to his teammates was on video, and his influencer girlfriend exposed him, them, with a fury that has had far-reaching effects.
Choosing not to revisit my particular humiliation by watching the duet video Savannah created, mainly because I didn’t want to read the comments likely agreeing with Bryce, I clicked the link to the article Amy sent me from StellaNova—the world’s most prestigious social media outlet.
Career-Ending Video Could Take Down Entire Roster
StellaNova learned, as did most of the working internet, that Oklahoma Lightning quarterback Bryce Parry hosted a party at his home this past week, which was intended to celebrate his now disintegrated engagement to celebrated travel photojournalist, Maya Cox.
The video, uploaded by Oklahoma Lightning rookie, Whit Reynolds, second string quarterback’s longtime girlfriend and social media influencer Savannah Leigh, witnessed Parry bragging about hooking up with multiple women in front of past and present teammates as well as providing instructions to the rookie on how to successfully manage the same.
The disgrace was compounded when key players from the Lightning were overheard egging him on. They chime in, admitting they’ve done the exact same thing. One even joked, “Bro, I just use her for practice before I go home to my wife. Got to get my moves straight.”
According to Leigh, she was waiting for Reynold’s to come out of the shower in her now ex-boyfriend’s bedroom after she had uploaded the video to her own social media account—which has well over two-million followers.
Raw and unedited, this video clearly shows how Parry “brags about hooking up with other women for the duration of his relationship with Cox. I feel for her; I truly do.”
We do as well.
It has been confirmed by a third-party source, Cox ended the engagement.
Fans and critics alike are clawing into Parry and the Lightning with hashtags like #TeamCheaters, #PlaybookLies, #FumbledThenFound, #EngagementGate, and our favorite, #SundayNightLoss.
Even worse for Parry are sponsors whispering about his facilitating a “toxic locker room culture,” which may cost him upward of forty million this year alone.
As one sponsor told StellaNova bluntly, “He may have moves, but this could be a career-ending fumble.”
While we’ve reached out to Cox for comment, she is unreachable due to being on assignment.
Thousands of messages of support are flooding our page for her, so she should know that people are supporting her, Leigh, and all the wronged women, even though she has locked down all of her personal socials.
Not the storm the—do we deign to call them men?—team members from the Oklahoma Lightning generated.
Since I’m aware my mentor—famed photographer Holly Freeman—knows the owner of StellaNova through some sort of family connection as I’ve seen them photographed together, I text her and ask her to pass along my appreciation but that I’m choosing not to comment.
Me:
Thanks but no thanks.
Holly:
You’re a beautiful woman, Maya—inside and out. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Me:
That’s kind of you to say.
Holly:
Don’t make me sick one of my nephews on you.
Me:
You think that’s a threat except I just got word. I’m heading out of the country on work assignments for the foreseeable future.
Holly:
Good for you. Be safe. Come by when you’re back for a stretch.
Still, I can’t help but smirk. Bryce Parry received his karma. Makes me wonder what’s in my future.
I guess I’ll find out.