“I’m not—”
“Oh, zip it, quarterback. Yes, you are. You put on your pretty shirt and you smell much nicer than you should, considering you’re going to clean cat shit for the next hour.”
“Maybe the animals will appreciate that.”
“I’m sure they will.” She smiled. “Especially Pumpkin. She’d scratch your face off for smelling so good. But I’m gonna tell you right now, that woman is looking for the kind of perfection that doesn’t really exist anymore.”
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Her standards are almost impossibly high, in that she is looking for complete and utter mediocrity. She wants the most vanilla man in the world, to avoid getting hurt again.” Her face gentled. “It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but if you want to overcome her reservations about you, you’re about to scale Mount Everest, baby. I hope you’re ready.”
I took a deep breath and managed to nod.
“Excellent,” she said. “I assume you recall where the bags of kitty litter are.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I answered dryly.
“Good boy. I’ll be up here if you need anything.”
I couldn’t turn my brain off.
At workouts and drills, Remi was always hovering at the back of my mind.
You’re about to scale Mount Everest, baby.
What the fuck was I supposed to do with that?
I could buy her a million trucks of dog food, and I still wasn’t convinced that was the right way to go about any of this.
With the level of distractions on my mind, it was a fucking miracle I was still able to do my job.
I caught the ball as Mitch snapped it to me, the hundredth rep of the morning. There were ten routes on the route tree, and as the receivers rotated in and out, we ran the route tree twelve times so they each had four cycles through.
Quick out.
Slant.
Comeback.
Curl.
Square out.
Square in.
Corner.
Post.
Go.
I had music blaring in my ears, my body humming as I made each throw to the receivers doing drills today. We had six receivers on the roster this year and two more on the practice squad. Today, we were working on the guys in the one through three spots.
Williams was a rookie, and we’d only talked a few times. He was quick and eager, his eyes lighting up every time he caught the ball to his chest. He’d do well. Better than I had my first year, probably because he wanted to listen and took down everything anyone was willing to teach him. Smith and Brooks waited on the sideline, watching with sharp eyes, even though they had their own music in their ears.
This wasn’t a time for conversation.
This was the kind of repetition that was the foundation for every guy who wanted to play this game. It was the repetition I’d missed when I was injured. And what I’d taken for granted when I wasn’t.