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“It’s fine,” he says, waving his hand. Behind his face, you can see the scenery shift from the pool house to the backyard. Sterling’s breath puffs out in front of him. “God, it’s cold. They’re probably still awake doing shots of schnapps and playing Apples to Apples.”

“Sounds like a good time.”

Sterling laughs loosely. Inside his parents’ house, he runs into Noemi and talks briefly.

While he’s busy, you fashion a makeshift stand for your phone on a pile of pillows at the end of your bed and fetch your present.

Now that your hands are free, you can turn it over and over, checking it out.

The paper is iridescent and thick, sealed with uniform pieces of clear tape.

It looks like the work of a professional.

On the other end of the line, Sterling hugs his sister goodnight and goes back out to his room. Once he’s back in his bedroom and wrapped in a thick flannel blanket, he shows off the present you got him. The green paper that Deb wrapped it in seems to be in good condition, the corners un-dented.

“Do we unwrap at the same time?” he asks. “Just go wild?”

“Let’s take turns,” you suggest. “You go first.”

“That’s remarkable restraint by you,” he laughs. “ Okay.”

Sterling is the type to unwrap his gifts carefully, meticulously untaping the gift and being careful with the paper. When he opens the box, he smiles.

“Oh, this is great,” he says, holding the jersey up by the shoulders. “I’m going to look amazing in this during the playoffs. It’s exactly the right size, I think. You asked Maeve, didn’t you?”

“Guilty,” you admit.

To your great delight, Sterling doffs his blanket and shoulders off his gray henley long-sleeve. You catch just a glimpse of his bare skin before he pulls the jersey over his head.

“What do we think?” he asks, preening. He turns around and sweeps his hair out of the way so you can appreciate the nameplate and number on the back. Your gut does a weird flip-flop.

“I think that you look mighty good wearing my number,” you say honestly.

Sterling bites his lip and casts his eyes down, the shadows catching his long lashes.

There’s a moment where things almost derail. Before you remember Sterling’s stance on getting freaky-deaky via video call. You clear your throat, and adjust the way you are sitting so that your crotch doesn’t show through your pajama pants .

“Anyway,” you say. It sounds rough even to your ears.

“Open yours,” Sterling urges you. There’s a flush on his cheeks, visible even on FaceTime.

You will yourself to look away from Sterling in the jersey and examine the package for the millionth time.

It’s not in your nature to play with this kind of thing, so you just rip it open.

Inside, there’s a plain brown box. You lift the lid, and find a mass of tissue paper.

Clearly, the wrapping was meant to obscure the actual shape of whatever’s inside.

“You fooled me!” you say.

“I knew that you would shake it,” he says. “Stop whining and just move it along.”

If you didn’t know better, you’d say that Sterling was more excited than you. Chuckling, you dig through the paper. It doesn’t take long for you to unearth a red square box wrapped in matching ribbon. You squint at the writing on the ribbon: Cartier.

Your throat goes dry.

“Ster…” you begin.

“Just open it,” he says impatiently.

You undo the ribbon and get the box open. On a bed of black velvet is a bracelet. It’s three rings of tricolor gold: white, yellow, and rose. The three are entwined so that they can move separately without coming apart. The bracelet’s been polished to the point of gleaming.

Without realizing it, you’ve started chewing the inside of your cheek.

You pick the bracelet up off the velvet, feeling its solid weight.

You have huge hands, but it slides on just right, settling comfortably on your wrist. You can’t help turning your arm to see the way it catches the light, glowing against your skin.

“It looks amazing,” Sterling says. “Do you like it?”

Your first two or three tries at saying something adequate don’t come out. You clear your throat.

“It’s too much,” you say. “If I had realized…”

“Don’t.” The resolve in Sterling’s voice snaps you to attention. “I’m allowed to spoil the people I care about. And I love my gift, so please don’t imply that it wasn’t enough. Put your arm closer to the camera.”

You obligingly do as he asked.

“It fits right,” he says, with no little satisfaction.

“Maeve?” you echo.

“Nope!” He pops the p on the word. “She’s good, but not that good.

You don’t really wear any jewelry, so I had to guess.

The sales associate asked how much bigger your hands were than mine, and we went from there.

” He tilts his chin at you. “There should be something, um. Engraved. On the inside of the yellow gold band.”

You slide the bracelet off, and examine the inside. The light really isn’t good enough. You have to bring it right under your lamp. Only then do you see the writing.

Apr 28, 2024 at 8:37 AM

“What’s this?” you ask, running your finger over the engraving. It’s faint under your touch, barely deep enough to be tactile.

“It’s a timestamp,” Sterling explains. “It’s when Maeve texted me to ask if I’d heard of Kaius Reinhart.”

“Oh, god.” You slide the bracelet back on. “After that interview that Sandy did?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You totally didn’t know who I was.” It’s not a question.

Sterling snorts. “You’re right. I didn’t. I told you that I don’t follow football. But I Googled you…”

“Oh, now you admit it.”

“I Googled you,” Sterling repeats, “and, at 8:47 AM, I texted Maeve back and told her to get in touch with you.”

It’s on the tip of your tongue to make an asinine remark. You saw all this fine-ass body, and you knew you had to hit that . But it would be inappropriate. Ten minutes. That’s all it took for you to get Sterling Grayson’s attention. What did he see when he looked you up?

He saved the text.

The enormity of that hits you, all at once, and it kind of chokes you up. You duck your head, afraid that your heart will be written all over your stupid face.

“I really like it,” you say, carefully. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Sterling says.

And it occurs to you: you should have brought him home for Christmas.

You should have gotten over your fears about your family, and Sterling’s reaction to their over-abundant attention.

He should be there with you right now, snuggled next to your side, so he could tell you in person about that goddamn text, and you could kiss his soft mouth.

Next year .

***

Dettweiler makes headlines the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

He was the guest speaker at a holiday church service in Laredo, where he gave an impassioned sixteen-minute homily about preserving the nuclear family and reaffirming the glory of God’s perfect design.

The pastor lovingly videoed the whole thing and uploaded it to the congregation’s Facebook page, where it went viral.

The Christian Right immediately latched onto Dettweiler’s pompous ass as a paragon of truth and virtue, and everyone else blew him up for the barely-veiled homophobic and misogyny in his screed.

The wheels had barely started turning by the game right after Christmas, but, by Week Eighteen, the spin machine was working overtime.

Dettweiler preens insufferably, obviously thrilled by the attention.

Jameson, discontented with his rapidly-dwindling share of the spotlight, decides to seize back some flash the best way he knew how: by being a louder, bigger jackass.

@jay.danger667: @dettweiler_kurt is a HATER.

Why you clownin on the gays bruh? Like we ain’t got a member of our CYCLONES brOTHERHOOD (wuz good @c.reinhart) who flies the pride flag?

GOD LOVES ALL, THE BIBLE LITERALLY SAYS SO.

And all that ish about women staying home?

?? Spoken like someone who ain’t got no head in a MINUTE. Fuck, ya wildin.

On paper, the message is supportive, but it enrages you all the same.

First of all, there was no reason for your name to get dragged into this muddy bullshit.

You and Jameson are not and probably never will be close.

It was a calculated move for maximum drama.

There’s an unspoken rule about not commenting on this kind of thing in any way but being supportive.

If you can’t be supportive, you just don’t say anything.

It tears up the locker room. The whole team is divided into camps: those that agreed with Dettweiler to start with (not very many), those that hate him for what he said and feel validated by Jameson’s rant (quite a few), those that are pissed at one or both of them for stirring the pot (you fall into this camp), and those who think Jameson took it too far by indirectly insulting Dettweiler’s young wife.

Things get bad enough that Coach rips the whole team a new one, ranting about how you all have presumably had media training, why the hell aren’t you acting like it?

and that this sort of bullshit is what loses championships.

One thing that nobody’s going to do is countermand Larry Beausoleil. But nothing changes, either.

So Sandy tries to step up. The first round of the playoffs, your hard-earned bye-week, he invites the whole team over for dinner.

All fifty-three guys on the roster get summoned to the Covelli manse in Coral Gables for catered barbecue, while Sandy delivers a highly-motivating and inspiring call to action.

To be part of a brotherhood. To be part of a team , and something greater than ourselves .

It’s the kind of delivery that foreshadows the poignancy and verve of his future Hall of Fame induction speech, which won’t happen for another fifteen years.

The words of a born leader. A captain, both on the field and off.

Yeah, that doesn’t work either. Dettweiler refuses to show up, and the only result is that his small, but loud coterie of supporters now include Sandy on their shit lists.

Paparazzi start hanging around outside the practice facility.

Just a few, at first. But it quickly spirals, and soon, there are fifteen or twenty cameras aimed straight at your face when you’re sweaty and tired, just trying to go home from your fucking job.

Oh, sure, they want pictures of GoGo, Jameson, and Dettweiler, too, but you are the big game.

The white rhino of the safari. The one that makes them scream and jostle for your attention, loud and completely obnoxious.

For your part, you keep your head down. You work out.

You meal plan. You reluctantly start paying for grocery delivery.

You stay up late talking to Sterling from across the world, falling deeper and deeper into a feeling that you aren’t ready to name.

It’s thrilling and amazing, heady and terrifying.

You manage to half-convince yourself that this is normal.

You’re the same man that you were back in April.

Sterling is just a person. He hates going to the gym, but does it anyway.

He reads voraciously. He loves the colors blue and green.

He’s growing his hair just slightly, and waiting to see how long it takes the world to notice.

He’s the most dedicated person you know, and works harder than anyone you’ve met.

All of this is fine.

You’ve got this.