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GoGo’s six inches shorter than you and at least seventy pounds lighter.

Realistically, he’s not fighting shit. You’ve just about resolved that this is how it’s going to end: you, being led away in handcuffs, because you are going to kill this motherless fuck on the dirty locker room floor with your bare hands, all fifty-two of your teammates as witnesses, when you feel a firm hand on your shoulder.

About to turn and hit whoever’s interrupting you in your single-minded goal of turning GoGo into human pizza, you hear a voice that cuts through the haze in your head. Soft, but firm.

“Get off him, Kai. It’s enough. You did enough. Come on.”

It’s Sandy.

Your eyes rolling wildly, you push yourself off GoGo’s heaving body to the floor. Immediately, GoGo balls up in a fetal position. He gags and spits up a mouthful of bloody phlegm. He’s moaning something.

Your gorge rises in your own throat, and you hang your head. Sandy’s hand is warm on your bare skin, even despite the fact that you feel like the room is on fire.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs soothingly. “It’s okay, Kai. Everything is going to be okay.”

“The fuck you mean, everything is okay?” Jameson cries. Somehow, he’s ended up back beside GoGo. He’s peeling GoGo’s arms away from his face, and checking on his friend. “He nearly killed him! Fuck, man. His jaw’s broken! ”

From your vantage point on the floor, you can see your handiwork.

Sure enough, GoGo’s chin is slightly displaced.

The side of his face that you hit him on is already puffing up, angry red and purple.

Blood is streaming from his nose and mouth.

It’s enough to make you want to vomit. You cough unsteadily.

“I hope it’s broken,” you mutter, loud enough to be heard. Your own speech is slurred, despite the fact that you didn’t withstand a single blow. “Won’t be able to talk any more shit.”

GoGo gurgles. Hocks his throat and spits up another mouthful of goopy, dark blood. Something else comes out. A broken tooth. (Not the one with the diamond.)

Sandy helps you to your feet. “Helps” is a strong word for it; he’s not brawny enough to get your body off the ground.

But his arms steady you, and you are grateful for it when that first rush of vertigo hits you on your feet.

Fuck , you realize. Your clothes are all scattered on the floor by your locker. You’re mostly naked.

The crowd of your teammates parts like the Red Sea when Sandy guides you gently across the locker room, your arm draped over his shoulder.

“Everyone get your shit together!” Sandy barks.

“The press is gonna be in here in twenty or thirty minutes. Somebody scrape Heller off the floor and get him to the medical team. Call a janitor. I want that blood gone in the next five minutes. Stop looking gobsmacked and get ready for your interviews.”

Like magic, everyone listens. Sandy’s QB #1. He’s the boss.

***

You know there will be hell to pay for the fight, and it’s not long in coming down. The next morning, you are summoned to Coach’s office.

Larry Beausoleil has an office at the $136 million Cyclones training facility that is not unlike the man in question: small, efficient, and to-the-point.

The carpet is shockingly industrial, and the walls are painted an unremarkable shade of slate blue.

His big desk takes up one whole side of the room.

Behind him are walnut shelves holding signed footballs and three different iterations of the Cyclones’ helmet behind glass.

There’s a framed Far Side comic on the wall; something with talking sheep.

He’s got a tree in a large pot, tall enough to almost graze the dropped ceiling.

The one concession to his vaunted position is the view: it’s a corner office, and the walls adjacent to and opposite his desk are all windows.

Beyond them, the practice fields are an expanse of rolling green.

Two leather chairs are in front of the desk.

He looks up at you when you knock at exactly three minutes before your appointed meeting, and gestures to the seat on the left.

“Do I need to call my union rep?” you ask before sitting down.

“This isn’t an official disciplinary meeting, Reinhart,” Coach says tightly. “Sit the fuck down.”

You are strangely calm as you do what you’re instructed. Running on maybe two hours of sleep, your head is sensitive, but clear. Coach scares the shit out of you normally. But you don’t have the luxury of freaking out.

Whoever designed Coach’s office had football players’ proportions in mind. The chair is roomy, deep, and spaced far enough from the desk that you can stretch your legs and cross them at the ankles.

“What can I do for you, sir?” you ask.

The expression on Coach’s face can only be described as withering.

Despite his age and multiple chins, it still carries impressive hauteur.

His grayish eyes are sharp behind their wire-rimmed grandpa glasses.

It’s been over forty years and almost seventy-five pounds of fat since Larry Beausoleil touched a gridiron himself, but the man’s mind and football intellect are sharp as cut glass.

“Don’t act like a fucking ingénue,” he says. “You know exactly why you’re in here. ”

You don’t reply, figuring that anything you say will be used against you, just like in court.

Being in court might be less intimidating, actually: Coach is judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up into one mustachioed package.

You steeple your fingers and lean back. Might as well make your ass comfortable before it gets chewed clean off.

“Since you asked,” he says sarcastically, “Heller won’t need surgery to fix his jaw.

He’ll be on a liquid diet for six to eight weeks and won’t be enjoying life very much, but it will heal.

I was sent a photo this morning by a member of the team staff.

In complex medical terms, you fucked his face up, Reinhart. ”

“Good,” you answer back.

Coach’s eyes narrow, nearly disappearing in his chubby jowls. “Save the disrespect for your idiot teammates,” he barks. “I brought you in here to talk to you, but this can pivot into something formal real quick if I think it needs to.”

You pull a deep breath in through your nose and exhale it through your mouth, then do it again.

“I brought you in here,” Coach repeats, “to hear, in your own words, exactly what the hell you thought you were doing. You think I don’t know Heller’s a bad apple?

You think I don’t know what he gets up to in his free time?

That’s not the kind of man I was raised to be, Reinhart, and I know that your mama sure as shit didn’t raise you to be like that, either.

It’s part of professional sports. You deal with assholes left and right.

Sometimes you get real lucky and they’re your associates.

Can’t help it. I thought that someone like you would have known better.

What I want to know is, why didn’t you? It’s unlike you. ”

“That’s two questions, sir,” you say. “Do you want to know why I hit GoGo, or do you want to know why I didn’t know better?”

“Both.”

You lift your chin slightly. “I hit him because he needed hitting. And I did know better, but I just didn’t care. Sir,” you add.

You half-expect Coach to throw something at you, but, instead, he pulls his glasses off.

Rubs irritably at the bridge of his nose, where there’s an indent from the frame of the glasses.

He seems to be taking a second, so you stare across the landscape of his desktop.

There’s an old-fashioned blotter, every day’s box filled with notes.

A framed photograph of Coach and his two sons, both of whom graduated Notre Dame, where he used to coach, but didn’t play football. A gold-and-brown plaque:

There Is No Limit To What A Man Can Do Or Where He Can Go If He Doesn't Mind Who Gets The Credit .

Ronald Reagan

“Kaius,” Coach begins, startling you just when you were finishing reading, “I think of you as a leader on this squad. I know you don’t have a captain’s patch, because you haven’t gone out of your way to make a lot of friends.

But I see it all. The effort. The commitment.

The way these young guys look at you. They hold you in esteem.

That’s not something that money can buy.

You’re a fine man, Reinhart. On and off the field.

I knew it when we drafted you, and you still manage to defy expectations. ”

“I appreciate you saying all that, sir,” you tell him. “It means more than you can imagine. I’m, uh, guessing there’s a but coming up, though.”

“It’s a big but ,” Coach confirms. “That bullshit yesterday has me questioning your judgment, Reinhart. You should know better than to lower your standards to the level of jackasses like Heller. If you had hurt him much worse, you could have been looking at fines. Maybe even charges. To say nothing of the bad press. You are aware that there were reporters crawling all over that field, right? That all it would have taken would be one of them poking their head in the locker room before their allotted time? Seeing Heller sprawled out on the floor, looking like Wile E. Coyote after he got hit with the anvil? Nobody’s going to know about it, but that’s by the grace of God, honestly. ”

Again, you say nothing.

“What would that boyfriend of yours have thought?” Coach asks, his tempo merciless. “How about his reputation? You’re famous now, Reinhart. If I’m not holding you to a different standard, the world is going to. The media. That was a boneheaded thing you did, son.”

You stiffen in your chair. When you mentally ran your lines on this interview last night while you were awake and not sleeping, you hadn’t prepared for that. For Coach to go there.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asks finally.

“I’m not sorry,” you answer.

“Reinhart…” he begins, his tone a warning.

You hold a hand up. “If you would, sir. I’m not sorry. There is something I want to say, though. So, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to say it.”

Coach looks skeptical, but he extends his palm. “Proceed,” he says. “You’re on thin ice.”

“I know I am,” you say. “I know that I’ve disappointed you and that my actions reflect poorly on the organization.

For that part, I do feel badly. For causing you to waste time and frustration in your busy day, I also feel badly.

But I’m not going to sugar-coat it, sir.

You started this conversation between us, and I’m going to end it. ”

Your blood is singing in your veins, alive with the electric thrum of anxiety. Despite the confidence you can hear in your tone, you are scared shitless. You rehearsed every word of this. Now, there’s nothing left to do but say it.

“I want GoGo gone,” you blurt out.

Coach raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I’m a free agent,” you say. “I want to stay with Miami. And if you guys want me too, sir, it’s going to be without GoGo.

You can have him or me. That’s not an empty ultimatum.

If you want me to stick around and be a leader for you, I’m happy and willing to do so.

But not with trash like that wearing the same colors as me.

” You take a deep breath. “I have a favorable offer from the Tennessee Goliaths. And, if you don’t want to trade GoGo, I’m going to accept it.

No bad blood, no hard feelings. It’s real simple, and it’s all up to you. Him or me.”

On shaking legs, you rise. On the other side of the desk, you think Coach might be speechless. From anger or surprise, you aren’t quite sure. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.

“I haven’t dismissed you, son,” Coach says, finally. His voice is tremulous. “You can’t—”

“I just did, sir,” you say. You drop your chin respectfully. “I’m dismissing myself. That’s the end of the discussion. You have a real good day, now.”

You turn and walk out of the office.