ONE
“I hadmy heart in my throat the entire fourth quarter. Why, I practically fainted three times.” Mama, always the dramatic one. I let out a chuckle and continue listening to her voicemail. She’s done this since my first year in the NBA. If she’s not at the game, she’ll leave voicemail messages throughout. Most of them praising me and anointing me as the best basketball player of all time, and a few criticizing my form or accusing me of hogging the ball. “But I knew. I just knew that my baby would win the game for his team. Son, I don’t think I breathed for a full five minutes. When Law took the ball and scored that three-pointer, I thought that was it.”
And on she goes, giving me a verbal replay of the last quarter. The one I just played. “But when he tried to fake you out, you showed him who’s boss.” Her enthusiasm is infectious, and I smile at myself in the mirror. Yeah, I sure did show them. I scored the last shot of the game. A three pointer that gave us the win by one. One measly point, but that’s all you need to win. “Oh, your brother showed me how to use the Twitter. Make sure you follow me back. And I can’t wait to have you home this summer. Maybe you and Robin can finally connect, but if that doesn’t happen, there’s someone else I want to introduce you to.” I end and delete the message after that. For someone who has chosen to remain single since my father died, she’s doing everything she can to find me a mate. Once was enough, but I do go and follow her on Twitter.
When I step outside, the usual crowd is waiting for us. Some are family members of the team, but most are fangirls. Attractive women, dressed in their finest and hoping to go home with one of us. It’s more prevalent at away games, but the single guys are never shy about finding a warm body to spend the night with, especially after a win.
“You coming, Chastey?” Wakowski, one of my younger teammates shouts from across the parking lot. He’s with three women, two of them wrapped around each arm. The third is standing in front of him, trying to get his attention.
“No, you go ahead. And it’s Chastain, not Chastey.” Chastey Chastain is a nickname given to me by Wakowski because I don’t sleep with everything female. One of the women, a pretty blonde, pouts.
“Okay, Chastey Chastain.” A few of the guys guffaw at the joke, but I don’t react. Truth is, I hate that name. And it’s untrue.
When I first got into the league, I was with my fair share of women, until Kelsey came to New York and got pregnant with our son.
I shake my head, unwilling to let those thoughts take over. It’s done. She died, and I keep her memory alive for the benefit of my son.
Who are you kidding? You do it for the benefit of everyone who thought your marriage was perfect.
I cross through the parking lot, all the while getting pats on the back by Coach Walsh. His hands are like bricks on my shoulder. As a former professional basketball player, he stands at almost seven feet tall, but since he’s been out of the league, he’s been lifting weights. He doesn’t look like any of the other coaches. He has long, dirty blonde hair that reaches his shoulders, and I know that underneath that custom-made suit, he’s tatted all over.
“Ignore those fools and go home to your son,” Coach Walsh says.
“Nice save, Chastain,” someone yells just as my driver opens the door to my car. I sit back on the plush leather of my Mercedes. It’s one of the few luxuries I allow myself. Expensive cars and luxurious homes for me and my son. And the best education that money can buy for Evan, so he won’t have to depend on a sports scholarship like I did. When he grows up, he won’t be responsible for taking care of his extended family.
It’s a short ride from Madison Square Garden to my building in Central Park. I thank my driver and nod at my doorman on the way inside. He stands to the side, and I can tell he’s holding his breath and waiting. I stop, chuckle, and pull the basketball out of my bag. Without asking, he hands me a sharpie. I scribble my signature and toss the ball in the air. He quickly grabs it and yells out a thank you.
My apartment is eerily quiet when I walk in. Marta, my son’s nanny, turns off the telenovela when she notices me.
“Welcome home, Mr. Colt.” Her Spanish accent is as thick as her waist and her glasses. “Good game tonight.”
“Thanks, Marta,” I say with a smile. I walk to the kitchen and grab a bottle of water while she puts on her shoes. She lives several floors down in a smaller unit I bought a few years ago.
I invest in real estate. That was the advice given to me by a close friend. Buy during a buyer’s market and hold on to it. Pass it down to your kids, but if you need to, you can always sell it. The only problem is there is never a buyer’s market in Manhattan, but when your contract pays three hundred million over four years, you can afford whatever you want.
Marta lets herself out, and I peek inside Evan’s bedroom. My five-year-old is in the middle of the bed in his racecar pajamas. The covers are off, and his butt is sticking up in the air like it did when he was a baby. I sit next to him and run a hand through his curly hair. That’s the one thing he got from me. Other than that, he’s his mother’s spitting image. From his pale coloring to his dark eyes and his full lips. He stirs, and I put the blanket on him and tiptoe out of the room.
By the time I shower and eat the meal my chef prepared, I’m ready for bed and already feeling the effects of tonight’s game. My legs are exhausted, and my shoulders are tight. Tomorrow’s session with my personal trainer and masseuse can’t come soon enough.
I step inside the master bedroom and imagine it’s bigger than the small house I grew up in right outside of Birmingham, Alabama. My parents were working-class people, both working at a meat processing plant until my father died of a sudden heart attack when I was thirteen. Despite our lack of material things, we were a happy household. My older brother was a star athlete and made varsity on the basketball team when he was a sophomore. We were the type of family who ate together each night. Mama’s always been a great cook. We’d go to church together on Sunday and had Bible study every Wednesday. Although we didn’t have money for extras, we had everything we needed.
The night our daddy died was the beginning of the end of a lot of things, none of which I want to think of right now.
Tonight, I’ll review the game and how I pulled out a win at the last second. I’ll think about how a young boy from a small town has made good. I won’t think about the bad side of that. I won’t think about the loneliness and isolation that I’ve lived with for the last nine years.
No one ever thinks about that part of it. Everyone thinks fame and fortune only bring about the best. The best that money can buy. The best vacations. The best food. The best of everything, but you can’t buy loyalty. You can’t buy friends, and you can’t pay family not to try and ruin your career before it begins. No amount of money can erase the pain caused by the ones you love the most. The ones you trusted.
“But everythin’ has a season, Son.” I can hear my mother’s words. Her southern twang thickening with every excited breath. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Yeah, I’m free. Through no act of my own. Fate took my wife when she overdosed on heroin, setting me free from a marriage I never should have been in. Despite my issues with Kelsey, she loved our son. And she loved her daughter, too. The one she had by another man after I left Alabama.
I broke her heart when I left for college, and she tried to mend it in the arms of another. While she went and married before she turned twenty, having a child before she was barely old enough to drink, I spent my time as a single man sleeping with fangirls.
That was my only vice. I don’t drink. I don’t gamble. I don’t even curse. The only difference between me and my teammates is that I was discreet, and they aren’t. But when you have young men with more money than they can spend, they’re going to indulge in a vice. Mine was sex. But that was then.
It only lasted until Kelsey broke up with her husband, and Mama told her where to find me. As discreet as I was back then, there were still rumors and innuendo. There were also a few photos, so as soon as Kelsey was free, Mama bought her a plane ticket to New York City and demanded I see her. She was familiar. I’d known her almost my entire life. She was my best friend when Daddy died, and her entire family supported us.
When she got to Manhattan, feelings resurfaced. It was like having a piece of home in New York City, which was like a different planet than my quiet, conservative hometown. Nothing was off-limits here. The city never shut down, and I had everything I could want at my fingertips. No twenty-year-old man who had hardly ever been anywhere could resist, and as much as celibacy was pushed on me growing up, I forgot all about that when I got here.
