Playing Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

by Mickey Miller

  Even though Jake was my number one priority, I still had to pitch in on other accounts and help generate ideas, because we were a small firm. Just to show him I could get some stuff done, I even emailed him a few thoughts I had on a couple campaigns in less than two hours before focusing on Jake.

  If I was going to fix Jake’s social media image, I needed to know what I was working with. I needed to collect as much info as possible until I could actually get the guy to sit down and talk to me.

  First, I reviewed the details around Jake’s contract. I already knew that his contract was one of the biggest in sports history, a hundred and twenty million over five years. Mr. Yerac had really gone out on a limb when he traded for Jake based purely on his talent. The owner had probably been just as arrogant to assume he could easily contain and control someone like Jake.

  The Jaguars gave Jake a signing bonus of almost three million when he was traded. The guaranteed money was based on Jake not causing trouble for the organization, and the rest he would get over the course of his contract with the Jaguars. He had his guaranteed money from his last team, so he wasn’t exactly hurting for money. Unsurprisingly, the endorsement deals had dwindled due to his bad behavior. It wasn’t just sports teams that wanted a good image out of their franchise player, but brand name companies selling to kids whose parents held the purse strings. And parents wanted a good role model, something Jake was not. At all. Not yet.

  However, it was clear that money was not a huge motivator for him. I had no idea how Jake spent his money, but based on his pictures, he didn’t wear over-the-top outfits from big name designers, didn’t display jewelry of any kind, and had an everyday, normal car—nothing extravagant. Not that he didn’t enjoy the finer things in life. He traveled on private jets, stayed at the best hotels, and ate at the finest restaurants. Usually with some pretty little thing on his arm.

  For the rest of the morning, I trolled through various media outlets about Jake, which had the usual byline—either commenting on his skills on the field, or off. His reactions to the mainstream media and interviews, especially if reporters were asking about his antics and behavior, often made it to the front page of the major Chicago newspapers. He either blew reporters off with some asshole remark, told them various ways to mind their own business, dismissed he’d done anything remotely wrong, or completely ignored the hoopla.

  Most of the media sites were thin on Jake’s past, but I wrote down interesting tidbits on my legal pad next to my laptop to research later. Including his sister, which still confused the heck out of me. His official team dossier was also pretty bare on his personal background, instead focusing on his career, which was extensive and glowing if you went purely by numbers. The numbers also showed the number of times Jake had been suspended, and the numerous fines over the course of his professional career. It almost outshined his rather remarkable accomplishments, and that was a darn shame. His productivity with his last team was poor because of all the fines and suspensions. Add in the fact that he was a pricey troublemaker, and well, trading him was the best and only option. However, with other teams desperate for a talented pitcher for a World Series run, it likely only proved to Jake that he’d done nothing wrong. I had a feeling that Mr. Yerac was probably one of the few people who had ever stood up to Jake and called him out on his behavior. And it was clear Jake did not like it one bit. For now, his productivity with the Jaguars wasn’t bad, but he’d been fined at least half a dozen times already, either for inciting a fight, mouthing off to an ump, or purposefully throwing close to or directly at the hitter as a way to intimidate him.

  To be fair, Jake wasn’t different in regard to other celebrities, and I didn’t fault him for falling into the trappings of what status and money brought, but he was traded to the Jaguars with only one specific caveat: to not embarrass the team or put a bad spotlight on them. I got that he was a young guy having fun and living it up. Yet he attracted all sorts of attention for the fights during games, which ESPN loved to replay and mainstream media loved to tear apart. The plethora of drinking and drunk pictures were what Mr. Yerac disliked the most, and Jake’s constant stream of flippant remarks to the media only made things messier and tougher to clean up. Funny how his numerous hookups were hardly remarked upon, and while Mr. Yerac didn’t like it, he could deal with it.

  The problem with Jake was that he didn’t care at all that his behavior, good or bad, reflected on the organization, or he flat out refused to recognize it, or both. It was my job to burst his little bubble and make him see reality, but convincing someone that they were in error wasn’t going to be easy. Jake had been getting away with this since college. Add the fact that a lot of his fans loved it only enabled him further.

  After another half hour, if I had to look at one more YouTube, TMZ, Yawper, or any other tabloid site with Jake acting badly or showcasing his womanizing skills, I was going to scream.

  I checked out his Facebook and Twitter accounts and wrote down notes on a legal pad next to my laptop. But Jake was most active on his Instagram account, so after lunch, I pulled his account up and dug into it.

  His handle was Big_Unit_Jake. His home picture was of him and a model he’d been seen with around town, known only as Kim B., for the early part of last year. Kim was wearing a black dress, and her bust was hanging out of it. She looked hot…in a slutty “I will do stuff with you after one night in the VIP section” kind of way.

  Hey, I’m not one to judge.

  And then there was the matter of Jake’s drinking posts. He continuously took pictures of himself imbibing at random bars around the Chicago area. Much to the delight of juvenile males everywhere, #drinkswithBigUnit had become a common hashtag. I scrolled down some more, looking at the different pics.

  Jake working out at the gym, shirtless with his buddies.

  Jake in a dark bar with a silly, smiling expression on his face while a crowd surrounded him.

  Jake shirtless on a beach with some girl. How did he find so many gorgeous, tiny girls in bikinis?

  I squinted closer to verify. Yep, he was definitely on a beach with this girl, and she was very attractive, but also very tiny.

  God, if that was my competition, I didn’t stand a chance.

  Competition. I stopped my train of thought right there. Why on earth was I thinking of her as competition? This was work, and I wasn’t about to induce a load of new complications into my first real job just so that I could have a shot at...a shot at what, exactly?

  Sure, Jake had hit on me in the locker room. I was willing to admit that. But I was also fairly sure he hit on any woman who came within a five-foot radius. It was more an ode to Jake’s nature; it didn’t mean I was anything special. His testosterone had to be so high, he probably didn’t even realize the pheromones he was releasing.

  Hell, with that wingspan of his, maybe it was even a seven-foot radius. That made me wonder about the radiuses of other things of his. And how nice would it be to have a man I could actually look up to. Not that I cared how tall a guy was. It was more about the guy feeling insecure because I towered over him when I wore my three-inch heels.

  Who was I kidding? Even in my flats, I had to slouch my shoulders and slink down in front of guys I wanted to like me. It was a sad fact of the dating world, even in the twenty-first century, which still held true: guys liked girls who were shorter than them.

  And, let’s be honest, guys didn’t just prefer shorter women. I preferred guys who were taller, like lots of girls. It’s just that when you are almost six feet tall, the pickings were slim.

  I kept on scrolling around his Instagram, and after a while I saw a thumbnail icon for a picture that seemed different. I clicked on it. It was from a year ago, of Jake, holding a little blond boy on his shoulders—had to be seven years old or so—on a baseball field. The picture stuck out to me because Jake didn’t have his Jaguars uniform on, but the little kid was wearing a black-and-white pinstriped Little League uniform. The field they were on was shabby and definite
ly in need of repair. Several other celebrating kids who were holding onto their baseball gloves jumped around him, seemingly in pure joy.

  There was no hashtag, no geotag, no information provided whatsoever for the picture. I noted that the date it was taken was after he had been traded to the Jaguars. There was something about the way Jake’s tattooed arm wrapped around the boy’s leg and held him up that sent a wave of emotion through me. It was totally different from all the pictures of him drinking with bikini models on the beach and living the glamorous life.

  I clicked out of the picture and saw another icon.

  Jake on a beach with a Sports Illustrated model. She was half cut out of the selfie, and I wasn’t complaining at all. His eyes were a beautiful light brown cognac color, lighter on the outside, and a slightly darker hue as one looked closer at his pupils. The girl next to him was different from the girl in the first picture, yet she was equally gorgeous, tiny, and with this deviant look in her eye.

  I sighed, staring at him. I both hated this girl who was next to him and wanted to be her. Who wouldn’t want to be held safely under the grasp of his lean, very muscular, tattooed arm? His big hands could probably give one hell of a massage. I shuddered and involuntarily thought how they might slide from my shoulders to my lower back and—

  “Andrea.”

  I nearly jumped out of my seat upon hearing a voice behind me. I banged on the keyboard accidently. I had been so out there in my own world, as I tended to do. I turned, and luckily, it was only Amy, the other twenty-something who worked at Green PR with me. Like me, Amy was also wearing a pantsuit and jacket combo with a very non-sexy high-necked top. Her hair was in a simple up-do, and she wore subtle makeup. She was dark-haired and eyed, and even though she was petite, I didn’t feel huge next to her. That was likely due to the fact that she had a pretty big personality. She’d been here a few years and had been graciously mentoring me. We also looked out for each other since the other interns and employees were heartless sharks.

  “Can’t you get some heels or something?” I asked, heart still thumping in my chest. “I don’t like it when people creep up behind me.”

  “What are you looking at?” she asked, ignoring my comment and leaning toward my computer screen.

  “Just a project,” I responded, my cheeks burning. I wasn’t lying. So why was I so embarrassed that I was looking up shirtless pics of a gorgeous man?

  “Is that...Jake Napleton?” she asked, eyes squinting.

  “Yes. It is. He’s my new client. Steve’s having me consult him on how to improve his social media branding.”

  “I just heard. Wish I could have been there for the game.” Amy batted her eyes playfully at me as she leaned over my desk, glancing briefly down at my pathetic two pages of “Jake notes” before ogling him on my computer screen. “I cannot believe you are getting paid right now to look at pictures of Jake Napleton’s abs. And you’re not just, you know, daydreaming about your favorite PILF like I would be.”

  “PILF?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “Oh come on, Tennessee. Player I’d Like to Fuck.” She said the words with an intonation that indicated this was the most obvious acronym in the world.

  “I’ve never heard of that. And I’m not daydreaming. Like I said, I’m doing research.”

  Amy stared at me, and her mouth opened in an “O” of disbelief, her lip-gloss glistening in the florescent light of the office. “So you’re really telling me you wouldn’t want to go on a date with those abs?” she asked, pointing to my screen for emphasis.

  I shrugged and clicked out of the photo, trying to act nonchalant. “I had a bad experience dating a baseball player in college. I don’t plan on reliving that nightmare.”

  “Who’d you date in college?”

  I sighed. I really, really didn’t like talking about him. But I wasn’t about to lie to my only friend in the office, or in Chicago, for that matter. “Grant Newman.”

  In her typical over-dramatic fashion, Amy pretended to faint. “Oxygen. I need oxygen!” She sat on the side of my desk, fanning herself, and took several deep breaths. I had to chuckle a little. “You dated Grant Newman, the star hitter for the New Jersey Bulldogs? And how is it you haven’t mentioned this before?”

  I didn’t feel like getting into the long, horrible, year-long relationship catastrophe that had scarred me for life.

  “It wasn’t a great experience, and I’ve been trying to forget it ever since it happened,” I informed her, settling on a general explanation for a story so complex that a multi-season telenovela would have a hard time covering everything that had happened between us.

  I could tell that Amy was ready to launch into a full barrage of questions when, staring over my shoulder, she changed the subject abruptly. “Which is why he needs to focus more on the community service aspect of his profile and not on the glamorous—Oh hi, Steve,” Amy said casually, plastering on a fake smile. “I barely even saw you there! I was just discussing with Andrea on how to handle The Big Unit campaign.”

  Our boss had the ability to materialize out of nowhere, which was impressive since we worked in such a small office with only a couple of rooms and a few cubicles. You’d think we could hear him coming.

  “Oh, really? Such as…?” he asked, with a judgmental look that told me he was itching to shut down our ideas.

  “Andrea was just saying that along with a community outreach angle, Jake should give interviews to smaller networks and papers to show the public the softer side of Jake Napleton. You know, as a human interest piece.”

  If Steve could read the sarcasm dripping from Amy’s voice, he didn’t let on, but he gave us both a narrowed gaze. “We need to come up with a better name than ‘The Big Unit campaign.’ And while I really appreciate your teamwork, Amy, why don’t you get back to your own desk? We still have a few hours to go until the end of the day.”

  “Of course,” Amy answered sweetly.

  Behind Steve, she mouthed happy hour, pointed to her watch, and mimed slugging back a beer. I had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing.

  Steve reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. I barely resisted the urge to shrug him off and glanced up at him from my chair. “Andrea, I’ve been thinking. The Jaguars are our number one client. I know Mr. Yerac wanted you on this job, and that’s all fine and good, but if you can’t figure out a way to get a one-on-one with Jake, how is he actually going to listen to your strategy?”

  It’s been one darn day. Cut me some slack.

  “I don’t know...can’t we call his agent or something, and make him? If he’s under contract with the Jaguars, he can’t just ignore what his owner wants him to do.”

  Steve pressed his hands together in front of his face.

  “You know, Andrea, I don’t really care what you do to get his attention and make him take our advice. You heard Mr. Yerac. And you pulled us into this, so we need him to clean up his act. Just get it done.” The last words he said stung hard. “I have complete faith that you’ll be able to get through to him. But if you don’t...” His voice trailed off and his phone buzzed. He unclipped it from his belt, glanced down at it, and then shot me one last piercing glare. “I’m going to have to take this. But I believe I’ve made myself clear?”

  I smiled and nodded, even though “clear” was not the right adjective for what just happened. Was he going to fire me if I didn’t come through for him? And how could you fire an intern?

  My own phone buzzed on my desk. I picked it up and saw that Amy had texted me a series of adult beverage emojis.

  After my “clear conversation” with my boss, a nice cold margarita after work was precisely what I needed. Maybe even two.

  Valentino’s Pub was right across the street from our work building on the Chicago River. We nabbed a patio seat a few minutes before five, when the masses would be getting off work. Steve had left early, so we did too.

  “So nice out,” Amy remarked as the waitress set down our glasses. A warm gentl
e breeze rolled off the river and onto us.

  I picked up my drink, enjoying the sun and relaxing after a long day at work. “Yeah, this weather is finally reminding me of Tennessee.”

  “Cheers,” Amy said, raising up her glass. “To being three weeks into your internship!”

  We made eye contact, touched glasses, and I took a big gulp. The cold liquid gave me a brain freeze as it went down my throat.

  Amy and I chatted for an hour, maybe two. We were so deep in conversation that I lost track of time. The patio got more packed by the minute, and we ended up ordering a few appetizers along with our drinks. I didn’t want to jinx it, but I thought I might be solidifying my first solid friendship bond since I moved here for the summer internship in June. I knew we had taken our connection to the next level when Amy signaled to the bartender for another round of margaritas. We had covered many different areas of our lives, and we couldn’t be more opposite. She was from the city of Chicago; I was from rural Tennessee. I had been a sporty tomboy most of my teens, while Amy had never picked up a ball to play a sport. Still, for some reason, we had a great vibe.

  “My parents used to walk around the house naked,” Amy said, stirring her drink with a straw. “I think they wished they grew up in the 1960s.”

  I raised an eyebrow, disbelieving.

  “They would just walk around naked? I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t know what to say. They were super weird. I’m super weird.”

  I chuckled. “I mean, you’re not that weird. Your upbringing was just about the polar opposite of mine, though. I was raised very religious, and my mother used to make me feel like it was wrong if I even looked at a boy. Heck, even if a boy looked at me, she’d somehow think it was my fault for dressing too aggressively.”

  “You never rebelled against her?”

  The question struck a chord with me, and I sat pensively for a few moments. “I guess I appreciate everything that my mother did for me, raising me as a single parent for all those years after my daddy left. I’ve never had a reason to rebel.”