Two tables down, I see Jack’s eyes narrow. I shift backward.

“Okay, thanks.” I take the card. She doesn’t leave. I look up and see an older guy tip his head toward me. He must think I’m stupid. Agent contact at any time before the season ends could ruin my eligibility. I pick up the card, rip it into tiny pieces, and dump it into the ashtray in the middle. Nothing will affect our chances of winning title this year.

“The card was his idea. The kiss was mine.”

“Need something, sweetheart?” Hammer comes to my rescue.

“Oh no, I was telling Knox here how much I like his game.”

Hammer puts an arm around her shoulder and gently turns her away from the table. “I play for the Warriors, too. You know much about football?” She shakes her head as Hammer leads her toward the dance floor. “I play on the quarterback’s blind side. That’s his weak side. Only the best defensive players get that position.” He looks back over his shoulder and winks.

I give him a salute and slide off the chair. Time to go home. When I arrive, Matty’s got the Do Not Disturb on the door. I ignore it and walk in. A woman is bouncing, reverse cowgirl style, her brown curls springing in rhythm.

“Don’t mind me,” I say easily. “Just getting my book.”

“You can join us,” Matty offers. “Lucy won’t mind.”

“It’s Laura.” She scowls. But then turns to me. “You’re Knox Masters, right? I saw you on the cover of Sports Illustrated.”

“Yeah? Which one was I?”

She looks confused. “The one in the Warriors uniform.”

That’s another reason I’m sure about Ellie. She can tell me and Ty apart. All the fucking time.

Matty sits up and rubs his hands along the side of the lady’s thin frame, and then up to cup a very large, very perky pair of tits. Not gonna lie. My body reacts. I’m twenty-one. There’s a hot naked chick offering herself to me.

“Thanks for the offer. I’ll read my book.”

“Your loss.” She shrugs.

I grab my phone and book, and head up to the tenth floor’s concierge lounge. Coach gets us access so we don’t have to sit downstairs and answer questions from the press.

I open the book and…it smells. Not bad but girlish. I lift it to my nose and inhale. It smells like her. And I can’t let another minute go by without contacting her.

I power up the phone, and as soon as it comes online, the message I’ve waited for appears. Got you. I grin to myself.

I shoot her a reply. Phone was dead. You up?

When the text message alert dings, all the tension of the day drains out of me. I slump down lower in the chair to get comfortable.

Ellie: Yes. Sorry about the other day. The thing with Jack caught me off guard. He doesn’t want people he respects to think he’s dumb.

I don’t want to text her. I press dial and wait for her to answer.

“Masters?”

I close my eyes in irritation at hearing my last name.

“You there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats.

“We’re on the same team, you know. We all want the same thing—for Jack to play.”

She sighs. “I know. But Jack is…sensitive about his grades. He doesn’t want people he admires to think he’s dumb or slow.”

“I don’t.”

“Then how about I check up on him?”

“That works for me.” I don’t care about Jack. I mean, I do in the sense that I want him to succeed, because that means our offense succeeds. But in a contest between caring about his classes and wanting Ellie, she wins.

The next sigh she lets out sounds like relief. “When will you be back?”

I smile at the slightly anxious note in her voice. She wants to see me. My whole body perks up at this.

“We’ll be back at nine. I plan to crash for a few hours. I’ll call you when I get up.”

I hang up, because I’m not giving her an opportunity say no.

19 Ellie

Week 2: Warriors 1-0

“Fuck,” Jack says, throwing himself down on the sofa.

“What’s wrong?”

The team got home this morning, and Jack had a meeting with his tutor over lunch. Apparently it didn’t go well.

“My tutor sucks. She spends more time trying to climb into my jock. I tell her I need her help and she hands me this paper.” He thrusts it at me. “What is this?”

I scan the paper. It’s a list of different models and a brief description of each. “An outline of sorts.”

“I signed up for this specific course because I thought game theory would be something I’d understand, but I don’t get even one of the concepts.” Jack looks anguished. “All these fucking models. I’m supposed to regurgitate this in a mid-term and final?” His bleak eyes meet mine. “Ellie, if I fail the class, my eligibility will disappear. I need to at least pass the midterm. I should have dropped the fucking class.”

The time for that has passed, unfortunately. “What about the playoffs?”

“Not to go all Denny Green on you, Ellie, but what playoffs? I won’t even be around for those games if I can’t pass this class. What was I thinking?” He drops his head into his hands and groans.

“It’s Jim Mora.”

“What?”

“Jim Mora had the postgame rant about the playoffs. Denny Green did the ‘They are who we thought they were’ bit.”

Jack stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Jim Mora was a coach for the Indianapolis Colts whose postgame rant in response to a reporter’s question about making the playoffs went viral. Playoffs? What playoffs? he’s seen spitting out from the podium. Green, the coach of the Cardinals, played an undefeated Bears and almost beat them, until the fourth quarter where the wheels came off and they lost the game. Green lost his shit during the post-game press conference. The reporter had to feel grateful for that barrier, because Green looked one step away from introducing his fist to the reporter’s face. Kind of how Jack looks right now. He’d like to take physical action against something—the class, the course syllabus, his tutor.

I need to watch my words carefully so that it doesn’t look like I’ve been sitting in the same class for the last two weeks. I put the tutor’s worksheet aside.

“Okay. Let’s look at game theory from a football standpoint. Take Seattle’s last play in the Super Bowl. Both run plays and pass plays from the one yard line had a close to 60% chance of success. But any play can be defended if the defense knows what to expect. If the run game is more powerful, then the rational decision is to run the ball because their physical resources are geared toward running. But the Patriots knew that Seattle had a more powerful run team, so their expectations play a role. Seattle decides that the expectation has a higher value than the powerful running game and calls a pass play.

“You have the statistical average of success of any given play impacted by the physical resources—your players—measured against the opponents players and the players expectations.”

“The political parties are opponents and the election is their Super Bowl, with the primaries and all of the stuff that comes before it acting as the season.” He’s starting to get it. Maybe I won’t have to do anything for him. He makes a few notes. “How do I find out the statistical chance of success?”

“Demographics. I guess that’s why polling is so popular. The parties try to analyze the likelihood of success of a position before moving to the bargaining table. Individual actors, such as the president, can increase or decrease bargaining power based on the position of power.”

“Size up the strengths and weaknesses of a certain political structure, the general mood of the electorate, and then predict?”

“I think that’s a fair analysis.”

“But there are like a dozen different models.” The space between his eyes gets tight.