It’s another sign.

I didn’t get her name or her phone number, but I’m not worried. A girl who puts on her running shoes before dawn cracks the sky has to know where the gym is. I’ll find her. I have zero doubt of that.

After our two-hour morning practice, Coach spends twenty minutes telling us the ways we can get suspended in the weekend before our opening kickoff. Too much boozing, missing curfew. If we want a goddamned lobster tail for dinner, he’d prefer we called him instead of sneaking one out of Kroger’s under our workout gear.

“Don’t disappoint me, men,” he ends, and then waves us off.

Despite the size, the newly laid carpet, and the fresh veneer on the mahogany lockers, the locker room still stinks of sweaty balls and swamp ass. The smell of home. I grin to myself.

“You’re in a good mood.” Harry “Hammer” Wright drops onto the wooden seat and starts stripping off his gear. Hammer’s a good natured southern boy, with a torso covered in ink and a quick smile for everyone.

I lean to the side to avoid being hit with his jersey. He has no sense of personal space. “We had a good workout.”

Hammer is a prime example of why I always thought being single while chasing my NFL goals made a whole lot of sense. I’d watched other guys play shitiful games because their personal life was a mess. Their girlfriend cheated on them or maybe he got caught with his pants down.

Hammer is single because his last girlfriend caught him with some out-of-town babe. After a night game, we’d drank with a few of the locals and Hammer decided one of them needed consoling—with his dick. His girlfriend drove up and surprised him at the team hotel. She succeeded with her surprise, but it ended with a lot of screaming, a little hair pulling, and a call to security to get to the two girls escorted from the premises.

Hammer got a lecture from Coach and me about keeping it in his pants on away games.

“Easy for you to say, Masters,” Hammer whined at the time. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re missing.”

“Get your nutsack under control or your hammer time will be on the bench,” I told him.

“You’re not human,” he called as I walked away. “It ain’t right for you to be denying yourself like that.”

Hammer’s about the only one who gets away with talking to me like that. We roomed together during our freshman year and I spent a hell of a lot of time listening to him lay pipe in his bed. Nothing about Hammer’s casual sexual encounters made me believe I missed anything. Sometimes they didn’t take more than fifteen minutes before he hustled them out the door so he could play a round of Madden.

Then some guys got kicked off the team after they’d videotaped themselves getting a blowjob race. It had all been consensual and the football team weren’t the only Western athletes represented in the six-person video, but it’d looked bad. Real bad.

And the guys had seemed more interested in showing off for the camera than the fact that someone sucked their dicks. I’ve taken more satisfying dumps than the blowjobs those fuckups got.

Nothing had convinced me that my decision to save my athletic skills for the field was wrong…until now.

“Hey, Masters. I know the dinner’s supposed to be team only, but my sister just moved in and I haven’t seen her in two months since two-a-days started. Do you mind if she comes to dinner?” Jack Campbell stops by my locker. He’s a newbie—a transfer from a top tier juco—and by the effort he’s put forth this summer, a potential difference maker. As a bonus, he’s not an asshole.

“I guess that’s okay. She’s not a jock chaser, right?”

Hammer snorts. “Yeah, Campbell, we got rules and standards. Only tens at the table. Your sister a ten?”

“Did this become Deliverance country and I didn’t notice?” Campbell shoots back. He’s not an asshole and he’s got some balls. “Maybe where you come from, you spend long hours deciding whether your sister is fuckable, but I prefer to do that outside my immediate family tree.”

“You’re good with first cousins, right?” Hammer says in a serious tone, but I know he’s still fucking with Campbell. We’re not allowed to haze anymore, so we have to get our digs in where we can.

“Yeah, first cousins are fair game.” They exchange fist bumps. Sick fuckers, I grin. Sick fuckers, but my sick fuckers.

“But, seriously, what’s she look like?” Hammer presses.

“You better tell him or he won’t stop asking until dinner tonight. You don’t want that kind of headache.” I throw my sweaty jock and work out gear in the laundry and grab my towel to cover my junk. The locker room got renovated over the off-season and now the showers are on the other side of the building. The team rules require us to cover up with towels because there’s a hallway in between. Genius design, boys.

Campbell rolls his eyes. “She’s about five foot eight. Long brown hair. Works out, although she needs to be careful, because she blew out her right knee in eighth grade. Uneven surfaces are a bitch for her.”

I stop and backtrack. Tall and athletic with a right knee injury? “What happened in eighth grade?”

“She was playing flag football. A douchebag with an inferiority complex and bad technique took her down. He ended up crushing her right knee.”

“Man that sucks.” Hammer shudders. “No more talk about that. Bad juju for the locker room.”

“I thought you had a brother named Eliot,” Jesse calls.

“Nah, my sister’s name is Eliot because my dad had naming rights.”

Tall and athletic with a right knee injury, and a boy’s name? She said it was different. It has to be her.

“Yeah, bring your sister to dinner.” The smile I turn on Campbell is so big he stumbles back. “It’s good for the team that we get to know your family.”

“Since when?” Hammer stands, buck ass naked. “I asked if you wanted to have dinner with me and my sister this summer, and you said no.”

“Your sister tried to molest me under the table during the family dinner at the Spring game,” I remind him.

“Someone’s got to punch your V-card, man. Might as well be my sister.”

“You know the rules,” Matty, another lineman, interrupts. He’s got dark eyebrows from his mother’s Columbian side that always makes him look serious. “No girlfriends. No sisters.”

“That’s a stupid ass rule. My sister is high quality WAG material,” Hammer protests. Hammer’s tried to get one of us to take his sister off his hands ever since he found out she was dating a twenty-five-year-old.

“Your sister is also underage.” I tighten my grip on the towel. I’d sat across from Hammer’s then seventeen-year-old sister, who had rubbed her foot against my dick the entire three-hour dinner. I ended up leaving my seat and standing for the last hour, citing a slight groin pull.

“You’re a virgin?”

We all swivel back to Campbell, who appears rooted to the spot.

“Yeah, man, but don’t bring that up at any parties.” Hammer rushes over and Campbell backs up so Hammer’s free-swinging dick doesn’t slap Campbell in the balls.

“You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.” It’s not a secret and I’m certainly not ashamed.

Hammer puts his arm around Campbell. “Jack Flash, you were fly out there today, but let me tell you a secret. You will get no pussy at a party this year if you bring up Masters’ V-card. All those sweet honeys rubbing against you on the dance floor will get it into their heads that we all want virtuous chicks. We don’t. We want to get laid.”

I roll my eyes. These guys haven’t spent a night without company since they stepped foot on campus.

“Don’t forget the line of girls who want to be the one to convince Masters to give it up,” Matty chirps.

“Yeah, man, it poisons the well. Don’t do it.” Hammer makes a gun with his fingers and points it at Jack, who appears dumbfounded by this information. Newbies. What can you do?