I tapped between my legs with a proud smile, and Gemma rolled on her back in a fit of laughter.
When she sat back up, she watched me for a long while with a knowing smile. “Belle. I ran out of fingers.” She held up all ten to show. “So, if we’re going by what you do know about him… I’d say you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Nothing to worry about, I echoed in my mind.
I wondered if I’d ever be able to believe it.
Makoa
Training camp was a strange kind of torture.
Any player would be lying if they said they hated it. Then again, any player would be lying if they said they loved it. Because the truth of the matter lay somewhere in between, and which end of the scale that truth landed on depended heavily on the day and the time of day.
Of course, we were all ecstatic to get out and play. For a lot of the guys, it’d been weeks since they’d touched a ball or ran a play. Even if they hadn’t taken a real vacation and had been running drills and working out as strenuously as I had, they hadn’t played with their team, in their colors, with that familiar adrenaline rushing through their veins and reminding them that each second ticked them closer and closer to the first kick-off of the season.
The slate was clean.
We all had a chance to make it.
And the team had a chance to make it to the big game.
It was exciting, to see guys you hadn’t seen in a while or, in my case, to meet a whole new team of guys. There was a lot of laughing, a lot of pranking each other, a lot of that high that comes only with getting the perfect snap or perfect catch or perfect block. There was a reason most football players would say their team is like their family, and much of that was born at camp.
All that being said, camp was also fucking brutal.
It was long days that started before the sun came up, and didn’t end until long after it went down. It was hours of meetings, two-a-day practices, scrimmages and drills. It was watching film until your eyes crossed, being twisted up and mashed on by an athletic trainer before being sent out for more work on the field, and lifting weights even when your muscles were so sore it hurt to lift a toothpick. It was fine-tuning techniques, pushing even when you were exhausted to try to stand out to the offensive and head coaches, and above all, treating every second like it was your last chance to prove you deserved a spot on the team.
It didn’t matter that no decisions would be made about who would be cut and who would stay for a few weeks yet. To even get that far, you had to get time on the field during the pre-season games.
That’s what I was after.
When the team had signed me as a free agent, it wasn’t lost on me that they signed at least a dozen other guys, knowing full well that they’d cut them just as easily if they didn’t fit where the team needed them to. Fortunately for me, the Bears needed a better receiving game, and I pushed through every sore muscle and ounce of exhaustion to prove I was the guy for the job.
On the last week of camp, the fans were invited to watch us scrimmage, and the entire team was alive with the buzz that came from them cheering us on. Gerald and I were standing next to each other, signing a few balls and jerseys — though most of the fans were crowding the other end of the field, where our starting quarterback, receivers, O-line, and defense were.
They didn’t know me yet, the few fans who passed me their balls with shy smiles or you did great out there encouragements.
But my hope was that by the end of the season, they’d be proud of that signature I left.
“I don’t know about you, man,” Gerald said, clapping me on the shoulder when the last of the fans were making their way out of the training facility. “But I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
I chuckled. “Think you’re going to have to wait until the end of the season for that.”
“Or the first Tuesday off. I’d take even a full day of sleep if I can’t get a whole week,” he rebutted. Then, he nodded