He was my employee. That’s all this was.
4
Mikey
So maybe going away had been my idea, not Coach’s. But when I’d casually mentioned sending Tiller to Colorado in front of my dad, he’d blown out a giant exhale of relief. “Yes, please. Get him the fuck off my bench and send him home,” Coach had said. “Moose’ll set him straight.”
I didn’t mention I was going too and we weren’t actually staying with Tiller’s parents. If he found out Tiller and I were going to a secluded mountain cabin alone, he would assume we were sleeping together and blow a gasket. So I let him believe Tiller was going to Jill and Moose’s place for the holiday and I was visiting a friend from college in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
I felt like a sneaky teenager which made me feel like an ass whose father had way too strong of an influence over him. Even though I was pushing thirty, my father remained the single most influential person in my life. How pathetic was that?
When we got to the check-in counter at the airport, I split off to go to the regular people’s line while Tiller headed for the first-class one. It took him a second to realize I was no longer behind him, but when he did, he hissed at me loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Get over here, you moron.”
I dutifully followed, knowing from years of experience how this was going to play out.
“I can’t fucking believe you did this again,” he snapped under his breath.
“You cuss like my dad,” I muttered. “And you know how I feel about spending your money.”
When it was our turn at the counter, Mr. NFL Superstar turned on his charm and laid down his celebrity card. “Hi…” He squinted at the woman’s name tag. “Nessa. How are you this morning?”
She blushed right on cue and fluttered her fake eyelashes. “I’m doing great, thanks! How can I help you today, Mr. Raine?”
He put his hand on top of my head and turned me to face Nessa. “My assistant here made a mistake when he booked our reservations, and I need to upgrade him to first class to sit with me, please. We have some work to do, and I don’t want to waste our time in the air.”
It was bullshit, of course. He just preferred sitting next to someone who wouldn’t pester him about his job, the team, stats, and insider information. When I was his seatmate, he had a buffer between him and the oftentimes rabid Rigger fandom. It didn’t hurt that I was so much smaller than he was and he wouldn’t have any issues fitting his giant shoulders and legs into the space between our seats. First-class seats were big, but not NFLer big.
She clicked on her keyboard and sighed, huffed, and scraped her upper lip with her bottom teeth before finally letting out an ah-ha noise. “Got it. Gimme just one… there. I’ll print these new boarding passes out for you and get your bags checked in.”
When Tiller tried handing over his credit card, she blushed again and pushed his hand away, her own hand lingering on his. I turned around so I could roll my eyes without being rude to her face. The businessman behind us in line caught my eye.
“Is that Tiller Raine?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “Bobby Simplethorn. You probably know him from that hemorrhoid commercial.”
The man looked at me in total confusion. “What?”
I sang a little jingle. “Nothing softens bottom thorns quite like Simplethorn… No? You don’t know it? Huh. Bobby here is the CEO. That miracle cream is his baby. I can introduce you if you want?”
The man winced. “Uh, no. That’s okay. Thanks, though.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
When I turned back to face the lady at the counter, I found both her and Tiller staring at me. Nessa turned to look at Tiller with a raised brow.
“No,” he said before she could ask. “The closest I’ve come to hemorrhoids is dealing with this pain in my ass.” He thumbed at me over his shoulder. “And now I’m regretting the seat change.”
Nessa looked confused, so I leaned forward and plucked the boarding passes out of her hand before she had a chance to change her mind. I’d already mentally ordered my first free drink and wasn’t about to give up the chance at an in-flight buzz courtesy of Tiller Raine’s largesse. Or, Nessa’s largesse as the case may have been.
“Thank you so much, Nessa. Have a wonderful day.”
I turned to head toward the TSA area when I heard Nessa call out, “Have a safe flight! You too, Mr. Raine. Good luck against the Jaguars on Sunday!”
There was a familiar beat of silence in which time seemed suspended. I’d often referred to this moment as similar in feel to putting on a pair of powerful, noise-canceling headphones. It was almost like the air around us formed a vacuum for a moment, sucking in and pressing against us before rushing out like the tide and grabbing up every fucking Rigger fan within a ten-mile radius.
Sure enough, after the beat of silence, it was mayhem. Fans came out of the woodwork, including airport employees, a nearby pilot, three families, and untold numbers of business men and women. Everyone was friendly and patient, but no one more so than Tiller Raine, who thrived in situations like this one.
He was a natural around his fans. You’d never know that they intimidated the hell out of him. He was always worried about disappointing them. One of the first things he’d said to me when I’d started accompanying him in public was to always treat the fans with respect no matter how they acted. At first, I thought it was the same old “the customer is always right” mentality everyone had in sales. Don’t piss off a season ticket holder. My father had said it in front of me tons of times over the years. It took me a little while to realize how different that was from Tiller’s motivation.
“Without them, I wouldn’t be living my dream,” he’d told me one night after I’d almost lost my temper at a fan who wouldn’t get out of Tiller’s face. We’d been at the grocery store late at night to satisfy someone’s frozen greek yogurt bar craving (hint, it wasn’t mine), and the man in line behind us had practically demanded an inside scoop on the upcoming game. Tiller had said it so calmly, and then he’d laughed when I’d gawped at him.
But once I’d calmed down, I’d realized he was right. And knowing how much he cared about his fans, his job, and the team had given me a newfound respect for him. Before that, I’d seen players come and go from the Riggers without seeming to care about much more than their team paycheck and endorsements. They mostly indulged fan’s requests for pictures, hugs, and autographs when asked, but I’d only ever met a couple of players before Tiller who’d truly embraced the fans as the reason for their success.
So I stood there in the airport terminal and held Tiller’s leather backpack while he laughed and chatted and signed autographs until a security guard came to escort us to the gate. Tiller thought it was generous VIP treatment, but I thought it was more likely TSA’s need to clear the area near the security checkpoint.
Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.
“That was fun,” Tiller said as we walked through a corridor to a single security checkpoint. Two women who looked vaguely familiar in a “were you on Real Housewives” kind of way went through ahead of us. The security escort brought us to the gate and handed us over to the gate agents, who promptly tittered with excitement and hustled us onto the plane to introduce Tiller to the pilot, who was a big fan. I tossed a polite smile and nod at the tall, good-looking man in uniform and found my seat. By the time Tiller had done his thing with Captain Tall & Sexy, I was settled with everything just so.