That’s the amount of times I’ve been invited for an interview on live TV. You’ve probably seen me already on one of those talk shows. Why the media took such an interest in me, I have no idea, but I rode that wave as hard as I could. The Princess of the League, some newspapers started calling me. It was weird at first, seeing my face plastered on the cover of a bunch of magazines, but I grew accustomed to all that.
My Instagram account blew up from a measly 150 subscribers to more than a million in just a few weeks. Yeah, one million; how crazy is that? I never thought people would be that interested in seeing what I had for breakfast, especially taking into account that it’s usually just cereal and a piece of toast. I never thought I’d have so many notifications on my cellphone that it would crash. I actually had to buy a new one so that I could use Facebook and Instagram without it going batshit crazy every time I posted a new photo.
I also got some proposals to do a few modeling gigs, but so far I’ve turned them all down. I don’t want to get distracted with all the fame and blow the opportunity I fought so hard for at Price Coopers. I might be turning into some kind of celebrity, but I will never let that get to my head, or has that already happened? Because, I admit, I might've been somewhat unprepared to deal with all this. Why? Well…
One.
Danny lost just one game and the dark side of the media reared its ugly head. That happened two days ago; we were spotted leaving a restaurant a bit late (not scandalously late, mind you), and when Danny had a terrible game the next day, everyone started piling up on me. I went from savior to being the devil’s spawn in a matter of hours.
Right now I’m holed up in his apartment, my eyes puffy and swollen from all the crying I’ve done. Danny left a few hours ago for his morning workout and, since it’s Saturday, I sat down on his couch and propped my laptop up; I was in for a surprise.
I’m still reading through all the articles and thousands of Facebook posts made about me. Do you want to know how many times I’ve been called a gold digger? Too many to count. Not to mention that people got in their heads that there's a problem in our relationship, which translated as Danny’s weak performance two days ago.
It’s not like he played that badly, anyway. It was just an average performance, nothing to write home about, and since every single team is thirsty for blood, they did their best to steamroll the Nailers—and steamroll them is exactly what they did.
Trouble in paradise? One article reads, stating all the reasons why Danny wasn’t his heroic self during that last game, all of them, spoiler, concerning me.
“Fiona has to go”, some bald overweight pundit is blabbering on TV right now, telling his viewers that, instead of helping Danny, I’m hampering his performance. Seriously?
You know what I need to do? Tune all this out. I close my laptop, shut down the TV and stretch; maybe I’ll do some yoga to clear my head. I’m sure that in a few days nobody’s going to care about this. Danny will be back to winning, and no one will care about the game he lost. Besides, the media loves me so much that I doubt they’ll completely turn against me.
Yeah, that’s it. In a day or two things will go back to normal, and then I’ll be back to being America’s darling once more.
Or so I hope.
65
Danny
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I’ve just got home and I can already tell that something’s not quite right. She’s usually on me before I take two steps inside of the apartment, and by the time I take off my shoes I usually have already made her cum twice. But now she’s sitting on the couch, wearing yoga pants with a blanket over her head and a giant bowl of ice cream on her lap. Sigh, this again.
“Look at that,” she points at the television without even looking at me, waving the spoon she has in her fingers at the guy on the TV. “He’s saying that I’m a bad role model for young girls.”
Without saying a word I just go around the couch, grab the remote, and turn off the TV. “Hey!” she protests, but I’m not even listening now.
“Why are you watching that crap, Fiona?” I ask her, sitting down by her side and taking the bowl of ice cream out of her lap. She’s gorgeous even in her old yoga pants, so I pull her into me, propping her up on my knees and pressing my mouth on hers.
Her face lightens up with a smile and she turns around, opening her legs and straddling me.
“I missed you,” she whispers, pressing her forehead against mine. She’s happy to see me, that much I can tell, but there’s a sadness in her voice that I’m not really into.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been watching that bullshit on TV since you got here,” I say, and the look on her face gives away the answer. I gave her my spare key, and told the doorman she could come up anytime because I wanted her around, not because I wanted her to be gorging on the news.
“What was it today?” I ask her, vaguely aware that the media has been raising a shit storm since that last game. That’s all I know, though, I don’t give a fuck about what some asshole on the TV says about me. As far as I’m concerned they could be saying I’m a fucking alien from Mars hell bent on dominating the human race,
and I wouldn’t care any more than I do right now.
Of course, now that I’m with Fiona, maybe I should start caring. This bullshit has started to take a toll on her. Even though she’s a natural in front of the camera, she’s too green to handle the ugly media beast. And I guess she’s slowly starting to realize it.
“Oh, the usual. They’re still being hard asses about that loss,” she whispers, sliding her hand down my chest and guiding her fingers to my crotch. By now I already have a massive hard-on, and I’m only half-listening to what she’s saying. Hey, don’t look at me like that; when it comes to sex, I’m a one-track kind of man.
“Fuck ‘em,” I whisper, running my fingers through her hair and yanking on it. She throws her head back and I press my lips against her neck, slowly kissing her skin in a downward line that leads straight to her breasts.
“They’ll come around,” she says, placing both her hands on my neck and sighing heavily. Somehow, I don’t like the way that sounds. They’ll come around; what does that even mean? Does she care that much about what these assholes think?
“Fiona, fuck, forget about them,” I say, looking her straight in the eye. “Who cares if they come around, or if they hate us for all eternity?”
“I care,” she tells me, and I just blink my eyes, staring at her in disbelief.