Free Tackled (Alpha Ballers #1) by Lucy Snow Page B

can’t live like this!” I had not lived with a roommate in….I had never had a roommate!

    The assistant disappeared. “Take it up with the management if you have a complaint.”

    “I’ll do that!” I called out after him.

    “I wouldn’t recommend it!” he called back, farther away this time.

    I picked my bag back up and threw it on the bed closer to the window. I sat down next to it and looked around.

    This room fucking sucked. There was no way I could stay here for a month. Not with a roommate. With any luck I’d have a lineman staying with me, some giant dude who snored. Ugh.

    How could I get my own room?

    I couldn’t even find a room service menu, what kind of place was this? I was better off in New York, at least there a guy could get some service!

    I sat there feeling sorry for myself, wondering how I had gotten to this place, where I was a no-name undrafted free agent begging for scraps, willing to do anything to even make a team, let alone get a huge contract and endorsement deals like I had dreamed.

    Of course, then memories of all the fun I had had during and after college came rushing back, and that put a smile on my face. I wondered what the policy around here was like for having girls over. I needed to find that out quick. I scrolled through my phone, wondering which girls I knew were local, and which would have to fly in.

    I looked to my right and saw the other bed. Ugh. Maybe this wouldn’t work out at all.

    The door opened and a bag came in, carried by a guy I had seen before when doing research on the Patriots. I wasn’t a fan of a particular team as a kid, I just liked watching all the greats do their thing under the bright lights, and try to pick up those moves and put my own spin on them.

    And I had lit up the high school and college game doing it.

    That meant when I found out I would be a New England Patriot, I didn’t really know anything about them, and I had done a little bit of research on the way here.

    The guy was tall, a couple inches taller than me. Built, like he knew his way around a gym, but that was every football player, though some did have a habit of arriving to training camp 30-40 pounds overweight. Not this guy.

    This guy was Lance Parker, the quarterback of the New England Patriots. He had a reputation for being a choir boy.

    “Hey!” He smiled as he dropped his bag and came over to me. “I’m Lance Parker. You must be Drake Rollins.”

    I stood up, a little surprised he knew my name at first, but I regained my composure quick. “Yeah, man, Drake Rollins. Good to meet you.”  

    “Looks like we’re gonna be roommates.” Lance turned around and set his bag on his bed.

    “Yeah? You sure there wasn’t some mixup with the room assignments?”

    Lance laughed. “No, man, nothing like that. Coach Armstrong has a weird way of doing things. This is only my second year, but I learned that in the first week last year. Expect the unexpected around here.”

    “Yeah?” Last year Lance had gone nearly undrafted, taken in like the sixth round or something. He had been a backup his first year, but after last season, the team had shipped the starter out of town for some draft picks, betting it all on Lance to take over. They had drafted a new backup in the 4 th or 5 th round, I thought.

    Lance unzipped his bag and started unloading things, still turned away from me. “It’s not just a way of doing things around here, it’s a way of life.” He put some things away in one of the drawers on the end table next to his bed and sat down. “You’ll find out about it soon enough,” he said with a grin.

    “Any tips? I want to make a good impression, make sure I get to stick around a while.”

    “Good man. Trouble is, the tips are just cliches by this point, stuff I’m sure you’ve heard your entire life. Try your hardest, try and get better each day, and don’t sweat the small stuff.”

    “You’re right, I have heard that stuff all