Calvin Daniels

I'd rather be doing anything else than what I am doing right now. I feel like I've been called to the principal's office. The General Manager's office is stuffy, and it smells like corned beef in here. I think this is only the second time I've been in this office since I was drafted in 2001. I've played my entire career in one place, but something tells me that's about to change. It's been rumored in the press for months now, but I try not to pay attention to that shit. I just want to play ball. No matter how much I keep to myself, the press is always there to trump up some bullshit that never even happened. You've heard about the wild orgy I threw on Lesbos, haven't you? I've never even been to Greece. Now, I'm not saying I've been a saint, but I haven't been a manwhore either. I'm forty years old. I've been in a few relationships over the years, but nothing serious, and I never loved any of them. There is a girl, though. A girl I can't have and shouldn't want.

"Well, Daniels, it's official. You've been traded." Traded. I knew it. It was either that, or I was being fired.

"Traded?" I repeat, knowing here and now know my twenty-year career is over. I am one of the oldest quarterbacks still playing the game at my age, but I feel that I at least have a couple of years left in me. A mid-season trade is never a good thing, in my opinion. It marks the end of a career, and everyone knows it.

"The Alaskan Malamutes are trading you for two quarterbacks," Barry says. Barry White is a former player himself but recently retired and became the GM of the Valdosta Wildcats.

"Can I refuse?" I ask, knowing that I would never turn down the job. I am the job, and I'm very good at what I do.

"Of course, you can, but I wouldn't. They are going to pay you three times the amount you got from us."

"Three times?" I ask incredulously. My current contract is worth twenty million dollars. There's a hell of a lot of things I can do with the kind of money the Malamutes want to pay me.

"Yes, plus incentives. It's all outlined here," he says, sliding a packet of papers across his desk to me.

"Alaska," I murmur. Specifically, Anchorage. Torque, my hometown, is roughly three hours from Anchorage. Just last year, when the league announced two new teams were coming, it was a big deal. One went to Wyoming the other was going to Alaska. It was a huge deal that Alaska got a professional football team, but that they chose Anchorage was odd. Who is going to go all the way to Anchorage just to watch a football game? The answer was everybody. Shockingly. The Malamutes have put Alaska on the map for sports. The rest of the country shouldn't underestimate Alaskan's when it comes to team pride. It may be the last frontier still full of vast wilderness, but the cities have modernized with the rest of the country.

I grew up on ten acres of land in a three-story log cabin with my parents, four brothers, and my baby sister. I went to the local K-12 school that didn't offer sports. There were three people in my graduating class, one of which was my best friend, Darren Holland. It'll be good to see him after all these years too. He owns his own business and works from home but talking on the phone or over email doesn't do much, but recently, I've been noticing his daughter on social media more and more. I've never met the girl, but God, she's gorgeous. Just seeing her picture made me want to change my ways. I haven't been with a woman in five years because of that girl. Going home will mean I can finally claim her.

As for my family, my parents have visited me in Georgia, but they are homebodies through and through. I've seen all of my brothers at least a few times, but my sister, Cherry, has never been any further than Anchorage. She doesn't want to go anywhere else.

Torque is a small town. Its population is only 1,100. I think there has been one murder in sixty years. Violent crime, in general, is pretty much non-existent. The majority of arrests are for DUIs and alcohol consumption. I didn't even have a chance to play football until college. I remember walking onto the field for the first time and feeling just as at home there as I did in Torque. The rest is history. I'm good at my job, and it makes me a lot of money. I'll follow the money in this case, follow it all the way home.

After all of these years, I'm finally going home. Bleak though it may be, I am determined to make it home again.

"Welcome home, son," my dad says, hugging me in the middle of the airport. Being back in Alaska is bittersweet. We haven't seen much of each other, the Daniels clan, and we are all to blame on that front, but I could have made an effort. Once I was drafted, I never looked back, and I knew that was wrong of me.

"Thanks, Pop. Where's Mom?" I ask, knowing that not much could keep her from being here. She's my biggest fan. We're waiting by the conveyor belt for my bags. The rest of my things are being shipped, but they couldn't give me a realistic time frame for when they will arrive, so I brought the essentials myself.

"Cherry is in labor," he says. That'll do it. Mom never leaves her side when she's giving birth. Cherry is having her seventh, God, possibly eighth child, and I've never met any of them. They are all home births and all in Torque. I've prayed my ass off every time she goes into labor because there is no hospital nearby. The closest one is here in Anchorage. If something were to go wrong, it would be catastrophic. Her husband, Clint, the only other person to graduate from Torque School, class of 2000, hates this. He'd much prefer her to go to town to have the kids, but she wants to do it the way women in Torque have done it since the 1800s, and how can you argue with that? I haven't met any of my brother's children either. God, I am the worst uncle on the planet. There's no time like the present to remedy that shit.

"Gotcha. We should go home," I tell him, grabbing my bags off of the belt.

"What about your fancy townhouse?" he asks, reminding me that the team has gotten me a fully furnished place in the suburbs. The only perk is that it has a private gym because I hate working out with others. The guys on the Wildcats said that it's my one quirk, my diva thing. Whatever, I like to work out alone. I don't need anyone critiquing me or giving me shit while I get shit done.

"I can get settled in later. I want to be there for my family." I wasn't able to do it before, but things are going to change now that I'm home.

It honestly feels like everything is about to change for me, and I want that.