Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (2 page)

There were a number of things wrong with that statement. I knew what he meant, but he had to be able to tell that the statement itself
really
could have gone either way. Dante being Dante could refer to the fact that the man was well on his way to achieving legendary status in the league and he wasn’t even thirty yet. He had talent out of his ass, and his worst games were comparable to some people's best games. Basketball is a team sport, but the guy
shone
. It was just a fact. Trudeau was probably counting on the guy to get them in the door and win the championship. If
anyone
could take them all the way, it was Dante Rock.

That, of course, relied on a number of factors. There was Dante Rock the star athlete, who everyone expected to succeed, and who
did
succeed. Then there was the other Dante Rock, the one you read about on trashy gossip blogs because he was photographed partying on a yacht or he was banging this girl or the next. He was still sort of a young guy, and he was earning millions of dollars a year. The fact that he had no family, wife, and kids, at least no kids that
he knew about
to support, meant nearly every dollar of that salary was disposable income.

He
disposed
of it extremely well, with no help. It wasn’t a secret that the guy lived in the Hollywood hills in a mansion the size of some small towns on his own. It was not a secret that he collected luxury sports cars the way some people collected stamps. The guy was single and rich; he was living it up. I couldn’t even be mad because somehow, living like a total degenerate, he was still able to perform on the court. He was affectionately referred to as a
bad boy
, which was annoying to me, because all he needed to be in the news for was his job…and that was playing basketball.

Dante was so good at his job, he was such an exceptional player, that that meant his other indiscretions were mostly just overlooked. Oh,
did he have racy pictures of him and a number of unidentified women leaked onto the internet
?
Was there photo and video evidence that he had had a weekend-long bender in Vegas and had maybe managed to burn through hundreds of thousands of dollars in a casino? Was the man with a different model or actress or socialite every other weekend?
It didn’t matter because he would show up to the court the next day and dunk on you, me, your mother, and everyone else.

He had somehow managed to balance the two sides of himself. His partying and his job really depended on each other if you thought about it. He partied as hard as he did because he had the money, station, and resources to do so. He played
so
well
because he needed to get that money in order to keep acting like a hoodlum in his off time. He had a good stasis going and hadn’t gotten into too much trouble… lately.

There were times he would slip and get suspended, but still, overall, he seemed like too much of an asset to his team for them to let him go.

“Dante’s a big player for you guys. Do you think this could be his first championship?” I asked.

“It would be a first championship for a lot of the guys on the team. I think the lineup could get us that win. I’m confident in our players.” I smiled at him.
So diplomatic.
We could just cross our fingers and hope that on game day Dante wasn’t passed out in a villa somewhere in the Caribbean with half their cheer squad.

“Dante seems a little off his game tonight, wouldn’t you say so?” I asked. He looked surprised…like I had blindsided him with that one.

“What the guy does in his personal life is his business. He always delivers when he comes to the court.” That was true. Dante had missed a couple clear shots and had been a little slow, but if this was him when he was bad, he was still better than most of the guys on the court. Trudeau had unintentionally answered a question I hadn’t even asked him. Apparently, Golden Boy Dante had partied a little too hard last night and was paying for it today.

The coach looked over at Dante and waved at him. I panicked, thinking for a second that Dante would come over, but he didn’t. He was on the bench, sitting on his own. He raised his arm acknowledging the coaches greeting. I looked at him and our eyes met. He winked at me. I turned away immediately and thanked the coach for his time.

There was still a little time before the fifteen minute halftime was up. I wanted to talk to some of the players, but there was no way I’d be able to have a whole conversation. You didn’t really know what to expect when it came to the sports types. All of them were athletes, and when it came time for them to interview, you sort of got an idea of who the guys were that
only
had athleticism going for them. It wasn’t funny; it was just interesting. Some of the guys were hopeless at interviews. They were players first, second,
and
last. They didn’t do the cameras-and-media part of the whole deal. These were the guys who made my job harder than it needed to be, but I understood. They were there to play; people like me were just an inconvenience. They would only give me as much as one or two words and force me to ask more and more questions to get them to give anything up. They wouldn’t really look into the camera, and they would give off the vibe that there was literally anywhere on earth that they would rather be than being interviewed by me.

Then there were the media
darlings
, the guys who could hoop and could also charm the fans and have a few interesting things to say. Dante fell under this category. He was great in an interview, and a few other guys really knew how to work the reporters and the press. They had a good time with it, and they were the ones who tended to get the sponsorships and brand deals because they were good talkers. They could be spokespeople for different things and their likeness, personalities, and the fact that they played on this team or that would give them a way to generously supplement their sports-career paychecks.

I thought about Dante again. He was there. I had him in my peripheral, but I didn’t want to look right at him because I thought he would be looking right at me. The wink had been cheeky, and there was no way in hell that I was the only woman that he had ever winked at. There was no way I was the only woman he had even winked at in the last twelve or so hours. It had made me a little nervous, I wasn’t going to lie. Whether or not I was looking right at him, I knew what he looked like.
Who didn’t
? The pictures on the internet were more than enough. They were all there. The man in his uniform, out of his uniform, out of his clothes and in his swimming trunks.
Even in a little less than that, too.

He was tall,
obviously
, but he even looked it, sitting there on the bench. His limbs were long and rangy, padded with lean muscle. He had a face that he could have used successfully in a modeling career. It was the sort of face that was most accurately described as
beautiful
. It was hard and masculine—with enough softness that balanced it out. His eyes and hair were light. The hair was blonde, and his eyes were green. He had dimples in both his cheeks when he smiled, or smirked, which was what he was doing when I decided to take a chance and glance over at him. He looked tanned every time I saw him. I thought it was more to do with his heritage, which was Mediterranean, than his frequent use of tanning beds.

He had a couple tattoos—(that wasn’t an irregular thing for athletes)—but they weren’t visible when he was in his uniform. I knew, not because I had seen them personally, but because I had done my research before coming here today. I had just been talking about him to his coach. Whether or not I wanted him to be, he was a
star
. He was the star. An interview today with the man himself, Dante Rock, was what I needed to get.
It just was.

What could be better than a quote from the man himself? I could ask him about whether he felt pressure being in the position he was in, or what he thought he had to do to make this his first championship. Did he
care
that he had—up to this point—not gotten a championship?

As far as athletes went, he was amazing in front of a camera. He must have had some media training because he was communicative, looked like he paid attention when he was spoken to, and was funny and magnetic when he talked to reporters. He knew
just
what to say, which meant a lot of people like me were clamoring for a chance to talk to him. He was the sort of interviewee who made interviews fun. He made them feel more like a conversation, from what I had seen of him.

I had not interviewed him. At least, I had not interviewed him
yet
.

I had imagined it, because, of course, I had. I was a sports journalist and he was pretty
high
up there on the list of people who were my dream interviews. It would be gold. A real tell-all with Dante Rock, an exclusive where he opened up about his career and his stresses and his history, would do wonders for my career. That sort of piece in my portfolio would be priceless. I wanted it—and maybe today I would be able to get it, or at least get the guy to agree to have it with me.

He wouldn’t say no. What reason would he have to say that? From an assessment of the man’s very public private life, there was no way Dante Rock would be bashful and shy about letting his fans under the hood. I wanted to do, like, a
Behind the Music
, but in
writing
, and not about music, but about basketball, and Dante Rock in particular.

When the game ended, there were interviews in the locker rooms. I would approach him then. Halftime was finally drawing to a close, and I saw the players start to get back onto the court.  I looked to my side and saw Dante there, on his feet, looking at me. I didn’t
think
he was checking me out, but I
felt
like he was. His eyes were penetrating.

“Big fan?” he said to me. I liked the sound of his voice. It was pleasant and smooth. The sort that you could listen to for a long time because it wasn’t annoying or overly raspy. “If you hang around after the game, I can sign your chest.”

I wanted to laugh, if only to hide the effect that the statement had had on me. He was coming onto me, and he had said that phrase as if it was a perfectly decent thing to say to a woman you had never met before and whose first name you didn’t even know. I felt my cheeks heat up a bit, but I needed to keep my cool around him.

“Hm, I think I’ll
pass,
but thanks for the offer.”

“I’m Dante Rock,” he said. Was he? Was he
really
?
Because I hadn’t noticed.
It wasn’t like his last name wasn’t emblazoned on the back of his jersey. That statement on its own was likely all he had to say to some women to get them to come home with him.

“I know who you are,” I told him, trying to sound sure of myself. I had walked up to him so we were about a foot away from each other. He should have looked a little worse than he did, given that he had just played one half of a basketball game. His hair bordered on long, but still sat at around medium length and was wavy. Standing that close, I could see the stubble on his chin and jaw. It was just a
little
bit darker than the hair on his head, but it wasn’t a drastic difference.

“Who do you write for? TMZ?” he asked. I bristled a bit.

“Not a chance,” I said, lightly.
How dare he
? How dare he suggest that I wrote for TMZ! TMZ was a different outlet than the one I worked for, and I didn’t want to judge them that harshly, but
shit
! They made their money, and I didn’t want to knock their hustle, but I had not been through four years of journalism school and accumulated the amount of debt that I had
to work for TMZ
.

“You know, there are a lot of articles about you on there,” I said, trying to hint at the possibility of me writing one on him.

“You’ve been reading about me?” he asked, eyebrows raising and interest obviously piqued. Whether or not he was interested for the right reasons was not something I could as yet tell.

“Nothing
good
. I’m Quinn Blaze.”

“Well, Quinn Blaze, you obviously want something from me,” he said. Was it
that
obvious? Could he read the hunger on my face?

“An exclusive would be nice,” I tried to say to him in a way that I thought of as sweet. I wasn’t trying to flirt; I was just trying to be nice. I wanted him to say yes. That was the whole point of this conversation that was likely going to make him late in a few more seconds if he dragged it on and didn’t just say yes like I wanted him to.