’FUCK!’
As David lay there, he realized he’d accidentally peed on himself, adding to his misery.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at the mess. Other people could cut loose and have a few cocktails after finals. But, when David did it, he found himself lost, in pain, and wanting to crawl back into his bed to sleep for another day or two.
He grimaced. As good as sleep sounded, he had stuff to do today.
“And I’m going to puke,” he mumbled to himself as he turned over and crawled to the toilet.
David spent the next several minutes purging the poison that had taken up residence in his stomach. When he was done, he felt a bit better. That worked until David brushed his teeth; the minty taste was his undoing. He was soon back hovering over the toilet as he dry-heaved. This was totally special. This was why he didn’t drink.
He got undressed and stepped into the shower. He chuckled when he noticed the water almost turned black after he stuck his head into the spray. It was a good thing the paparazzi couldn’t see him at that moment.
After his shower, David ventured downstairs to make himself some dry toast and a big glass of water. He found a chipper Cassidy making breakfast.
“I called the cleaning lady. She took one look and went back to get reinforcements.”
He just nodded. Then Cassidy smiled.
“Did it work?”
David blinked because he had no idea what she was talking about.
“You tried to get me drunk. You said that we would be so hungover that neither of us would remember why we were drinking last night.”
He closed his eyes, which was a mistake because the world tilted again. When he almost fell off the stool he was sitting on, Cassidy barked out a laugh.
“Here. Eat this, and then go for a run to sweat it out. Trust me on this one,” Cassidy said confidently.
She’d shoved a pancake in front of him. After he ate it, he did feel better.
The concrete street reflected the early summer sun and added to his headache.
David’s body found a comfortable pace as he began to think. Last night’s events started to come back to him. He remembered having a great time as he partied with all the new people that had come into his life since he’d arrived on campus. Seeing them all together made him realize just how many there were.
The highlight of the evening had been when the USC Song Girls had shown up and wanted to dance. That was when the party had really started. He remembered, towards the end of the night, climbing on the table and dancing with Milena’s best friend, the redhead.
David struggled for a moment to remember her name.
’Taylor!’
Things got a bit sketchy after that. He did remember looking for Milena, and someone told him that she’d just left. He must have tried to find her; he recalled wandering the street for a bit.
David shook his head when he realized how dumb that was. He vaguely remembered someone finding him and bringing him back to the townhouse. He seemed to recollect two people helping him wobble up the stairs and putting him to bed. David had no idea who they were; it was all too fuzzy.
His mind wandered off into thinking about all that had happened to get him to this point.
It felt as though at every turn, there was some sort of mixed signals, something that he’d failed to recognize or decipher. It started with the fiasco at Oklahoma. Hindsight was 20/20, and now that some time had passed, David could see every misstep he’d made. If he’d just slowed down and thought it through, he would have been able to work it out.
Instead, he’d been worn down after months of sixteen-plus-hour days of work, making three movies in record time. He should have gone to the campus and talked directly with the interim athletic director. If he had, David would’ve discovered that Stewart Chadwick was behind his problems. It wouldn’t have taken long for him to work it out from there.
The flip side was that the head coach hadn’t fought for him. If David had been in the coach’s position and given his word, he would have made them fire him or make it right. Knowing that his head coach wouldn’t go to the mat for him told him everything he needed to know.
USC wasn’t much better at keeping their word. In their case, they had a coach who made promises that he obviously didn’t intend to keep. If David hadn’t been able to tell that USC was due for a coaching change soon, transferring would have been a likely scenario. Still, all the reasons that David had decided to come to USC remained valid: he was close to his family; USC was a kick-ass school educationally; and they were a traditional powerhouse. However, looking at the total package objectively, it still wasn’t necessarily the right place for him to land.
Again, the mixed signals had cause him to make a hasty decision. Both Alabama and Ohio State had switched quarterbacks over the offseason. David knew that he would have at least been given a chance to show what he could do at other schools.
Though things hadn’t gone as planned, David was confident that even if USC looked to be a busted play, this was the kind of environment he could thrive in. If he focused on reading the signs correctly moving forward, rather than reacting to the spur-of-the-moment, he was confident he could make the right moves. Throw him into the middle of chaos, and that was when the magic happened. Now that David had the clear underpinnings of a plan, he had no doubt that he would be playing in a championship game before he graduated.
He honestly wasn’t in a hurry to become the starting quarterback for several reasons. First, while he wanted to someday play in the NFL, that wasn’t his primary objective right now; getting his education was. He was on track to earn his bachelor’s degree in another two years. Second, he couldn’t enter the NFL draft until he’d been out of high school for at least three years. If he redshirted this coming year and then started next, he could get it done.
It wasn’t ideal to only have one year as a starter in college before he entered the draft. But that was just one of those nitpicky arguments that draft gurus liked to throw around; there were a number of one-year starters who made it in the NFL. David’s other favorite reason to dis the gurus was their occasional comments that someone had small hands. There were plenty of small-handed quarterbacks starting in the NFL, and some of them had excellent professional stats.
The main reason David wasn’t pushing hard to start as quarterback this year was that USC had had zero continuity with their offensive line coaches. They’d run through a series of them over the past several years. Because they kept switching, the players had to adjust to a new coaching style every season. Each of the coaches also had a different idea of the types of players they wanted to fit their particular style. That made both recruiting and development of linemen a confusing mess for everyone involved.
Places like Wisconsin and Alabama had systems to develop talent regardless of the coach. Unlike them, USC didn’t. To add to the confusion, USC had had three recent coaching changes at the top. That had allowed each of the successive offensive line coaches they’d hired to use his own scheme and development methods. That was a problem because the offensive line was the one group where you couldn’t just plug in a great recruit and be successful. Young, inexperienced linemen, and even experienced linemen in a new scheme they were unsure of, would get their quarterback killed.
To build a great line, each player had to be developed over time and trained to work together with his fellow linemen. That included teaching the backups to be able to step in at any time because injuries were almost a given. USC’s most significant weakness was player development; the majority of the coaches’ time was spent with the starters. That was fine in the NFL, which only took players that had already been developed, but taking a lineman from high school to college ball was utterly different.