Never Before Ever After

CHAPTER 2

The Baller

A R C H E R

“I love you babe.” She smiles widely at the camera from the video that I had taken a few years ago. She pushes her beautiful blond hair away from her sixteen-year-old face which never changed even after ten years of being together, and she was still as youthful as possible. She was pretty and had always been pretty no matter how she looks and she had always been the only woman that I have ever loved at the age of fifteen. “But you need to get rid of that thing right now because I look so ugly right now.”

“No you are not.” I answered her from the video.

She was always wrong when she said she looked ugly because there never was a day when she was ugly. For me, she was always beautiful and always had the perfect skin complexion, perfect eyes, perfect smile and perfect in every thing because to me she was.

“Archie come on,” She hollered as the camera was pointing at her.

I could hear my sixteen year old self responding, “What?” Chuckling, even.

She spun around and faced me instead of the camera lens as she pushed it down, away from her face and gritted her teeth as if she was angry at me, “I told you to stop recording.”

“Come on, you know how I love recording you so when we get married in the future, we can use this as memories of how madly in love you were with me.” My sixteen year old self answered the love of my life.

Yes I have always envisioned myself marrying her and only her.

She laughed as she planted a kiss on my lips, something that we had only and always done since fifteen till we were seventeen. “I love you but we both know you are more madly in love with me.”

She was right, as I was reminded after viewing this video once again. She was my source of happiness and knew me better than anyone else, with the exception of my best friend Clint, who does not really play basketball but our differences have allowed us to become the best of friends since we were only ten years old. I was definitely more in love with her than she was with me, but I was okay with that because she was my source of happiness. I was willing to give the entire world to her and give her everything I could as much as I could because I love her so much.

I forwarded the video since it was the part where we were cuddling and kissing on the bed.

“Do you love me?” Sixteen year old Maxine asked as she was on top of me, hovering over me with her face and a beautiful smile on her face as the camera was placed on the side table drawer.

“Yes.” I answered proudly.

“More than basketball?” She asked.

I love Maxine but basketball has always been my first love.

I smiled at her, “I love you in a way that is totally different from basketball but I will love you above any other woman in this entire world.”

When my hands began to massage her spine and our tongues began to play together, she grinned and gave me another kiss which was more sensual and deeper. Since we began dating at the tender age of fifteen, we have remained virgins together, and we both made commitments to have s*x once we turned eighteen. However, it never happened since our hormones were evolving and the thought of wanting for more from each other’s bodies were enveloping our minds, and neither did we keep our promises to one another because we started having s*x for the first time when we were just seventeen years old right on the night of prom.

We continued doing it since it was giving us the kind of pleasure that we never actually felt before and it became something that further cemented our bond. And while using a condom always made for fantastic s*x since s*x ed had always reminded us to use protection, f*****g raw was more enjoyable and watching her suck my d**k drove me insane with how great she was the more we have s*x. In the end, I put a lot of effort into honing my ability to draw away before I arrived, and I believe I was so proficient that I never once missed.

Ten years later, Maxine and I are still a couple and have become professional adults in our own ways. After she graduated in college in flying colors, majoring in Business Administration, she became a manager of LUX Hotel which my best friend Clint works for as the vice-president since his dad owns it. I am so proud of Maxine as much as she is so proud of me for the achievements that I have had accomplished as an NBA Star. We are both functioning in completely different worlds but we always made time for each other as much as we could though she is residing in New York and I am most of the time in Los Angeles for my basketball career while traveling mostly everywhere to play against other teams.

Although we were always apart from each other because of the distance and the busy schedules we both share, especially from my end, I made sure to always give her time on her own when she would ask me because I respect her as much as I respect our relationship. Since I am a very private person, our relationship has been hidden from the rest of the world because I have always wanted to give her privacy. The kind of privacy where there are no random people would come at her, ask her for pictures when she does not want to and disrespect her or take advantage of taking pictures of her in the most inappropriate way.

I wanted to keep someone so important to me hidden from the world because my NBA Superstar life is completely different from my personal life, two things that I do not want to collide with. In the back of my head, when a relationship is open to too much public scrutiny it could lead to something absolutely negative. Moreover, we are both in a long term and very committed relationship with marriage in our mind, so my partner is my main priority above everyone else in my life aside from basketball. Keeping my relationship with Maxine private allows me to respect and honor her because I will not be sharing our weaknesses, insecurities and vulnerabilities with the world which is filled with people who always have something to say about anything and anyone.

My father has always prepared me to become a professional basketball player when I was drafted at the age of nineteen. I have been practicing the sport since I was four years old and until today, I am still trying to perfect my mistakes even though most of my fans have always thought that I never make mistakes in playing but I always know when I am making a mistake in playing during every game. My father always tells me that I am being too hard on myself every single time.

Prior to retiring at the age of forty due to a severed Achilles tendon after playing as Center, my father was a professional basketball player. Since I was in high school, he has continued to coach me and teach me everything he knows about the game. I have put everything he taught me into practice and have won a ton of titles and MVP awards every game in which we placed the medals and trophies on this huge shelf in our home.

I was Wingfield High School's youngest starting player when I was there, and as a result, we won back-to-back titles before I graduated and proceeded to pursue becoming a pro player which I achieved immediately.

The first team I signed a contract with was the Philadelphia Brawlers before I was offered a bigger amount of money to pay for Los Angeles Pythons which I have been playing for five years now.

Despite the fact that many people talk about me and my accomplishments, thanking me for the things I had professionally accomplished, there are still those who would doubt and question my ability to play ball. For people who solely want to bring you down, your accomplishments from a young age are never enough. However, they have never been able to do so since I am constantly at the top of my game. I have never actually had anything chemically injected or orally taken, despite the fact that the majority of news reports would have you believe that I use steroids or power boost to give me an adrenaline rush before playing the game I love. In each and every NBA game I play, I always give a hundred and ten percent of what I have to always win every single game I could play.

Despite the criticism I receive from others, the harshest criticism I could possibly receive is from myself. As a result, I constantly accuse myself of not giving each game my all or of choosing to do one thing instead of another. I had received advice from my father and my Pythons teammates to never allow myself to be my worst critic and to at least acknowledge my role as my team's leading scorer. I still find myself condemning myself more, though.

I immediately boarded a private jet after defeating Boston and ending the conference to fly to New York at around eleven o’clock in the evening, where I changed into a suit in preparation to surprise Maxine at the apartment I had purchased for her a few years back and turned into a home we can call ours. I knew today was the day to get down on one knee and ask her the question that I have been meaning to since we were just fourteen, I never told her that I was going to visit her since I really wanted to surprise her when I arrived at four in the morning there.

I wanted to ask her for marriage during sunrise since our apartment in New York had this huge glass window where we usually see the sunrise and sunset together when I am around.

I was eager to ask for her hand in marriage because I had vowed to do so whether I defeated Boston in the game or not. Since we have been together for ten years and I had always wanted to get married on the same day as our eleventh year anniversary as boyfriend and girlfriend, which is coming up in a few months, I was at first nervous, but at the same time it seemed right. She always believed that one and one together is meant to be or somewhat a lucky number so I wanted to choose that for her.

Even before going inside our apartment when I got there, I practiced saying my line and wondered which knee I should use to kneel on. Just a few minutes before daylight, it was four eighteen in the morning and I was tremendously nervous as it was building more and more inside my body. A muffled voice then came from the bedroom as I carefully shut the entrance door and observed how quiet the entire living room was but there was muffled noise. She had a crucial meeting tomorrow, so I assumed that is why she went to bed early last night and did not want to speak over the phone late.

However, I quickly forced that notion from my mind that there was something else because maybe it was just the television that she usually leaves on from watching from the night before and moved toward the bedroom door.

The sound of their skins clapping became louder as I drew nearer from the entrance, and I immediately felt my heart race when I heard her moaning from the other side of the door and another man grunting. My hands started to shake as a result of the heat that was rapidly rising up from my wrists to my neck and finally reaching my entire head.

Actually, it was something I had never considered before.

No, not now. She would not throw something away as long as what we shared.

It might just be the television.

I quickly opened the door and my eyes fell on a naked Maxine who was laying on the side of the bed with her legs apart and her breasts being grasped by the hands of another man, who had his d**k inserted within her v****a. Their eyes met mine and they were so big that none of them said a thing, but mine were even wider because the man who was f*****g her on the same bed that Maxine and I would f**k was none other than Clint Kingson, my own best friend of fifteen years.