3rd & Long

Chapter 8: Illegal Formation

The door to Nat's apartment creaked loudly as she slowly closed it. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and stared as the notifications kept rolling in. Her phone had legitimately not stopped vibrating ever since the "news" broke out about her and Jeff Giordano. On pretty much every single app possible, she was getting a notification.

On Instagram she was gaining hundreds of followers by the hour. From her earlier total of 3,144, she was now up to 6,724 and counting. She was already anticipating breaking 10k before the day was over, something she once dreamed of but now had woken up to the harsh reality of it.

Under every single post, she was receiving comments from her new "fans." There were some nice ones, congratulating her for bagging Jeffy G or telling her how pretty she was. But the bad ones were a lot more memorable than the good ones, even if they were adequately outnumbered.

There were multiple girls commenting things such as "shes not even that cute" or "he could do better". One verified account commented "THIS is what Jeff ditched his ex for???". Nat had blocked her but not without feeling the wound first. Can't believe people online could be such dicks to strangers.

But the catty girls were nothing compared to the football fanboys. So many of them paraded to her profile and were leaving all sorts of irrelevant yet aggressive comments.

"You better not break his heart, he NEEDS to take us to the Super Bowl."

"Tell your boyfriend he cost my fantasy team major points"

"Jeffy G is banging this?? Damn king"

"I'm giving away $5000 to the first 15 people to DM me"

Nat closed out the app and went to her messages. Never the most popular, Nat was shocked at the amount of people who had texted her asking if the rumors were true. There was of course Raf and Stef, the latter who she had called and explained everything to on the way home from her lunch with Nick. Then came the messages from her family. Her dad was absolutely heartbroken:

Papá: You and Giordano? Mija there's so many Lightning players, did you even try to talk to one?

Nat never told him about her stint with Dustin Haggard. And she would rather have every single one of her teeth pulled out than do it now.

Her mom was excited about the new pairing and was making light of what she had no way of knowing was a serious situation.

Mami: AY Nat, good for you!!! Does he have any brothers :D

Her sisters were also over the moon over this pairing. Her older sister, Margarita texted:

Margie: okay wow, totally jealous rn. I hope you're ready for all eyes to be on you!

Margarita was always considerate. Nat contemplated calling her but she knew she was busy with her 2 year old nephew, so she figured it wouldn't be a productive call. Still, Margarita's message was far more helpful than what her younger sister Sonia had said:

Sonia: I know that's right sis. Send some pics of him, shirt off preferred.

Nat had enough of her phone for now. She decided she would start getting Sugar's things together since Raf would be stopping by and leaving the next day with the puppy.

As Nat walked around, her mind wandered to Nick and how he was processing the news. To his credit, when she told him about the article, he handled it surprisingly well for someone who not even 5 minutes before was begging her to go out with him. Nat had assured him the photos were all out of context and that two were hardly even friends. Nick didn't fight her on it though, in his words he knew Nat was "into him" because of how desperately she made out with him. He said only a girl who hadn't gotten some action recently kissed like that.