Kelcie laughed heartily. “Girl.” She placed her hand on my shoulder and went in for another round of chuckles before speaking. “I don’t know why these men won’t leave you alone. You never give them any rhythm. What in the world implores them to shoot their shots?”
“The fact that other chicks continually and repeatedly bust it wide open for them.”
“Yeah, that does create a problem.” She sighed, and I understood why.
Kelcie was married to Travis Woodson, the starting quarterback for the Chicago Coyotes. Travis was fine, talented, and successful. Women had been coming for him since he first picked up a football. He and Kelcie were college sweethearts, soshe’d seen just how persistent and disrespectful women could be.
“Subject change,” I said easily.
As far as I knew, Travis was faithful to Kelcie. And that was saying something, because I had tea on a great number of players and otherwise in the sports industry. Not just in Chicago, either. That was due to the nature of my job. If Travis was out there slinging dick, chances were, I would know it.
As a player liaison, my job was to work with athletes who were recently traded to Chicago sports teams. When they arrived, feeling all out of sorts and disconnected from the city, I worked to connect them with their new community.
If the client needed a place to live, I did the footwork. I met with the real estate agent and presented the client with a short list of options.
If they needed a new doctor, dentist, chiropractor, masseuse, trainer, physical therapist—I found a very short list of candidates for them to choose from.
If they needed a housekeeper, I had connections with all types of cleaning companies. Do you want one person to clean the spot? Two? Three? I could make that happen.
Need a daycare?
Babysitter?
Nanny situation?
Private elementary school?
Personal chef?
I could make those things happen for them.
Ayana Truesdale had liaisons in every major market. I was one of five liaisons in the Midwest region. When I was first hired atEngineered Excellence, I was based in the Indianapolis, Indiana – Londynville, Kentucky area. Having grown up in Londynville, I was familiar with the ins and outs of the city. Connecting athletes with service providers, housing, and almostanything else was easy for me. I loved working in my hometown, but I couldn’t say that I didn’t dream of working in other markets.
I got my opportunity when marriage and a couple of children caused Chicago liaison Kitari Miller-Mann to want to retire from her position. True hand selected me to take Kitari’s place, which was a huge honor. Not only because Kitari was her niece, and she trusted her implicitly, but also because Chicago was the number three market in the country for sports teams.
The sheer number of athletes employed by professional teams in Chicago was massive. While I had handled the Indianapolis-Londynville area all by myself, it took three of us to handle Chicago—myself, Paris Small, and Adam Worthy. Though the three of us were assigned our own clients, we worked well together.
There was no rivalry or jealousy on our team. If one of us happened on a new vendor that gave excellent service, we shared the contact info. If we knew that a certain client was looking for something specific, it didn’t matter whose roster they were on; if we found it, we shared the info. We called ourselves “The Awesome Threesome,” and I truly believed that us working together so well was why we were three of the most successful liaisons in the company. The team in the East that handled the New York tri-state area seemed to always be involved in some measure of infighting. I was thankful not to have ended up there.
In spite of any complaints I made, I loved my job. I loved my team, and I loved the company. I loved the players, too. At least I loved most of them. Many of them became honorary family members.
I discovered two seconds into the job that the best way to make a connection with a married or dating player was to make sure your actions always let the wife or girlfriend know that you were non-threatening. As a liaison, I tended to work very closelywith the players and their families. They had to like me for the process to be successful. Sometimes it took months to find the right house, the right school for the kids, the right nanny, . . . the right barbershop or hair salon. I was around a lot. If a wife or girlfriend thought I was after her man, there was no way she would want me around. I wouldn’t be able to provide the service of making a relocation seamless.And that was always my goal.
Joining a new team and relocating were two of the most stressful situations in a player’s life. My goal was to take as much stress and worry off the plate of the player as I could. And because I was with them so much in the beginning of their career in Chicago, the players and their families often became lifelong acquaintances. I got invitations to events that many people would envy, simply because of the work I did on the front end of a player’s transition to Chicago.
Anyway, I was always hearing things about players through the grapevine. And I’d never heard anything about Travis, which led me to believe that he was faithful. I kept everything I heard about players to myself, except the stuff that was too good to keep to myself. That stuff I shared with my other best friend, Jaxxon McKissick, because I knew he would forget 90 percent of what I told him twenty minutes later. And he would take the other 10 percent to his grave.
I met Jaxxon in elementary school, when his family moved in next door to mine, right after his father had become the pastor of a local mega-church. Jaxxon and I were the same age, and we hit it off right away. Everybody thought we had one of thoseLove & Basketballrelationships, but we totally did not. First of all, Jaxxon played football. Second of all, I was no Monica. Sports didn’t interest me at all, except for noticing how fine the guys who played were.
We were in high school the first time we openly expressed our shifting feelings for one another. Apparently, one day, weboth looked up, and we were physically attracted to each other. Jaxxon was open to all the possibilities. It was me who had cold feet. Jaxxon and I were so close. We knew everything about each other. We understood each other.
Trust was always a . . . thing for me. I didn’t give it easily. It took years and hundreds of interactions to prove yourself trustworthy to me. I wasn’t that way on purpose. I didn’t even like being that way, but that was my reality. Jaxxon was one of the few people on earth that I trusted wholly.
But Jaxxon was simultaneously the most popular and the most laid-back guy in our high school. What that looked like to me was girls fawning all over him and him never rebuking them. Girls snatching his varsity jacket off the back of his chair and wearing it around school all day . . . while he never corrected them. Girls hanging around his locker and him never telling them to “shoo.”
As a Scorpio woman, the way my jealousy and possessive nature were set up, the entire school would’ve felt me acting up. I probably would have been tried as an adult and convicted for the crimes I committed. So, I opted to keep us platonic, while loving him in my heart. He agreed to the arrangement. He also made sure that I understood that he loved me and he planned for us to be together. He was just waiting on me.
To that point, before he agreed to attend Tubman A. & M. University, he negotiated acceptance and a scholarship for me. We met both Travis and Kelcie at T.A.M.U. She was my freshman roommate, and Travis was his.
