Tiger jogs back over, plops down on the seat, and immediately lifts his phone in the air.
“Lets take a flick, Mia.”
“Sure.”
“Let me show you how easy this is,” he says, referring to our earlier conversation.
He leans into my shoulder and takes a few photos of us. I smile and make sure to flash some teeth, hoping that I look as if I’m having a good time.
“Which one do you like?” he asks.
I point to the picture that looks as if I’m enjoying myself the most and in a matter of seconds, Tiger puts a filter on it, texts the photo to me, and then posts it to his Instagram. Another minute later, he already gets thirty likes.
“See! There are some people that see all of my posts the minute they go live. Now if we give it a little longer, we should double those likes by the time we leave here. I’m just mad that I couldn’t tag you. If you had an account, I’d be able to tag your name and people would follow you too. Want to do an Instagram story?”
Seriously, at this point, I just want to watch the damn game. I didn’t tag along on this date to get a crash course in social media.
“Whatever you want,” I say.
He’s actually pleased with my answer. Totally clueless to the subtext.
“We don’t have to force it. We can wait until something natural happens.”
“Cool.”
The game gets underway, and it’s pretty entertaining. Let’s just say that most sitcom actors and actresses don’t have an athletic bone in their bodies.
“Holy crap, is that the guy from theCambridge Witchesshow on Netflix?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He’s a cool dude. You want to meet him?”
“Well, I’m not really the groupie type.”
“There’s nothing groupie-ish about a fan wanting to say hello. Celebrities appreciate it because there’s nothing worse than being forgotten.”
“Rush doesn’t like it.”
“Well… Rush is a little different than the average celebrity.”
I hear a twinge of something when Tiger says Rush’s name that I never noticed before.
“Do you have a problem with Rush?”
“No, but I definitely think he has a problem with me.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t talk behind my teammates’ backs, and this is just between us, but Rush threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t stay away from you.”
His own teammate?
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
“I know it sounds out of character for him, which is why I let that shit go, but it definitely happened.”
“Wow, I’m sorry about that. Rush is kind of overprotective when it comes to me. He’s been that way since school.”
I make an excuse for Rush’s behavior, but I’m actually embarrassed by this news. I’m not sure how I’m going to earn the respect I want and need from my clients if Rush is going to go around and threaten them all to stay away from me. I decide to worry about that later. Right now, I want to enjoy myself.
