“Okay, let’s reconsider it. But I still feel like we need to put some protections in place.”
“I think we need to put less in place than you feel is necessary. The players aren’t wrong. We refer to them as kids, but they’re all adults. Every last one of them. If they’recomfortable with all age groups, then maybe we need to give them that choice.”
“Ah, I think that’s how we protect them. As part of their cards, we have them mark down the age range they’re comfortable with.”
“Oh, I like that!” he says.
“Okay. We’ll run that by Quin to see if he has any reservations. If he does, we’ll have to take it to the broader group of deans and see what they think.”
“It’s cute you think Quin’s going to care. His man is more than a decade younger than him.”
“Really?” I ask.
He laughs. “Yep. Same age as Declan.”
“I never thought to ask how old Declan is.”
“About fifteen years younger than Quin.”
I stare at him. “Well, fuck.”
Alka grins. “Yep, so I totally get what they’re saying and kind of feel like a hypocrite when almost all of us have a much wider age gap between us and our lovers than we’re trying to allow for the auction.”
“I guess I never thought about it. Jessica is seven years younger than me, but her age isn’t something I think about often. It’s not like it has much bearing in our lives at this point.”
“Yes! The more we talk about it, the more I agree with them.”
“Okay, fair,” I concede. “We’ll run it by Quin next week and see what he thinks.”
“Cool.” Alka gets to his feet. “Thanks for talking it out.”
“Yeah, ‘course.”
He opens the door and steps out of the office as I pull out my phone. We set up a website specifically for this event so those who were interested could watch the standings and keep track of who was where. It made more sense than some big board of flyers all over the place. We’re living in the digital age, after all.
I’m quite proud of what these kids put together. The hockey team might have come up with it, but it definitely turned into a group effort. As has the date auction. I love to see them collaborating and learning that, even when you’re on different teams, working together is always better than trying to make everything a competition.
Maybe my thoughts were too loud in the universe. The office door swings open and Lemon steps into the room. I look at him warily, seeing the permanent glower on this man’s face.
He pauses just inside the doorway for a minute before stepping further into the room. My heart immediately jumps, especially when he closes the door.
“You have this rigged,” he says.
I sigh and click off my phone. “Please tell me how I’ve rigged it.”
“You have the most teams, therefore you have higher odds of winning the pool.”
“No,” I counter. “Both lacrosse teams also have four teams. Are they rigging it too?”
He presses his lips together.
“The real problem is that your team—which, mind you, has like ten times the number of players as other sports—is only represented by two teams. My guess, and this is based on whispers as I walked by, is that they weren’tencouragedto join in because they knew you didn’t want them to. Allowing them and encouraging them are very different things, Lemon.”
“We’ve never had a need for fundraising before?—”
“Yes, before I got here,” I interrupt, “and the athletic budget was more fairly distributed between all eight teams.”
“I send players to the NFL,” he says, nearly in a shriek.
