“I wasn’t fired because of my game,” I say out loud, the words crashing across my heart and leaving a flaming path of destruction in their wake.
He lied.
He made me feel broken. Inept. Done.
He hit me where he knew it would hurt the most to make me leave.
And it was never about me at all.
Sweet Pea whimpers and licks my chest again. I scratch behind her ears, then shake the three ladies off of me.
I need to go.
I need air.
I need?—
I need to make an enormous wrong right again.
41
Goldie
I’ve beenin London a little less than a month, and I’ve decidedbloodyis my favorite new word.
It fits when I say I’mbloody tiredafter a long day of coaching sessions and classes and private calls with my other clients that I’m still seeing.
It fits when I say I’mbloody chuffedanytime I see one of the students in the intensive get excited over a new concept to try with their own clients.
It fits when I say I’mbloody pissed, which is what I was last night after entirely too many glasses of wine with Judith to celebrate Friday night.
But unfortunately, right now, I’m bloody wrecked as I’m wrapping up the question-and-answer session of my Saturday morning motivational talk for the students.
Hangovers and I don’t get along well.
Also, I miss Odette and Sheila and Evelyn, even though we’vetexted nearly every day and had a group phone call while they were at the wine bar last weekend.
And every day, I swear my heart hurts a little more for Fletcher.
I shouldn’t have tracked down any of his teammates on my Sundays off the past two weekends. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in it.
But I did, and if I’m being honest, that’s why I’mbloody tiredand willing to getbloody pissed.
I should let it go.
The man blocked me on socials.
If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.
ButI miss him.
It’s been a month, and I still miss him.
“Your best will never be the same from one day to the next,” I’m saying into a microphone in a small auditorium on the university campus in response to the last question of the day. It’s an answer I’ve given in coaching so many times the past five years that it’s ingrained in my head and I don’t have to think. “You catch a cold or you eat something that doesn’t agree with you or you have an argument with a loved one, and your best won’t be the same as it was on a day when everything is going right. And that’s okay. Also, sometimes our clients need to see thatweare human too. There’s power in demonstrating that we have bad days too. Does that help?”
With the stage lights as they are, I can’t see the student’s features clearly, but I can see that he’s nodding from his spot in the aisle to my left. There are microphones set up in both aisles so that everyone can hear the questions without me having to repeat them.
“Yes, thank you,” he says.
