“Sure you are.”
And now it’s time to change the subject.
“You have two players in Chicago, don’t you? They’re doing good tonight,” I muse. I don’t blame Cam for sometimes also representing the competition, that’s just the way of the league, but I am irrationally smug about being the only one he’s actually friends with, and his first solo client too. “Who do you have winning?”
The game is close—only seventeen to fourteen right now—which means it’s a good game to watch, and as we discuss it and then move on to the future of his young clients, I settle in even more comfortably.
Nowit’s been a really, really good day.
5
CAM
MARCH
With football season over,it’s time to focus more intently on all other sports, and I do that with a laser focus I don’t think I’ve had in at least half a decade—that’s the reasonable bi-product of having something to avoid thinking about.
Drafts are coming up, some players are deciding whether to retire or not, get traded or not, and this year—because some deity seems to be on my side—there have been no scandals to deal with... yet.
That means I have a good amount of time to hang out with AJ and for us to figure out just how much PDA we want to show at the reunion. Those conversations havebeen frustrating but somehow always end with me laughing my ass off.
It’s something that AJ does so freaking well, and I don’t think he even realizes what a gift it is.
But when I think we have the plan done—we’ll hold hands occasionally and maybe some hugging—he throws me a curveball.
“We’re going to dinner with Derek and Hawk,” he declares. “Hugh and his boyfriend are also going.”
It doesn’t take fucking Einstein to connect the dots—two other same-sex couples connected in one way or another to the sport or the limelight. Hugh and I have known each other for a very long time, though we’ve never worked together.
He’s also an agent and represents some of the best players in the league, as well as a couple of really good baseball players, but he works solo. He didn’t want to open an agency and become everyone’s boss like I did when I left my previous agency.
And boy there are some days when I envy him that, but then I think about how I have Lindsey and so many others who I work alongside every day, and I get over that envy real quick.
“Why?” I ask AJ uselessly. I still want to hear his reasoning.
“They’re gonna coach us.” His excited smile and the way he bounces lightly on his toes is adorable enough to have me smiling.
“We don’t need coaching, we’re ready.” And in allhonesty, I don’t want to spend the next two months thinking about this constantly. I already did that while AJ was away, and I had my phone ready to go a dozen times to call it all off and confess my lie to Mom, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow through.
“I think we just need to test things out with them,” he insists, and I give in. At the very least we’re going to have good food with good men, so it’s not like it’ll be wasted time, and I can tell it’s going to be a great dinner when we walk up to the table in the private room of the ridiculously exclusive sushi restaurant in the Hills.
Hawk and Ollie are bickering while Hugh and Derek look on with amused smirks. All conversation stops when we walk up to them. We get the greetings out of the way, and I have to snort when Hugh’s slap on my back is a bit harder than necessary.
“Still salty about how I got Liston?” I taunt him about the rookie pitcher who’s now in the minors, playing for Boston.
“I won’t stop being salty until you tell me what the hell you said to the kid to sign with you.”
An enigmatic smile is the only answer he’ll get. I’m not giving away my secret—get to know them before you put the offer on the table.
Hugh knows this, so it would be moot anyway, but I found out that what Liston really wants is a long career. He doesn’t care about money and sponsorships, at least not right now, so that’s what I focused on the most during ourfirst meeting. As long as he’s smart and takes care of that spectacular arm, he should go far. Very far.
I snap back to the present when the waitress asks what I want to drink, and since AJ and I drove over together, I relax and order my favorite, gin and tonic.
“Dee told me you wanted to talk about something important today?” Hawk says after the waiter leaves, and I level AJ with a look that tells him to go ahead and tell them all.
I enjoy sitting back and being able to take in their reactions.
Ollie is open-mouthed the whole time, Hawk gets a dangerous glint in his eyes the longer AJ talks, Derek is frowning—harder than normal, but that could mean anything from his chair is uncomfortable to he’s planning on murdering me tonight—and Hugh starts shaking his head and chuckling after the second sentence.
