Except…
The drive to the studio felt longer than usual. Maybe because I actually obeyed speed limits for once. Maybe because my palms were sweating on the steering wheel and I couldn’t stop rehearsing worst-case scenarios like a doomsday prepper.
Fired. Suspended. Public apology tour with an HR-mandated smile.
By the time I pulled into the lot, my stomach was doing somersaults in business casual.
I parked, fixed my lipstick in the mirror, and took one long, steadying breath before heading inside.
Tom’s office was already open. He waved me in without looking up from his phone.
“You wanted to talk?” I asked, smoothing my skirt like it might soften the impact.
He glanced up, unreadable.
I braced for it.
“MLS loved it.”
…What?
I blinked. “Loved… what?”
“The interview. Your segment. The spice. The sass. The fact that Twitter turned into a cage match over whether or not Walker deserves basic human decency.” He set his phone down and gestured for me to sit. “You’re being reassigned.”
I didn’t sit.
“Reassigned?”
“Effective immediately. You’re embedded with the West Michigan Storm for the entire season. Full access—locker room, practices, pre-game, post-game. Whatever you need.”
My stomach dropped straight into my heels.
“Wait. Wait, wait—what?”
He looked entirely too calm for someone casually detonating my life.
“They think the chemistry between you and Walker is… well, their words were ‘combustible.’”
I stared.
“PR gold,” he added, like that made it better.
“Tom, I can’t work with him. He hates reporters. He hates me. You want me to follow around the man I literally called a defensive fossil on live TV?”
“That,” he said, folding his hands, “is exactly why you’re the story.”
I didn’t respond.
Because what was there to say? I’d gone into that meeting expecting a slap on the wrist. Maybe a quiet reassignment to something safe and boring, like injury updates or youth camps. I did not expect a season-long slow burn with the most media-averse man in cleats.
I walked out of Tom’s office on autopilot, phone buzzing in my bag, thoughts spinning like a kicked ball in a wind tunnel.
I just called this man a washed-up god on live TV. And now I had to spend the next six months following him around like a soccer groupie.
This was bad.
This was so bad.
