“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, for sure,” I promised. “What am I getting wrong?”
“The part about how he shouldn’t have hemmed and hawed. He should have come out and told me what he was thinking,” she said angrily. “If he didn’t want our relationship to move so fast, then he should have said it!”
“That’s true. I completely agree.”
“But I get that he was afraid to say anything,” she continued. “I had already told him about my ex and how I wasn’t going to waste time with someone who wanted to play games and not be serious. So he knew that I’d break up with him if he backed off, and he was afraid to lose me. I think that he was falling in lovewith me and he was scared, so that was why…” She blinked. “We had different timelines. It’s not your place to say that mine was wrong and his was right.”
“I’m not saying that,” I told her. “You want what you want, and I understand that. I’m the same way. I have goals and I work until I achieve them.”
“Yeah, exactly.” She seemed to relax. “I have goals, relationship goals. I’m not messing around and I only accept serious candidates. There’s no trying things out.”
“Well, maybe there is,” I said. “He had a tryout with you but it didn’t work.”
Now Kiya laughed a little. “Right, he didn’t get picked for the roster and he was sent down. Maybe next season,” she told me. “Except that I’m not waiting around because I know what I want. What about Ronan?”
Did the discussion that he and I had the night before somehow show traces on my face? They’d all been looking at me very closely. “What about him?” I asked cautiously.
“He must have new Woodsmen friends who are searching for the woman of their dreams,” she prompted. “Or maybe I’ll go back to enjoying myself for a while instead of looking for someone special. I need a break after all this.”
“I can ask him,” I said. “I’ll say that you’re interested in both things, or either. Actually, I might know somebody, too.”
She nodded. “Thanks. I’ll just ignore Channing. I don’t care what he wants to talk about.” I saw her eyes go to her phone. “I don’t care,” she repeated.
“I think it’s easier to be alone,” I told her. “There are a lot fewer complications.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. Then she looked at her phone again and sighed. “You’re absolutely right. I’d rather be alone.”
“Me too,” I responded. I didn’t think she meant it, though. For the first time, I wondered if I did.
Chapter 11
What a waste. What a waste!
I turned to Ed, indignant, and he looked equally frustrated. “In the preseason, they want to see how the different guys work out,” he explained, but I shook my head. To my mind, that was no excuse and I could tell that he didn’t believe what he was saying, either.
“They should have played him,” he sighed, and now I nodded in agreement. It was absolutely silly that Ronan hadn’t gone in. He had gotten significant minutes in the first preseason matchup but this time? He’d sat on the bench.
I would find out what had happened soon enough, because I was going to wait for him after the game in some special area that they reserved for the players’ friends and families. I assumed that it was stratified and separated into spaces for the starters and non-starters, like they did for everything else. There were the Woodsmen prima donnas and there were the extras. The extras didn’t get game tickets to give to someone like Ed, whodeserved to be in the front row for all the work he did for the team (the Junior team, but they were still part of this football organization). I was working on a solution for that problem. The extras also didn’t have fan replica jerseys made with their names on them, but I was working on that, too.
I was actually furious about Ronan’s playing time and I was aware that he must have been very disappointed as well. The preseason meant so much! “What’s wrong with the coaches?” I asked Ed. “Are they bad?”
“Lower your voice,” he said, glancing around to make sure that the other Woodsmen fans hadn’t heard us. “They’re great coaches. If he didn’t play, there could have been a good reason.”
Or maybe not. I knew all too well how things could go sideways for someone through no fault of their own. I was thinking specifically of how I’d been placed with a lab parter in ninth grade who…that incident wasn’t important. “I’ll find out and let you know,” I told him as we started the long walk toward the exits. We had been back in the nosebleed area but next week, for the third preseason game, the Woodsmen were going out of town to play in Utah. I’d been there with my dad (since we’d been everywhere), but I’d never seen their football stadium.
I would next week. I had developed a plan of how I would travel and it was going to work out fine. It depended on Mr. Gowan, but it didn’t depend on him doing something other than what would directly benefit himself. He was very happy with me at the moment, because Amy Gas (aka Annie Whitaker-Gassman) had already come through with the gravitas drapes. She had sent two guys to install them, and they’d bought their ownladders so no one had to stand on my back. The drapes did look very nice in the room, and when my boss got back from his trip (maybe to the Seychelles?) he’d seemed impressed.
“I also like the new color,” he’d said, pointing at the wall next to his desk. I had nodded and kept to myself that no one had done any painting in here.
Ed and I finally made it down the stairs and out of the building. I checked to make sure that my Junior Woodsmen banner was ok in the concourse with all the booths and I took his picture standing beneath it. Myles Pham and I had sat at a table there before the game and it had gone pretty well, with a few people expressing minor interest in the Juniors. Myles was a very personable guy and I thought he was good-looking, too. That hadn’t hurt the cause.
Ed thanked me again for everything I was doing for the team and I tried not to think about all the stuff I had spent money on, and all that was left to do. Speaking of painting, their side of the practice facility needed…no, I really wasn’t going to think about all that today. I also wouldn’t fret about my new concern, that Mr. Gowan would be fired and I would go with him. No, I would let it slide off my back and not worry.
I returned to the stadium and then used the pass that Ronan had gotten for me to access the family lounge. My Woodsmen employee credentials weren’t sufficient to allow me into a sacred football player area.
That wasn’t divided as I had thought it would have been, between the “have” section for the starters and the “have-not”area that might have been located in a basement or beneath a flight of stairs. Yes, I was a little salty about the treatment I saw Ronan getting, especially today. He should have gone in. He really should have! There was suckage in life but I didn’t like to see it foisted on him.
