I nodded.
“We don’t expect you to make the mile time.” He laughed. “Nor do we expect you to do anything more than you’re comfortable with. Everyone knows you’re pregnant and not coming on in a full-time capacity until you’re ready.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I have to warn you about the shit going down, though.”
Boone crossed his arms over his chest. “Will she be safe?”
While they were talking, I thought about my old team. About how none of those words would’ve come out of the old team manager’s mouth. They would’ve rather sued me—though at this point they very well might still do that since I’d broken my contract with them—than let me have maternity leave from the team.
And they certainly wouldn’t have said “It’s okay not to make time.”
I’d seen them fine several women who’d had the bad luck to get pregnant in the years that I’d been on that team.
They certainly hadn’t made it a safe environment for pregnancy.
“Very,” Beau promised. “It’s not danger. It’s just petty female behavior that has digressed into all-out verbal warfare. I was hoping with a veteran on the team of Nettie’s caliber, that we might get this figured out.”
Even fighting like cats and dogs, I knew that this team would have a better atmosphere than the one I’d just left. It all started with a good boss. You had to start at the top and work your way down.
I really should tell Boone about what was going on with Miami FC.
“What’s going on?” I asked, not really relishing the thought of entering into a team that had problems.
“We had a couple of females on the team that have been traded,” he started. “But they caused a lot of drama. Instilled a lot of distrust among the entire team. No one trusts anyone. Not on the field, and certainly not off of it. I’m hoping with you here that you can kill two birds with one stone. One, you’ll be able to be entered onto the roster since you’re practicing with us. And two, you can help me figure out how to make my team a team again.”
“What about the coach?” I asked. “Is she good? Did she help with the discontent among the players?”
“About that,” he said. “I offered another coach the job as head coach.”
“The old one wasn’t any good?” I wondered.
“The old one was okay, but she was very set in her ways and was very against me figuring out an alternate solution to the anger and resentment on the team. She was of the mind that it would all iron itself out eventually. But we don’t have eventually.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “My sister will get control of the team if I can’t turn this shit around. I have two seasons. And last season was practically wasted with the girls.”
I wrinkled my nose at him.
Seraphina, Beau’s sister, was a douchebag of the nth degree.
She was callous, petty, and just about the worst person that could ever run a women’s soccer team. Or a women’s team of any sort.
For women’s sports, you wanted to instill power and will, but also wanted the team to like each other. You didn’t want to go in there and instill the kind of hate that Seraphina would.
I remembered playing soccer with her in high school.
She’d been a ball hog, thought she was better than everyone else because she got lessons from a professional, and literally made everyone hate each other because she started rumors that weren’t true.
“Your sister was the one to start all the shit on your team, wasn’t she?” I asked.
“There’s no proof, but I would imagine so,” he grumbled.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Who’s the coach?”
“I am!”
I looked behind me at that familiar voice and blinked.
“What…how?” I asked, turning to my sister. “But the high school!”
“I’m going to do that, too,” she said. “The seasons only overlap very little. Plus, I will have great assistant coaches at both places.”
Excitement started to build inside of me.
