“Oh well okay I guess,” I say and bite my bottom lip to keep a snicker from escaping. My hotel room door swishes closed behind me. “Maybe I can get a couple for you.”
“I’m not trying to pressure you but if that maybe can be a hard yes then I can add it to our online advertising and we can hopefully get some more tickets sold,” she explains and seriously, the need in her voice is adorable.
“You need ahardyes from me?” Oh yeah, I am totally moving this into innuendo territory.
“Ah…yes?” Now the awkward discomfort in her voice is being quelled by the indignation she’s trying, and failing, at taming.
“I’m good at hard,” I explain to her. “So I’ll give you a hard yes.”
“Thank you.” Her tone is clipped now and it’s really hard not to chuckle. She takes an audible breath. “So because you’re donating a prize you’ll be given a complimentary ticket to the event. Will you be joining us?”
“In the Hamptons? Why the hell not,” I fall onto my bed.
“Great! So I assume it’s okay to add your name to the information then…”
“What? Put my name where?”
“On the advertising,” she explains like it’s no big deal at all. “We often mention specific prizes as well as famous attendees. I hear you’d be a pretty big draw and since you’re so behind the cause I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” I interrupt sharply and then pause to rein in the harshness in my tone. “I don’t want to advertise my involvement. Mention the tickets as a prize, fine, but I don’t want to be promoted. Not me personally.”
“But I just assumed…I mean you’re a media personality so…” She seems perplexed and that adds to my annoyance.
“I’m not a media personality. I’m an athlete,” I correct her.
“Yes but you’re always giving interviews and stuff,” she argues. “You’ve done ads for Gatorade and Nike and even a car dealership in San Diego.”
“Those were endorsement deals or one-offs for corporate sponsors for the team I work for,” I explain tersely and I can feel the muscles in my shoulders and neck start to knot with tension. “I don’t make my charity work media fodder.”
“Oh, so you’ll put your name on something only if someone pays you to do it?’ she challenges and I automatically want to groan. Of course, she’d take it that way. She has a shitty opinion of me and wants to stick to it.
“I keep my personal life personal,” I say and I know it’s a vague answer but I don’t want to get into it too deeply with her. If I start publicizing my involvement with charities, everyone is going to want to know why. Everyone loves a personal sob story to get behind a cause and I am not giving mine. Not now, not ever.
“You did a five-minute YouTube interview with some internet sports reporter about the pros and cons of boxers and briefs,” she says. “That doesn’t make it seem like privacy is your issue.”
“Look, I know you’re not used to being told no, but the answer is no,” I reply. There is an intended sharpness to my tone.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demands. I could tell I’ve hit a hot button with her.
“You’re not the only one who can do an internet search,” I bark. “I picked Daphne’s House because I have a soft spot for kids beat up by the system, but I didn’t research it too much until after I met you. I know it’s run by a company your parents own.”
There’s a long, hard pause. When she speaks, her tone is dripping in ice. “So?”
“So you assume I will be anyone’s media whore and I assume a girl whose parents gave her a business to run straight out of college isn’t used to hearing no,” I tell her and I swear I can feel her anger boiling up through the phone. I’m actually surprised it doesn’t get hot in my hand like a curling iron. “But you’re hearing it now. I want to volunteer and I will donate game tickets. Hell, I will donate an entire row of tickets but I’m not going to pimp myself out. Sorry.”
I wait for her response. I even hold the phone half an inch off my ear so if she yells she doesn’t make me deaf. But instead of her voice I get nothing more than a dull beeping sound. I glance at the screen and see the end button flash once before the screen goes dark. She hung up.
“Merde.” I swear and drop the phone onto the bed as I stand up, too agitated now to lie down anymore. I know I just made this volunteering gig a hundred times harder but I don’t care. When I started Googling Brie Bennett the other night it was because I needed a distraction more than actual curiosity. I had woken up from yet another nightmare and was looking for a simple distraction to get my head out of the darkness that always lingers after a bad dream so I could hopefully fall back asleep.
I didn’t find out who owned Daphne’s House until after finding out a lot of other information—from social media sites and New York–based blogs—which made me realize if you looked up “silver spoon” in the dictionary you’d find this woman’s picture. Her father was CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Her mom is a socialite who helped organize just about every ball or charity event in Manhattan. Brie’s an only child. She also has an open Instagram account that she hasn’t posted on since two years ago, but it shows pictures of her skiing in Aspen, beaching in the Bahamas and boating on Lake Como. Not to mention all the food pictures of meals from Michelin Star restaurants and the pictures of her partying in designer dresses in VIP sections of clubs.
I didn’t actually resent her for it, because it’s not her fault she’s privileged, but she and I are from two separate worlds. It’s funny because both times I met her, I kind of had this weird feeling of potential with her—like despite the attitude she was throwing at me, which should have come with a windchill warning, I might actually connect with her. Like maybe she was just challenging me to work harder to impress her. I thought it seemed like a worthy challenge, but now I realize it’s not. Sure, it seemed noble at first that she would want to run a place like Daphne’s House when she could clearly just jet around the world and be nothing more than a social media selfie queen, but it’s easy to care when Daddy buys you a place to do it.
Frustrated, I grab my jacket and my wallet. Fuck the coach, I’m going to hang out with my friends. People who get me.
An hour later I’m sitting at the juice bar at Elevate Fitness staring across a thick green smoothie at Shayne Beckford. Shayne started dating my friend and former teammate Sebastian Deveau shortly after I was traded from the Winterhawks. I got to know her pretty well over the summer when I came here to Seattle to visit him. She’s gutsy and bold and a total sweetheart, which is exactly what Seb needs. “This is not what I expected when I decided to come here to see you.”
“Then you don’t know me at all,” she quips with a snarky smile.
