Epilogue TwoTaylor
I guess we don’t all get thehappily ever after.Out on the court, I could see them laughing and kissing each other. They even showed up on the damn Kiss Cam. But don’t worry. It didn’t hurt the way it used to. I had gotten over it. I really had.
It had been tough for me in the past, but now it was nice to see them together—she looked radiant, and my brother, he was basically drooling over her.
It was just the lovey-dovey shit that was nauseating.
Anyway, I had my own life, and by my own life, I mean basketball. I’d made it into the NBA. I was playing with the Boston Celtics and earning that NBA money.
My life had made a 180-degree turn. I had a million-dollar condo in downtown Boston and was traveling all over the world, winning games—sometimes losing them—and living a life most people could only dream of. But it was also lonely.
Most of my teammates were either married or hooking up with anything that moved (I did that, too, but not all the time). But even with all the traveling and riches, what I really missed was affection.
I’m not going to cry about it or anything, but I hadn’t experienced anything like what I’d felt for Kami with any other woman, and I was starting to ask myself if it was my fate to be alone.
How pathetic.
That was on my mind one morning, a morning when I was supposed to close one of the most important endorsement contracts of my career, and I had to do it withher. I couldn’t stand her, with her air of superiority, the way she was always telling me not to let fame get to my head, the way she bossed me around. Just the other day, she’d said that if Nike told me to get the swoosh tattooed on my forehead, I’d better do it—that was the first time she mentioned they might sponsor me.
She was the daughter of a big shareholder in the Celtics, so you can imagine the type we’re talking about. When I met her, I remember thinking she was hot, with her penetrating black eyes, but not two minutes later, she opened her mouth, and I lost interest. I would have preferred another agent, but how was I going to refuse an offer from Jack Gates’s daughter? If he said she was the one I needed, I had to bow my head and say yes, especially being the new guy who was still proving himself.
We met at her office, and I couldn’t help noticing what she was wearing: a black tube dress and stiletto heels to try to make herself look a little taller than a Minion. Every time I saw her, she seemed to have a different pair on. Sexy as they were, my takeaway was how much of a complex she might have about being five foot two. Sometimes, to get on her nerves, I liked to stand and lean over her desk to make her feel small—that wasn’t like me, but hergoddess of negotiationsattitude made me want to do it. She knew she was the one who held the reins. And she loved throwing that in my face.
“Good morning, Di Bianco,” she said, taking out papers and spreading them across the desk. “Here’s the contract we’ve finalized with Nike.”
I sat down to read it over. When I realized it was more than thirty pages, I looked up at her and said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Too many pages for your little brain?”
I threw the contract down and scowled at her. She grinned.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was taking it too far.”
“I have an engineering degree from Harvard, top of my class. I’m not just some dumb jock.”
“And just like everyone who went to Harvard, you can’t help but mention it,” she said, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
OK, that stung, but I just wanted to get down to business. “Can we stop the pissing contest and talk about what I’m here for?” I asked.
“I’ll ignore the vulgarity and get to the point: Nike wants you.”
“And what about you? Do you want me, too?” I asked, not knowing where the hell that had come from.
“All I want from you is your signature on this contract I’ve been negotiating for months.”
“How much are they paying?” I asked.
“A million a year.”
“You did your homework,” I responded, impressed. That was a lot of money.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, sitting on the desk and looking at me with those glassy eyes that were so sexy it was hard not to imagine her down on her knees—
“I want to up my percentage on this.”
When she said that, all erotic thoughts disappeared from my mind. “What? Are you crazy?” I asked, almost choking.
She didn’t even blink. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t—”
