Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Chloe
Pressure is coming at me from both sides.
From Henry I expect it. Dealing with professional pressure is what I thrive on, right?
Deadline? No problem. It’s the other side I’m feeling that I don’t know what to do with.
The pressure from left field, the kind I never knew about, never thought of, never realized even existed.
The Fontanna pressure to be his fucking girlfriend and put him before the story.
We’ve been together every night this week and it’s been good between us, like we’re building to something.
It feels right, but there are expectations and that feels like pressure going against the rest of my life, displacing and opposing everything I’m working for professionally.
It’s not that he’s said anything, because how could he?
He has no idea what I’m working on, that my Perspective piece, the so-called human-interest exposé, is even a thing, let alone aimed at him.
Now, sitting at my desk in the busy NESH station on a Saturday morning, with the big Monday Night game two days away, I try to remember why the hell I decided Tate Fontanna should be my subject?
Then I remember that first day. The day I laid down the two-hundred percent challenge and he came back with the Ms. No-Name reporter snap. It was a white-glove slap across the face moment if there ever was one. But it all seems so distant and irrelevant right now.
Henry would never have bought into it if he hadn’t already known about Tate’s uncle, the funeral debacle, and the accusations surrounding his uncle’s drunk driving. How much does he know about Tate’s guilty conscience?
Most of all, I don’t want that dredged up. No matter how immune to the slings and arrows he is, Tate still holds that guilt deep down. I know it and I feel the pressure to protect him from it.
Henry stands in front of my desk, arms folded. “Let’s have the preview. My office in ten. Sarina will be there—”
“No one else,” I say. He nods in agreement and I gather up my source material file, the zip drives, and a notebook and pen.
Sometimes I like to go old-school. Especially times like these when I have that feeling in the pit of my stomach like I wish Dad were here for advice, or at least a pithy saying.
I’m riding the edge and I feel like I’m getting to the end of the line, about to fall off.
Heading to Henry’s office like I’m walking the plank, I close the door behind me and nod at Sarina. She’s leaning on the edge of the desk.
“I’m excited to see what you’ve got, Chloe. I loved the outline and the preliminaries.”
“Showtime,” Henry says.
Sitting at the console for the big screen, I plug in my zip drive and load up the file then hit play.
The voice-over is rough and not all the clips are treated.
It’s not synced and there are still a few holes to fill in.
But like a puzzle with some missing pieces, you can still see what it’s supposed to look like.
By the time it’s finished my chest is so tight I’m seriously considering how I can score a Xanax before I have a heart attack—and I normally don’t even take aspirin for headaches.
Spinning my chair around to face my mini audience while they clap, true smiles of appreciation on their faces, I feel a little loosening of the vise pinching my heart.
If I have to go down as a total bitch, the kind of woman who would betray a man who might be her boyfriend, a man who’s trusting her, then I may as well do it for a great piece of work.
“Great job, Smitty,” Henry says. “So far. When can you have it completed?”
“I agree,” Sarina says. “I can help with revisions to the narrative, but we need to put this out now, cash in on the injury issue plaguing Fontanna.”
Cringing at that last comment, I wonder if maybe Sarina is the source of all the off-the-record speculation about Tate’s back being a season-ending injury.
He hasn’t said anything, but that kind of talk is bad news for contract negotiations—even if it is idle speculation.
I’ve seen player’s stock go down on the basis of less, sometimes no more than gossip.
“Come on—where are you at? Ninety percent?” Henry prods.
“Seventy-five percent at best,” I say.
“Bullshit.”
I shrug. “I’ll finish it up. I’ll take your suggestions for the narrative, Sarina. Send me an email with your comments.” I stand, pull my zip drive, and put all my files together.
She nods. “I have to admit, you’re doing a terrific job. I promise I’ll do your piece justice.” I have to admire her for giving me sincere credit.
“I’ll take credit on the screen, if you don’t mind,” I say.
“Sure,” she says, looking at Henry.
“You’ll get a credit line. But Sarina’s right. Now that Fontanna’s injured, it’s the perfect time to run it—before he gets back to a hundred percent.”
More pressure. Great. I head for the door.
“I’ll pump the medical staff,” Sarina says, “and the coaches for information about the injury, and I’ll get some clips of whatever bullshit they feed me.” She pauses, licks her lips. Both her and Henry’s eyes are on me.
“Can you get any of the records from the trainer, your source?” Henry says. “Get him on record about the back injury being pre-existing?”
I don’t dignify the request with an answer. Overhearing something in a bar is one thing, stealing files or leaning on a source is another. I have my lines. Henry and Sarina stare at me relentlessly.
“The thing is, my source doesn’t know he’s a source, so that’s not happening.”
Henry nods. “Fine. We’ll see what Sarina can get from Fontanna.”
Snapping my eyes to his, I know it’s a calculated move, aimed at my jealousy nerve in a deadly strike.
Henry’s on Twitter and Instagram and sees what’s going on.
He hasn’t asked me about it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe the gossip about me and Tate.
I’ve been careful at the studio and at the stadium, not like my normal self, frankly, but Henry’s a cagey guy.
In spite of the tremor quaking through me, making me want to scream, I remain calm and say nothing. I can warn Tate about Sarina, but I know he needs no warning, know he’ll be more immune to her charm and underdeveloped interviewing skills than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Knock yourself out, Sarina.” I walk out the door, taking everything with me.
It’s late, well past midnight, and I’m still at the office.
Still have everything with me at my desk.
The entire paper file with source material and my notes, the zip drives, and my tablet.
I have everything there is on Tate and how he’s playing injured and why he’s driven, not just for the money.
Closing the door behind me and locking it doesn’t make me feel any better.
Because it’s all on the servers at the studio.
Thank God I never put it in the cloud. We hardly keep anything proprietary in cloud storage, mainly because of paranoia.
Pacing around the dimly lit office, not caring that it’s stifling hot, not caring that I’m still wearing heels and my feet are starting to get angry, I contemplate my options. I pull a red Twizzler from the jar on my desk and start chewing my dinner as I move.
Everything in the file reveals Tate’s story, gives the Perspective about why he plays even when he shouldn’t.
I included his relationship with his uncle and the guilt over his death and how he feels his uncle should have been the one in the NFL.
But his uncle Frank got hurt in college and, when he was supposed to return for his senior year as the team’s star linebacker, he didn’t.
Instead of rehabbing his injury and getting back into condition, he got hooked on drugs.
Frank had been in and out of drug rehab since then for several years until Tate was in his sophomore year of high school.
Tate was going to quit football and his mother was worried about him, so she asked her brother to help.
That’s when his uncle took over, made it his mission to see that Tate got where Frank should have been.
Frank coached him through school, and worked with him to get into the best possible college, met with recruiters, sent out film, everything.
He went to every game and helped Tate work out in the off-season.
He attended the Draft Combine with him and finally sat with him in the audience at the NFL draft, then celebrated with him later—until he left to drive home, a long drive Tate knew he shouldn’t have taken.
It was my fault he got so involved in football again instead of finding another passion. I knew it gnawed at him, it had to. It was my fault he had so much to drink, my fault that he got in the car to drive when he shouldn’t have. My fault that he died.
Tate’s words haunt me like a bad ghost. I want no part of spreading that bad karma, or piling onto and exploiting those guilty feelings. It’s all wrong. Even if he’s over it, even if words can’t hurt him, it’s wrong. And I have a bad feeling that the story might still be able to wound him.
There’s also the fact that the story would hurt his contract negotiations. The team will use any weakness to reduce his value. Rumors, bad press, whatever they can exploit. I’ve seen the do it before and that makes me tighten the circle I’m pacing.
I have clips galore from news stations and photos from press clippings all through his youth, interviews of him with his uncle standing at his shoulder and his mom and dad in the background.
I have it all, the whole story perspective about what made Tate Fontanna play, even when he was hurt.
I even have information on the drugs he is taking, the painkillers that had been prescribed and the injections.
I have the evidence proving Tate’s feelings of guilt, piles of spin for the show, proof that guilt is the driving force of Tate’s punishing success. Perspective?