Chapter Twenty – Crew
The road to Nashville is a long breath you forget you were holding.
Cornfields give way to billboards that promise you a new you if you just buy this, wear that, smile here.
I keep the radio low—white-noise country about trucks that never break and women who always forgive—and let the miles stack like reps.
David calls somewhere past the state line. “Hotel’s booked. Suit steamed. Lines in your inbox.”
“I’m not reading lines.”
“Then you’ll wing it. You’re charming when you’re cornered.”
“Not anymore.”
Silence sharpens. “Don’t get precious on me, Crew. We need this. Sponsors need to see you’re pliable.”
I stare at the dotted white line and consider a hundred answers that would end this quicker and messier. “Sponsors need to see I’m a person.”
“You’re a product,” he snaps before he can make it sound like love. He swallows and tries again. “You’re a person when we win. We do this right, everybody eats.”
“Bailey isn’t everybody.”
“She’s… a bookstore,” he says, like the word can be filed under quaint. “She’ll be fine.”
“She’s the point,” I say, and hang up because growth is not letting a conversation finish carving you down to the old shape.
The next call is Laramie, my agent. “You going?”
“I am.”
“Good. Eyes open. No closed-door signatures. Record with your memory. Don’t give them a monologue. Make them interrupt themselves. They’ll tell you everything they’re afraid of if you let the silence stand.”
“What do I do with the fear?”
“Whose? Theirs or yours?”
“Mine.”
She chuckles. “Put it in your pocket and bring it home. I’ll label it and file it with the rest.”
“Copy.”
“Crew?”
“Yeah.”
“Proud of you for walking in and not out.”
The words land where I keep the fourteen-year-old who thought respect only came after the hit. “Trying not to be benched by my own life.”
“Attaboy.”
I lose her to a dead zone, and for a few blessed miles, it’s just me and the hum of decisions I haven’t made yet.
Nashville looks like itself—glass and steel and murals and men with microphones.
The facility looks like a spaceship wearing a varsity jacket.
I park in the staff lot because old habits don’t surrender easily, clip my visitor badge to my hoodie like I still belong, and walk in through the door where the custodians smoke on their break.
They nod; I nod back. Tribe recognizes tribe.
The lobby smells like new rubber and old money. Screens loop footage of me and not-me: touchdowns, sidelines, a slow-motion smile someone once told me to save for fourth quarters and commercials. A receptionist with lashes for days gestures me toward Conference B. “They’re ready for you.”
They always are when there’s something to take.
I pass the weight room—empty this time of day—and feel my body tilt toward it like muscle memory is magnetized.
I pass the film room and catch my reflection in the dark screen: a man who learned to read defenses and is learning to read himself.
I pass the hall of framed jerseys and stop at mine, the one from the season the city decided winning was everything.
I touch the glass. It’s colder than it looks.
“Crew.” Harris’s voice is the same it’s always been—pleasant over a blade. He’s at the end of the corridor, hands in his pockets like a reasonable man. David’s next to him, smile pinned tight.
“Harris. David.”
We shake hands because being a professional is a habit too.
“Appreciate you coming in,” Harris says, pivoting into the conference room. It’s gray and glass and very impressed with itself. A carafe of water sweats on a credenza. Three folders sit at my seat like decisions have already been made for me.
“We’ll keep this quick,” he says. “We know you’ve got… coastal engagements.”
Land mines called books and porch lights. “Quick works,” I say, and don’t sit.
David clears his throat. “Sponsor slate is excited about your ‘journey.’ We just want to capture a little texture. Let folks see you’re still their guy.”
“I’m not,” I say, and watch the sentence land like a fumble in a quiet stadium. “I’m Bailey’s guy. This town’s guy. My own, for once.”
Harris’s smile doesn’t move. “We can hold both things.”
“You tried,” I say, nodding at the folders. “Which one’s the ‘I surrender my spine’ packet, and which one’s the ‘I pretend to be contrite about fabricated clauses’ packet?”
David goes pale. Harris’s eyebrow does a trick it does when he’s impressed and furious. “You’ve been talking to your agent.”
“Like she’s my friend,” I say. “Because she is.”
“Agents investigate,” Harris says. “They don’t advise.”
“They do both when the people being investigated make it easy.”
Harris steeples his fingers. “Let’s start over. You’re here because we want to support your next chapter—mentor track, analyst deals, civic leadership. You get paid, we look smart, and the town gets its little lighthouse on a brochure with our logo somewhere tidy. Everyone wins.”
The way he says little lighthouse makes something old and volatile light match after match along my spine. “No logos,” I say.
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“She’s not a backdrop.”
“She?” he says lightly. “We’re discussing property.”
“Language tells on you.”
“Language is what kept you employed,” he says, smiling. “Also, talent. We haven’t forgotten how much you gave us.”
Gave. Past tense like a verdict. I steady myself on the back of the chair and decide not to throw it through a window.
“I’m not taking the shoot. I’m not reading your lines.
If you want to talk about my future like I’m in the room for it, we can.
If you want me on a leash for the sake of optics, call a different dog. ”
David flinches. Harris folds his hands. “Poetry aside, we have obligations.”
“So do I,” I say. “To a place that keeps saving me in small ways. To a version of myself that’s not always apologizing for existing.”
Harris opens a folder and slides a document two inches forward. “This is called mutual benefit, Crew. Read the numbers before you light yourself on fire for a bookstore.”
Harris’s smile thins. “We control narrative when narrative threatens value. You’ve always known that. We tried to keep you on the field.”
“By using her as leverage.”
He tuts. “The world is leverage.”
“Yet,” I say softly, “the people who keep it turning are the ones who put their hands out and pull, not push.”
He watches me for a beat. “How long did it take you to rehearse that one?”
“Three months,” I say. “Every night I watched her lock the door and leave the porch light on anyway.”
David clears his throat, voice hoarse. “Just do the spot, Crew. We’ll make the clause go away. We’ll say it was… overenthusiasm from legal. We’ll drip a donation at Christmas. We’ll—”
“—name a bench,” I say, mouth bitter. “No.”
Harris leans back. “Then here’s our no: we suspend you.
Administrative leave pending review. You don’t talk about internal matters.
You don’t step in front of a microphone without a handler.
If you do, we call it breach, and we call your sponsors, and we call your agent, and we call the station that thinks it wants you in a suit, and we remind them that live television prefers predictable men. ”
My heart does the thing it does left of panic and right of peace. “Predictable men don’t come home.”
“Some do,” he says. “The smart ones.”
“I’m not smart like that anymore.”
“Be careful,” David says quietly, and I hear the version of him that used to throw me passes and tell me to keep my chin tucked. “They’re not bluffing.”
“I’m not either.”
Silence stretches like a new muscle. Harris breaks it. “You’ve got tonight to think. Tomorrow we announce one of two things: your future with us, or your departure. Make me proud and let me give you a hug for the cameras.”
“Or?” I ask.
“Or I shake your hand like a man and release you with cause,” he says, and the word cause sits on the table like a snake. “That’s the path where you crawl under fences for the rest of your life.”
I think about fences. About the way a little boy looks at you when you sign his library card and ask him what he loves to read.
About the way Bailey moves through her own shop like the world is meant to be tended.
About goats that need corralling and shelves that need leveling and a lantern that needs rope and patience.
About the way my own breath sounds when I’m not performing it.
“I’ve done enough crawling,” I say. “If you’re going to call it cause, at least tell the truth about the cause. A man who stopped being your favorite story because he learned to read his own.”
Harris’s mouth twitches—approval he doesn’t want. “Seven a.m.,” he says, standing. “My office. Wear something fans can get behind.”
“Jeans and stubbornness?” I ask.
“Those will do.”
We don’t shake hands. David follows me to the door and grabs my elbow before I’m out of polite distance. “You okay?”
“I will be.”
“This is bigger than you, Crew.”
I nod. “That’s why I’m small on purpose.”
He flinches like I hit him with a word.
The hotel room is beige and humming when I shut the door behind me. I don’t turn on the lights. Nashville glows through the blackout curtains like the city is trying to apologize for being itself. I sit on the edge of the bed, pull the paper bag out of my duffel, and open Bailey’s note.
You’re allowed to want the quiet kind of win.
P.S. The cat is pretending to be impartial but he slept on your pillow for three minutes and then judged me for noticing.
I laugh. I cry. Both are small, and both are mine.
My phone buzzes.
Laramie: So?
Me: They want me pliable. I’m not. 7am. He’ll try to hug me for a camera or gut me for a quote.
Laramie: Good. Don’t sign. Don’t smile. I’ll be in the lot. Bring your spine.
Me: It’s packed.
Laramie: Proud of you. Also, sleep.
I drop the phone, lie down on the bedspread that smells like bleach and a thousand men wondering who they are when they’re not being clapped for. I close my eyes and try to hear the lighthouse beam even from here—the slow, stubborn sweep of home sounding out the dark.
Sleep comes in two-minute plays. Every time I wake, the room is the same, and I’m a little less afraid.
At 5:26, I give up pretending. I shower, dress in the jeans and stubbornness, and leave the tie on the dresser like a relic of a version of me I don’t love anymore. The sun is bleeding into the edge of the city when I hit the sidewalk. I can almost taste salt that isn’t here.
At 5:58, I step into the lobby.
At 5:59, I see them—Harris by the elevator, crisp as a threat; David beside him with a face that looks like it has said too many almost-apologies; a glass door that leads to a day that will try to make me invisible.
At 6:00, I square my shoulders and walk like gravity remembers who’s in charge, and for once, it isn’t the room.
And then—because the universe loves drama and I’m trying not to—my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I ignore it. It buzzes again. And again. The receptionist glances up. Harris’s eyes sharpen. David checks his watch like time could be trained.
On instinct, I pull the phone out. One text. Unknown number. A photo of the lantern room window shot from the bay at night, our silhouettes faint where brick meets glass.
Unknown: Beautiful view. would hate for anything to block it. 8 a.m. broadcast—don’t be late.
I look up, and Harris smiles like he didn’t just try to set the sky on fire with a match he can’t hold.
“Shall we?” he says.
I put the phone face down on the counter and tell my pulse to stop sprinting. If they want me afraid, they can watch me breathe instead.
“After you,” I say, and walk toward the elevator like a man who finally learned you can be terrified and still refuse to run.