Better make the roster
I eventually get tired of dancing, which is not the same thing as becoming tired. My body could probably continue for another hour if the music remained good and somebody periodically supplied water, alcohol or external validation.
I simply lose Jenny when a girl in a silver top takes both her hands, spins her around and apparently becomes the new centre of her universe.
Jenny looks delighted.
I give her two thumbs up.
Will is still outside by the pool with Nate and DJ, which means the three of them are probably discussing basketball, protein intake or some deeply male emotional problem disguised as a joke about somebody’s balls.
I saw him watching me several minutes ago. He had one shoulder against the fence, beer held loosely near his hip, his eyes following me with the deeply satisfying expression of a man who knows exactly what I look like without this dress on.
I blow him a kiss from across the room before pushing through the crowd towards.
The house belongs to one of Jason’s friends, which I know because Jason pointed at the guy when we arrived and told me he had inherited the place from an uncle. I lost the rest of his story after that.
The kitchen has become the usual party disaster. Every surface is wet. Nobody knows whether the liquid is beer, water or something capable of removing paint.
Three girls are sitting on the island with their shoes beside them, and a boy I vaguely recognise is attempting to open a bottle against the edge of a marble counter worth more than his future salary.
I take the bottle from him before he permanently reduces the house’s resale value. “Move.”
He looks down at me. “I know how to—”
I hook the cap against the metal opener built into the fridge door and pass the beer back.
“Maddy!”
I turn towards the voice and find the rower from the recovery-clinic shoot squeezing past two people beside the pantry.
His hair is no longer professionally damp and he is wearing a navy shirt instead of the grey athletic set I made him change into three times, but the shoulders remain immediately recognisable.
“My favourite medically rehabilitated torso.” I lift my unopened beer in greeting. “Miss me yet?”
“My mother has made one her phone background.”
“That was the target demographic.”
He laughs and gives me a one-armed hug, careful not to knock the drinks from either of our hands. A cluster of girls follows him into the kitchen, all long legs, glossy ponytails and the kind of posture people develop after years of being shouted at from the bank of a river.
Rowers.
Leila appears between two of them.
Of course she does.
She sees me at almost the same moment, and something uncertain moves across her face before she arranges it into a small smile.
Apparently our scheduled coffee tomorrow does not prevent her from also arriving at the same party tonight, because the universe is committed to placing this girl directly within my field of vision until I either speak to her or move countries.
I turn back to the rower before Leila can begin another conversation.
“You looked good, by the way. The client already chose six of the final images.”
“Only six?”
“We need to work on your left side.”
One of the rowing girls laughs. “He told us you bullied him for an hour.”
“I provided creative direction.”
The rower places a hand over his chest. “I thought we built trust.”
“We built content.” I correct him.
Another girl leans against the island beside me, dark ponytail falling over one shoulder. “How do you get so many athletes to work with you? You’ve got people from, like, every team now.”
“Threats, emotional manipulation and a highly organised spreadsheet.”
“I’m serious.” She grins wider.
“So am I. The spreadsheet is colour-coded.” I reach for the cooler to get myself a beer.
She waits, smiling, and I surrender approximately three percent of the truth. “Friends and friends of friends, mostly. We do one good campaign, the athlete tells somebody else it wasn’t terrible, then they answer our message instead of pretending they’ve never opened Instagram.”
That makes it sound casual. Organic. Like Jenny and I accidentally became surrounded by commercially attractive athletes because we are fun at parties and understand lighting.
Fuck, it has not been casual.
It has been fucking hard.
A real agency can call an athletic department, mention a recognisable client and get a meeting before anyone has time to investigate whether the person making the call has finished puberty.
Jenny and I send twenty carefully written messages and receive nineteen versions of We’ll keep you in mind, which is adult language for Please disappear quietly so I don’t have to press block.
I tell Jenny that the chance of success at anything is five percent. Therefore, if we approach one hundred businesses, we will get five clients, and if we want enough successful campaigns to become an actual company, we need to approach one thousand.
I do not know whether that math is mathing. It has never been my greatest contribution to society.
One thousand is simply the number I put inside my head, and once a number enters my head with sufficient confidence, it becomes a target instead of a hallucination.
The athletes are the easier part now because we do not force them to become another pretty face holding green juice beside a window or smiling lovingly at dumbbells.
We know who hates early shoots, who needs music playing, who photographs badly from the left, who cannot remember a line longer than six words and who requires twenty push-ups before a photograph because abdominal definition is shy.
We speak their language.
More importantly, we remember what they tell us.
The girl beside me twists a silver ring around her finger. “So there’s no secret recruitment package?”
I grin. “There is coffee.”
“Only coffee?”
“Sometimes juice. Depending on performance.”
One of the others laughs into her cup. “I heard the first few athletes received more personalised incentives.”
The group breaks into the kind of collective laughter.
I lift my beer towards her. “Sexual incentives are reserved for athletes who exceed quarterly targets.”
The rower nearly spits his drink over the pantry door.
“Shit,” the girl with the ponytail laughs. “No wonder basketball signed first.”
“Basketball did not sign first. Football did.”
“Right.”
Something flickers between two of the girls. A glance. Tiny and fast, one of them looking towards the phone in the other’s hand before returning to me. Interesting.
Not alarming. Jenny and I can conduct an entire criminal trial through eye contact from opposite sides of a lecture hall.
Before I can decide whether everybody in this kitchen has recently joined a cult devoted to awkwardness, a large hand touches my elbow.
Mike leans down near my ear. “Can I talk to you?”
“Always. You owe me another release form and your schedule for next month.”
“Not about work.”
That gets my attention.
Mike is not smiling.
I study his face. “Did you get someone pregnant?”
“What? No.”
“Why are you so serious then? Everything else can be fixed.”
“Maddy.”
I put my beer on the counter. “Okay.”
Mike guides me several feet away, into the narrow space between the pantry and a door leading towards the garage. Music still shakes the walls, but the kitchen noise becomes softer behind his shoulders.
He glances over me towards the rowing group. “Have you seen it?”
“Seen what?”
His jaw shifts.
“Mike.”
He unlocks his phone and opens a message thread. “A girl I’ve been seeing sent me these. She got them from one of her friends, whose boyfriend was apparently in some old athletes’ chat.”
He turns the screen towards me.
At first, all I see is the usual dark background and pale message bubbles. Boys’ names. A few profile pictures. The top of the screenshot has been cut off, so there is no title, only the end of a conversation and a timestamp from several weeks ago.
Then I see my surname next to the word head.
I blink once.
The little one. Obviously.
A laugh leaves me automatically.
“Legendary?” I glance up at Mike. “At least Rory verifies consumer feedback.”
Mike gives me a stern look, entirely serious and not laughing.
Then I look back at the screen. My smile stops.
The words stay in front of my eyes even after I lower the phone slightly.
Captain has home-court advantage.
Better make the roster.
There are many things about the screenshot that should offend me.
Better make the roster is different.
Because I have spent months building an actual roster of athletes.
Apparently everybody else has been discussing a different one.
The conversation from two minutes ago rearranges itself in my head. Personalised incentives. No wonder basketball signed first.
Oh.
Captain has home-court advantage is worse in another direction.
Will did not choose me.
He simply lived closest.
My fingers tighten around Mike’s phone.
“AirDrop these to me.”
“Maddy—”
“Mike.” I lift my eyes to his. My voice remains level, which is more frightening than shouting and we both know it. “AirDrop every screenshot she sent you.”
He nods immediately.
My phone vibrates in my hand a moment later. Six images. Not one.
I accept them, open the first and begin moving through each screenshot with my thumb. The conversation goes further back than the section Mike showed me.
Other women. Parties. Phone numbers. A photograph of someone asleep on a sofa with drawings over his face. Graduated players still inside the chat. Someone named Big T, which sounds like either a former athlete or a children’s breakfast cereal.
Who the fuck is Big T?
Irrelevant.
“Where did your girl get these?” I ask Mike.
Mike pushes one hand through his hair. “Her friend is dating a senior. Apparently one of the graduated guys showed his girlfriend because she recognised a girl’s name in another part of it. She sent it to friends. It reached the football group this afternoon.”
“How many people?”
“I don’t know.”
“That answer is useless.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Who sent it to you?”