Chapter Four Los Angeles Nine years earlier
The charity auction at the Montage was for something his father would not have donated to if it hadn’t been a chance to be seen donating.
Piper was twenty-one. He wore a borrowed suit cut slightly too narrow across the shoulders and stood near the bar with a club soda, pretending to follow a conversation about venture capital he couldn’t care less about.
Across the room, his mother worked. Donna always worked the room.
He had watched her do this since he was a child.
Her hand resting on someone’s forearm. A slight forward lean, calibrated to suggest the conversation mattered to her and only to her.
The person always leaned back in. His mother’s whole life had been built on leaning back in.
She had Piper at seventeen so she was still a kid and her looks always garnered a certain amount of attention.
Leaning into the promise of opportunity to fund their lifestyle.
There was a way she held her chin when she was talking to people with money, slightly elevated, slightly tilted, and Piper could identify a man’s net worth by the angle of her face before she said a word to him.
Donna Ashton had already tossed back two glasses of champagne since they arrived and was now on her third, which was her favorite buzz before entering the dark side.
Piper had stopped counting his mother’s drinks when he was fifteen because counting them didn’t change the number.
Carlo Rossi had evolved into Dom Pérignon by the time he got to college, but the volume hadn’t changed.
Piper knew the booze was practically a sibling to him and his twin sister Alexis.
His father was already on his fourth drink by eight, which meant he was at the version of himself he liked best. Confident and certain that the evening was already a success. He was talking too loudly to a film producer about a script neither of them had read.
Piper had been calculating when he could leave since the third song. Rockstar by Post Malone filling the ballroom was a vibe Piper could not match with the over-65 crowd in the room, loitering near the silent auction tables looking for tax write-offs.
“You look like someone who would rather be anywhere else.”
The voice came from his left. Piper turned.
The man was in his early forties. Dark hair going slightly silver at the temples.
A Tom Ford suit perfectly tailored to his body in a way that told Piper he didn’t miss chest day or any other gym day for that matter.
He held a glass of scotch. He was not looking around the room, scanning for a conversation that benefited him. He was looking at Piper.
“I’m fine, you?” Piper said.
“You’re doing the math. I’ve watched you do it for the last twenty minutes. You’re figuring out what time you can leave this snooze fest.”
Piper kept his expression steady. “Well, thanks for observing the wildlife.”
“I like observing,” the man said with a look similar to a lion hunting his prey. He held out his hand. “Jayson Days.”
Piper took it. “Piper Ashton.”
“I know who you are. Senior year Stanford. Four hundred and twelve yards against USC last year. The ball you threw on fourth and twelve was the best throw in college football this year.”
“It was a good catch.”
“It was a good throw.”
Piper glanced at him sideways. “You watch college football.”
“I watch exceptional people.”
It was supposed to be a compliment. Piper took it as something else but could not name what.
They talked for fifteen minutes about football, then the conversation took a turn into the loneliness of being exceptional at something most people didn’t understand.
Jayson listened more than he spoke. Piper had never met a man who did that.
Every adult man in his life was a talker.
His father, his coaches, the recruiter who had flown out his junior year.
They filled rooms with themselves. Jayson was removing himself from the room to make space for Piper, which Piper understood later was his own technique.
Jayson handed him a card. Heavy paper stock with gold embossed print. Just a phone number and a single word: Days.
His father showed up behind Piper.
“Pipe. Pipe, honey.”
The bourbon was on his breath before the words were. “Do you know who this is?”
Piper kept looking at Jayson. “Yes.”
“He’s a billionaire, just sold a chip company for billions.” His father said it the way he said most things after drink three. He said it loud enough that people at the bar turned in their direction. Piper cringed in embarrassment.
“I’ve enjoyed meeting your son, Mr. Ashton.”
“Please, Jayson, call me Dan. We should all have dinner. Donna would love to meet you properly. She’s somewhere.”
He gestured vaguely toward the ballroom, where Piper’s mother was laughing with her hand on a stranger’s arm, her eyes lighting up like Bambi. “Donna. Donna!” Dan yelled.
She didn’t hear him. She was doing what she did. The champagne could only hear so much.
Jayson’s eyes stayed on Piper.
“I would like that,” Jayson said.
Piper’s father pumped Jayson’s hand two more times than necessary and drifted back toward the bar, visibly proud of himself. Piper watched him go. He watched his mother from across the room.
When he looked back at Jayson, Jayson was still watching him.
“They drink a lot,” Piper said, before he knew he was going to say it.
“Yes,” Jayson said. “They do.”
Piper looked at the card in his hand.
“If you ever need to talk, give me a call,” Jayson said, very gently. “You can use it when you need it.”
***
Piper’s shoulder was injured three months later.
A defensive end had come through a gap that should have closed. Piper took the hit hard, felt the labrum go as he threw, and finished the throw anyways.
The ball was completed for twenty-seven yards. Piper was on the turf unable to get up due to the pain.
The news came from the orthopedic surgeon in a conference room two days later. Piper held back tears. Surgery required and the timeline was nine months minimum. The draft was in four months. The scouts had already been in the building.
His mother cried over the potential loss of her free ride in life and then reached for her phone.
“We need to make calls,” she said. “We need to call Alan at the firm. We need to call... Dan. Dan, are you listening? Fucking listen to me! We need to think. Piper is projected at one in the draft. This can’t be happening!”
His father was looking at the floor. He hadn’t said anything since the surgeon left the room. He pulled a flask out of the inside pocket of his jacket, a thing Piper had never seen him do in a medical office, and took a long pull.
“Dan,” his mother said.
“I am fucking listening, Donna.”
“Then say something, asshole.”
“Let me have a minute.”
His mother reached out to her best friend Kay who apparently knew “a surgeon in NYC who does the pros.” His father drank from his lucky flask. Piper sat across from both of them with his arm in a sling and his mind raced.
That night, Piper made the call when he remembered the card. Jayson answered on the second ring.
“Piper.”
“Hey Jayson, you told me to call if I needed anything and guess what, the shoulder is torn. Three places. They want to operate.”
“Which surgeon?”
Piper told him.
“He is fine, but there are better ones though and I know two offhand. I will have both of them call you in the morning. Is there anything else you need me to do?”
Piper hadn’t been asked that question in a very long time.
“No, that’s it. I really appreciate this Jayson, I don’t know how to thank you,” Piper said.
“You will find a way in time. I will call you in the morning.”
The line ended.
***
The specialists called at nine and by noon a facility in La Jolla had been secured. By the next day, a plan was created that no surgeon at the original hospital would have assembled. His parents spent that afternoon orbiting Jayson’s involvement like moths to a flame.
The legal paperwork arrived that week.
They were bound in navy leather. His mother spread it on the kitchen table and said, “We’ve had Alan look at it.”
“Alan who?”
“Alan at the firm. He’s looked at it. He says it’s standard.”
“Standard for what?” Piper asked not sure what was going on. His father and mother had been communicating with Jayson now about some sort of deal.
“For representation.”
His father was at the kitchen counter pouring a second glass of red wine at three in the afternoon. “Jayson wants to help us, wants to help you,” his father said as he drank his wine.
The ‘us’ sat in the kitchen for longer than it should have.
Piper didn’t need his parents to sign. He was twenty-one.
His signature was the one that bound the contract.
But his parents were on the contract as his co-managers, because the trust that paid for the surgery was going to pay his parents a monthly manager’s fee.
The fee was structured as management, but did not require them to manage anything.
His mother spread the pages. His father reached for the pen.
Piper picked up the stack. His shoulder burned under the sling.
The draft was months away and the projections had already slipped.
He flipped to the signature pages. He read the first page carefully, the second page more quickly, the third page not at all.
His ADHD made it hard for him to focus on legal jargon he did not understand.
He trusted his parents’ lawyer, Alan, to have dug into the details.
He signed where they had marked.
His mother’s hand shook slightly when she took the pen next, which Piper attributed to lack of Chardonnay in her system. She signed. His father signed. His father’s signature was wet at the bottom and he apologized for it and poured another splash of red wine into his glass.
“This is going to be good, I promise. Really fucking good.”
She was not looking at Piper. She was looking at the room.
His father raised his glass. “To us.” Piper remembered that later.
The phrase. The wet signature. The way his mother had said that this was going to be good.
He had thought he was signing away a percentage of his future earnings which was normal.
What Piper did not understand was why a tech billionaire would sign him to one of his umbrella organizations.
He did appreciate the help and liked the idea of being attached to someone with endless resources.
What Piper had actually signed would take him years to understand, and by the time he understood he’d be in too deep to get out.
***
The surgery was early in the morning. Piper woke a few hours later to an IV line in the back of his hand, a monitor softly beeping above him, and a room that was too cold and too clean and too quiet.
His mother was not there. She had slept through her alarm, he was told.
His father was golfing, he was told. His twin sister, Alexis, was in Dubai with her boyfriend at the time doing whatever she was doing, probably on a yacht surrounded by cocks and cocaine.
The nurse gave him another dose of something strong as he drifted off again.
When he surfaced the next time, he didn’t immediately remember where he was.
The room was dark. There was a small lamp across the room.
Under the lamp’s light, in the chair against the wall, Jayson sat reading a book. Piper tried to speak and couldn’t.
Jayson looked up from the page.
“You’re fine,” he said.
Piper went back under.
When he surfaced again the light through the window was different and Jayson was still there. Piper noted how long he had been sleeping.
When he woke fully, hours later, Jayson was standing at the window with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking out at the parking lot. Piper’s mother still hadn’t arrived. His father was not going to.
Jayson turned and crossed the room without hurrying.
“How is the pain?”
“Manageable.”
“Good. They will give you more if you ask.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know.”
Jayson sat down in the chair beside the bed, “How long do they want you here?”
“A couple days.”
“I will stay as long as you need.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know,” Jayson said.
The second time he had said it was like he had already considered the question before Piper had asked it.
Piper had thought about that night many times since. Not the access, not the money, not the specialists. The chair. The book. His parents not being there, and Jayson reading quietly in the corner while the anesthesia wore off.
Years later, after his father died on Pacific Coast Highway, Jayson arrived at the hospital in Santa Monica before Piper’s mother did. Piper would come back to that first hospital night.
He had thought it was love. Someone who took care of the things that needed to be taken care of in life. It was the closest thing to it he had gotten.
He had been twenty-one.