Chapter 13
Steven
A meeting with public relations.
It was like I was being summoned to the principal’s office.
I’d gotten the call early in the morning. I’d barely gone to sleep after returning home from a wild and wonderful night when I’d been summoned to the team’s set of offices.
Instead of going through the arena’s entrance, I parked around to the side in hopes of avoiding any press. At least there hadn’t been any paparazzi parked outside Tony’s place. I had a feeling if there had been, he would have tossed my shit on the street by now.
Today had been my only day off for a while, which is one reason why being summoned to a meeting didn’t thrill me.
Especially since I had a new group of people eager and ready to tell me all the things I did wrong on social media. I’d posted a couple of innocuous pictures I’d found, trying to avoid anything remotely sexual. But the comments hadn’t stopped when I’d left Philly.
Some were nice.
Some were not so nice.
Now, a few Tampa residents had decided to make destroying my reputation a quick and easy game for themselves.
The truth was I couldn’t give a shit about Facebook and Instagram. I’d had an account for years and had a few followers, but I’d never really cultivated the environment. I’d been too busy playing the game.
I’d barely managed to grab a shower before leaving the house. With my hair wet and wearing a winkled pair of jeans and a tee shirt, I knew I looked a sorry sight, but I hadn’t even taken the time to hang up my clothes. Now, why bother? I’d just need to pack them once again.
“There you are.” The assistant coach was almost as gruff as Coach Braxton, but he’d come up through the ranks over the years and knew what it felt like to be a player caught in a crossfire.
He’d been forced to step down from a prominent position a decade before after being caught in bed with the wife of the team’s owner.
I remembered the scandal, something my father had used as a teaching mechanism. Don’t fuck around. His three words. At least they were ones I remembered.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Rough night?” he asked as he motioned me toward his office.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” The way he was looking at me meant it was possible one of the team members had seen me with Christine. If anyone talked, I’d kick their ass.
“Get some coffee.”
“Does that mean I’m going to need it, Coach Parker?”
“First of all, call me Bobby, for God’s sake. My father is still a coach and he wouldn’t like it if I was confused with him. You don’t know Ansley yet. She’s tough. And there might be a bit of a crisis.”
“Crisis? What does that mean?”
He scratched his beard, more stressed than I’d seen him before. “Let’s allow Ansley to handle this.”
Great. Why did I have a terrible feeling about events from the night before?
“Any hints how to handle her?”
“Just agree. She’s good at what she does and from what I understand, you need a little help in the social media department.”
While I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, on this morning I needed a little pick me up. I was dragging my ass something fierce. By the time I made it back to his office, a projector had been set up, a screen already pulled and there were whiteboards near his desk.
“Mr. Masters. Please take a seat.” Her voice was crisp, cold, and calculating.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but while a tiny woman, barely standing five foot tall, her voice packed a punch. I had a feeling she was a take no shit kind of woman.
Maybe there was something in the water. While I sat down, my thoughts drifted to Christine.
“I’m Ansley Adams. We met the other day.”
She didn’t offer her hand for a shake, nor did she smile. In fact, her eyebrows were knitted together as if she was disgusted with what she was seeing.
Self-conscious, I looked down at my clothing.
Only then did I realize I’d found mismatched socks.
Great. I must look like some disheveled idiot.
If she was all of twenty-two years old, I’d be surprised, but her button-down shirt under a crisp, boring suit reaffirmed she was a take no shit kind of girl.
“Yes, ma’am. We did. What can I do for you?”
“I see you once broke a reporter’s jaw for annoying you.” She tipped her head, her expression droll.
“He had a microphone in my face and refused to back off even after I told him three times.”
“So you broke his jaw.”
Shrugging, I tried to act as if the event had been no big deal. “He had it coming.”
“I see,” she breathed. “And the naked girls all over several posts from a few weeks ago?”
“Hey, I don’t control what they do.” My answer hung in the air with silence following.
“Are you aware your social media accounts are atrocious?”
Well, she didn’t mince words. Just like someone else I knew. “I’ve been a little busy to worry about them.”
“Well, you need to start. Those issues aside, you have a measly ten thousand followers on your Instagram, no TikTok account, and let’s not discuss the atrocity that is your Facebook account. Obviously, you don’t pay attention because it’s apparently been hacked.”
“Hacked? I was just on it the other day. Although for the first time in a little while.”
She grumbled under her breath while flicking on the projector. She found my page, showing a hot sports car first then another one. Then another. I could clearly tell she was exasperated. “What is this?”
“They’re mine. I mean I don’t own the cars. I just posted them because I like them. See, I have a Trans Am as well.”
She looked at me as if I had two heads. “Well, these are the decent pictures, the ones that can be shown to with children in the room. The others? Well, I’m shocked you haven’t gotten kicked off Facebook.”
“What are you talking about?” Now I was getting annoyed.
Perhaps Ansley could tell, which was why the look she gave me was brutal. When she flicked to a series of photos I’d taken after a big win a few months later, my skin started to crawl.
“Where was this?” she demanded.
“A party after the game, but that was months ago.”
“Uh-huh. A topless party with beer bongs?”
The tone of her voice had heat building in my face. I was slouching down even further into the seat. “I didn’t know the girls were going to be there. They just showed up. Like I said. That was months ago.”
“It doesn’t matter how long ago they were taken. Haven’t you ever heard footprints on the internet are forever? Even more so with celebrities. And it certainly doesn’t look as if you were bothered by their presence since you have your tongue stuck down each woman’s throat more than once!”
Ansley was completely exasperated, huffing so hard she blew a strand of hair down from her tight little bun. “Okay. I’m sorry. I stopped posting because my old coach said I was doing myself a disservice.”
“They should have advised you to remove the photos altogether.”
“Don’t be so hard on him, Ansley. Or on the Philly coach. Just explain the rules and he promises to do much better. Don’t you?” Bobby’s eyebrows were knitted together out of frustration.
“Of course. Absolutely.”
A sudden quiet in the room formed and I didn’t like it one bit. Not one.
“While I don’t agree, from what I’ve been told, you’re a star.
Or at least you might become one. You don’t do that kind of shit.
Everything is a photo op and trust me when I say that every time you’re out in the public, you need to be thinking about being the star.
Now, look at these. When were these photos taken? ”
“What’s wrong with them? They’re of the stands and the teams and the first play. And what do you mean you don’t agree?’
“That’s the issue,” Bobby tossed out, tossing Ansley a look that told her to be careful. “There’s a blackout policy the day of games. No social media. Maybe that’s not a typical rule in the lower leagues.”
I glanced at Bobby who was thoroughly amused by what was going on. “Guess not,” I quipped, barely avoiding my increasing rage. “Whatever you say. No more game pictures.”
She was flipping through photos on the screen so fast I couldn’t make them out.
“Your Instagram is not much better. You need to be posting pictures with fans and of every city you go to. Every game.”
“I’ll do what I can with what time I have.”
“This is part of your job. So let’s take a look at some of the other items you’ve been posting for the last six months.” As soon as she started flicking through the photographs, I slouched down in the seat again.
She was growing angrier by the minute, especially when seeing the naked girls in the vats of Jell-O. “I can explain.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t want to know. What I need for you to tell me is that you’re never going to do anything of that nature again. Jell-O. Mud. Quicksand. I don’t care. And you aren’t. Right?”
I glanced at Bobby who was giving me a very stern look. “Okay.”
“If you don’t comply then I’ll be forced to take over your accounts and you won’t like it when I do. Get it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I could clearly tell she didn’t like to be called ma’am.
I had to wonder if her bite was as bad as her glare. Maybe so.
“Have you not been told that people are out to get you?”
I almost choked on the coffee as I took a sip, managing to burn the hell out of my hand as I did. “What? Out to get me the hockey player or me the shifter?”
“Both.”
“What now?”
She threw Bobby a look that told me the two of them had been already discussed whatever issue they’d been faced with.
Her sigh was heavy and long. “What were you doing last night?”
“I do get to have a personal life. Right?”
“You do,” she said. “As long as you don’t break a man’s hand while enjoying your down time.”
“Oh, shit.” How much lower in the seat could I go?