Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Callie
Monday morning I walk straight into Marty’s office, don’t stop at my desk, don’t set down my coffee or my purse. If you pause at your desk, you can talk yourself out of things at your desk. I’ve done the research.
In feudal Japan, samurai would sometimes commit ritual suicide to convince their lord not to do something they believed was immoral, the ultimate argument, made in a currency that couldn’t be ignored.
I’m not as brave as a medieval Japanese warrior.
But I’m about to commit the career equivalent, in this office, before nine a.m., and somewhere between yesterday’s medical room and this morning’s school drop-off, the math finished computing: my integrity, Danny’s life, and Nate’s are worth more than writing something I don’t believe.
“Callie. I don’t have an email from you with the article.” Marty says it before I’m fully through the door, and he says it tired, which is worse than angry.
“You’re not getting one. At least not the article you want.” I set the coffee down on his desk like a gavel. “I have an article ready for your review. It doesn’t drag anyone down.”
It will cost me. I know exactly where the desk stands, he needs a bombshell, the Herald is circling, the traffic pays the payroll, and every word of that is true and none of it is my problem anymore. I’m not going to be the tool.
“We talked about this. In this office.” He drags a hand down his face. “Callie, there is no better moment than right now, after Rivers’s little performance yesterday, the whole state is watching his name.”
Marty doesn’t know the half of yesterday, and he’s not going to learn it from me.
And privately — God help me, he’s right about the timing: if you wanted to punish Nate Rivers, you’d do it this week, while the fight highlights are still running on every screen in Texas.
I decline to give him the satisfaction of agreeing.
“Rivers’s performance has nothing to do with the photos.
” True, in the way that hides an ocean. “Marty, I will write this article the way I want. That’s why you hired me.
I’m your best and smartest writer, and what I’ve got is a piece worthy of an award.
But it is not going to describe Danny Alvarez as a drug addict living the dream, enabled by his rich buddies.
That’s against my professional integrity, and it’s beneath this desk, and it’s disrespectful to two men who don’t deserve it.
If you don’t want it, I’ll quit, and I’ll sell it to someone who does. ”
I hope that scares him, because it certainly scares me.
Writing the article was the easy part. The idea of someone else out there publishing the other version, the Herald’s version, the version with fangs, while I stand unemployed at school pickup…
that’s the part I’ve chosen not to look at directly.
“You’ll kill your career.” He leans back, and now he’s studying me the way he studies a bad traffic report. “Over a man who was planted at your son’s football practice.”
“Marty, my career has been dead for three years.” And saying it out loud, in this office, feels like setting down something heavy.
“I write about college coaches. Draft predictions. Low-stakes game speculation an intern with below-average intelligence could file between classes. I’m not killing my career.
” I pick my coffee back up. “I’m earning it back. ”
And that’s the truth, whole and unqualified. For the first time in three years I feel professionally alive, terrified, broke-adjacent, and alive.
“Callie.” He goes quiet, and takes the last exit available to him, the one I knew was coming. “You’re a single mother. You need the paycheck.”
He’s not wrong, and it’s the one soft spot in the entire plan, and I’ve been prodding it since five a.m. But I have savings.
I have child support that arrives from Travis with the punctuality he never managed in person, say this for the man, his accountant shows up.
And if the runway gets short, I can always deploy the Priya strategy: I will write about extravagant baseball weddings, I will critique game-day tunnel fashion, I will rank quarterbacks by their skincare routines before I will ever again write something that ruins a life.
“I’ll figure out my mortgage. Don’t worry about it.” It’s the truth; I don’t know the how yet, but the how is tomorrow-me’s problem. “Take what I have, Marty. Or take nothing.”
He doesn’t respond.
He looks at me for a long, long moment, the editor and the man having an argument behind his eyes that the man loses, and he doesn’t respond, and that’s my answer.
#
I walk out of the building feeling lighter than I’ve felt in three years. Feeling free.
This is objectively insane. This is not how a person should feel minutes after detonating her income, a responsible woman would be hyperventilating into a paper bag about groceries, and instead I’m standing on the sidewalk in the sun, unemployed, holding a cold coffee, feeling like I finally handed back something I’d been carrying so long I’d stopped noticing the weight.
Turns out a spine weighs less than a compromise. Who knew.
My phone buzzes.
Priya: I have never respected you more than I do at this exact moment. Whatever you need, I’m here. (Also Marty just closed his door and put on his sad jazz, so you KNOW it landed.)
I’ll answer her later. Right now I need to call Nate.
“How did it go?” He picks up on the first ring, which does something to me I’m not examining on a public sidewalk.
“He didn’t budge.” A breath. “And I quit.”
I told Nate I’d fight Marty on the framing.
I did not tell him I was prepared to quit, deliberately.
Because I know this man now: he’d have tried to talk me out of it, or worse, started generating plans A through F, offering to fix it, fund it, absorb it.
And this one wasn’t his to fix. This decision needed to have exactly one name on it. Mine.
“You… quit?” Surprise in his voice, surprise, and not one atom of disappointment, and the absence is louder than anything he says next. “Well. Then we need to celebrate.”
“What?”
“Come to my place after school pickup. I’ll order pizza. Texting you the address now, send me what the boys like on theirs.”
And he hangs up. Just like that. No processing window offered.
That is a man who makes split-second decisions and then executes them at full speed, and honestly, by now, it shouldn’t surprise me.
The address arrives before I’ve re-pocketed the phone, followed by a second text that says, in its entirety: ‘this is a pineapple-tolerant household, tell Finn.’
#
Nate
I have a present for Callie waiting in my living room.
The present is two hundred and twenty pounds, stands about six-two, and was made in Oregon. It goes by the name Grant Hale, and it is currently drinking water and critiquing my furniture.
Here’s the state of play. Callie told me her article gets exponentially stronger if it’s not an opinion piece, if it has real voices in it, real quotes, and the realest voice of all would be Danny’s.
She asked me, straight and serious, whether I could get her access to him.
I’m working on it, carefully, because whatever Danny said about permission, I’m going to mind his state and his pace; he gets to set both.
But in case Danny takes time, I’m delivering the two next-best things on the menu: myself, and Grant.
I could probably talk some of my other teammates who were there three years ago into it, but that will take time and Callie doesn’t have time.
If Danny declines, Grant and I will have to do.
Grant agreed to talk to her. Under protest, with conditions, negotiated like the professional contract-holder he is.
Condition one: a formal apology from me for being an ass, about everything I have done in the last several weeks.
Fair; delivered; accepted with insufferable grace.
Condition two: I reimburse half of what he paid for Danny’s ring, because apparently the auction ‘went feral’ and he had to dig deeper than planned.
Also fair; also done. He then informed me he’d have done the interview anyway and simply wanted to see what he could get.
I will have my revenge one way or another, just not today.
So when Callie walks into my house with the two boys and a laptop bag, she freezes in the doorway like she’s walked into an ambush, which, to be fair, she has.
“He’s harmless. I promise.” I point at Grant. “He wants to talk to you. For the article.”
I keep my eyes on Grant, because I need him to break this ice — Callie is operating on the assumption that every man on that roster hates her, which, historically, has not been entirely a lie, and the first thirty seconds here matter.
“Hey.” Grant deploys the easygoing smile, the one that melts anger and defuses referees. “Nate says you’ve got questions about three years ago. My perspective’s yours if you want it.”
“I’ll get the boys set up with pizza,” I say, and do exactly that, while Callie pulls out her laptop, sits in one of my armchairs like it’s a cockpit, and becomes, before my eyes, the other Callie, the byline.
Spine straight, questions clean, follow-ups loaded.
It’s genuinely something to watch. I have never seen Callie work, I have seen the aftermath, very familiar with that one, but the labor before the publication is a mystery.
Now I get to observe this mystery and see more of this woman.
They talk for hours. And I’m in the kitchen having an entirely different experience.
My house is loud.