CHAPTER 38 Everleigh Bradley
Spin Old News
Mr. Jennings acknowledges that he has made mistakes and will do better in the future. He has no further comment at this time.
Mr. Jennings is working hard to learn from his past mistakes and change his behavior. We have no further comment at this time.
Mr. Jennings takes full responsibility for his actions and is committed to earning back the trust of his team and his fans.
It’s on repeat. Put a fire out here with a bland, nondescript statement. Put another fire out there with another bland, nondescript statement.
Mr. Jennings isn’t, in fact, trying to do better or change his behavior.
But that’s not what I tell the media.
No, I spin old news, put out the same statements over and over, and try to highlight the good he’s done.
It’s hard.
He broke my heart with his words. I fired the shots first, sure. Absolutely, I did. But he didn’t have to come back and say that it was easier when we hated each other.
Even if he was right.
And so that’s where I find myself. Hating him again, but this time it’s paired with a side of worry. What the hell is he going to do next?
He’s back to his old self again, especially this weekend since he’s suspended.
Rather than keep a low profile—which is what most professionals in a situation where he was suspended for his behavior would do—he’s doubling down.
He was photographed drinking at a club last night after our conversation.
He was photographed later in the evening—or the early hours of this morning, I guess—at a strip club.
The asshole went to a strip club. To drink, to touch boobs, to stick dollar bills into thongs, who knows? All I know is that he wasn’t with me, and he’s not making himself look any better.
His birthday is tomorrow. He’s turning thirty-three on Halloween. I asked him once if there was anything he wanted to do to mark the occasion, and he said no. I wonder what he’ll do now that he’s on his own.
I think about going through with my plan. I was going to take him to dinner, and then I was going to give him his gift. Instead of doing that, I call the place where I bought his gift and ask them to send it directly to his place rather than to mine.
He can still have it. It’s already paid for anyway. This way I won’t have to interact with him.
I work my ass off burying the nonsense he participated in last night.
I highlight the same stories—a handful of charity events, his little moment with that girl at the Hope Gala…
and that’s about all I can find. There’s so much more out there that’s negative that I’m having a hard time covering it all up.
I think about bringing up the shelter, but that’s just for him.
He’s been adamant about that since I first mentioned it, so I leave it be.
No sense in creating even more bad blood between us.
Even Ellie is out of statements to make up.
We’ve circled the same verbiage a hundred different ways.
She has other clients, but I don’t. This is wholly on me, and I hired Ellie to help me.
I’ve turned to her a million times in the last twenty-four hours, but not being able to give her the full picture makes it harder to ask her for help.
Still, she’s working on some things in the background. Appearances at youth camps, more charity events, things of that nature, while she also reaches out to his sponsors with our plans of what he’s doing to turn himself back around.
It’s just hard to sell that when he’s being photographed at places he shouldn’t be. I lost what little control I tricked myself into believing I had when I said those nasty words to him—when I chose against him instead of with him.
My phone rings just before I’m going to take a lunch break on Friday, and I see it’s Penny calling.
My chest tightens as I realize what a horrible friend I’ve been.
“Hey,” I answer brightly. Too brightly. Fake brightly.
She sees right through me. “You can fool the media, but you can’t fool your best friend.”
“I should be the one calling to check up on you, not the other way around,” I say.
“Yeah, probably, but honestly, I’ve had a little time for it all to sink in, and despite everything, I’m happier than I’ve been in years.
So what’s going on with you? I keep seeing these headlines about Maverick Jennings, and Stuart has been running around here muttering things under his breath all morning. ”
“Stuart has?” I ask, my voice trembling a little. If Stuart is upset over what’s going on with Maverick, well…that can’t be good for me. It likely means Jack has been in touch with him.
And that could mean the end of this job for me.
“Yeah,” she says quietly.
“Shit,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” she repeats. “I wanted to give you the heads-up, that’s all.”
“Great. Just fucking great. I’m going to be fired because Maverick Jennings is an asshole.”
“You’re not going to be fired. Maybe just taken off his project,” she says, trying to be comforting.
“Same difference. It won’t matter. It’ll be a hit to my reputation, and I won’t be able to open my own firm because nobody will want to work with the girl who couldn’t fix Maverick.”
“Some people just don’t want to be helped,” she points out.
Isn’t that the truth? I blow out a breath.
“Nobody has to know he was your client,” she adds.
“I knew I didn’t want to work with an athlete. This right here. This is why.” I hang my head as I try to come to terms with all of this. My career and my personal life are coming to a screeching halt at the same time, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to save either one of them.
The prospect of opening up my own firm is slipping further and further from my reach.
I lost the man I loved.
I’m in a city that’s not my home.
I feel alone and lost. I feel like everything has been ripped out from under me in one fell swoop.
And it feels like it has an awful lot to do with my very own father.
“I know, Ev. What can I do?” Penny asks.
“Nothing,” I mutter. “I have to let this play out and see what Stuart decides.”
“You know I’m right here if you need to talk.”
“Well, if I get fired, I’ll be back in Chicago ASAP, so let’s plan on a girls’ staycation weekend somewhere fancy. Okay?”
“Definitely. But you’re not going to get fired,” she says.
That remains to be seen. She fills me in on the latest office gossip at Langford, and then she adds, “I forgot to tell you that I talked to Billy the other day.”
“Oh? What did he have to say?” It’s not curiosity so much as I can hear in her voice that she wants to tell me. Talk about old news.
“He wants you back, Ev. He told me that. He said he was disappointed with how things went when he was in Vegas, and he was hitting me up for how he can win you back. Maybe if you’re back in Chicago…”
She trails off, but the insinuation is clear.
“Nah. That ship has sailed.”
“Are you sure?”
I think about the night he came by here and what I felt for him versus what I felt for Maverick after he left. “Yeah. Totally sure. I fell for Maverick, Pen. It was different than how I fell for Billy.”
“Was?” she asks.
“I’m afraid that ship might’ve sailed, too.”
“Oh no. Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
And then I proceed to tell her everything.
Is Maverick right? Would letting him name my dad as the operator of that underground casino solve all these issues?
I have no idea. He was issued the citation either way.
But we don’t know what comes next. The DA could decide to go hard on him, and he could end up far worse off than being suspended for one game.
It’s all speculation until the DA has time to review the evidence.
If the raid occurred, they already have evidence, and they probably already have my father’s name, too.
I don’t know much about this stuff, though—I guess that’s not all that surprising considering the extent my father went to hide it all.
I suppose now we play the waiting game. Wait to hear from the DA. Wait for my phone to ring to see if Stuart is going to fire me. Wait to see if Jack is going to call me in again even though he claimed he doesn’t blame me for Maverick’s missteps.
Wait for Maverick to continue making my job harder.
Wait for a miracle that will somehow turn this entire thing around and put me back in his arms. What I said about wishing we’d never slept together was purely out of anger, and I miss him.
I don’t regret our time together, but I also know that at this point, I can’t go backward. I made my choice—even if it was the wrong one.
Now I have to live with it.