Chapter 33
A New Friend
Kodi
After I’d gotten some — literal — distance from Kean and could catch my breath, I decided that whether I wanted to fuck him or not didn’t matter if it distracted me from the job I wanted.
Sure, I could theoretically become somebody else’s PA if Kean and I became a thing, but that would probably reinforce Hansen’s image of me being irresponsible and then I’d never become the media manager.
So before I crack and let Kean crack my back, I needed to get this job.
Or at the very least make progress towards it.
And since I’ve gotten to know the guys on the team better, I could make a more thorough social media road map for them that shows off how they’re all brothers constantly annoying each other with love.
Once I showed that to Hansen, maybe even one of the owners at the gala, then I’d get the job.
It was a great plan that would surely solve all my problems.
I just had to make that road map first.
But no matter how long I stared at my laptop, no matter how much research I did, I just couldn’t get my vision down on paper.
And this week, I couldn’t even blame my brain fog on Kean overloading my schedule. The list of PA tasks he gave me was child’s play compared to my first week. Everything that didn’t need to be done on a specific day was completed by Tuesday afternoon.
So now I was sitting in the shared office with nothing to do but get frustrated at myself.
Maybe I just needed a break. Maybe if I hung out with some of the guys I’d stumble upon the perfect plan.
Surely a few of them were in the gym or the med bay rather than running drills on the field.
Though if I hung out with any of the first-string players, they’d probably spend the whole conversation selling me on Kean or whatever their cockamamie plan was.
And given that having Kean on my mind is what was causing all my problems, I should probably avoid them, too.
“Ugh,” I groaned, thunking my head on my desk, praying that’d jog some ideas.
“Whoa, what’s up with you?” a familiar voice asked. I looked up to see Rosa in the doorway and suddenly everything was brighter.
My adult life in Florida has been … lacking in the friends department.
I mean, I had light friendships with folks I went to school with.
We went out every once in a while, dinner, clubs, place where we could chat or stuff our faces if things got awkward.
But overall, I’d grown apart from most of my local friends and as a freelancer, there weren’t many secondary spaces I could go to make new friends.
But talking with Rosa at the Nasties game, I got that giddy feeling that we could be close and I really, really hoped it’d stick.
“Hey, Rosa! What’re you doing here?” I stood up, mentally debating if I should hug her or if that’d be too much. I wasn’t a hugger-hugger but I liked a hug or two.
But before I could overthink it, Rosa rounded the desks to hug me.
“Oh my god, do I have some gossip.” She squeezed me once before letting go to hop on a free desk. “Carmen finally told about what the boys are doing with you and Kean. Like, more than the make-Kean-look-good thing.”
“Seriously?” My eyes went wide. “What’d he say? Or did Jimenez tell you not to say?”
“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “One of the reasons he doesn’t share that kinda shit with me is because he knows I like to talk. But him telling me means he cleared it with Kean or the rest of the guys. And you know what that means …” She trailed off, looking at me expectantly.
“Um … that he trusts you?” I said uncertainly, completely at a loss as to what conclusion she was jumping to.
“Oh my god.” She slapped my arm with the back of her hand. “No. I mean, yeah, sure my husband trusts me, we have a healthy relationship, blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that they want me to come blab to you.”
“What? You think they had a team meeting to clear how much of their ‘force me and Kean together’ plan they could share with you?” The idea of all the players gathered around to gossip and help each other out with their love lives was super amusing.
And maybe something I could use for the social media road map? Nah, probably not.
“Exactly! You can picture it, right? Brooker being annoying and nosy and initiating the whole conversation. Christenson trying to balance shit out. Kean just grumbling. Taylor and my husband giving the best advice.”
“You don’t think that’s a little biased?” I cut in and she nudged me again.
“Shut up, he’s the only married guy on the team, of course he’s gonna give better advice than the rest.”
It wasn’t something I’d realized, but she was right.
Most of the dudes were single, so they probably had a lot of problems they needed advice for with very few advisors on the team.
Maybe there was something to that. I’m sure fans would find it amusing to ask the players advice and see them be stupidly relatable with how they answer.
“So how do you feel?” Rosa asked and all I could do was blink back at her because I didn’t hear the context of the question.
“I feel … good?”
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
“Sorry.” I cringed. “I’ve been trying to come up with like … a sample plan for the team’s social media to give to Hansen to convince him to give me the social media manager job. But this whole thing with Kean is … distracting.”
“Oh, shit, that’d be so cool. Is that what you, like, want to do? For your career?”
“Oh my god, yes.” I let my head hang back, staring at the ceiling. “Being a full-time social media manager is the dream. And being the manager for my favorite team? It’d be amazing.”
“But?” she prodded.
“But I — when did y’all move here?”
Her face scrunched, but she looked up at the ceiling, counting on her fingers. “I guess it’ll be three years soon.”
“Mmm. So five years ago, I came to a game and sorta kinda flashed the camera when it panned to fans.”
“Holy shit! Kodi!” She jumped off the desk and grabbed my hands. “The balls on you! That’s wild!”
“Well, I was a tad tipsy. My tits were also painted like soccer balls, so …”
Rosa threw her head back and laughed. “Please, please tell me you have pictures.”
“Obviously. But —”
“Show me, show me, show me,” she said, shaking me with both hands on my shoulders.
“Oh my god, why’re you so excited to see my tits?”
“Because they were painted like soccer balls! Who wouldn’t be excited to see that?”
“Well, you have to let me go for me to pull up the pics,” I grumbled and Rosa immediately let me go.
I rolled my eyes and pulled out my phone to find my old, archived post from that incident.
“But the reason I brought it up was because I applied for the social media manager position and was made Kean’s PA because of this.
Hansen didn’t wanna hire me for such an important position without me ‘proving’ that I’m more responsible and shit.
And this whole thing with Kean and his general hot, grumpy ass being …
hot and the guys trying to get us together or whatever, isn’t helping. ”
“Oh, right.” I handed my phone to Rosa and she set it down on the table without looking.
“So like how do you feel about Kean? Because all the guys have clocked a vibe and, like, it’s Kean.
He never likes anybody, so they’re hyped and want it to work out for him.
But also he’s kind of your boss, so if you feel at all pressured by — okay, stop with whatever that face is. ”
Rosa stopped when my face scrunched up, mimicking the look in confusion.
“Sorry, it’s just … I guess I don’t view Kean as my boss at all.
Like, the first week I worked with him, he ran from me like I had cooties and that kinda made me lose all respect for him as a higher-up.
Like, I guess technically I report to him and I call him my pseudo-boss, but it feels more like a group project, but the project is making sure he’s the best player he can be. ”
“What was that K word you said?” Rosa asked and it took me a second to figure out what word she meant.
“Oh, cooties, it’s like a childish, imaginary germ from the opposite sex.”
“Uh-huh,” she said skeptically then took her phone out and handed it to me. “Spell it for me. I know y’all mean well, but sometimes it’s just easier for me to Google the equivalent word, especially with slang.”
“By y’all, you mean me and Brooker?”
“Uh-huh. What’s the phrase? Bless his heart or something like that? He’s definitely trying, but he’s trying to learn, like, four dialects at once and that’s … not efficient.”
“Yeah, bless his heart indeed,” I said with a laugh, typing cooties into her phone then handing it back to her. She squinted at the screen, tapping and scrolling for a second before muttering something that I thought meant nonsense.
“Whatever, he was acting childish, right?” I nodded and she continued. “So you don’t feel pressured to accept his advances?”
“Well … I wouldn’t say he’s made any advances. Like, there’ve been a couple of heated looks, a comment or two that could be read as flirting. But like, he hasn’t done anything forward.”
“And if he did, what’d you do?”
“Like right now?”
“No, in a year,” she huffed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, right now.”
“I guess …” I sighed and slumped back into my chair. “So like, I’m not the best at impulse control.”
“You and me both.”
“Right, so like, if he asked me literally right now, I’d probably say something like I’d be interested if I can get the job I want first. 'Cause like, if I go to Hansen and ask to be somebody else’s PA 'cause I wanna get with Kean, that doesn’t really help show that I’m mature enough for a management position, right? ”
“I guess,” she huffed. “I mean, it’s definitely not true. But I get where you’re coming from.”
“Right. But if he asked me out if I’ve had a drink or he was in that tux he tried on …” I sighed and rested my head on the table, thinking about Kean’s ass in his boxers.
“Ah, the age-old battle of logic versus horniness.”
“Exactly.”
We were silent for a minute as I tried, unsuccessfully, to not think about Kean’s biceps or thighs or the way he said he’d do anything I asked him to. How he acted when I cried, the way he took responsibility when Hansen was upset for the meme thing.
“Follow-up question, are you hot for the man or sweet on him?” Rosa asked and I literally had to pull back from my thoughts and just … think about it.
I’d thought I just wanted fuck him, but …
“Maybe both,” I eventually said, voice soft. “I dunno, it’s too soon to tell. We haven’t known each other all that long. But he … he has his moments.”
“Ah!” Rosa squealed, wiggling a little in excitement. “Oh my god, this is so exciting! Let’s go get you a dress for the gala that’ll have him begging Hansen to give you that job.”
“Rosa, calm down,” I said through a giggle while she started packing my things. “One, I’m technically still working.”
“Bullshit. You were bored as fuck when I walked in. Next.”
“Two, we don’t even know if Kean is interested in anything. Like more interested than a base attraction.”
Rosa narrowed her eyes at me in a look that I interpreted as she’d beat my ass if we knew each other better.
“Let’s go dress shopping,” she said, looping an arm around mine with my bag over her other shoulder, leaving no room for argument.