8. Scheduled Delusions
Scheduled Delusions
Nolan
Four months later, February Manhattan cut through my suit while cameras flared across the red carpet outside the campaign launch.
Fans crowded the barricades with phones lifted over their heads, calling my name whenever I turned toward another bank of photographers.
The venue doors waited at the end of the press line, close enough to promise heat and quiet, but every few steps another publicist pointed me toward a new mark.
“Left side, Nolan,” one photographer called. “Sloane, come in closer.”
Sloane slid her arm around my waist before the sentence finished and tucked herself against my side. She rested her head against my shoulder as if we had done this a hundred times in private instead of under sponsor lights. The cameras erupted again.
“Your hand is freezing,” she said through her smile.
“Then let’s finish the stills before I lose the other one.”
She laughed for the lenses, and the crowd answered as if I had delivered a punch line meant for them.
I rested a hand at her waist because that was where the photographers expected it, then turned toward the next cluster when someone shouted my name.
The campaign team had spent months teaching us how to make every pose look accidental. By now, even the accidents came on cue.
Four months of silence from Piper should have made this feel different.
Instead, I had gotten better at performing around it. The photographers shifted us toward a sponsor wall while a coordinator raised two fingers and called for another set. Sloane snagged the back of my jacket as she moved.
“Your jacket’s stuck,” she said.
“Move your elbow.”
She lifted it, and I tugged the fabric free before another camera bank started firing. Beyond the barricade, someone screamed that we looked good together. Another fan yelled Sloane’s name, then mine, then something about the commercial that disappeared beneath the rest of the crowd.
Piper had been gone long enough that the empty house had stopped surprising me when I walked through the door.
That was the part I refused to examine too closely.
Reid had said she needed space, and I had given it to her.
Then one week had become two, two had become a month, and football had filled every opening I might have used to admit that my wife had not come home.
She’ll cool off.
The thought had carried me through November. By December, I had replaced it with another excuse: She knows this is business. January had stripped both down to nothing useful, yet here I was, standing beside Sloane while strangers debated whether we were sleeping together.
“One more stop,” the press coordinator said. “Mic coming in from your right.”
A reporter stepped into the opening before I could move toward the doors. He brought his microphone up between us, and Sloane kept her arm around my waist.
“Nolan, the chemistry between you and Sloane in the new commercials is undeniable. Are the rumors true that things are heating up off the gridiron?”
The easiest answer was one word: no. It was right there, clean and available, while the reporter waited and the cameras stayed trained on us.
Sloane beat me to it.
“We promised Reid we wouldn’t kiss and tell.” She tipped her face toward me for the cameras. “But QB1 is a dream to work with.”
Laughter broke along the press line. Someone behind the reporter called for us to look at each other. Sloane did, and I met her gaze because turning away would create its own headline. I had spent three years letting Reid convince me that avoiding the wrong headline justified almost anything.
The reporter angled the microphone toward me.
For a moment, the crowd, the sponsor wall, and the cameras faded, leaving only the choice in front of me. I could correct the story. I could tell them I had a wife. I could say her name and watch every reporter on the carpet start digging into the part of my life I had kept away from them.
Then Piper would become the story too.
That was how I justified it.
I put the smile back on and turned toward the microphone.
“It’s impossible not to feel a spark when you’re working with someone as captivating as Sloane,” I said. “I think that connection speaks for itself in the campaign.”
The reporter grinned and pulled the microphone back. Cameras flashed over Sloane’s shoulder while the crowd gave the campaign team the reaction they wanted.
I gave them the answer they came for.
The venue doors closed behind me, and the red-carpet noise collapsed into something muffled enough to tolerate.
My smile went with it. Sloane stayed outside under the lights while another group of photographers called her toward the sponsor wall, leaving me free to cross the lobby without anyone hanging from my arm.
My PR handler appeared at my side with his tablet already open.
“This way, sir. The back exit is clear.”
“Not yet. Come over here.”
He glanced toward the corridor leading to the car pickup. “We’re already running behind.”
“I need two minutes.”
I caught his sleeve long enough to steer him out of the stream of event staff and stopped beside the drapes lining the lobby wall.
The exterior doors opened again behind us, letting January air spill inside before another security guard pulled them shut.
My handler lowered his tablet, though he continued tapping the stylus against its edge.
“You crushed that interview, sir,” he said. “The car is waiting out back to take you to the hotel so you can change, but Reid wants you at the VIP reception in exactly thirty minutes.”
Of course he did.
The red carpet had taken longer than scheduled, the press interviews had run over, and Reid had still managed to wedge another reception into the night as if shaking hands with distributors mattered more because everyone involved was wearing expensive clothes.
Months ago, I had stopped asking how many appearances were necessary. The answer was always one more.
“How much time do I actually have upstairs?”
The handler skimmed the schedule. “If the driver gets us back without traffic, maybe fifteen minutes to change. Less if Reid decides he wants photos before you come downstairs.”
“And after the reception?”
“There’s a sponsor dinner.”
I looked at him.
He corrected himself without being asked. “A short sponsor dinner.”
“Right.”
Four months ago, Piper would have laughed at that phrase. Short sponsor dinner usually meant three hours of smiling beside people whose names I forgot before dessert arrived.
Now there was nobody waiting at home to make fun of it.
That thought stayed with me as the handler shifted the tablet and started toward the exit again. I stopped him by catching his arm.
“There’s enough time for one errand.”
His eyebrows rose. “Tonight?”
“Before the reception.”
“Sir, if this is wardrobe, I can have someone from styling meet you upstairs.”
“It isn’t wardrobe.”
For the first time all night, I had a task that had nothing to do with football, campaign metrics, or convincing strangers that Sloane and I had chemistry. Something useful. Something I could take home when this playoff run and this campaign circus finally loosened their grip on my schedule.
I had noticed the bracelet that morning while crossing the hotel lobby.
A diamond tennis bracelet sat in the boutique’s front display, expensive enough to be absurd and simple enough that Piper might actually wear it.
She had never cared much about jewelry, which should have warned me how stupid the idea was.
Instead, that made it seem safer.
Money was something I understood. I could replace things.
Upgrade them. Fix an inconvenience before it became a problem.
Piper had walked away from me, and somewhere along the line I had decided that showing up with an apology and a gift large enough to prove I meant it would help me get through the door.
“I’ll be ready for the reception,” I said. “But before you meet me there, I need you to go to the boutique in the hotel lobby and buy the diamond tennis bracelet from the front window.”
The handler stared at me for a moment before checking the tablet again.
“I can certainly send an assistant, sir. Reid expects me to be at the hotel to prep your talking points for the brand distributors.”
I glanced toward the entrance, where another burst of camera light spilled through the opening doors before they shut again.
The talking points could wait; the bracelet couldn’t.
The handler looked toward the back corridor as if Reid might appear there by force of will.
“I can have someone at the boutique in five minutes,” he said. “One of the hotel staff can pick it up and have it waiting upstairs.”
“No. I want you to do it.”
He started to speak, then stopped, pulling the tablet tighter against his chest as another group of event staff passed behind us carrying garment bags and sponsor folders toward the reception space.
“Reid is expecting the distributor brief before we leave,” he said. “If I’m not there when you get back to the hotel, he’s going to ask where I am.”
“He can ask me.”
That answer bought me another few seconds of resistance. The handler glanced down at the schedule, then toward the exit, already trying to fit the errand into a night that had been packed until there was no room left for anything personal.
That was exactly why I refused to let him pass it off.
I had spent four months doing everything according to someone else’s timetable.
Practices. Flights. Sponsor shoots. Network appearances.
Sloane beside me whenever the campaign needed another image.
Piper had been reduced to the problem I kept promising myself I would solve when the schedule finally loosened.
It never loosened.
The bracelet was at least something I could put in motion tonight.
I reached inside my jacket and pulled out my black card.