Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MILLER
“Well, it’s all right for some.” I look from the heavy clouds in the early evening darkness outside Frankie’s kitchen window to the sunny blue California sky and lapping Pacific Ocean behind Chase on my laptop screen.
“Yeah, it’s a hellish seventy-two degrees,” he says from the desk of his Malibu home. “Just had a lunch meeting on an outdoor patio. Truly awful.”
“And yet you choose to live in New York and spend a bunch of time in Boston. I’ll never get it.”
“The LA paparazzi.” He throws his hands to the sky. “They drive me fucking crazy. The only reason I could sit on the patio for lunch was because it was behind the restaurant, hidden from view.”
“Well, you do have a face that sells gossip magazines.”
“You’d think they might have figured out I’m really fucking boring by now and given up,” Chase quips.
A black box pops up on-screen, then Leo’s face appears in it.
“Where the hell are you, Miller?” Leo squints, puzzled, at his screen. “Looks like the set of Little House on the Prairie.”
“A real working farmhouse kitchen.” I lean to the side so he can also see the tired living room behind me. “Well, it’s a donkey sanctuary, not a farm. But you get the gist.”
The lift of his eyebrows sets off a defensive spark in me. “Certainly a lot more inviting than your all-black office that feels like a badly lit cave,” I add.
Leo is sitting at his desk at his venture capital company in Boston’s downtown financial district.
“All about limiting distractions,” says the most focused man I know. “But why the fuck are you at a donkey sanctuary?”
“Trying to buy the land.” Probably best I keep it simple.
“By working from its kitchen?” Leo’s face screws up in bafflement.
“I’m kind of staying here.” I really do not want to get into this. Especially since the knot of guilt at having sex with Frankie when she has no idea what I’m really doing here or who I really am is crushing me.
And I was totally about to tell her everything.
Come clean. Get it all off my chest. I’d worked myself up to do it.
I even got as far as explaining the full story of how we lost the house and why I had to quit trade school.
But just as I reached the part where the guy behind it all was Skinner, she straddled me, gave me the kiss of my life, and my brain shut down.
I’m not proud.
But, fuck me, I will never look at a camping cot the same way again.
Anyway, if I’d told her, she would have undoubtedly thrown me out, which would have left her with no one to look after the animals while she went to Chicago for the night.
And without that help, she probably wouldn’t have gone.
And that could have ruined her chances of the promotion she wants so badly.
So, yeah, I’ll try to convince myself that I stayed quiet partly for her benefit and not entirely because I’m a weak, terrible man.
It’s not only the sex, though. When I waved her off in the cab to the airport yesterday afternoon, I missed her before she even got to the end of the drive. It’s like my chest was attached to the car and it was hauling me along behind it.
And now I feel like an excited kid waiting for her to get home later tonight.
“Staying where?” Chase asks.
His question brings me back to reality, but without enough clarity to remember what we were talking about.
“What?” I ask.
“The donkey place,” he says. “Where is it?”
“Upstate New York. Hudson Valley.”
“But you’ve never built anything outside Boston in your life. Why would you want to buy land out there?” Leo looks like he’s about to call some professional medical help for me. “And even if, for some godforsaken reason, you did want to, why the fuck would you stay there?”
“It’s kind of an accident.” How would I even begin to explain this? “Long story.”
Leo rolls his eyes. “Where’s Oliver? I only have fifteen minutes for this.”
Right on cue, Oliver’s cheery, disheveled face creates a fourth quarter to the screen and saves me from having to explain my absurd situation.
His image wobbles as he walks across his apartment, the Empire State Building passing by in the background.
If I ever had a project in New York City, I’d want to build it just like the one he lives in.
It’s owned by an overseas client of mine who I persuaded to lend it to Oliver, rent free. And it’s fucking perfect.
“Sorry I’m a bit late, chaps.” Oliver flops onto his sofa and sets the phone down on something facing him.
And here we are, the four seemingly mismatched owners of the Boston Commoners soccer team that the sports world laughed at. Oh, the joy we take in proving them wrong.
“I was on a call with my publisher,” Oliver adds.
“Oh, yeah,” Chase says. “How’s the memoir coming along?”
Oliver sighs. “Well—”
Leo emits a sharp cough. “Really short on time.”
“Okay, yes,” Chase says. “So we just need to come to an agreement on whether to accept this offer for Schumann or keep him.”
“He’s only got two years left in him. Three, tops,” Leo says. “Why would we keep him when the club isn’t exactly swimming in cash? We could do a lot with that money.”
“Sure.” Oliver pushes up the sleeves of his gray sweatshirt that has a hole in the shoulder and a stain on the front that looks like it might be tea. “But he’s like the Commoners’ talisman.”
“What do Hugo and Drew say?” I ask. Hugo, our head coach, and Drew, the general manager, are never short on opinions. And just because they’re engaged doesn’t mean those opinions are the same—it’s usually the opposite.
“Hugo says he gets why we’d want to make the sale,” Leo says.
“Yeah,” Oliver says. “But he also said if he was Schumann he wouldn’t want to be sold. He’d want to see out his days at the club he’s spent his entire career at.”
“And Hugo told me he’d be fine with whatever decision we make,” Chase adds, ever the diplomat.
Oliver relaxes back on the sofa. “Drew thinks we should keep him, and when his playing days are done, give him a coaching job at the youth academy. And I like that idea.”
So do I. “Might be the best of both worlds.”
Or am I now in a permanent mindset of thinking it’s possible to have my cake and eat it too when the reality is that I can’t? Keep the player and still make the most of his talents when he has to retire. Buy the land and still have Frankie?
“We might have bought this club because we all love soccer.” Leo swings from side to side in his black high-backed chair and rolls a silver pen between his palms. “But it’s a business. Not a retirement home for has-been players.”
“Has-been is a bit harsh,” Chase says. “He’s the most generous player on the field. Always happy to pass to someone in a better scoring position rather than try to claim the glory for himself.”
“Or is that because he doesn’t have what it takes to score anymore?” Leo asks.
“Oh, come on, Leo.” Oliver leans forward again, elbows resting on the knees of his ripped jeans. “He’s been a great mentor to the younger players. Ramon’s learned a lot from his solid, no fuss, clean-living attitude.”
“Ol’s right,” I say. “Every player looks up to Schumann. Respects him. I’ve never heard any of them say a single bad word about him. He’s like this solid rock at the head of the team. You can’t replace natural, organic leadership like that—you can’t teach it to someone.”
Leo lets out a reluctant sigh of agreement. “And I have to admit, his strategy is top notch.”
“Whoa.” Oliver holds up his hands in an exaggerated calm down, calm down action. “The master business strategist can’t fault Schumann’s strategy? Did hell just freeze over? Or a member of my family say they’re happy with my life choices?” He dusts his hands together now. “Job done. Decision made.”
“I say it like I see it,” Leo says. “The way he worked the wall against Cincinnati at the end of this last season was the only thing that stopped their free kick from going in.”
“Are we agreed then?” I ask. “Or do we need more time?”
“Seriously?” Leo says. “Since when did you have trouble making a speedy business decision? Is all that fresh air messing with your mind?”
Something’s messing with it for sure. But I’m absolutely certain it’s not the fresh air.
“Whoa.” I jump at a bright flash outside the window.
“What in God’s name was that?” Oliver asks.
There’s a loud crack and rumble. “Thunder and lightning, I think.”
It’s immediately followed by rain lashing the windows. It doesn’t start with a slow pitter-patter and build up. It goes from no rain to nails being thrown against the glass.
“Shit,” I say. “We have a storm.”
“I can relate.” Chase looks over his shoulder. “I think a little cloud drifted across the sun a minute ago. Boy, did it get chilly for a second.” He does an exaggerated shiver.
“But you moved out of LA for a reason, man.” Oliver is the only other one of us who understands paparazzi and press coverage. And his has always been considerably less glowing than Chase’s—in the UK, at least.
“I know, I know.” Chase smiles. “Only here for meetings. Fly back to New York tomorrow.”
All I can think about while they’re talking is what the hell the donkeys would do in a storm. Maybe they’ll just run into the stables by themselves. But who knows? Not me, that’s for sure.
“I gotta go, guys.” Concern simmers in my stomach. “I haven’t brought the donkeys in yet. Need to get them out of this weather.”
“Sorry, what?” Leo leans forward onto his desk. “You’re actually in charge of the donkeys?”
“Only for twenty-four hours. The owner went away yesterday. Last night went fine. And she’ll be back in a bit.
Actually, there’s two owners.” Why do I even feel the need to explain this?
“But the old guy is in a rehab unit recovering from a double knee replacement. It’s his granddaughter who’s here taking care of the place, but she had to go back to Chicago for a meeting. ”
“Ah,” Leo and Chase say in unison as if two pennies dropped at the same time.
“The granddaughter,” Leo adds with a knowing smirk.
Oliver, who already knows the story, and Chase smile and nod.
“Oh, all of you, fuck off.” I reach for the laptop lid to shut it. “You can hear the storm. The donkeys need to be brought in. I have to go.”
“Me too,” Leo says. “But for more sensible reasons. Quick vote. Who’s in favor of selling Schumann?”
He raises his own hand.
“Against?” he asks.
Me, Oliver, and Chase raise ours.
“Why did I ever agree to a partnership with such terrible business people?” Leo asks.
“Because you fucking love the Commoners,” Oliver says.
“And you’ve grown to love us too,” Chase adds.
Leo pulls a rueful smile. “Let’s go. I have a multimillion dollar controlling partnership to negotiate. And Miller has donkeys to keep dry.”
Oliver rocks with a belly laugh.
“Yup, we’ll let you get on with whatever scheme you’ve got going on over there,” Chase says.
Is it a scheme?
It certainly was the day I overheard in the coffee shop that Frankie was running this place.
Is it still one now?
I have no fucking clue. But I am absolutely certain that I can’t bear the thought of having to explain to Frankie that a single hair on any of those animals’ bodies has come to any harm on my watch.
“See ya.” I close the lid of my laptop, dodge around a pile of boxes of supplies for the Thanksgiving event that arrived this morning, and head for my boots and coat.