Chapter 11 #2
“Princess Cheeseburger, it is not your turn to talk right now, shmoochy poo. Mommy’s working, yes she is.” She pushed the teensy-tiny dog back down into her purse, and smiled at all of us as if she expected us to ooh and ahh over her display of affection.
Tiki recalibrated. and then she turned the full wattage back to Gabrielle.
"We'll talk," she said, not a question. "I'll have my assistant send some thoughts. This is going to be so good. I'm thrilled."
She stood, gathered the doggy bag, from which some yips and yaps sounded within. I think there was more than one dog in there and also had clearly cost more than my first car, and swept toward the door. "Don't change anything until you hear from me."
The door did not close fully behind her. Nobody moved to fix it.
For a second the room just sat in the wake of her, the way a beach sits there after a wave pulls back and takes some of the sand with it.
"Well," Fox said.
"Don't," Gabrielle said, but there was no heat in it. She was already somewhere else, doing major coping skills behind her eyes.
Clover closed her laptop. Said something to Gabrielle about the audition timeline, quiet, professional, the two of them leaning in. Then she stood and walked out without looking at me once.
Not pointedly. Just cleanly. A woman with a full afternoon ahead of her.
Monty stood too. He went around the table, gave or rather took a handshake from Coach, both hands, we're-in-this-together.
He gave another handshake to me, firm, held a half second too long, eye contact that was almost a challenge.
He'd said maybe four words the entire meeting.
He'd watched the whole thing happen with patience, like he had nowhere he needed to be and nothing he needed to do, because it was all going exactly the way he wanted.
"Great energy in here today," Monty said. "Really great. This is the kind of thing that gets organizations through a transition. Love that Tiki is here to help. Can’t wait to see what her fingers in the pot can do." And he left, looking extremely satisfied for a man who had contributed nothing.
Coach didn't move toward the door.
He sat at the head of the table after Gabrielle left and looked at the door Monty had gone through. Just stared at it for a second.
Then he looked at me. Then Fox. Then Rutherford.
"How long has Tiki Jackson cared about cheer marketing?"
Fox and I looked at each other.
"She doesn't," Rutherford said. "My guess is she’s looking for something to do after her big divorce."
"And she walks in two days after a video goes viral, with a vision and contacts and an assistant who's going to send thoughts.
" Coach picked up his legal pad. "People don't develop a passion for a thing on a Tuesday and storm a meeting about it on a Wednesday.
Somebody pointed her at this." He made a few faces, each one telling a whole ass story. "My office. Now."
Coach's office smelled like whiteboard markers and ambition.
There was a framed photo on the wall I recognized after a second as his Washington D.C.
Women's Football League team. Twenty-two women in burgundy, gold, and white, mid-celebration, Gatorade going everywhere, specifically over Coach Roper’s head.
He had a big corkboard behind the desk too covered in index cards with players and positions and stats, clearly getting ready to do some trades.
I squinted to read them in case it was someone I knew.
The only name I quickly made out was Warner Bishop, Middle Lineman, Bruins.
Good, we could use a strong middle lineman for me to butt heads with.
Coach sat down. Leaned back. Looked at us like he was deciding where to start.
"Tell me more about Monty," he said. "Not the job, but what he was like when Jack Jackson was running things."
That surprised me. I thought he’d want more info on Tiki.
Fox went first. "He was the building. Whatever Monty wanted, Monty got. He ran the whole football operation and Jack mostly stayed out of it."
"He had opinions about everything," I said. "Roster, schedule, press.”
Rutherford nodded and added, “You wanted something approved, you went to Monty first. Going to Jack without Monty on board was a waste of time."
"And now?"
I thought about the conference room. About two seasons of small things that had never quite added up to anything I could name.
"Now he reports to Gabrielle," I said. "And I'm not guessing when I say he hates it."
"Not the job," Fox said. "The person. Specifically the person."
“Yep,” Rutherford rubbed his chin as if considering whether he should spill the tea. Coach made a go on motion giving him the go ahead. "He talks differently when she's not in the room. About her decisions, about the direction of things, about—" He stopped.
"About women," I finished.
Coach nodded, pulled open a desk drawer and pulled out a big chocolate chip cookie. I think they helped him think.
"He was fine under Jack," Fox said. "Happy, even. The second Gabrielle took over, something curdled. Even when he agrees with her there's this…" Fox made a gesture that didn't have a word but everyone in the room understood.
"Underneath," I said.
"Yeah. Underneath."
Coach looked at the corkboard for a moment. Then picked up his phone.
"I'm calling Gabi in. She needs to hear she's not imagining things."
I opened my mouth.
The word was out before the thought finished forming. "Bring Clover."
Fox turned his head exactly two degrees in my direction.
I looked at the corkboard. Very interesting corkboard. Lots of index cards.
Don't be suspicious. Don't be suspicious.
"She should be in this," I said. "Tiki walked in and told her she was brave for existing and then told the whole room she was going to take over Clover's project. If we're building something, she needs to be in it."
Coach looked at me for a beat. Then into the phone: "Gab, come down to my office. Grab Clover on the way." A pause while she replied. "Yeah, bring snacks. I'll make coffee."
Gabrielle came through the door first.
She read the room in approximately one second. Coach behind his desk, Fox in the corner chair, me by the window with my coffee, and something in her posture dropped about three millimeters.
"Thank God," she said. "I thought I was being paranoid."
She wasn't.
Clover came in behind her. She read the room. She saw me. Something moved through her face fast enough that most people would have missed it.
I didn't miss it.
She sat down next to Gabrielle, opened her laptop, and looked at Coach. "What did I miss?"
"Here's what I think," Coach said. "Monty expected to run this team. He didn't get it. So now he's going to make sure the person who did can't hold onto it. And he's not going to put his own fingerprints on any of it if he can help it."
Gabrielle had her hands flat on her knees. She was looking at Coach like she'd been carrying something alone for eight weeks and someone had just taken hold of the other end.
Gabrielle swiped her hand down her face. "I kept telling myself I was being—"
"You weren't," Coach said. Simple. Certain.
"I saw it the first day, in your office," Clover said.
The room was quiet for a second. She still hadn't looked at me.
But she was here, in it, which Coach had made happen because I'd said her name out loud in a room and not been able to stop myself, and I decided I'd take it.
Whatever this was. A woman who didn't date football players, sitting four feet away, on the same side of a fight she didn't know I'd asked her into.
It wasn't a door opening. But it wasn't the door closing, either.
I'd take it.
"Okay." Coach set down his cookie. That was a big deal. "Last time, I told you boys to keep your eyes open. That's done. Eyes open didn't stop a woman with a purse full of car-horn dogs from trying to annex an entire department in front of God and everybody."
Gabrielle put a hand up. "Before anybody gets ahead of themselves, I'm not going to fire him.
" She said it flat, like she was laying a tool on the table.
"I can't. Not on a feeling and a nudged camera.
The second I move on Monty without proof, I'm the new owner who couldn't handle the job. That's the story he's building."
“So we don't give it to him," Coach said. "We stop watching and start writing things down. Every helpful little concern. Every camera that takes a nap. Every time something goes suspiciously wrong." He tapped the legal pad. “Nobody plays a card until we can win the hand."
Gabrielle was nodding, weeks of carrying it alone draining out of her shoulders in real time.
Everyone turned, without quite meaning to, toward Clover.
"Can I say something that might be paranoid."
"We're fresh out of paranoid in here," Coach said. "I think we’re on the same page. Spill it and I’ll nod along. Floor's yours."
"Monty hates what Gabi and I are building.
" She said it slowly, like she was checking her math in her head.
"Not the squad. The direction of it and how well it’s working.
The recruiting numbers, the video, the kind of women showing up to try out.
All of it is the new owner being right about something he would never do. "
Gabrielle took a breath and narrowed her eyes. “I always knew he wouldn’t like the idea.”
Clover leaned back in her chair. "And then your sister, who has never once cared about the back office of the team or cheer, walks in thinking she can run it. Doesn't that feel like a lot of coincidence for one Wednesday?"
“Mm-hmm.” Coach touched his nose and then pointed at Clover. “There it is.”
The room went quiet in a new way.
Gabrielle sat back. Whatever she'd walked in braced for, it hadn't been that. "You think Monty sent her."
Coach took a bite of his cookie and stared at Clover waiting for her to bring it home.
"I think men who hate losing find someone louder to lose it for them." Clover stood, ready to leave. "But I'm not going to make the team smaller and quieter to keep the peace. I've spent my whole life being told a room wasn't built for me. I got real good at building my own."
Clover picked up one of Coach’s cookies, and walked out.
Rutherford exhaled. "I'd run through a wall for her."
"Get in line," I said, before my brain could stop me.
Three heads turned toward me. I pulled out my phone and pretended to stare down at it like I’d been doing that the whole time and hadn’t said anything.
Luckily, I got a text. Saved by the buzz.
Except shit. It was a text from Tiki.
A photo loaded and I frantically tried to delete it but my phone apparently hated me and instead made the photo bigger. Tiki was squish kissing a Chihuahua puppy, impossibly small, wearing a tiny orange striped jersey, with my number on the front.
Tiki: Meet King Man(icotti)!!! Get it? He’s named after you!
Jesus Donkey. “Hey Coach, I think I need a cookie.”