Chapter 8
It had been a terrible few weeks…
But not for everyone. “This summer has been so fun!” Taylor said. She had been busy with her friends, one of whom was now a friend with benefits, and her cool job in Marketing.
“So fun!” Victoria echoed. She was loving her new apartment, she told us.
“So fun,” Kiya stated flatly. She blew her nose and didn’t mention her Cado.
I didn’t even bother to respond. They already knew that I hadn’t been having any fun for a while now. This period of anxious waiting would end tomorrow, which was not soon enough.
“Fan Day was great,” Taylor reminded me and Kiya, and we nodded mutely.
I recognized that Fan Day really had been an amazing experience for a lot of people.
Every Woodsmen employee had worked manically but also exploded with excitement that the team had come back to town.
The football fans who showed up to the stadium had loved it.
The current Woodsmen players, the ones returning from last season and the guys who had already signed contracts, had sat at booths to meet and greet everyone and there had been all kinds of activities.
I knew that, because I had helped to run them.
Fan Day had also been the first day of the tryouts for the would-be Woodsmen.
It was only a meeting and not an actual practice or workout, but Ronan had been at the stadium for it.
I’d managed to run over to catch a glimpse of them just before they went into one of the conference rooms. I hadn’t yelled his name or tried to attract his attention, but he’d spotted me and I’d seen him smile.
I had smiled back and not given an indication that I was anxious in any way or on the verge of flipping out.
After all, this was his deal, not mine. I was invested because I was a friend who had joined him on part of the journey to make the Woodsmen roster, but he had been putting his heart and body into football for his whole life. It was his dream, not mine.
But the training camp so far had not been fun, not for Ronan and not for me.
He had been working his butt off and was exhausted and worried.
I felt like I’d been going through it too, when actually all I’d done was try to help him while also avoiding the Office of Special Projects.
I had been farming myself around to different departments without even asking my boss if that was ok—I assumed it was and anyway, Mr. Gowan wasn’t there much himself.
He was traveling even more than what he’d done over the winter (and I also assumed that he was golfing but really, I had no idea).
I was working hard to distract myself but it hadn’t been a solution for my anxiety.
No matter what I was doing, my focus always swiveled back to the Woodsmen training camp and my focus was no fun at all.
With Kiya out of sorts and with me brimming with nerves, Taylor and Victoria were probably glad when we finished our lunch.
“I’ll walk you back to your office,” Victoria volunteered.
That made sense since we worked on the same floor and across the hall from each other, but she meant directly to my office.
She escorted me all the way to my cubicle and then kept going up to Mr. Gowan’s door.
She peered cautiously inside and then, when she saw that he wasn’t there, she walked right in.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I followed.
“I just wanted to see,” she told me. She walked around the back of his desk and pulled out his chair. “What do you think of Beau?”
“Of Mr. Gowan? He never suggested that I could use his first name,” I answered. “I don’t know him very well.”
“You’ve been working for him for almost a year.” She looked at the bare surface of his desk. “You have that weird alligator but he doesn’t keep anything out.”
“He’s not in the office very often. My stuffie is a crocodile and his name is Polyphemus,” I let her know.
She wasn’t very interested in that. “What do you know about Beau Gowan?” she pressed.
“Um, I know that he isn’t very interested in completing any special projects.” And I wasn’t interested in discussing him. “Have you talked to Kiya about her boyfriend?”
“Who, that avocado guy? They broke up.”
It was hard to know if that was true, though.
Kiya was obviously unhappy but she wouldn’t talk about it, and even her roommate Taylor didn’t seem to know what was going on.
Ronan hadn’t heard anything from Channing, aka her Cado, but he didn’t care much about his friend’s relationship issues at the moment.
He was eating, sleeping, and going to the Woodsmen preseason practices, which were his tryout for the team.
Victoria peeked around a little more but finally went across the hall to her own department.
I went up to the floor above us to work in Community Relations, where I’d been volunteering my time (for which I was paid as an employee of Special Projects).
They were constantly busy, which I really enjoyed.
They were also always talking about their desire for feedback and input, unlike how Mr. Gowan ran things.
I had some feedback and input—but mostly I had questions. “Why doesn’t the Woodsmen team promote the Junior Woodsmen?” I asked the woman I was working with. She reported right to the head of the department, so I thought she would know.
“The Juniors?” She thought for a moment. “Oh, you’re asking because of that petition.”
The online petition about the crappy Junior Woodsmen field and facility had made a few waves around the stadium complex when I’d first started working here almost a year ago—which was why Mr. Gowan had originally sent me to the practice facility for the comprehensive survey of the problems. “I guess,” I said.
“But it also seems like a missed opportunity.”
“How so?”
I told her my ideas, the things I’d been developing for the last few months.
Tickets to the real Woodsmen games at the stadium were expensive, but watching the Junior team was a great way for families to catch some football (if they bundled up well against the cold).
It was an entry point to encourage fan support of both teams—was there a chance that Junior Woodsmen merch could be a thing?
This department, or maybe Marketing, could also have promoted more interaction with the Junior players, who were basically ignored by everyone in this building and by everyone in our area.
The woman who’d been hitting on Ronan at the gym hadn’t been interested because he was a football player, but because he was handsome, tall, built…
Never mind that. “It just seems like an easy way to get the community more involved,” I concluded. The bosses here were always talking about the broader Woodsmen family and outreach, all that stuff.
“That’s interesting,” she told me. She didn’t look out of the window and tap her lip with her fingers like my actual boss did when I spoke, but I got the feeling that the outcome would be the same.
She would also ignore what I’d said. We both returned to work and I narrowed my thoughts to the tasks at hand rather than letting them drift off to the practice facility where the Woodsmen players (and potential players) were having drills and working out today in front of the press and special invited guests.
Their practice was going to be easier and shorter than usual, because the Woodsmen were heading off to their team trip to Mackinac Island.
Organizing that had been a huge logistical challenge—they were treated like kings the whole time and every detail of their travel, accommodations, food, and entertainment had to be perfect.
The people trying out, like Ronan and Myles Pham, would sit around here instead of attending because they weren’t yet counted as part of the team.
But tomorrow, they’d find out if that would change. Tomorrow, the Woodsmen would release their official roster for the upcoming season because when the guys returned from the trip, the preseason was officially underway.
“Are you all right?” the woman asked me. She looked concerned and I wondered how I had been looking myself, if the sudden twist of nausea I’d felt in my stomach had left traces of feeling on my face. Usually, I was very good at disguising my emotions.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Great.”
I drove directly over to Ronan’s house after I left the stadium and I let myself in to wait for him.
He’d given me a key, since we’d been spending so much time together—it just made more sense that I’d be able to get in so that I could start dinner or wait for him away from the heat.
Yes, it had finally gotten nice and warm up here, but I could appreciate sitting on his couch rather than on the front steps in the sun.
I did start dinner tonight, but my mind wasn’t much on it. When I heard his SUV/car in the driveway, I realized that I had a jar of pickles in one hand and a bag of sugar in the other. I put both of them down and backed away from the stove.
Ronan walked in a moment later, wrapped in bandages that attached bags of ice to different parts of his body. He looked tired and I tried to read his expression for more than that. I was extremely happy when he smiled.
“Man, I’m glad to see you,” he told me.
“Are you?”
“The whole ride home I was thinking, ‘Cate and I will sit on the couch and have a beer, and she’ll give me another motivational speech. Then I’ll make a poster of what she said to sell to the employers who believe that motivational posters make a difference to the schlubs who work for them, and I’ll earn my fortune that way.
Screw football, I’ll be the poster guy.’”
“It sounds like a great plan. Do you actually want a beer?”
He did and so did I. We sat on the couch together like he’d pictured and I tried not to wonder about those bags of ice and the injuries that might have been under them.