Though hard and sometimes down heartening, Piper tried to hold tight to the good from her experiences and let go of the bad. And she was glad to acknowledge how many good times she had on her journey. She’d met some amazing people who became lifelong friends.
Plus, she learned some important lessons and tried to apply them when she finally branched out on her own.
Lesson number one? Be a good boss. If her employees weren’t happy, their discontent trickled down to the clients. Which brought Piper to lesson number two. The clients are the first and last priority. She didn’t merely provide service with a smile. But the willingness to twist yourself into a pretzel, look at every angle, and then look again until every avenue and resource for saving money had been explored and exploited.
Piper never broke the law. She considered the tax codes to be sacred texts. However, her nimble brain knew a loophole when it saw one and, where saving a buck was concerned, she was an expert at slipping through the tiniest of openings.
Rubbing her empty stomach, Piper contemplated what she wanted for dinner. Should she stop for takeout or sit down in the restaurant to enjoy her meal? Eating alone wasn’t a problem. She appreciated her own company. Though if she were honest, her appetite was healthier when she was with a friend or two.
When Piper’s phone rang, she was annoyed by the interruption—until she saw the picture filling the screen. Levi. Her favorite football player. Without thinking, her lips lifted into a happy smile.
“Hey, handsome,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be on a plane over the Atlantic? Or have you landed in New York already?”
“Still in London.”
“What? Why?” Piper frowned. “The game ended hours ago.”
“Our flight out of Heathrow was canceled due to bad weather,” Levi explained. “Hopefully, we’ll get in sometime tomorrow morning. Lord, I hate these international games.”
Back in 2007, the NFL began a global expansion of its brand. London’s Wembley Stadium hosted a matchup between the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins. A huge success, two games were played annually.
This year, the Seattle Knights took their turn.
After a long, exhausting cross-country, trans-Atlantic trip, the players weren’t thrilled. However, they understood their roles as international ambassadors of the game. Besides, what choice did they have? Big boss, i.e. the commissioner, said fly across the ocean, they flew.
Of course, the long journey wasn’t as bad if the team won. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for the Knights.
“We lost,” Levi said with a resigned sigh.
Piper saw no reason to watch every second of every game—she wasn’t a fanatic by any means. However, out of loyalty, she kept tabs on wins and losses. With a record of 2-6, the season was not shaping up to be a success.
Trouble was, everyone and their dog knew the reason for the Knights’ on-field woes. The problem could be summed up in two words. Monte Oliver. To be concise, the team’s starting quarterback sucked. Four years in the league, his career began with endless potential. Unfortunately, he peaked in college. Each season his skill level dropped until now he could barely get out of the way of his own feet let alone the other side’s rush defense.
If Piper ran the team, she would have kicked Monte Oliver’s butt to the curb after he lost the second game of the season with a fumble. Or the third game with an interception.
With a bumbling twit behind center, why not replace him? Why not replace him with the backup? Damn it, someone needed to finally give Levi his chance.
Knowing how hard it was for Levi to stand on the sidelines and watch his team fail with no way to help the losing cause, Piper stifled her righteous indignation and tried to lighten the mood.
“On the upside, you looked great.”
“You mean the camera caught me and my clipboard? Mom will be so proud—if she didn’t blink,” Levi said with his trademark deprecating laugh. “The upside of not getting in the game is I rarely wear my helmet. Good thing I got a haircut before we left Seattle.”
Levi was an expert at walking the fine line between humor and understandable bitterness over his situation. He was thirty-two years old and never started a game in the NFL. The only time he saw playing time was when the score was too lopsided one way or the other to matter. He joked that his life was golden. What other profession—besides politics—would pay him so much for doing so little?
Sometimes Piper wanted to bundle him into a hug and cry because she knew he never would. Despite his glib, smiling exterior, where his lost dreams were concerned, Levi was a prototypical stoic man. When he shrugged off the hurt, she knew the truth. He wasn’t okay, not now, not ever, with his role as a backup quarterback.
Unfortunately, spilling his guts wouldn’t change the facts. After ten years in the league, Levi’s situation wasn’t likely to change and Piper’s heart broke for him.
As his friend, Piper wasn’t about to state the obvious. Instead, she followed Levi’s lead and kept their conversation light and breezy.
“Where are you now?” Piper asked. “Cozying up to a local beauty?”
“I wouldn’t call Dylan a beauty,” Levi said with a snort. “More like a beast. But to each his own.”
“Up yours, Reynolds,” a gruff voice answered.
“In your dreams, Montgomery,” Levi countered.
Piper rolled her eyes at the exchange of adolescent banter. Dylan Montgomery was the starting tight end for the Knights and Levi’s longtime friend. Teammates back in college, though both were over thirty, worldly and sophisticated, when in each other’s company, they could revert to the equivalent of a pair of bickering teenagers in the blink of an eye.
“Tell Dylan hello for me,” Piper said.
“Hello back, Piper.”
Wincing, Piper held her phone away from her ear. She was surprised to realize that Dylan was more than half-crocked. She sighed in sympathy. Seemed losing four games in a row could take its toll on even the most died-in-the-wool teetotaler.
“You’re keeping an eye on him, right?” Piper asked. “Dylan is such a lightweight drinker.”
“I cut him off after the second beer,” Levi assured her. “As I look around the bar littered with Knights players, I realize frustration and anger make the alcohol work faster.”
Piper felt a surge of concerned empathy. She might not love the game of football with an all-consuming passion the way so many of her friends did, but she was connected to the team by a series of tightly woven bonds. Friends, clients, family. Because she cared so deeply, their pain became hers.
“Take care of my boys,” Piper said, knowing she could count on Levi to keep everyone safe.
“Don’t I always?” Levi let out a dramatic sigh. “When did my wild and free Piper become such a mother hen?”
“I’m still the same woman you tried and failed to pick up two years ago,” she assured him.
“On a football player, they say the legs are the first to go. I guess on an accountant, it’s the memory.” Levi scoffed. “You made the first move. You initiated the conversation. You propositioned me.”