It’s more my space now, but as I watch the TV, the sportscaster teeing up for the interview, I can’t help but feel like an intruder in here.
My nails are chewed down to the quick, a gross habit I’ve tried quitting a billion times but can’t, and I try to force my mind in another direction. Something outside of this job, and it lands right on last weekend, when I felt my heart flutter for reasons it hadn’t in quite some time.
Hayes Swindell had … flirted with me. At first, I wasn’t sure, because even thinking that sounded crazy in my head. But then he said it twice, how he’d basically want me to bid on him, and a whole swarm of butterflies had flapped through my stomach. Imagine that, a date with Hayes?
For me, a date with anyone would be out of the ordinary. Like I said before, I don’t date and have barely held a relationship in my adult life. But a date with one of the most dashing men I’ve ever met? That made my throat run drier than that summer vacation I spent in Arizona with my father when I was ten.
Hayes sported that just-rolled-out-of-bed look even when he was all dressed up in a tuxedo, which was a deadly combination. It’s got to be the hair, which Uncle Daniel has complained about twice now since he asked me to address it. But Hayes clearly won’t cut it, and I don’t have the heart to rob millions of women from looking at those dirty blond locks. There is something so Roman soldier about his whole appearance, like he’s an extra on the set of 300.
I’m pretty sure he was throwing out some signs at the bachelor auction, and while I know it’s off-limits to even entertain that with one of my players, I couldn’t help it. For a split second, I was just a normal woman being hit on by a very gorgeous man, and I liked it.
And then there was the actual act of watching him up on that stage. I thought he would act reserved and somewhat grumpy at being paraded around, but the man put on a damn show. Strutting around the small elevated podium as the announcer rattled off his stats, his accomplishments in the league. He threw winks and smirks at the women raising their paddles, trying to win him. In the end, he’d gone to the wife of one of our season ticket holders, a nice old woman who would probably talk his ear off about why he should make pretty grandbabies with one of her granddaughters.
There is no denying he’s been on my mind ever since that interaction, which feels wrong in such a forbidden, giddy way. But that’s all it can be; one suggestive interaction at an event that we can both claim had too much free alcohol. This can go no further than that, despite the fact that I walked the long way to my office this morning simply to see Hayes practicing in the batting cages.
My father’s voice comes over the speakers of the flat screen, and I’m captivated.
Over the next hour, I sit in suspended shock and awe as I watch my father describe his crimes. The inner workings of the scheme. How he duped and manipulated players to coming to the Pistons, paid people off, bribed some, and blackmailed others. He’s leaving nothing off the table, and I wonder idly how much he’s getting paid for this interview.
And then he gets to his family. Namely, me. Words like inexperienced, unintelligent, not equipped, and too myopic come out of his mouth.
But the worst thing he says? That the Pistons never should have given me this job.
I almost bend over and heave into the garbage can under my desk during that one.
I have to get out of here. Staying in the office for this was the wrong decision, because I suddenly feel like I’m coming down with the flu. My whole body is going hot and cold, I’m wracked with shivers and chills, it feels like I can’t breathe.
Making a mad dash for it, I pray to heaven above that I don’t bump into anyone who decided to work late or the odd stadium crew who sometimes mill around.
But I’m almost to my car when I feel the tears coming on. Hot and violent, burning my ducts, I know they won’t wait to come out. I’m about to unravel on the spot, and I need to find somewhere quickly.
I wait until I make it to a back room of the trainer’s offices, where players typically have their massage therapy. No one is in here now. Players and staff left the stadium nearly an hour ago, and I duck inside before the tears can start sliding.
Once I’m there, in the dark office with its glass windows looking out onto the main room, I sag against the wall and let the sobs wrack me. They come in violent, sharp wails that I have to clamp a hand over my mouth to muffle. As I cry, it feels like a tension is easing inside, but also like a tidal wave is drowning me.
If I let myself listen to all the doubts and naysayers about me being able to do this job, I’d never get out of bed. Usually, I can move past it, keep my head on straight and advance the initiatives I’ve been working hard on. But to hear your own father, who was grooming you for this job in the first place, say that you should never have been hired? For him to say that I am just a spoiled rich girl who’s been handed this position?
God, he really is vile. We weren’t getting along before the scandal went down, and I’d even told him at one point that I would never run the team the way he did. He’d been furious, even throwing a crystal paperweight in my general direction. Things must have been unraveling even then, for him to lose his temper so quickly with me. Dad would have known, since the allegations came out a week later, that he was about to be burned.
One week before the most famous sports news organization outed his dealings in a full investigative piece, I’d stopped speaking to my father. And haven’t said one word to him since. I wouldn’t read his letters, did not attend his trial, and have not been to visit him in prison. As far as I’m concerned, that man is out of my life.
Not only was he volatile with me, but he has no remorse for what he did. He made no apologies to the team, the people who have worked for our family for years, or to his closest relatives. Including me.
This is clearly his payback, he’s trying to teach me a lesson through the media. By making a public statement about his own daughter’s ability to lead, he was all but dooming my career as general manager. Jimmy Callahan is a criminal and a liar, but his track record with World Series championships still speaks for itself. Sure, there will be people who think he’s a phony and still just trying to get in front of the cameras because he has nothing better to do in jail. But there would be more who took that grain of sand he planted in their mind and let it unfurl into an entire beach. As if it isn’t hard enough doing my job now, there would be even more scrutiny.
And this is my father, I don’t think I have to go into huge detail about how emotionally scarring a parent speaking out against you is. When you have a parent who trashes you to other people, no matter if it’s on a grand scale or to your best friend’s mother, it leaves a tiny cut. I should know, I’ve been sustaining those cuts my entire life. Some are scars now, having healed over from one too many verbal assaults on my character or ability. That’s what happened when the person who was supposed to love you most in this world constantly chose the side against you, put you down, made sure you thought you’d never be enough.
You know what they say about death by a thousand cuts …
The door to the room I’m in creaks, and the handle turns with a metallic click before its pushed open. I shoot straight up, swiping at my cheeks even though the damage of swollen redness has to be done.