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I knew this wasn’t going to be pretty the second Jolene admitted her parents were going to be in attendance tonight.
“Seven,” Joseph snarls.
“Ten grand,” my dad roars.
Ten grand for some whiskey, cigars, and a JD5 jersey?
It’s a pissing match. A cock fight. Neither one of them cares about the goddamn whiskey. They both care about showing up the other one. Joseph might want the jersey for the bar, but my father has no stake in it. He’s just being an asshole.
“Twelve,” Joseph returns. When my father doesn’t say anything, Joseph yells out clear as a bell across the room. “Finally letting me win one after you took everything away from me? Or are you all out of cash?”
“I took everything from you?” my dad shoots back. “Don’t you dare talk to me about the past, Bailey.”
The room is so silent I could hear a pin drop—but no pins are dropping given that everyone in the room is completely still as we wait out this feud two decades in the making.
Everyone wants to know what’s going to be said next. Everyone wants to know who’s going to throw the first punch.
Neither of them is going to back down.
“Or what?” Joseph taunts.
I glance over and see my mother tugging on my dad’s jacket. She’s telling him not to embarrass me.
Too late.
“Okay, okay, boys,” Jack finally yells from a few seats away from me.
Part of me wanted to see them have it out. The other part of me is absolutely fucking mortified over what just went down, and I’m sure Jolene feels much the same.
“I have twelve thousand,” the auctioneer finally says. “Going once, going twice…sold to bidder twelve-fourteen for twelve thousand dollars.” He pounds his gavel and moves on to the next item, but it’s not like I can focus on anything other than what just happened.
And it doesn’t get better from there.
As the auction starts to get lengthy, people get up from their seats and move toward the bar.
I spot my dad talking to Tristan Higgins and Travis Woods, two of our star wide receivers, which makes sense given that my father also played that position.
And then I see Joseph Bailey walking toward the bar.
I rush over to run interference, to do something—anything—to stop an actual fight from going down, but I’m stopped by a reporter…and it’s not Jolene.
“Care to comment on what your father said to Jolene Bailey’s father?” he asks.
“I have no comment,” I say, and I turn away but they’re already facing off.
And I can hear them from here even though there’s a low hum filling the room now as the auctioneer announces the final auction item.
“You took my entire career from me,” Joseph yells at my father. “The least you could do is let me have that goddamn whiskey set.”
“I took your career from you?” my father yells back. “What about the bar you ran into the ground? You took my entire life savings when you fucked me over!”
I jump in between the two of them before someone starts throwing hands. “Gentlemen, may I remind you we’re at a charity event. If you need to confront one another, you’ll have to do it somewhere else.”
“Get the fuck out of my face, you lying, manipulating piece of trash,” Joseph says to me.
And that’s it. That sums up the entirety of our problem in one fell swoop.
Joseph doesn’t just hate what my father did.
