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“I’m so, so sorry. It wasn’t anything against you. I was nervous about what was going on with Devin, and I didn’t know how to handle being in the media so I picked up more hours at work to lose myself in that instead.” She slings her arm around me. “It was nothing against you, and I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”
“It’s okay. I haven’t been the best friend lately.”
“Stop it. You’re the best friend always.” She purses her lips at me. “So what are you going to do?”
I shrug. “I have no idea. Play it cool for now. Go to work, do my job, hope for the best, but I’m not sure there is a best I can hope for. If Marcus thinks it’s a conflict of interest, he’s never going to give the job back to me, and now that I’ve lost my dream job…I’m not sure where to go from here. I barely had time to celebrate actually achieving the goal I set out for myself when I first started this career before it was ripped away from me, and I don’t know what’s next. I don’t know how to set another goal after this since I can’t do the only thing I ever wanted to do.”
She clears her throat. “How does that make you feel about Lincoln?”
I shake my head a little as I start to yawn. “Part of me resents him. Part of me feels like maybe there’s some other idea I’m missing.”
“What about the podcast?” she asks, and she sits up a little as if she just had an idea.
“What about it?”
She twists her lips as the idea forms. “Could you, I don’t know…like get a behind the scenes view of games and stuff and expand your podcast so you’re reporting on it in a different sense?”
I sit up, too. The plan for the podcast was to produce thirty-minute shows once a week. But what about a woman’s take on the sport? What about a reporter’s perspective? What about the coach’s girlfriend’s view of things? It’s a dynamic that isn’t well represented, and given the audience we’ve already built with our first few episodes, I think there could be something to this.
“Longer episodes mean more sponsors,” she adds. “More sponsors equal more monetization.”
She’s right, and I start to get excited until I realize something.
“There’s just one problem.” I sigh. “The station owns the podcast.”
“Do they? Talk to Ellie, babe. Read over the contract and make sure before you count it out. Because it sounds to me like you’re fed up with VG-oh-three after what they pulled on you, but maybe this is your chance to keep doing what you love.”
I think back to our contracts, and I know Ellie pitched it as Lincoln’s podcast where he’d partner with a local news channel. I signed on as co-host, and I really didn’t read through the finer details because they didn’t really matter to me at the time.
But now they matter.
“I don’t know whether Ellie sold the rights or Lincoln retained them, but if he owns it, maybe he’ll sell me some shares so I can be a co-owner, and then we can pull it from VG-oh-three, I can quit, and I can produce it myself. I already know how to do all that…” I trail off as I think it through.
Maybe I’m just tired.
Or maybe this is the new goal. To own something of my own where I get to do what I love with a team and a man I love…and I get to make all the fucking rules.
CHAPTER 22: LINCOLN
I shouldn’t be nervous. I’ve coached plenty of games before, a couple right here on this very field.
But this is it. My first home opener. The first Sunday of the regular season.
So, yeah, of course the nerves flit through me as I pace the locker room ahead of my team gathering in the locker room after warm-ups. I’ve rehearsed what I need to say a hundred times over, and I’m still not sure if it’s quite right.
My job today is to motivate these players before they head out onto the field, and I hope I’m able to do that. I hope we win. I hope we can mute all the stories in the media about Jolene and me painting the two of us as immoral cheaters.
I hope we can focus on playing some fucking football today instead of focusing on my brother or my personal life.
A text comes through from Jolene, whose name is now her real name in my contacts again.
Jolene: Good luck today, Coach. I’ll be cheering you on from the stands.
I didn’t know if she’d come to today’s game since she’s not working it. She doesn’t have the place on the field she deserved to have, and instead Cody Sanders stands there. During warm-ups, I breezed right past him until he basically screamed my name.
I was purposely short with him. If it’s not Jolene, I don’t want to talk, and I want her sports editor to know that loud and fucking clear.
I’m about to tap out a reply when the locker room doors open and the players start to file in. Some are wearing their noise-canceling headphones as they work to get in the right headspace ahead of the game, others are talking quietly with teammates, but one thing is for sure. They’re ready to get on that field and fight. I can feel it.
