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Ah crap.
Bruce is giving me a hard look, but I know he’s too much of a teddy bear to hold onto an ounce of anger.
Hannah presses her lips together. I think she’s trying not to laugh.
I raise my eyes to the ceiling and sigh. “Okay. How much?”
“How much what?” says Bruce. “Damage?”
“How much is this going to cost me?”
“You can’t just throw money at your mistakes, Sawyer,” he says. “This goes beyond that.”
“Technically, I didn’t do anything, so…”
“There were eyewitnesses,” says Hannah. “And this.” She taps on her phone where she has a video cued up and lets it play. It’s a little wobbly, and the lighting in the bar is crap. But I guessone could make out my image in a blurry sort of way. It just catches me shoving Buzz Cut Guy to the floor.
“It’s gone viral,” Hannah says.
“Look,” I say, holding up my hands. “The guy deserved it. I gave him a little push and walked away from the fight.”
More like crawled away, but let’s not go there.
The video plays on, and all you can see is complete mayhem. Chairs flying, bottles crashing, guys punching each other for no reason. The video shakes even more, all you see is the floor for a little while and then it zooms in on me. And there’s Maggie, radiant as ever. Even more than I remember.
“The Crowned Loon is not holding you accountable,” says Bruce. “Not financially, anyway. An apology wouldn’t be amiss, though.”
“All right. If you write it up, I’ll sign. Or whatever.”
“That’s…actually the least of your worries right now,” he says solemnly.
Oh no. It couldn’t be about my dad, could it? No. I’d hear about it from my sister first. Then again, I have been avoiding her texts. My stomach drops. Could it have something to do with Maggie? Is she okay?
“Spill it,” I say, shifting my gaze to Hannah, as if asking Bruce if she should be hearing sensitive information about my family.
“It’s Nitro Blitz,” Bruce says. “They’re threatening to pull the deal.”
“They can’t do that,” I cry.
“Yes, they can if you’re in breach of contract. Which, getting into bar brawls pretty much qualifies.”
“Okay, fine. Let them. Tastes like piss anyway.”
Hannah nods. “It really does.”
“Sawyer, you need this endorsement deal.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t even like energy drinks. I feel like a damn liar every time I see myself in that stupid commercial pretending to drink it.”
“Sunrise Foods also reached out to me,” he goes on. “They have concerns.”
I look to Hannah and gesture at her phone. “So here’s where you tell me to recite poetry on our socials and prove I’m Boy Scout enough to sell cereal?”
Sunrise Foods is the conglomerate behind Happy Puffs and Sugar Squares, which they rebranded as Honey Squares in the 1980s. Their answer to a healthy breakfast cereal, Nutty Morning, is the endorsement deal I’m locked into. My face is on the damn box. When I got traded to Toronto from Boston, my new teammates teased me about it, saying “Top ‘o the Nutty Morning to ya,” when they’d see me. Even Owen. So one day, I gave them a nutty morning they’d never forget. You don’t want the details, but let’s just say they laughed their heads off for weeks. I earned their respect after that, and now we’re thick as thieves.
But not actual thieves. I’ll leave that to my dad.
“I’m tired of pushing energy drinks and breakfast food,” I say. “What about Nike or Starco? Didn’t you say we were close to getting a Velocity Gear endorsement?”
