Page 11 of The Tiger in the Sack

“She hired me because I believe in⁠—”

“Because you fit the narrative.” Still controlled. Still precise. “A plus-size woman coaching a body diverse squad? That’s a really great press release for an owner who needs people to believe she’s different from every other League owner who’s ever sat in that box.”

She tilted her head slightly. “What happens to the women you recruit when the press cycle ends? When the front office gets nervous about the numbers and the fanbase pushes back and the experiment stops being good for the brand?”

My mouth opened.

She wasn’t finished.

“I’ve watched women pour everything into this squad. Rearrange their whole lives. Train through injuries and family emergencies because this mattered to them. And Coach Daniels is gone with no explanation, and now there’s a new vision, and the women who gave everything to the old one—” She stopped. Pressed her lips together for a beat. “I need to know if your loyalty is to these women or to Gabrielle Jackson’s project.”

My office went very quiet.

She was right about almost everything. That was the part I couldn’t argue with and couldn’t fix tonight. I’d been in this city for a week, this job for a day. I had a vision and a spreadsheet and a conviction I’d carried my whole life, and none of that added up to diddly-squat for her. Not yet.

“Zahra, I took this job because I was the little girl who got told this world wasn’t built for her, and I’ve spent my whole life proving otherwise, and I want to build something that means the next little girl doesn’t have to prove it before she’s allowed in. I believe in you and these women before I met them.” I held her gaze. “And I can tell you that if you come to auditions, you’re going to see something that will answer your question better than I can sitting here.”

Zahra stood, picked up her jacket from the back of the chair, and said, “I’ll be at auditions. Because I’m a professional.” She moved to the door. “But I want you to know that I’ve heard a lot of people say the right things in this building. Saying them isn’t the same as meaning them.”

The door clicked shut, quiet, closed very deliberately by someone who had made their point.

I sat at my desk and looked at the small trophy on the bookshelf behind me. First place at regionals, junior year of high school, and thought about every room I’d ever walked into that had recalibrated when it saw me. Every gentle redirect. Every polite version of being told that this world is not quite for you.

Zahra Smith was protecting women from being hurt by a system that had never been built for them.

So was I.

We just had to find our way to that common goal.

I turned back to my spreadsheet and started actually working toward the vision.

I called my mom on the drive home because some days required immediate debriefing and this was aggressively one of them.

She picked up on the second ring like she’d been waiting for this call and was not going to pretend otherwise. “Kidlet. How was the first day?”

So I told her. The parts I could make funny I made funny, and she laughed in the right places, and I was in the middle of describing Monty Whyte and his very sincere compliments that somehow left me feeling like I’d been handed a job description I hadn’t applied for, when I heard the familiar scrape of a barstool in the background.

“Put it on speaker,” my dad said. “I want to hear.”

My mom’s sigh was the fond kind, thirty-five years of fond, and then the quality of the call shifted and my father’s voice came through warm and close.

“Clover. First day. How’s Gabrielle? How’s the facility?”

“Gabrielle is great. The facility is⁠—”

“You see Kingman yet? How did his foot look? The camera doesn’t always capture the footwork, I need a ground-level assessment.”

“Morgan.” My mom again. Mild as weather.

“I’m asking a reasonable question. The kid’s completion rate in a pocket under pressure is historically significant, I want to know if he’s got the footwork to back it up in person or if it’s⁠—”

“He seems,” I said carefully, “to have functional feet.”

My dad laughed, big and genuine, the laugh I’d been making him do since I was old enough to understand that making my father laugh was one of the great achievements available to a human being. “She’s funny. Tory, our kid is funny.”

“I know,” my mom said. “I was there when she got that.”

“The Tigers are going to turn it around this year.” The familiar frequency, the one that meant he’d settled into pundit mode and was going to be there for a while. “Those boys will turn the underdogs into top dogs. That is if Theo Roper can actually coach at this level— Clover, you keep an eye on that situation. You’re going to have a front row seat to something historic.”