Page 64 of The Tiger in the Sack

“Our date.” She said it patiently. Fondly. The way you explain a thing to someone slow. “Friday. I was thinking that little place on the river, but you’ll handle it. Surprise me.”

She reached into the purse and tilted it toward me so all three small heads were visible, the newest one in his Tigers’ Kingman jersey riding highest, like he’d earned the view. “King Manicotti wanted to meet his namesake in person.”

The dog blinked at me.

“Say hi, baby boy.”

Was she talking to me or the dog?

“We don’t—” My voice did a teenager squeak I was not proud of. “There’s no Friday. There’s no date. Tiki, I never⁠—”

“Eight, then.” She was already turning, already done, already a woman who’d gotten what she came for, which was witnesses. A whole offensive team worth of witnesses. “Wear the blue. It photographs.”

And she left.

The room stayed quiet for one more full second.

Then Fox, from two lockers down, still dripping, said to the room at large, “I’ve got Friday-the-date-actually-happens at three-to-one. Wedding-by-Christmas is paying out at twelve.” He pointed a finger gun at me, delighted, the worst best friend a man ever had. “No takesies-backsies, the book is open.”

“Fox.”

“The book,” Fox said, “is open, Kingman.”

I put my head into my locker and groaned.

By Friday I had no less than forty-billion messages from Tiki. All unanswered.

I’d managed to avoid her for a while, but those carefully curated days were now at an end.

Today I’d learned that a small dog makes a kind of cute whiny sound when it has decided you are its destiny. King Manicotti, Tiki’s brand new third Chihuahua, had been calling for me down the east hallway of the Tigers facility for a full minute, and it was getting closer.

Yip. Yip-yip. Whine, whine. The skitter of toenails on polished concrete. The specific click of a heel that had my name on it.

“I-saaaaak.” It was a singsong of my name. Drawn out across more vowels than the two syllables had any business holding. “Where’s my QB?”

I did the only sensible thing a starting quarterback and grown man can do when faced with his recently divorced half-sister half-team-owner who was making goo-goo eyes at him and chasing him down with her giant purse full of Perrier-drinking Chihuahuas.

I hid.

The film room was locked. The trainers’ suite had Rutherford in it getting his ankle taped, and Rutherford could not keep a secret if you sewed his mouth shut, so that was a no. The supply closet was an option for exactly half a second before I pictured the headline — KINGMAN FOUND DEAD IN MOP BUCKET — and kept moving.

The door at the end of the hall had a little door plate decoration on it that somebody, probably Clover, had hand crafted. This is a Cheer-o-cracy.

The light was on underneath.

I knocked with two knuckles, the way you do when you’re already opening the door, and I was inside before I’d finished the knock.

“Hide me,” I said.

Clover looked up from two monitors and a coffee that had gone cold enough to grow a skin. She had a pen behind one ear and a pen in her hand and a third pen she’d forgotten about stuck in her hair.

“What? No,” she said.

“Clover. Please. I’ll buy you a year’s supply of weird popcorn.”

She rolled her eyes and pointed toward the tin on her desk that was still half full. “I’m good, and I’m working. Get out.”

“Yip,” said the hallway.