“Dad…” CJ trailed off. His parents were hurt. That’s what he was hearing in their voices. He’d done that to them.
“We’ll talk about this in person, CJ. This weekend.”
“Yeah,” CJ said. “Okay.”
“Are you—” His father stopped, and CJ waited while he gathered his words. “Are you being smart about this?”
CJ had a lot of answers to that question. “I thought I was. I’m trying to be.”
His father made a sound that wasn’t quite a response, and when he said goodnight, CJ could almost feel the effort it took for his father to not say the many things he definitely had on his mind.
He stood in the kitchen for a long moment after the call ended, then he opened the link again. The original post had climbed past six thousand shares. CJ watched it for a while before he closed out of it and stared at the ceiling again. He needed to call his agent.
Marcus Howell had been his agent for seven years. He was methodical and honest and frequently exhausting, and he had never once, in all that time, given CJ anything but the truth. CJ dialed his number and waited for him to answer.
“Okay,” Marcus said without preamble. “Walk me through it.”
“The basics?” CJ asked, and Marcus made a sound of agreement. “Two teammates, All-Star break trip to the mountains for a few days. Some guy at the counter took a photo.”
“Thephoto.”
“Yeah.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment, but CJ had sat through enough of his silences to know how to wait without filling it.
“Here’s where I am,” Marcus said. “Right now, it can be read as ambiguous. The picture is grainy enough that it could be denied. I’ve seen the post, and I’ve seen the comments. It’s about seventy-thirty speculation to noise, which means the thirty percent is the loudest. And that thirty percent is saying the photo looks like two people who are close in a way that’s more than teammates.”
“Okay.”
“Is that an accurate read?”
CJ looked at the harbor beyond the wall of windows in his living room. “It’s not inaccurate.”
Marcus absorbed this without commentary, which CJ appreciated. “So here’s the conversation you and I need to have, and I want to be clear that I’m having it as both your manager and your friend. My concerns are your career and your well-being, in roughly equal measure.”
“I know.”
“You have a few options to consider, and I want you to understand all of them before you do anything.” Marcus gave him a chance to speak, then continued when CJ stayed silent, “The first option is you put out a statement on your terms. You control the framing before anyone else can. You acknowledge you were there, nothing more, nothing less. The second option is to say nothing and let the story run its course. Most of these burn through a news cycle in a few days, especially if you lie low and don’t give them more fuel.”
“Do you really think that would happen?” CJ could hear the hope in his voice.
“I don’t,” Marcus answered, and CJ deflated. “There’s a third option, and that’s you addressing it fully and directly, on your terms, when you’re ready. That one has a longer preparation period and doesn’t happen this week.”
“I need to talk to Evan.” It was the only thing CJ was certain of.
“Yes,” Marcus agreed. “You do. And that conversation needs to happen before either of you says anything publicly. If you two are not on the same page, you’ll make this significantly harder on each other and you can’t undo that.” He paused briefly. “Call me after you’ve talked to him.”
Then he hung up, and CJ was left staring at his phone. He texted Evan again. Watched the message go from Sent to Read with no response. Sent another one with the same result. Evanneeded space and CJ would give that to him, for now. He’d try again in the morning.
CJ woke earlythe next day and went through the motions as if it were a normal day. He moved through the kitchen on autopilot, made a pot of coffee he didn’t really want, and leaned against the windows while he sipped it. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and CJ grimaced before pulling it out to look at it. It was a text, but he didn’t recognize the number. He opened it with a frown.
Unknown Number
CJ, it’s Reid.
“Fuck.” CJ saved the number to his phone. There was no chance that getting a text from the team’s general manager this early in the morning was going to be a good thing.
Reid Harrington
