We were met at the backdoor by a young man who looked barely older than Olive. His phone was held up with a rig in his right hand, and he held a smaller camera with his left.
“Here we go,” I mumbled, no stranger to the need for content from players and teams these days.
“Nola Young! It is so cool…” The kid tried to extend his hand as if he forgot a camera was attached. He then tried the same with the opposite hand, getting the same result.
“Oh, Jesus,” Daya muttered.
“Um, alright, let me just put these down.” The kid’s skin was tan with a golden undertone, his hair faded on the sides, but long enough on top that his curls slightly flopped onto his forehead.
“I’m Marcello! I’m the social team’s intern for the spring.” He extended his hand, and I shook with all my strength. He only winced slightly before shaking rigorously then he moved to Daya, his eyes immediately doing the closest version of heart eyes.
“Nice to meet you Marcello. Do you have a boss?” she inquired because if the first Waves representation we were meeting was an intern, we already had problems.
“Yes! You’ll meet Nina shortly. I’ll walk you over to her now.” Marcello picked up his gear, forgetting he needed hands to open doors, then put it down and opened the door for us.
“What a gentleman.” Daya snarked, only meant for my ears.
“I try, you know. I think it’s such a privilege that I get to work in women’s sports,” Marcello rambled.
“You don’t say.” I egged him on because I wanted to see if he actually meant anything coming out of his mouth. “When did you start watching?”
“Oh, always! I’m the baby of the family—only boy, too—so I grew up watching my sisters play soccer and volleyball.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t full of shit.
“Did they play in college?” Daya asked as we continued to walk down a long hall.
The Miami Waves shared a stadium with the men’s team, but given we were close to the season starting, the walls were lined with action shots and team portraits from the Waves’ first game in ’96, to their last. I recognized a lot of the women’s faces,people I’d passively met over the years either through my mom or playing against their daughters in college. As beautiful as it was to see this history, it felt like I was actively cheating on a girlfriend. I was walking through the bowels of another arena, seeing what a well-founded and widely-supported franchise looked like. Andman, was this shit nice.
Marcello stopped drooling over Daya and picked up his cameras again, the red dots indicating they were actively recording.
“What’s with the double duty?” I asked because, yes, content was important, but this was just supposed to be a simple signing with the new team members.
“Uh…” Marcello started to turn red. “We’re just really excited about you being here, Nola. And meeting Nina, and also—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence because on the opposite end of the hallway, I noticed a tall woman clad in jeans and a Waves t-shirt. She was flocked by a man and a woman who had uncannily similar features, and a third figure I’d befriended, ignored, fought with, beaten, and lost against.
A figure whose lips left a phantom sensation I couldn’t get out of my head for the longest time.
Oh shit.
CHAPTER NINE
Bee
No fucking way.
CHAPTER TEN
Bee
The thought to scream had absolutely occurred within the thirty seconds it took for me to register the group at the other end of the hall.
But that would be wildly unprofessional.
Also, judging by the way the Waves had brought their own camera crew via the definitely-not-of-drinking-age boy, a scream would only make its way to socials and cement this moment for life.
I refused to believe this was happening! There was absolutely no way that the Miami Waves had managed to sign both Nola Young and I. This absolutely could not be happening.
There were many ways our budding friendship had gone from rivalry to bets on who’d be the first to get a technical foul in a Jaguars versus Violets game.
