Page 52 of The Tiger in the Sack

“Clover.”

“Give me a second.”

Gabrielle gave me a second. She sat down across the desk and waited. She knew what we were looking at and knew better than to rush it.

I read two more. Both of them were some version of the same thing. Some version of I have been waiting my whole life to see someone who looked like me on that field and now I have and I am asking if there is room.

Each one slightly different.

Each one the same underneath.

I had known this would happen. I wanted to be here to build the whole thing because I knew this would happen. Because I had been the girl who needed to see it and hadn’t, and I had carried that long enough to turn it into a job description.

Knowing it would happen and watching it actually happen were not the same thing.

“Okay,” I said, when I trusted my voice again. “We need to talk about audition capacity, because the structure I have right now accommodates sixty women and if this keeps⁠—”

“We expand it.” Gabrielle didn’t hesitate for even half a second.

“The space⁠—”

“We find a bigger space.”

I looked at her. She looked back. Forty-three years old, new owner of a professional football team, sitting in my office on a Monday morning with graffiti being cleaned off her stadium and her video blowing up the internet and she was the calmest person I had ever been in a room with.

I thought about the three words on the outside of the building.

I thought about Monty Whyte and his transition period.

I thought about the fourteen women who’d already applied, the twenty-seven new ones today, most of whom had been waiting for something like this their whole lives. My laptop dinged with a notification of another application.

Twenty-eight.

Twenty-nine.

“Okay,” I said. “Bigger space. More judges. Maybe some local celebrities?”

Gabrielle smiled. Then she opened her laptop and said, “Yes. Including Kingman, Daws, and Rutherford.”

And there it was.

“The response to his clip specifically is—” she paused, scrolling through something with the expression of a woman who had been reading analytics since before I finished my coffee, “extraordinary is an understatement. Sports media is picking it up. There are League fan accounts making compilations.”

She looked up. “I want to build this in. The audition content, the first preseason game. Kingman, Daws and Rutherford visible with the squad as this thing grows.”

Every professional instinct I had lined up in a neat row and told me this was the right call. The numbers agreed. The now thirty-two women in the application portal agreed. The mission, which was bigger than my feelings about any individual colleague, loudly agreed.

“That makes sense,” I said.

“Good.” She closed the laptop. “I’m going to set up a meeting this week. You, me, Theo, and I want the boys in the room directly. Get everyone aligned on what this looks like going forward.”

“Great.” My voice was a marvel of modern engineering.

“Oh, and I suppose Monty will want to be looped in. He’ll say it’s about budget approvals. But I want to keep my eye on him.” She said it pleasantly. Neutrally. Like she was already adding it to a file somewhere.

“Of course. Good plan.”

Gabrielle stood up. Then stopped. “Oh, also, my sister Tiki is in town.”