Page 55 of The Tiger in the Sack

“Both real and accurate. Also growing by the moment.”

Fox sat back and made a sound that was not quite a word and not quite a whistle.

Gabrielle looked at me, then Fox, and Rutherford. “I want to keep this energy going. The three of you visible with the squad as tryouts build all the way through the preseason game. We lean into what’s already working.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m in.”

She hadn’t even finished the sentence.

“Yep. Same.” Fox pointed a finger gun at nobody in particular, which was his way of being delighted about something without technically admitting it.

“Anything for our ladies,” Rutherford said and fucking winked again.

I wondered just how much a football through the eyeball would hurt.

Gabrielle started to say something about the auditions.

The door opened.

Not a knock. The door just opened, the way a door opens when the person on the other side of it has never once in their life waited to be told to come in.

The woman who walked through it was probably a little older than me and dressed like the meeting had been scheduled around her outfit. Sunglasses pushed up into her hair, which I swore last time I saw her was black and curly, and this time it was blonde, long, and straight. She came in on heels that had no business on the industrial carpet and looked around the room like she was deciding whether to buy it.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, in the tone that was fully intended to interrupt. “I heard there was a meeting about my video.”

Gabrielle’s face scrunched in a way I had never seen it do.

“Tiki,” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming in.”

“I’m always in the office when I’m in town.” Tiki pulled out the chair at the opposite head of the table from Monty, the only open seat with any authority to it, which she’d clocked from the door, and sat. “And this matters. Four million views, Gabster. Four million. Do you know how long the family’s been trying to get numbers like that?”

The family. I watched the word land on Gabrielle and not move her an inch.

“For anyone who hasn’t met her before, this is Tiki Jackson,” Gabrielle said to the room, even and clear. “My sister and the new team owner this year besides myself. Tiki, this is Theo Roper, our head coach. You know Montgomery, and Clover Freeman. She’s our new dance and cheer director this year. And I assume you know Isak Kingman, Fox Daws, and Blake Rutherford.”

Tiki’s eyes did a circuit of the table. They paused on me about a half second too long, and I recognized that lusty look in her eyes. Eek.

Then they landed on Clover, and I watched them do a recalibration, the recategorizing of a person into a smaller box.

Clover saw her do it and didn’t even flinch. I, on the other hand, wanted to throw the table through the window.

“Clover, dear.” Tiki smiled. “You’re the one in the video with the junk in your trunk.” She paused for a very purposeful beat. “You’re very brave.”

“Am I?” Clover asked, but in a weirdly pleasant way. Watertight. That smile cost her, I was sure.

“Anyway.” Tiki turned to Gabrielle and folded her hands like she was about to do everyone a tremendous favor. “I want to be involved. I’ve been telling Jack-Jack for years I should be more hands-on, and now look, the one time the Tigers do something the internet actually likes, it’s a cheer initiative, which is, let’s be honest, exactly the kind of thing I understand better than anyone in this room.” She gestured vaguely at the table, at all of us, at the concept of us. “So. I’m going to help.”

“Help,” Gabrielle repeated.

“With the squad. The marketing. The whole rollout. I have ideas, I have contacts, I have a feel for this, no offense to anyone, that a football coach and an engineer do not.” She said engineer like it was a charming little fact about Clover, a thing a child had done. “It’s my family’s team too, Gabrielle. I’d like to act like it.”

Here is the thing about a play like that. There was nothing in it you could say no to without looking like the bad guy. She hadn’t asked for a title. She hadn’t asked for a budget. She’d asked to help, and she’d asked in front of witnesses, and now refusing her meant explaining to the owner’s sister why her enthusiasm for her own family’s team was a problem.

Smooth. Genuinely smooth. I hated it.

Gabrielle opened her mouth.

“And Isak.” Tiki turned to me before Gabrielle got there, redirecting the whole room with my name like a leash. “I’m so glad you’re attached to this. You and I should sit down. I have a whole vision for how to use you in the campaign, and frankly you’re wasted just throwing a ball around.” She smiled at me like we were already mid-conversation. Like there was a thing between us that had started somewhere I hadn’t been present for. “I’ve been telling people for weeks, the face of this franchise should be doing more than football.”