Page 8 of The Tiger in the Sack

The Den, the Tigers Football headquarters, smelled like rubber and industrial cleaner and something underneath both of those things that I decided was ambition, because that was the kind of morning I wanted to be having.

The woman at the front desk smiled at me and when I gave her my name, she rang up the president’s office, then told me to wait just a moment. A group of players moved through the far corridor, enormous and casual in the way of men who played a game for a living.

I wondered what Cat Daddy did besides rescue cats from trees and ride motorcycles.

The executive assistant in his smart suit and lavender tie with the matching pocket square greeted me and walked me back to the office suites.

“Clover.” Gabrielle rose from behind her desk and came around it. She wore a beautiful, enameled green ivy leaf on a fine gold chain around her neck, and I touched the one at my throat that I’d worn especially today.

We’d gone to the same school and joined the same sorority, but twenty years apart. Gabi gave back to both Chadwick University and our sorority by being a mentor to young, ambitious black women. I’d been one of the chosen lucky ones.

She pulled me into a hug that smelled like expensive perfume. She was the epitome of black girl magic and everything I aspired to be. “How are you? How’s Tig taking the move?”

“We’re good, and as long as Tig has his blanket and any cereal bowl to sit in, he’s good. But remind me to tell you about the great tree incident.” I purposely left out Cat Daddy because we wouldn’t get to work at all if I told her about him.

She gave me a look that said she knew I was keeping something back and she would get it out of me sooner rather than later. “Sounds intriguing, can’t wait. Tig is always good for stories.”

“How’s your dad liking Switzerland? Did your sister go with them? How’s she doing after the divorce?”

“You’d think Barbra was torturing him by making him go to the spa. So he’s fine. It’s Tiki that’s driving me insane. She doesn’t want a thing to do with running the team, but she’s bored out of her mind with nobody to cater to her every whim like Reggie did. Which means she’s calling me every other minute.”

Gabi’s younger half-sister from her dad’s second marriage was not that much older than me, but she lived a very, very different life. She’d be right at home on the Kardashian and I was more of a Proud Family girl.

“Oh no.” I laughed out my understanding. “As long as she doesn’t expect you to babysit the dogs, you can handle the rest.”

“I know, she’s just being Tiki” Gabi rolled her eyes and laughed too. “But it was easy enough to talk her into casting her vote for the new body diverse cheer team plan. Ready to dive in, coach?”

It wasn’t just the sisterhood, but her mentorship that had convinced me to take a job with the Tigers’ organization when she’d asked me. I’d do just about anything for her, including deferring my acceptance to the Colorado School of Minds for a year.

It hadn’t been a hard choice though. Dance and cheer was my passion. Engineering was my ambition. To have a chance to immerse myself into one more year of cheer after I’d been captain of Chadwick Cheer, and minored in dance was an indulgence I was taking advantage of.

It’s not like I’d get to do anything like it once I started my masters and eventually got a job as an aerospace engineer. Not a lot of dancing or pom-poms at NASA.

“That feels so weird for you to call me that.” I huffed out a little laugh-sigh. “But I guess that’s why I’m here.”

“You’re here because you’re exactly the right woman for the job and I’m grateful you agreed to help me launch this initiative.”

The word initiative felt tame for trying to change the world. Creating a body diverse cheer team was kind of a big deal and I’m not sure if Gabi really understood how important this would be. Especially to women like me who’d been told the size of their body excluded them from the dance world their whole lives.

We sat across from each other with coffee and the logistics document I’d built over the past week, and got to work. I laid out the specific, concrete, engineering-brained breakdown of how you build a body-diverse professional dance squad for a League team from scratch.

“Community recruitment has to start before we announce auditions,” I said. “If we put up a flyer at The Den or just announce it on the website and wait, we get the women who already know this world. We need to go find the ones who don’t know there’s a door open for them yet.”

Gabrielle’s finger traced the map I’d sketched. “Dance studios, step teams, community centers.”

I leaned forward. “I’ve got the framework, but I need someone who knows Cincinnati. I’ve been here less than a week. I don’t know where to go yet.”

“That,” Gabrielle said, pointing at me, “I expect we’ll have returning squad members who know every corner of this city and have been waiting for someone to ask.” She made a note. “I’ll get you the names and contact info for last year’s captains. It’ll be good for you to meet them as soon as possible.”

“Building the coalition from inside.”

“Always the strongest foundation.” She sat back, looking at my document and smiled at our plans taking shape. “Clover, this is all great stuff. But I need you to understand that not everyone in our halls is going to share our vision. You’ll meet⁠—”

A knock came before she finished the sentence.

The man who opened the door was somewhere in his fifties, broad-shouldered, silver-dappled hair in the way that only ever seemed to happen to white men on television and apparently in this hallway. He had the comfortable authority of someone who’d been the most important person in most rooms for a very long time.

“Gabrielle.” His greeting was warm, easy. His eyes moved to me immediately. “And this must be our new addition, Clover.”