Page 17 of Base Block

“Would you do that? Would you help me?”

“Sure,” I said. I felt myself smiling. “I could be your Millie, except without the coke bullet. I can do everything.” I could get a job, start a social media campaign, keep track of the emails, and manage anything else.

“I like the lipstick you have on now,” he commented. “You don’t need that old one.”

I didn’t need anything from my old life—I could leave it behind. I had reinvented myself when I went to Los Angeles and I could do that again.

The past was over and done with. I could forget it all, like it never even happened.

Chapter 4

“Welcome…” The security guard looked around and paused for a second, letting the excitement build before he finished: “…to Woodsmen Stadium!”

Everyone erupted in cheers, including me. It really was exciting to be here. I had gone with Sage to a few concerts at big venues in Los Angeles and to be honest, this place wasn’t as large or as fancy as those had been. But it did have something. They kept talking about tradition, family, and generations of fans, and maybe it was smaller, but it felt more real. Like, it was grounded and meaningful, not just an expensive building. It was the same as Damian trying to fake his street cred. Either you had it or you didn’t, and this place did.

“I never thought I’d see the inside of Woodsmen Stadium,” a woman named Heidi whispered to me. We were a group of the wives/girlfriends/partners of the guys trying out for the team and also the guys who had already made it. On the ride over here, she had told me all about her life. She and her husband, a kicker, had gotten married just after college and for the past few years, they’d been on the move. They’d lived in Canada (two different provinces) and Mexico, and he had also played for three lower-tier teams in the United States. As George pursued a position at the highest level of football, Heidi had tried to start her own career as a kindergarten teacher. But it was hard to have a job where you definitely had to be there for nine months, if your husband was always having to go to another city and you also wanted to be with him.

She didn’t seem to regret anything, but she admitted that she was really, really hoping that he would make the Woodsmen roster and they could be in this area for at least a few seasons. “I’d like to settle down and work at a school. I’d like to start a family and not have to live separately from George,” she had told me on the bus, which the Woodsmen employees had called a luxury motor coach. “How many places have you lived?”

“A few,” I had answered. “Do you think they’ll sign him?” That was some lingo I’d recently learned, part of a whole new set of vocabulary words regarding football.

Heidi had looked very worried. “I hope so,” she had told me. Then our orange luxury coach had gone over a bump and she’d looked sick to her stomach instead. I wasn’t sure if it was due to the road or to nerves about my question.

She seemed happy enough now, as we walked through various parts of the stadium. We saw the awards room with cases brimming with trophies and plaques, the large cafeteria where the players ate when they were at the stadium, the locker room where they would change, and finally, the football field. That was awe-inspiring. The green surface stretched so far and the sky overhead was such a beautiful blue.

“This kind of sucks,” another woman muttered.

I turned to look at her. “Why?”

“Because they’re waving it in front of us like the nectar of a bertam palm in front of a pen-tailed treeshrew.”

Now we all looked at her instead of the guy leading the tour. “A what?” someone asked.

“It’s a jungle animal in Southeast Asia that survives on fermented nectar, but it doesn’t get drunk. That’s what they’re doing right now with this tour, tempting us with fermented nectar!” She sounded very frustrated.

“I think I see what you mean,” Heidi said. “It’s like dangling a carrot.”

“I don’t like vegetables and I’m certainly not going to drink nectar from some shrew,” a voice announced, but Heidi continued.

“By giving us the tour of this beautiful building and the field, they’re showing us something we want really badly but may not ever get.”

I also understood. It was fine for the partners of the guys who had definitely signed with the Woodsmen for next season and beyond, but for the rest of us? It would have been better to wait, because now it would feel even worse if Callum didn’t make the team. I knew what he’d be missing.

He was also here today, but just for a meeting. Usually, they used another building called the Woodsmen practice facility that was way off in the woods. It reminded me of something built with Legos, bright orange ones. He had told me that it was really nice inside, though, fitted out with more gear and amenities than he’d ever seen before.

“It’s amazing,” he had reported after his first day of practice. He’d sounded impressed but also exhausted. He had limped into our motel room from the car and fallen backwards onto his bed. “I worked harder today than I ever have in my life. Did I really think this was a good idea?”

Since then, he’d been heading to that orange building constantly. When they weren’t practicing, they were studying the playbook, lifting, conditioning, and recovering. And eating. Apparently, the team provided two meals a day for all the players, regardless of whether or not they had a definite place on the roster.

The other women and I probably hadn’t even seen a quarter of this campus, but now our tour was over. We had divided ourselves into two groups, the women with boyfriends and husbands who were already Woodsmen, and then the rest of us. That first group was confident and happy, smiling and laughing as they walked toward the exit. The second group had only a few people, since most of the guys had left their partners and families behind to come solo to northern Michigan. Things were too uncertain to move everybody here for an audition—no, they called it their summer training. But there were a few women, like Heidi and me, who had tagged along.

Now we were supposed to meet up with our partners, the Woodsmen and aspiring Woodsmen. But before I found Callum, I had something else to do. I started to edge away from the group.

“Where are you going?” The question had come from the same woman who said she didn’t eat vegetables. On her nametag, she’d written “J E N A E” in the shape of a heart, which had made it difficult to read.

“I have to check the lost and found,” I said. I guessed that Woodsmen Stadium had one of those, a big one. I had spent an entire day digging through the lost and found at LA’s Faultline Stadium after Sage had misplaced her new sunglasses at a Pippy Polluelo concert. The glasses had been a gift from Damian and he would have shit bricks if he’d known that she’d lost them and (even worse) that it had happened when we had snuck out to see Pippy perform. Damian thought that Pippy was his rival, and it was true if you ignored their merch sales figures, concert attendance, and streaming royalties. If you did look at those numbers, then you would have seen that there was no rivalry at all. Pippy crushed him.

The other women didn’t seem to think anything about my excuse, except for the one who had talked about the sap-sucking rat. She eyed me suspiciously as I walked away, toward the building that had been identified to us as one of the admin areas. I happened to arrive there just as an employee was leaving, so I didn’t need to use a key card to get in. I checked the directory on the wall of the lobby for the location of the payroll department and went directly there.