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“Hello, kid,” he said. “What’s doing?”
“Oh, nothing much,” I replied, and then immediately cursed myself for the false casualness. Now that he’d let me inside, shouldn’t I just go right to the point of the meeting, not beat about the bush? Or maybe if I schmoozed with him for a little while, it would soften the blow, make him put up less of a fight over my departure.
Though, now that I was saying that, it was a bit arrogant of me to think that he’d give a damn about me leaving. After all, soccer coaches are a dime a dozen, and there were plenty of folks just like me, fighting tooth and nail to step up from assistant to head coach. He could probably have me replaced within the hour, just like he did the last guy.
He didn’t seem to pick up on any of my internal tension, because he replied, “I didn’t watch the livestream, but I heard you won this weekend. Nicely done. You know how much I like winning.”
Though I was, as usual, mildly annoyed by his 1950s mob boss style of speech, it was worth something that he hadn’t actually seen the game, just the results. If he hadn’t watched the livestream from the local stations that covered the game, it meant he’d only heard about our win, and not about Catya’s, er, struggles. So, minus the whole sleeping with me thing, she was at least still secure in her position as captain. Though granted, the “whole sleeping with me thing” was a big minus.
“Thanks,” I said in response to his compliment. “It’s all about teamwork.” That was an awful platitude, but I was treading water until we could get to the real stuff.
“Yes, certainly.” He paused, and cleared his throat. “Well, Simon. What are you doing here? Not to be blunt about it, but folks usually make appointments with me. I do oversee all of ULA’s sports, you know.”
Yeah, dude, I know, I thought to myself. Had I offended him by not making a meeting? That hadn’t been my intention. And here I was, thinking I’d caught him in a good mood. This wasn’t promising, I should’ve known better than to assume David was even capable of good moods. But there was no time to think about it — I had love to declare. No more dilly-dallying.
Heart pounding, I interrupted David before he could begin down another line of thought, saying, “Sir, I’m here because I’m in love with a player. A player on my team, that is.”
I don’t know what David had seen in his life, but his reaction was oddly mild, as if this weren’t the first time he was hearing a proclamation like this one. It was the reaction of a hardened vet who’s been in the trenches. In fact, I would say I was more startled by his lack of a reaction than he was by my statement.
“Oh yeah?” he said, chewing his gum, which had a cinnamon flavor so powerful I could smell it from across the desk.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t look interested in offering any more words, so I took it upon myself to explicate the situation.
“I’m in love with Catya,” I specified. “The team captain.”
“I know Catya,” he said, his tone unreadable.
Wow, he was not making this easy.
“Sir,” I continued, despite the enormous lump in my throat, “I love her, and I’ve been… engaging in relations with her, and this weekend, the team found out. I was trying my best to keep it from them—”
“So you were lying?”
Crap. “No, no, I mean we’d only been seeing each other in any significant way for a week or two, so it didn’t seem right to tell anyone yet.”
He sighed. “Simon, it’s my job to be on your side, but I need you to shoot straight with me. You didn’t tell the team because you knew sleeping with a player would get you in massive trouble and possibly ruin your chances of championships. Is that right?”
I paused, then countered, “It’s true, I was protecting my job, and her scholarship. But I also didn’t want them to know because… because I care about her very deeply, and I didn’t want them to think that would impact how I treated the rest of them. As in, I didn’t want my view of how special she is as a person to interfere with my view on how special a player she is. Does that make sense?”
David’s eyes roved over me, judging, calculating. He replied, “And this was a consensual relationship?”
My head bobbed up and down very quickly. “Yes, yes, absolutely. I wouldn’t have touched her without her permission.”
“If I bring her in here, will she say as much?”
“Sir, she begged me not to come today because she wants me to stay. I want to stay too, of course, but only if it’s the best thing for everyone, not just myself and her.”
