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The next day she called me into her office where I sat down with not one, but two bigwigs who run this very newspaper. Mia apologized in front of our audience, approved a pay raise she accurately assumed wouldn’t be enough, and then admitted that she overstepped and would never alter my column again.
Far as I could tell, she was sincere. I left, promising to think about it, and after a sleepless night in bed determined that giving up wasn’t my style. So here I am. Not giving up.
Go me.
In the conference room, Mia flips on the flat screen television which is already tuned in to ESPN. “I just received a call from Tom Lawson’s assistant. Look at our boy.”
Barrett’s on screen, not on the field but at a table with a pair of sportscasters I recognize. Tom Lawson and Sean Simmons. Their smiles are as plastic as their hair.
“Sports Center was fortunate enough to land an exclusive with Barrett Fox, former quarterback for the Miami Dolphins,” Sean says. “After a shoulder injury devastated his career, he made his way back onto the field announcing games for his alma mater, The Ohio State University…”
Barrett is clean-shaven, his hair in a neat, stylish part. His half smile is relaxed and easy. If there is any pain in his blue, blue eyes over losing everything we had together, I can’t see it. I didn’t know I could feel any more devastated by our breakup until now.
“Barrett, thanks for agreeing to sit with us,” Tom says. “We’ve been clamoring for a reaction to the column that ran in the Columbus Dispatch two weeks ago—” The rest of what he says is drowned out by the applause and cheers of my co-workers.
“Shh! Shh!” Mia gestures for everyone to keep it down, but she’s smiling. She loves this shit.
“What everyone wants to know is how much of what ended up in the column was real and how much of it was for show?” Tom asks Barrett.
“The dyslexia is one hundred percent real. I didn’t intend to share it, but it came out. I didn’t want the attention. It wasn’t a publicity stunt.”
“Come on,” Sean says with a laugh, “Barrett ‘Bad Boy of the NFL’ Fox doesn’t want attention for something?”
A web page featuring our column, and Barrett’s and my headshots, appears on the screen. More cheers and applause come from my co-workers while my stomach flips. The headache creeps from the back of my skull to the front and curls around my eye sockets.
“Eat it up, honey!” Mia nudges me with an elbow. “Part of you has to be enjoying this. Your beloved column made national news.”
I’m tempted to ask “at what price?” but I don’t have the energy for that conversation. Instead I say, “I thought you were mad at him.”
“We go where the dollars take us,” she says, and that pretty much sums up Mia.
I watch the TV for a few seconds longer, until Barrett mentions my name—not Kitty Cat, but Catarina, my nickname one of the few details that managed to stay out of our column—and says what a “pleasure” it was to work with me.
Arms folded, I face Mia. “Looks like you and Barrett Fox have everything you ever wanted.”
“Unfortunately, Catarina Everhart and I don’t speak any longer,” Barrett’s talking head says. I turn back to the screen, aware of my co-workers watching my face for the slightest muscle tic. I remain mannequin-still, refusing to give them an ounce of satisfaction.
“Did something go wrong?” TV Tom asks.
“Yeah. I went wrong.” Barrett’s mouth forms a frown. “I went way wrong.”
“Come on, man, you can’t leave us hanging,” Tom chides. “I read the articles. Unless you were faking it, there seemed to be a spark there.”
“Like you know anything about sparks, Tom.” Sean emits a canned laugh, but my focus is on Barrett.
The way his eyes lower to his folded hands. For a split second his for-television façade slips, and sadness seems to consume him.
“We’ll be back after the commercial break with more from Barrett Fox on ESPN.”
Mia mutes the TV and everyone in the room trains their gazes on me—most of them wide-eyed, expectant.
“What?” I ask.
A few of them smile.
“What happens next?” Nanci asks, her smile bigger than anyone’s.
“My guess is they come back from commercial break, announce that Barrett has been offered his field reporting gig again, and then—”
