Kickin' It (Red Card) - Rachel Van Dyken Page 0,1
myself off because hadn’t I just been thinking along those lines? Why couldn’t I lock her in her room? Send her to Siberia? “Can we not talk about this now?”
“We’re talking about it now!” she said a little forcefully. “I want to do something I love, something competitive and exciting. It’s your fault I fell in love with sports in the first place. I want to learn from the person I love the most in this world.”
“Lay it on thicker and you’ll suffocate yourself, Will.”
She groaned. “My proposal is this: give me the summer to learn the ropes from your company. I swear I’ll be great! It’s impossible to get into this business without connections. You’re my connection! And once the summer ends, you either hire me, or I’ll look for something else.”
“Uh-huh.” I checked my watch and tried to ignore how sound her logic was, then checked my watch again. Damn, I was going to be late. “Look, you live in California, what are you going to do? Pack up all your shit, move here, and just . . . try it out? What if it doesn’t work? You realize this is a huge commitment. You’ll be around professional athletes who think their shit smells like roses. You have to be tough, you can’t be . . . you,” I coughed out. She was naturally flirtatious, and I could only imagine what some of my clients would think about that. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”
“I’ll prove myself,” she said in a small whisper. “It’s what I’ve always wanted, to be just like you.”
“Ah, she offers cake while a knife gets shoved into my back. Nice.” I let out a long sigh. I knew my reasons for saying no were purely out of fear, and maybe a little bit about her growing up too fast. “I’ll give you three months.”
“Yes!”
I pulled the phone away from my ear. “One catch. I’m not letting you just . . . live in a crappy apartment with no security where any of the athletes can track you, or downtown near the party scene. If you commit to this and—”
She burst out laughing. “Matt, do you hear yourself? Why would a professional athlete follow me to my crappy apartment? They aren’t criminals! Or stalkers!”
I thought about some of my clients and winced. “Right . . .”
“Matt, be reasonable.”
“You’ll live here or the deal’s off.”
“Matt . . . I have a friend that’s moving up there too, we were going to live—”
“Look, I gotta go. I’m running really late, you got what you want, congratulations. Send me the details later. I’m not trying to be an ass. If you want the job bad enough, you’ll make it work.”
“But what about—”
“Your friend will be fine. I really need to go, Jagger’s waiting—”
“I mean I guess she could come with me.”
“Sure! Yup. Sounds good.” The clock was ticking in my head. There wasn’t enough time in the world to babysit another athlete hell-bent on ruining his own reputation. “Whatever.”
“Really?” she said.
What the hell was she talking about now? Was she still on the phone?
“Sure. Willow, I have to go. Love you, just put everything having to do with the move on the card, keep your receipts, and text me when you have details, yeah?”
“Matt, you’re the best, I can’t wait to tell—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, love you!”
I hung up and ran into my living room just in time to hear the doorbell. The door opened a few moments later.
“Yes, please, come in.” I waved my arm in the air. “Jagger, you need to learn about boundaries, personal space . . .” I eyed his orange joggers. “Fashion . . .”
He rolled his eyes. “This is from one of my sponsors. I have to wear this shit so they pay me so I can pay you.” He grinned.
“If I go blind from those pants I want a raise.”
He flipped me off in typical Jagger style. The guy was one of soccer’s highest-paid goalies and talked a lot of shit, but he did a good job taking it as well. He’d recently gotten into a verbal altercation with another player. As luck would have it, he was shoved into the ref and accidently gave him a black eye.
The video went viral.
It was his third viral video this year. He kept going viral for all the wrong reasons.
Keeping Jagger out of the news was an art.
Like swimming through shark-infested waters with a flesh wound . . . and surviving.
“So.” Jagger plopped down