the rookie had played well up until then. For a defense guy, he’d scored quite a few points.
The reporters were bounding out of chairs, flowing into the tunnel behind the team, their curse words echoing off the walls.
The head coach led the press into a conference room. But by the time she could squeeze her way in, the cameras were rolling and print journalists were taking notes as the coach spoke in monosyllables from his spot in front of a wall covered in sponsor logos and imagery for the team. He called on the TV reporters first.
Beside her, Eddie shook his head and muttered, “This fuckin’ guy. He always does that. Gives the talking heads priority.” He grunted. “Listen to the questions they ask. They’re clowns. They pay more attention to their hair than the game.”
Listening to the dialogue up front, she couldn’t disagree—at least, not with this particular bunch. The coach didn’t seem to be saying much to them, anyway, almost every response consisting of, “I’ll have to watch the game tape before I can answer that,” or “We played with heart.”
After a couple of minutes, the coach depleted his catalog of one-line, innocuous responses, so the group hustled into the hallway and over to the locker room. Just outside the door, there was a vastly oversize photo of a deceased coach, his eyes watching them as they jostled to be the first through the doors.
She’d known this moment was coming, when she was going to have to go into the locker room. A lot of female reporters before her had fought for her right to capture the post-game energy and hype along with the male reporters.
She was no quitter.
Hara followed. She’d never had the opportunity to interview anybody right after a game, especially not well-known players. There was no way she was going to shy away from the chance.
She’d read the stories. She knew what other women had gone through. And still went through, both in the locker room and in the abusive world of social media, from verbal harassment to physical attacks. Which explained why there weren’t many skirts in a sea of gray suits and khakis.
The room was smaller than she expected, but a far cry from her high school locker room with its pitted cement floor and a grimy shower room facing rows of bent lockers. The Fishers had a well-maintained space, including a line of glass tables and leather office chairs in the center, and a thick, low carpet underfoot with a massive picture of the team’s emblem embroidered into the center. One wall had a wide hallway leading back to the shower rooms and training room and medical bay. There were floor-to-ceiling lockers, and seats along three of the walls, each of which bore a plaque with a name and number, set apart by walnut partitions that offered no privacy whatsoever.
The damp air and bite of body odor was the same as at her high school, though. Worse, even.
The scrum of reporters hummed as the players returned from the shower rooms.
A young rookie, Gus Lawrence, was using a wet towel as a snapping weapon and came close to getting punched by at least one varsity player. Most of the guys weren’t in the mood for horseplay, exuding sullen waves of disappointed energy.
When she realized just how much skin she was seeing, her eyebrows shot up in surprise. The ridiculously tiny towels looked like they had been stolen from a Motel 6; they were unable to close around the players’ above-average-size bodies. Hara had thought she was prepared. But when a few guys strode past naked, their man parts free and bouncing off a leg with each step, her stomach twisted in anxiety. It was surreal. And very, very awkward.
Psht. Naked. Big deal. She forced her back straight, her face impassive. Hara had been flashed before, by far less attractive men. Her father’s fellow inmates, and even the guards, had provided years of unwanted lessons on how to deal with sexual taunting. The reporters were breaking apart, surging as small groups around individual players, who were yelling at each other and, oddly, slathering their entire bodies with lotion before getting dressed.
“Hey, jersey chaser. Who let you in?”
It wasn’t a player. The comment came from a sneering reporter to her left, his hairpiece a different shade of brown than his natural hair.
Hara pushed her glasses up on her head and batted her eyelashes at him. “My daddy said it was okay.”
Charles Butler emerged, a towel