Playing the Field

by Lark Maren

  I shrugged and looked down at my food, trying to will myself to eat, but my stomach didn’t feel right. I knew my dad would make sure those people were taken care of, but I had just learned about women’s football for the first time today, and I was intrigued. Surely if I felt that way there had to be others who would as well. I wanted women’s football in my city. Even if it was just so I could watch hot girls tackle each other.

  “Mom’s gone til Thursday,” I said. “Do you think one night this week we can take a ride down to a football practice?”

  “Sure. I’ll call Ed and see if he can pull some strings. I want to get my jersey signed anyway.”

  “I meant a woman’s football practice,” I said. “I want to go see.”

  He looked confused. “You’re not trying to play football, love, are you?”

  I picked up my sandwich and took a huge bite. We all knew I was the best pierogi of them all because I could barely run in a straight line without falling all over my feet. My athletic ability was limited to spin class three times a week, and even then it was a miracle if I didn’t fall off a stationary bike. “I just want to see what it’s like. It sounds interesting to me. I feel like there’s a big opportunity there that you’re not seeing.”

  “You just want to go check out the girls in tight pants rolling around in the grass.”

  “So sue me,” I teased. “You know I’m a creep. You raised me.”

  “Anything for my cupcake,” he said. “As long as you promise not to tell your mother what I just did.”

  “I’ll save it for a rainy day. You never know when you’re going to need a little bit of blackmail on a guy.”

  “I raised you well,” he said with a smile. “If it didn’t go against everything I believed in, I’d hire you in a heartbeat.”

  “I’ll probably have to use you as a reference someday,” I said. It sucked, though. My dad owned so many businesses in this city I wasn’t even sure when I did a job hunt which ones were his. He didn’t believe in hiring family, preferring to keep those things separated, not mixing those aspects of his life. Even if I did get an interview somewhere, as soon as they figured out who I was, it was suddenly like I was carrying the plague with me. They assumed, because I was Richard Morgan’s daughter, I was just some snobby stuck-up brat who didn’t know up from down. I hated to admit, their assessment of me was pretty much on the nose.

  I couldn’t help but think that maybe this football thing might be a good chance to prove otherwise, though. Not just to my father or to the world, but to myself. If I could breathe some life into the team, it would be good for the community. If I failed, I had nothing to lose. My dad was planning on scrapping it anyway. I knew if I asked him right now, he’d probably say no, so I had to be very calculated, planting seeds in his mind, making him think it was his decision to give me the team.

  “Where does the team practice?” I asked.

  “In the Homeburg High School stadium.”

  My eyebrows raised and my smile grew flat. I had imagined some crazy underground workout facility with pink and purple Astroturf and an adjoining spa, not one of the roughest outskirts of the city. “Is there even grass on that field?”

  He shrugged, crinkling up the parchment paper and tossing it into the trash can next to his desk. “Like I said, I don’t know a lot. I just know it’s going nowhere fast.”

  Maybe I wasn’t cut out to take over a team like this. These women and I probably had zero in common. Then again, maybe I could use my resources to help them. It didn’t hurt to be optimistic.

  “We’ll go tonight?” I asked. “Then sushi?”

  “Anything for my princess,” my dad said. I tried not to cringe.

  “Dad…” I whined.

  His phone rang on his desk, and I kissed him on the cheek as he took his call. I let myself out, walking through the maze of hallways in the top-floor office suite. It always left me with a feeling of awe, that my father, the college dropout, managed to do all this for himself. By the time he was my age, he was already a millionaire on his own. His entire life, he had a vision and stuck to it.

  Me, I just wanted to have any vision beyond sushi and my purse collection. Needed it. Craved it. Maybe this football team would be the exact kick in the pants I needed to get it. Maybe it would at least put me on the right path.

  Chapter Three

  Ella:

  “You look cute,” my dad said as I walked out of my bedroom in a pair of skinny jeans over a tight black ribbed bodysuit, my platinum blonde hair casually curled. I had toiled for hours over what I should wear tonight. I knew it was silly, but I didn’t want to look overdone, and I also wanted to look mature and professional. That was a hard look to attain. Cute definitely wasn’t what I was going for. “What kind of handbag are you going to dazzle me with this evening.”

  I held up my simple black leather Gucci wristlet. I didn’t think rolling up with a Birkin was going to win me any points with the team. It was bad enough I had a billion-dollar escort by my side.

  I always felt this way when I met new people—this overwhelming anxiety that I was immediately being judged based on the family I was born into. It was hard making friends who didn’t just want to be near me because I came from money. People were either over-the-top nice to me or immediately went on the offensive, either acting downright nasty towards me or simply ignoring me. Both hurt equally as much. Both reminded me that I was honestly nobody outside my father’s empire.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “If you’re trying to lay low, you probably should ditch the Louboutin stilettos, though.”

  “You’re always a step ahead of me,” I said, pouting. Even in his cargo shorts and polo shirt, he looked like money. Maybe it was his tan. Maybe it was his porcelain veneers that sparkled in the sunlight. It definitely showed in the way he carried himself. His simple mannerisms. The very mannerisms he passed off on me.

  “How about we take the Jeep?” he suggested. I pulled my hair back in a ponytail so I wouldn’t undo all my hard work.

  It was warm for mid-September, but that seemed to be the norm lately. Even with the roof and doors off, any time we came to a stop in city traffic for longer than a minute, it was hot enough to make me sweat. We pulled up to the ramshackle stadium, my dad not even bothering with a parking spot, just swinging in next to the gate. Apparently he didn’t think we were going to be here for long.

  I hopped out and shook out my hair, and we approached the field. There were about fifteen women running back and forth, doing different types of drills, changing the way they ran, crawled, or hopped every time the coach blew her whistle. They were all different shapes and sizes, all huffing and puffing and pushing themselves as hard as they could go as the coach screamed at them to pick up the pace. It was a stunning sight to behold, the determination on their faces as they went through the various exercises. Nobody ever quit, even if they started going a little slower than the rest of the pack, and that was amazing to me. They were determined and driven, and they weren’t even getting paid.

  The coach blew the whistle and they all gathered around her in a circle before dropping to the ground. I tried to listen to what she was saying to them, admiring her ability to command a team just with her voice and her whistle, but suddenly, everything got silent. A woman pushed herself off the ground and came sprinting over to us. As she grew closer, I realized it was Ms. Ross, from earlier today, only instead of black blazer and upsweep, she was compression shorts and pigtails, and I didn’t exactly hate it. I would’ve never guessed she was a football player just from earlier today. I figured she only worked for the team, not played on it.

  “Can I help you, Mr. Morgan,” she asked, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon. We were just practicing.”

  “No, no,” he said. “Go about your business. My daughter didn’t realize there was a football team in the city. She wanted to come check out a practice, so I figured I’d indulge her. Don’t mind us.”

&nb
sp; She stood there looking extremely uncomfortable, like we were spies or something.

  “Go on,” my dad said. “Tell your little friends it’s okay; we’re just here to watch.”

  I cringed as the words rolled out of his mouth. Either he was delusional or just being cocky. This wasn’t a group of ‘little friends’ playing in a field. These women were serious business.

  “Dad, that’s rude,” I quipped. “We’ll get out of here, Ms. Ross. I have to admit, it is pretty exciting watching you guys practice, though. I’d love to come to a game.”

  “You’ll have to talk to your dad about that,” she said. It was a double-edged statement. Either she was implying that my dad controlled me, or she was implying my dad was about to pull the plug on the team before their season even started. She’d be right either way.

  Suddenly, a roar of giggles washed over the team as they stretched out on the ground. “Is that cupcake?” a redheaded woman with the most beautiful freckles I’d ever seen shouted. “Please tell me that’s cupcake.”

  Ms. Ross did a signal with her hands implying she was slitting her throat and the woman threw her head back and started laughing.

  “Please don’t mind Tonya,” she said through gritted teeth. “She doesn’t have any filter.”

  “Apparently neither do you when it comes to discussions behind closed doors,” my father said, giving her one of those stern dad looks.

  “Dad, knock it off,” I said. “I’ve told you a million times not to call me that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ms. Ross said. “That was very unprofessional of me.”

  “Especially considering the state of your team,” my dad quipped.

  “Dad,” I scolded again. “It’s not her fault. It’s weird to call your kids cupcake. I would’ve totally blasted that to my friends.” As mad as I was at him, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the redhead. She was chugging from her water bottle, staring over at us with angry green eyes. She was a knockout, that was for sure, and her sports bra and compression shorts left very little to the imagination. As much as I admired her curves, I was more impressed by the muscles in her calves and the way her shoulders were so defined. A body like that took dedication I couldn’t even begin to wrap my brain around. Plus the freckles. I didn’t realize until that very moment that I was a sucker for freckles.

  I’m sure she hated me just based on the very little bit of information she had about me, and I wasn’t sure what I could do to change that, but I needed to come up with a plan. I needed to get to know this Tonya girl better. As cheesy as it was, I knew I wanted her more than anything in the world, more than that Fendi Peek-a-Boo bag I’d been wait-listed for for the last six months. That was some serious want.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “We won’t hold you up any longer.”

  I swore as we got in the Jeep I heard a collective sigh of relief come from the stadium. Apparently our presence was not welcomed at all. I needed to change that.

  “That was pretty awesome seeing them run like that, Dad,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, fiddling with the radio.

  “That takes some serious skill,” I said. “Not just anybody can do that.”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied, completely dismissing me as he put the Jeep in drive.

  “Dad!” I screamed, gripping his arm.

  “What?”

  “I want that team,” I said. “You can’t get rid of it.”

  “Ella, you are just being emotional. You know by now that sometimes people say rude things when they’re jealous. That’s no reason to want to ‘own’ them. That’s no way to earn respect. Sometimes you just have to walk away with your head held high.”

  Of course the cupcake thing bothered me, but he was making it sound like I wanted the team so I could punish them for it. That’s not why I wanted the team at all. I wanted the team so I could make them like me. So I could show them I wasn’t cupcake, Richard Morgan’s spoiled daughter. I wanted the team so I could show them I was their friend.

  Or more importantly, so I could show that redhead I was her friend. Maybe more than friends. I wanted to get to know her better, at least. She was hot. I’d never seen her around before, and I was sure once she figured out I wasn’t just somebody’s ‘cupcake’ she’d have to like me.

  “I just want some more responsibility, Dad,” I said. “I don’t feel like I have any direction anymore. You and Mom are both so successful. I want to leave a legacy.”

  “And women’s football is how you want to go about that? You don’t even like sports,” he said, throwing me his stupid smirk.

  “Gotta start somewhere,” I said with a shrug, “and I do like sports.”

  “You like sitting in a luxury box and partying with your friends.”

  “Hey, don’t forget I was a pierogi. That’s gotta count for something.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said as he turned down the Roberto Clemente bridge. “My clumsy little dumpling. I’ll have to put that in my bank of pet names.”

  “Dad!” I whined, rolling my eyes. He could call me whatever he wanted as long as he bought me that team. I rested my head back on the car seat and closed my eyes, playing out in my mind how my first day at work would go, how I would save the team and get the girl. Like a movie, only real life. My life.

  Chapter Four

  Tonya:

  “Areal!” I scolded under my breath, beside myself with anger. “It’s one thing for me to have to pick you up from the school; this is a whole new level.” My teenage sister hung her head. She knew better than to get an attitude with me at this point. I was feeling my classic mix of failure as a sister and immense frustration for her behavior, and as careful as I was trying to be with my words, I didn’t have any good ones.

  “Does she need a lawyer?” I asked the police officer as he handed me a stack of paperwork.

  “Not this time,” he said, his tone so condescending I had to bite my tongue. I knew what he was implying by the statement, and it broke my heart. “If she keeps running around with those girls, though, I’m sure we’ll be getting to know each other quite well. Are you her mother? You look like a kid yourself.”

  I shook my head. “I’m her legal guardian,” I lied through my teeth, knowing that if we had to get my mom down here to pick her up Areal would be an adult by the time she came around. “Now can we go?”

  He opened the door, and as we walked through the station I felt so uneasy thinking about my baby sister having to sit here with these criminals and scumbags. She wasn’t a criminal. We weren’t scumbags.

  “I didn’t do anything, I swear,” she said as we walked to the car. “Janelle was the one with the weed. I was just there.”

  “What?” I stammered. “What are you doing hanging out anywhere near that shit?”

  She crossed her eyes and sighed. “Don’t play stupid. Look around you. Our beautiful hometown. I could probably throw a rock in any direction and hit a crackhead. You should be proud of me that it’s just weed.”

  I got in the car, slamming the door behind me. I couldn’t argue with what she was saying. This wasn’t exactly the kind of place people wanted to raise their children. She wasn’t my child, though. How could our mother not want more for her. How could she not want more for me?

  “Why can’t I just go live with Aunt Mae?” she asked. I groaned as I clenched the steering wheel. She knew exactly how to get my blood pressure going, as if it wasn’t high enough already.

  “Areal, I am trying my hardest. I swear, as soon as I have enough saved up for first and last month’s rent we can move anywhere in the city you want. I just need you to trust me. Tough it out for a minute.”

  “Dude, she’s rich. She doesn’t care. She told me yesterday I can start cyber school any time I want. They’ll send me a free laptop and everything. Why don’t you want that for me?”

  “You are in no position to guilt-trip me right now,” I said. “And that’s the problem with Aunt Mae. She doesn’t care. She wants a teenage friend to hang out with. S
he doesn’t know anything about raising a kid.”

  It wasn’t just that, though. It was downright offensive my crazy old rich aunt thought she could just swoop in and save the day, take my sister away from me with her empty promises. She did the same thing to me when I was a teenager, and after a month she had me packed up and back on my mom’s doorstop without so much as a ‘have a nice life.’ I didn’t want my sister to ever have to feel that rejection and confusion. I didn’t care how many times Mae promised she’d changed; to me, she’d always be untrustworthy.

  “And you think you know anything about raising a kid?” she scoffed. “You missed my parent teacher conference because you were at football practice.”

  “What?” I stammered. Nobody said anything to me about parent teacher conferences. I always showed up for Areal, even if it meant missing out on things that were important to me, be it work or play. She always came first. “When was this? Did they send you home with a paper? I never saw a paper.”

  “I put it in the mail pile.”

  My skin crawled at the thought of the mail pile. Our entire kitchen counter was a mail pile. Going through it only reminded me of how many people wanted something from me, how many bills I was behind on, and apparently how many school-related functions I was missing. It reminded me how irresponsible I really was. How I barely had things together, no matter how well I pretended.

  “You should’ve told me,” I muttered. “I need reminded every once in a while. I need you on my team if we’re going to make this work. And I need you to stay the hell away from Janelle. Straight home from school the rest of the week. Do your homework and chores, start dinner, you know the drill.”

  “Aunt Mae has people who do that stuff for her,” she said, pursing her lips into a smug smile.

  “You’re not going to live with Aunt Mae, end of story,” I said.