“No, Nick, I told you—whatever they want, we keep Dad away from it. You know he’s trying to enjoy retirement with Mom. It’s—”
Another pause came.
“Look, here’s the bottom line, OK?” my father said. “You take care of it however you need to. Do not rope Dad in unless you absolutely have to. You know just the mention of that will turn him inward very quickly. OK? OK. Goodbye.”
I waited a second after my father had let out a long sigh before I knocked once and pushed open the door.
“Tough call with Uncle Nick?”
My father, with his heads in his hands, laughed in an exasperated manner.
“Nothing but some disagreements about how business is run,” he said.
Something in me said that that wasn’t exactly the full truth, but it was like if one of my teammates said he’d “only” stayed out until midnight; it wasn’t something that I could change.
“How did the interview with ESPN go?”
“It was fine,” I said with a sigh. “You know how it is. Tried to push them towards Ferrari Wines—”
My father cut me off right there.
“You’ve always done good for the business, Nick, and we’ll get you more involved when you retire. I didn’t drive your ass to Little League games eight months a year and batting practice another three so that you could retire in your prime.”
“Strange, I always thought you enjoyed that.”
“I enjoyed it when it meant I got to have some peace and quiet with your lunatic siblings,” he said.
I laughed. I knew full well that the minute my father got around Brett or Layla, he’d be calling me the stupid jock. It was just how we operated.
Well, everyone except Leo, but that was…that was an incomprehensible one.
“Anyway, just wanted to see what the chances were of you reaching up to the marketing department in the Giants to get us some wall space in the outfield,” he said. “That’s some prime real estate space, and more people are interested in wine than they are in some hot new app that butchers the English language.”
“I can make some calls,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“See to it that you do,” he said. “I know that as soon as you head down to spring training, your ass will be harder to corral than a mountain lion.”
I laughed, promised that I would make do, and left. With nothing left to do at the family business for the day, I headed outside, found my Tesla, and got inside.
I may have been the only person in the world who actually liked driving in California traffic, and it wasn’t false modesty for me to say that. At almost every other hour of the day, I had thousands, if not millions, of eyes on me. Even bringing a girl back to the house or to a hotel room was a risk; some girls thought they would get famous recording a sex tape of me. It hadn’t happened yet, but the paranoia was always there.
In my car, though? No one was recording me. No one was keeping tabs on me. It was just me, the road, and whatever audio I had playing. I usually liked to listen to a good audiobook, but it wasn’t something I talked about much. I had to maintain some secrecy.
“You have one new email.”
The car notified me of this arrival, something that only happened when I got something that wasn’t obviously marked as spam or kept from me by my personal assistant. Although I was a good driver, as we’d reached a spot where we were in bumper to bumper traffic, I decided to check the email. The subject had my attention immediately: “Speaking gig at Fresno State.” My alma mater.
“Dear Nick Ferrari,
We hope this email finds you well. As part of our Friends of Fresno campaign, we are actively seeking successful alumni to speak at the opening of the career fair about the process of becoming good at what they do.”
I read through the rest of the body of the email, which contained the usual marketing bit about who past speakers were, what it would mean to fellow bulldogs, and so on and so forth. The part that really mattered, though, was who was signing this email at the end. It wasn’t like I had the entire Fresno State administration memorized, but my days as a star baseball player there—not to mention the “Ferrari” name—introduced me to more than a few of the higher-ups.
“Please let us know at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Izzy Saunders”
Izzy Saunders. I repeated the name in my head a few times, trying to recall if I had ever known an Izzy Saunders. No, I had not.
“Hey, Siri,” I said. “Search for ‘Izzy Saunders’ on Google.”
After Siri confirmed the search had been completed, I took a quick glance at the results while traffic remained at a standstill.
And, damn, I didn’t say this often, but she was stunningly attractive. Like, not just porn-star or made-for-TV hot, but beautiful too.
First, she had a captivating smile that pretty much made it impossible not to fall for her. So many girls thought the “unsmiling” look was sexy, and I just never understood the appeal. It was like they deliberately made themselves less attractive, but Izzy did not suffer from that issue.
Second, as shallow as it may have sounded, she hit a lot of the “shallow” qualities I preferred. She had brunette hair; she had dark blue eyes; she had amazing dimples; and she wore clothing that made it clear that while she had a great body, she was not trying to reveal everything to the world.
Perhaps I was just spoiled by all of the girls
