I would expect someone who wants to win at any cost to be snarlier than that. Mean maybe, borderline cruel in his pursuit of a win.
Mean and cruel were not words that fit with a guy who noticed a rib out of place on a stranger and fixed it.
“But you were on the deck with him,” Rory said as she peeked into the pot of water on the stove that had just started to steam.
“For a few minutes,” I said, glad I was getting this discussion out of the way before Eve got here. We hadn’t been a thing in almost a year, but things were more over for me than they were for her. I didn’t want to hurt her anymore. I did everything I could to keep it from spilling over onto the team. Dating hadn’t been my brightest idea, but the attraction was there so I ran with it without really considering what would happen if it didn’t work out.
Or if one of us got in too deep instead of keeping it light and fun. “It wasn’t a big deal. I thought I had a pinched nerve. Turns out I had a rib out of place, and he fixed it.”
“He’s your doctor now?” Eve said, pushing her way into the kitchen.
Shit.
“He’s someone who knew what he was talking about and I’m someone with shitty health insurance. Seemed like a no-brainer if I wanted to stay upright.”
“He couldn’t be here at a worse time. We’re going to be under a microscope applying for the WRDF. If they catch wind he’s not only here, but sniffing around one of our players, everything we’ve worked for will be for nothing,” Rory said with a wary glance between Eve and me.
I slapped a smile on my face to reassure her, but she only narrowed her eyes and studied me harder.
Cause I was shit at covering my feelings once they bubbled to the surface.
Total and utter shit.
Which was why Tilly managed to crawl under my skin at every bout and tear me apart from the inside out. The ultimate wound that just wouldn’t heal.
“I wouldn’t call it sniffing around. He met Sheriff Chase for breakfast and I just happened to be working.”
“Which naturally led to kissing on the side deck,” Rory replied.
“Again…no kissing.”
Rory shrugged. “Just making sure.”
“Look. It’s not like either of us enjoyed being in close proximity”—God I was a liar—“but the rib hurt and he did fix it so I’m grateful for that. And now I won’t be seeing him again. It’s not like he lives here or anything.”
“If he’s meeting with Sheriff Chase, that could be changing. Wayne Savage is retiring this spring so a position is opening up with the police department,” Sean said.
“Mmm, I don’t know about that. Priest didn’t seem that interested in what he had to say.”
“And you paid close enough attention to notice that, huh?” Eve said with a disgusted snort.
We’d been at this for four years. Four years leveling up in bouts, playing against WRDF teams, and white-knuckling our way through getting our asses kicked over and over while getting better, training harder, until finally we’d earned our way into enough sanctioned games in a season to make filling out the application worth it.
Glancing around at the somber expressions on the faces of my friends, I had to wonder if this was really Eve being a jealous twat or if maybe my excuses had less with pointing out how unreasonable they were being, and a whole lot more to do with how I was feeling about a certain flaming asshole.
It turned out leveling up our game play was only the beginning of the hard work. Once there, we had to form a committee and a code of conduct. We all had our talents, but it turned out not a single one of us had a desire to touch paperwork or anything having to do with making rules. Our “committee,” as we were still getting used to calling it, had more hands-on talents. Eve worked in construction. Rory slung beers behind a bar and effortlessly made every patron, even the assholes, feel like kings and queens. Sean worked as a self-trained pastry chef. Zara worked for a non-profit for homeless youth.
The closest skill set to write a dry as fuck code of conduct was Marty. A certified personal accountant, and when all eyes turned to her, she grunted and said, “I prefer numbers.”
But after three months and several votes to address rules we’d never once imagined we’d have to consider, Marty had done it and because she had, she never had to pay for her drinks at Banked Track again. We all covered her, a permanent arrangement that hadn’t quite banished the twitch in her left eye left over from her time in the trenches with headings, subheadings, bullet lists, articles—basically all the technical writing layout aspects that made our eyes glaze over.
Eve had even tossed in some construction at Rutledge and Brooks law firm to get them to review everything to make sure our code of conduct was complete.
After all of that, and still stumbling in our mind-numbing haze of paperwork, we had training and skills tests for both our players and officials for our team.
In our little corner of the world where people lived modestly, we had players who had a hard time keeping up with equipment needs. Once we managed to overcome that hurdle, it was all about how the hell we would coordinate the schedules in an area where most of us worked nontraditional jobs with odd hours. Add to that the complications of joining a federation and we’d been sapped of every last bit of resources we could scrounge up.
Everyone in this room
