THE HARDEST YARDS (A BAD BOY FOOTBALL ROMANCE)

by Andrea Rose

  “Ari…”

  “I got in the deepest I could,” I said, “I fell completely in love with him and he fell in love with me but both of us are too stubborn or scared or angry to do anything about it.”

  “Ariana. Wait one sec, one sec, I can’t hear you over the wind. Out. Of. My. Way.”

  The angry shouts of Aussie sunbathers…

  A gull squawking…

  “I don’t think I heard you,” she said clearer. “Did you say you fell in love—Your minutes have expired. To top-up, please dial…”

  “Goddammit.” I threw my phone to the floor and stomped on it so the screen smashed.

  “Miss Maldova,” a guard of the building, David, ran by me with his umbrella. “Been a while since you were this early!”

  “I’ve been a tied up.”

  “Come inside for some coffee? You’re gonna need it. ”

  “Why?”

  “You not hear Yuri’s Sportster squealing into the parking lot just now?”

  “Sunglasses on?”

  “The big ones.”

  She’d found out I’d lost Phoebe.

  33

  I ran through my dusty files, searching through KSE bank statements. Apparently Chrissy thought there might be a red flag in the company books that’d help the Spiros case. I was hands-off with that stuff, what better place to hide something.

  “This is gonna take forever,” I said.

  “Let it take forever. Get a ruler, get a highlighter and get reading.”

  I flopped over the pile starting at April last year.

  “She’s also asked us to steal his phone,” she said, crouching in the mini-fridge. “I mean…I think we should steal Gavin’s phone.”

  I caught a tossed water bottle from the air. “Why?”

  “Proof.”

  “Of?”

  Poker-face.

  “Of, Chrissy?”

  “General proof. His contacts, his bank app and stuff.”

  “They have bank applications?”

  “Apps. Yeah. You do whatever you do in a bank but from your couch. We’ll download you one next lesson.”

  I checked my watch. “Better do it quick.”

  “Download an app?”

  “Steal his phone.”

  Her eyes brightened. “You wanna do it?”

  “Whatever gets him in cuffs faster.”

  “Sweet, good luck.”

  She kicked her feet up on the bed and opened a book.

  “Now,” I said.

  “Now?”

  “Twenty minutes, for his routinely morning shit and shower,” I said. “It’s the only time you’re gonna get it without him noticing.”

  “Gross. Cool.” Chrissy snatched her jacket and ran us toward Suite 538.

  I slipped the card in and out the key-slot on his door. No one suspects someone five-foot with novelty glasses would steal a maid’s key from her apron

  The light flashed green.

  Steam billowed from the bathroom. I crouched to Gavin’s room safe then spun right back out again, under-handing the device to Chrissy.

  “This is sooo illegal and I love it because heee…” She held up the unlocked phone screen. “…Is a cunt.”

  “You know his code?”

  We hid inside the Ice Room.

  “The dude forgets I’m in the room half of the time,” she said and opened the bank app that prompted another four-digit pin.

  “Shit,” she said. “The code’s different.”

  “1-2-0-8?”

  “No.”

  “Uh, 1-9-6-1?”

  “One attempt left.”

  “I have no idea. I don’t…know the guy as much as I thought.”

  Chrissy stood to make a call on her own phone. “Please don’t kill me for this.”

  “For what?”

  “Ari, OK, I have it. What do you need from it? We don’t have it long.”

  I stood beside her, throwing my hands to my head as Chrissy browsed the phone more. “Ariana doesn’t get to know this stuff.”

  Chrissy backed away from my hands imploring her to hang up.

  “You don’t know?…I thought you wanted us to steal it?” She scrolled through Gavin’s phone some more. “Oh.”

  “Hang up,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, he’s here…Ariana says hi…”

  My eyes rolled. The coins I put in the machine fell and a water tumbled down. I was sitting this girl chat out.

  “He says hi back…Do you know Gavin’s bank password code?…OK…”

  Chrissy bowed her head closer to Gavin’s phone with an open mouth, eyes growing. “Ari…I’m gonna have to call you back…”

  “She’s not a part of this.”

  Chrissy slapped down my ‘WTF’ arms.“Sure. Anyway, she doesn’t know his password but take a look at this shit…”

  She gagged her tongue out her mouth. “Oh my god. Take it awaaay.”

  When I saw it, I reacted much the same.

  A grainy video featuring Yuri Kissinger, sucking her finger and spreading her pussy on my manager’s bed played on Gavin’s screen.

  Ice fell in the machine.

  A real-life drenched Gavin swung the door open, towel around his waist.

  “Staff meetin’?” he said, squeezing between us for the snack machine.

  My balls went up inside me.

  Chrissy stepped behind a soda machine.

  “Yeah. Got some scripts off Ariana to learn.”

  “Ah shit, I’m a quarter short.”

  From my pocket, I put one into the slot for him. “My treat,” I said as Chrissy snuck out the door.

  I spent the evening with a highlighter, four coffees and a binder of TKE’s accounts.

  I moved down, line by line until my eyes went square remembering why I never took up finance shit. Seven hours spent following clues, building lists and finding patterns I found a red flag but not where I thought I’d find it.

  Moving onto my own accounts, I found a weekly withdrawal tagged with a company I’d never seen in my life but a familiar per hour amount:

  JENLANG SERVICES $900

  “You or I have to go pay some a visit,” I said, shaking Chrissy’s foot at three AM.

  “What the fuck, Ty. Stop. We’ll do it in the morning.”

  “It is morning and we have to get back to New York.”

  “New York? The final’s in four days.”

  “I found it.”

  She wiped her eyes and leaned up with a groan. “You did? What?”

  “I don’t know yet but we’re gonna need to pay Miss Juniper a visit.”

  34

  Upstairs on the fortieth floor, La Maison sat in darkness before the dawn.

  I liked the office this way, quiet and dimmed only by the orange LED lights on the wall.

  The lemongrass scent wafted through the air-conditioning. I sat at the reception desk for the comfiest chair.

  Yuri hadn’t stormed up from the garage yet.

  She wasn’t mad at me, obviously, meaning she’d be half-way through a rant to another subordinate downstairs.

  I didn’t envy them.

  04:45AM

  The only place appropriate to call at that hour was in another time-zone than Australia. I couldn’t keep sitting stewing over it anymore.

  “Kite residence, Phoebe speaking.”

  “Phoebe!” I cried out and crumpled her parents home number in my hands.

  “Oh…Shit…Ari?”

  I dropped my head.

  “Phoebe, what the fuck, hun?” I said. “What the actual fuck? Where have you been?”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “I’m…fine for the most part?”

  I blew a long stream of air through the phone. “Why did you leave me that message? What the hell is going on?”

  “I need your help so bad.” Her composure fell to sobbing. “Ooh, you’re gonna hate me. I don’t want you to hate me.”

&nb
sp; “I won’t hate y—”

  “Someone has a photo…” she blurted out.

  The four words a publicist fears most.

  I held my chest.

  “Of…?”

  Heavy breathing from both ends of the line.

  Please not me, please not me, please not me…

  “Me…” she said.

  Whew until—

  The elevators purred—Yuri approached.

  “You and…?” I said, already verging on tears thinking she might say him and I don’t know which would be worse.

  I squirmed and stood from the chair to take the rest of the call in the conference room.

  Please not him, please not him, please not him…

  “Tell me quick.”

  “Me and a female friend—ex-friend,” she said. I exhaled. “We took some racy photos a few weeks ago messing about in a hotel and, uh, someone is threatening to release them.”

  “How racy?”

  “Naked. Sexual. Oh, fuck. What do I do? I need your help. I need a plan. I’m so scared this creep’ll release it and everyone will know what a fucking fraud I am. My career’s over in Hollywood if I it comes out I’m gay. I’m fucked.”

  “It’s not over. Stay calm.” I caught my head.“We’ll figure it out. I can say…you took it before you met, Tyler.”

  “I have new tattoos. People figure this shit out. Oh. I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I? All this time we were bugging Tyler to behave and I goofed the whole thing.”

  “Phoebe…Why? Why right before his final game?”

  “I’m not cut out for this business, babe. The other week in LA, things got weird, I forgot three whole days. Blip. So I panicked, ran away, and decided what better place to sober up than my parents miserable London flat the other side of the globe.”

  “You had two weeks to tell me you were alive. Two weeks. Are we not friends? The NYPD had a fucking undercover investigator sent looking for you.”

  I wiped away a tear of my own.

  “I’d taken too much shit to know what was going on. I locked myself in my parents flat and didn’t come out for a week except to piss. I made a mistake.”

  “A big one.”

  “I’ll be the one to live with that and, trust me, I’m not looking forward to it. I hardly sleep thinking every hour is the hour this tosser uploads it.”

  “You relax,” I said and kicked a conference chair across the room. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Bang! It hit the opposite wall.

  “What do you want me to do about Tyler?” I asked.

  “I’m with him, still. I’m staying on this tricycle as long as that photo stays hidden, I promise. I won’t mess it up until it leaks or…he says he doesn’t wanna date a lesbian anymore.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “No. Let me tell him about the pic. Please.”

  “Do whatever you want, Phoebe. I’m gonna call to let him know you’re safe. He’s been worried sick about you.”

  “Really? That’s sweet.” The other end went quiet.

  “I gotta go.”

  “Oh, shit! Your court hearing! Oh my god! I’m more shit than I thought! When is it again?”

  “Today. Feebs, I can’t care about this right now.”

  “Ari, I’m sorry. I know I said I’d be there—”

  I hung up and moved on numbly to the next necessary call of the morning, not dwelling any longer for the sake of anyone getting an extra hour sleep.

  “Yo.” Tyler answered first ring. “You found her?”

  First things first: “Last night, I received an email from some fancy-schmancy law firm who said they’d like to take on my custody case last minute.”

  “Wow, that’s…that’s great. They say why?”

  “Someone thinks I need charity. Stop helping me. Stop helping me if you’re not going to be anything more than a client which is barely what you are to me.”

  He moaned. “I couldn’t help with Phoebe, you won’t take handouts and I didn’t wanna abandon you like that. You left me no choice.”

  “You can’t abandon me. You were never here for me to begin with. Let me to fight my own battles.”

  He exhaled. “Stop being a princess.”

  “Princess?”

  “Meet with them. It’s all paid for. You know you’ll have a better chance winning your dogs back with this legal team over yours.”

  My fingers creaked as I tightened my grip on the phone.

  “Stay out of my personal life. Speaking of personal lives, you can sleep now knowing you’re lovely Phoebe is safe. I’ll leave her to tell you what happened.”

  “Good, good.” I leaped at a Yuri hunching in the door. “Glad to see you back on old hours. Alone, I hope?”

  I hung up.

  “Yes. I’m just a bit behind on work. Thought I’d catch up in peace before anyone else gets in.”

  “You’ve been trying to hide from me. After Chicago, I haven’t seen you at all.”

  “I’ve been…busy.” I straightened my skirt and walked to the door beside Yuri’s sunglass-hidden face. “I’m happy to catch up later at lunch.”

  I headed back to the reception to open my computer.

  Yuri’s boots clopped slowly ten feet behind me.

  “Catch up on this,” she said, stomping foot over foot, removing her black leather gloves finger by finger. “I want you to leave my office immediately.”

  I swiveled in my seat. “Please don’t bar me from the office today. I have way too much shit to do.”

  A stare of icicles pierced through me.

  “Today?” She spun my chair to face her. “Try for life.”

  I snickered to ease the awkwardness in the room and returned to open my notebook to brainstorm protecting Phoebe from potential scandal.

  “You think risking your future, my company and myself to ride athlete dick is something to laugh at?” Yuri said behind me.

  My face lifted, the prior conversation shape-shifting into a blinking exclamation point.

  I tip-toed the chair back to her.

  “Explain yourself.”

  She hung over me, hands grasped at my chair’s armrests.

  I froze when she pushed play on her phone.

  ‘Is something going on?’ My voice.

  ‘’Course not. You think I’m that much of a pig I’d fuck one of your friends right after you? That how little you think of me?’

  ‘I’m sorry…I know…’ my muffled voice said.

  ‘You don’t know. You have no idea act—’

  Yuri paused the overheard conversation with a smile.

  My world fell apart piece by piece.

  “I called you a few times that day. You answered once, you just didn’t know it.”

  The low rumble of the heating turned on.

  Yuri bored into my soul.

  “I’m always right on these inklings.” She pressed herself upright and folded her arms. “You have the audacity to call me paranoid, you two-faced snake? I thought you journalist graduates were the honest ones.”

  “Inkling? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “That sudden sweat on your brow makes me think otherwise.”

  “It’s the heating.”

  I chased after her towards her office.

  “You used to inspire me. Now you make me a little ill. How far did it go?” she said, closing her door in on us which I’d never seen closed before.

  “Nowhere.”

  She slammed the desk. “How far?”

  “The feelings were…there but we ignored them. I have too much to risk breaking your rules.”

  “Rules? I hoped you’d take a legally binding clause more seriously than that. I don’t write them because I’m some kind of evil bitch out to make your life miserable, Ariana. It’s because I am a woman in a man’s world running an empire on my own. I’m being smeared left and right, I can’t risk them shitting on me again for this a second time.

  If you stood back and saw the bigger pict
ure, had some patience, maybe you’d have got the promotion and the man. As it stands it seems that in fucking Tyler King, you’ve utterly fucked yourself.”

  “It’s finished, Yuri.”

  “You’re right. It is.”

  “With him.”

  “With us. And the fact still stands you slept with him. Who’s to say photos aren’t out there already waiting to be used at the exact right time.”

  “There won’t be photos.”

  “Get.Off. My. Floor.”

  I clasped my hands together by my heart “One more chance.”

  “Why on Earth would I want to keep you? I can ask the mailroom downstairs about sorter openings, perhaps.”

  “I don’t see him anymore. His media strategy is working on autopilot meaning we hardly speak unless Phoebe’s in town.”

  “Then of what use are you to me but a liar and a girl who over-planned herself out a job? Leave. You’re suspended without pay. I’ll take the Tyler controls from here. No point sending it crashing to the ground just yet. Though, I see why he’s been so obedient lately.”

  Time hung still.

  No sounds.

  No tears.

  No vomit.

  No one to blame but me.

  “I pray no real evidence of this rule breaking surfaces. For that reason, I’ll need this…”

  Yuri slipped my hot, stomped-on phone from my grasp and tossed it in her drawers.

  “It contains classified client information. You understand.”

  “Yuri. I need that phone. I have a court—”

  “Speaking of phones, did you do that task I asked of you before Chicago?”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  She tossed her sunglasses at her keyboard and folded her arms.

  My phone sat an arm length away. I just had to reach out and grab it…

  “I left a note with Tyler to do it, though,” I said and put my hand back in my pocket.

  “Tyler King?” she said through a low brow. “I told you to keep this request between us.”

  I showed her the back of my hand. “Then I’m even a worse employee than you thought, I guess.”

  Wind gust across my face as I exited the rotating doors into the busy New York City morning a free woman.

  My head went left and right, like my future would be standing there holding an answer saying:

  THIS WAY

  I tucked my arms in my sleeves and did what I always do: