Free Agent

by Catherine Gayle

  “Very well,” Mr. Grissom said. “Are we all ready to proceed?”

  “I’d say so,” Mr. Sutter replied congenially. He took off his bifocals and folded the earpieces in, setting them on the board table in front of him. “Our lawyers have put together a list of comparable incidents around the country, as well as the actions taken in each case.”

  Mr. Grissom looked as taken aback as I felt, but he quickly pulled his features under control. “This isn’t just any old incident, Mr. Sutter, as I’m sure Ms. Castillo will be all too happy to explain to you. Her students are especially impressionable, more so than the majority of the student body. She teaches our special education population—a group of students far more sensitive to outside influence than the average student of the same age.”

  “We’re quite familiar with the sensitivities of special education students,” Coach Bergstrom put in. “My stepdaughter happens to be one of them, although Sophie is a bit older than Ms. Castillo’s students.”

  “Yes, we’re familiar with Sophie,” Mr. Grissom said. “In fact, I believe she and some of her classmates joined Ms. Castillo’s class while she was in New York recently, isn’t that so? They worked on an art project for Mr. Kozlow while he and Ms. Castillo were supposedly visiting his ailing grandmother. But in reality, she was taking risqué photos with her boyfriend.”

  “We were with his grandmother the majority of the time we were in New York,” I said. “Other than when we were sleeping. Anyone at the hospital can verify that. The reason for my taking the time off was exactly what I said it would be when I put in the request.”

  “And I don’t believe the way Ms. Castillo spent her hard-earned time off is in any way relevant to this discussion,” one of the other men on my team said.

  Mr. Grissom scowled. “Since her behavior has affected our students—”

  “How?” another lawyer interrupted. “How has her behavior affected your students? The leak of the photos only took place two days ago. The Storm’s legal team got the article taken down within an hour of it being posted to the internet. The likelihood that any of those students saw them—”

  “Whether they actually saw them or not is irrelevant to the discussion,” Mr. Grissom interrupted.

  “I’d think it would be entirely relevant,” Mr. Sutter said.

  “They could have seen them, Mr. Sutter,” the school board president said. “We can’t have a teacher in compromising positions like that—”

  “Compromising positions?” Ms. Farnworth interrupted. “They were intimate photographs, sure, but there was nothing remotely illicit about them.”

  “They had their clothes off,” Mr. Grissom argued.

  “On the contrary, there is no nudity involved,” Ms. Farnworth said. “Have you seen them? Because I have copies here for everyone present.” She picked up a stack of manila folders, then stood and distributed one folder to each person present. “If you’ll take a look, please, gentlemen. So sorry to invade your privacy like this, Ms. Castillo,” she said as she handed a folder to me, “but I believe it’s necessary for everyone to have a full understanding of the scope of the situation.”

  My cheeks heated, but I nodded my agreement. The images had already been all over the internet. They were currently featured on no fewer than a dozen of the biggest sports blogs and news sites in the world. There was no hiding from them, whether I wanted to or not.

  “Now, Mr. Grissom, would you kindly tell me which image contains the nudity you mentioned?” Ms. Farnworth said pleasantly, a brow raised in expectation. “I’d love for you to show me what I’m missing.”

  “YOU KNOW I still want to murder you, right?” Dani said from over the top of the pint of Halo Top ice cream I’d brought her. “Bringing me ice cream is only enough bribe to convince me to wait until I’m done eating it to deal with you.”

  “I deserve it,” I said, cautiously taking a seat at the foot of her bed.

  “You do.”

  “I fucked up.”

  “You have a pulse and you’re breathing, so yes, I’d have to say I agree.”

  “I’ll never be able to make up for this. She’ll never forgive me.”

  “Not if she’s smart.”

  “I don’t deserve her forgiveness.”

  “You aren’t expecting me to argue with you on any of this shit, right?”

  “You could try to cheer me up some.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “What the hell were you expecting?” Dani bit off.

  “I love her, all right? I know I fucked up, but I love her. And she loves me, too. We need each other.”

  She scowled, resting the carton on her growing belly. “Help me sit up straighter, hmm?”

  “I don’t know. If I come close enough to touch you, you might find a way to shove that spoon up my nose or something.”

  “Better your nose than your ass.”

  “Am I supposed to find that reassuring?” I shot back.

  “If you don’t, I’ll get my husband to bring me a gun so I can shoot you.”

  “We don’t own a gun,” Harry called from somewhere nearby.

  “We should do something about that,” Dani called back.

  “Nope. I don’t trust your mood swings.”

  “If you’re close enough to hear her,” I shouted, “why don’t you come and help her sit up so I don’t have to? She’s your wife.”

  “And you’re the one who fucked up with her best friend,” he called back. “You two are having a private conversation. I’m only listening in to be sure I don’t need to call the cops to protect you from my wife’s wrath.”

  “Maybe you should protect me in here, then.”

  “Hush,” Dani said, digging her spoon in for another large bite. “And for the record, you would’ve scored more points if you’d brought me the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor.”

  “I’ll make a mental note for next time.”

  “Assuming there is a next time.”

  “There’s going to be a next time,” I insisted. “There has to be.” I refused to believe that Bea would cut me off from her life forever. I had to convince her to give me another shot. “So how’d the hearing go?”

  Dani shrugged. “Thanks to the team’s lawyers, better than she expected.”

  “She’s reinstated?”

  “Not yet. Apparently the process is going to take a couple of weeks, maybe longer, no matter which way things go. But the lawyers were able to point out the numerous flaws with the school district’s case.”

  “But she will be able to keep her job?” I pressed.

  “Too soon to know for sure, but it looks a lot better than it did before. The suspension is bad enough, though. It’s killing her.”

  It was killing me, too.

  Dani stabbed her spoon into the carton and drew out another bite. “She’s miserable, you know.”

  This wasn’t helping my morale any. “I hate that she’s having to deal with all of this because of me.”

  “I mean without you. She’s miserable without you.”

  A frisson of hope came to life inside my chest. “I’m miserable without her, too.”

  “Don’t ask me why she’s into you. I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never understood it.”

  “I couldn’t tell you, either. All I know is I love her, and I fucked up worse than I ever realized it was possible for a person to fuck up, and it doesn’t look like I’ll ever be able to fix it. She’s never going to let me make it right.”

  “I know why she’s into you.”

  The familiar voice coming from the doorway made my heart stop. I glanced at Dani’s face to determine if the voice had only been in my head, but she was staring at the doorway with an expression I couldn’t name.

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t budge.

  No part of me would budge.

  I was completely stuck.

  “She’s into you because you’ve got a heart as big as the
ocean. And because she gets why you screw up. And because you refuse to let her see anything but what you see when you look at her. She’s into you because you make her laugh. And because you make her feel sexy, when she’s never felt that way before in her life, even if it scares her sometimes. She’s into you because you’re everything she never knew she was missing until you walked into her life. She’s into you because you’re willing to move unmovable mountains when you make a mistake in order to make things right again. And because you love your grandma with your whole heart. And now that she’s shut you out, she’s miserable. Just as miserable as you are.”

  Bea’s words fluttered through my ears and settled around my heart, filling the holes that I’d gouged in it as well as the ones others had left behind.

  “That doesn’t sound very nice,” I forced myself to say. “Being miserable.”

  “It’s not. It’s lonely.” She came to the side of the bed and sat next to me, her hand settling on top of mine.

  Cautiously, I threaded my fingers with hers, staring down at the place where we were joined.

  “I’m lonely,” Bea said.

  “So am I.”

  “I don’t want to be lonely anymore. I don’t want to be scared of what everyone thinks of me anymore. I don’t want to be the DUFF anymore.”

  “The DUFF?”

  “You’ve never been the DUFF other than in your own head,” Dani interjected, reminding me we were still sitting on the edge of her bed and she was listening to the entire conversation.

  “Designated Ugly Fat Friend,” Bea explained.

  “You’re not—”

  “I know I’m not fat anymore,” she said, pressing a finger to my lips before I could get a head of steam going.

  I kissed that finger. Couldn’t stop myself. “And you’ve never been ugly.”

  “That’s not the point I’m trying to make.”

  “So what are you trying to say?” I demanded.

  “That I’m sorry I jumped to the worst possible conclusion again. And I know you didn’t intentionally hurt me. And I want us to try to figure this out.”

  “Your family’ll hate me.”

  “Not all of them,” Bea said. “Abuelita just wants me to be happy, even if I won’t eat her tamales.”

  “But your father…”

  “Maybe he’ll come around. Maybe he won’t.”

  “Are you okay with it if he doesn’t?”

  “They’ve never come around to see that I’m not who they want me to be,” Bea said. “They can’t love me for who I am, so why would they love the man I love?”

  A grin took over my lips. “Told you.”

  She shot up a brow in question. “Told me?”

  “That you love me.”

  “You’re so freaking cocky,” she said, laughing uncontrollably.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not for me, it’s not.”

  “Good,” I said. “Because I don’t want to figure out how to deal without having you in my life.”

  Bea picked up our joined hands and pressed a kiss to the back of mine. “I don’t want that, either.”

  “Are you two finished already?” Dani interrupted, and I jumped. I’d forgotten we were sitting on the edge of her bed.

  “For now,” Bea said, thoroughly unfazed by her friend’s disruption of our flirting. “Why?”

  “Because you’re as sappy as a Hallmark Christmas movie, and my hormones are going haywire, and if you’re going to make me cry and shit, you owe me chocolate. Copious amounts of chocolate. Stat.”

  “You only get to say stat in the case of an emergency,” Bea said with a grin.

  “Chocolate is always an emergency for a pregnant bitch.”

  My girlfriend looked toward the open doorway and called out, “Note that she’s the one calling herself a bitch, not either of us.”

  “She knows the truth,” her husband replied, returning to the bedroom with a small handful of Dani’s favorite individually-wrapped dark chocolates. “But chocolate helps.”

  I dug out my phone and tapped some shit into my notes app.

  “What’re you doing?” Bea asked.

  “Making reminders for myself, since we all know I’m not good at remembering things.”

  “What sort of reminders?”

  I shrugged. “Chocolate gets emergency status—for when you’re pregnant.”

  Her eyes went as big as saucers.

  “I’m not planning on knocking you up anytime soon. Right now, we’re doing fine with Neville and Luna. Just—you know—for whenever we’re ready.”

  That shy, sexy grin I loved so much slowly crept over her features, and she squeezed my thigh. Which, of course, made me wish she’d squeeze a different part of my anatomy, a little bit higher.

  “Ugh,” Dani groaned. “Don’t you two dare start making sexy, googly eyes at each other. Not while I’m lying here like a beached whale.”

  “You’re a hot beached whale, though,” Harry said, smirking. “And you’re mine.”

  I caught Bea’s eye. “I think that’s our cue to get the hell out of here.”

  She threaded her fingers through mine, and we made a hasty retreat.

  Together.

  “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE come,” Blake said again, holding my hand so tightly it was a wonder I had any circulation. But he couldn’t let go, and I didn’t have it in me to complain. His muscles all seemed to be in a permanent state of contraction, as if they’d never relax again.

  “I wasn’t about to let you do this alone,” I said. “What kind of girlfriend would I be if I did that?”

  “But this isn’t— You didn’t sign up for this. To hold my hand and watch me blubber and shit.”

  “That’s exactly what I signed up for.” I stretched up onto my toes and kissed his cheek. It was a soft kiss, no heat at all. Just tenderness. The scrape of the facial hair he’d been growing—getting an early start on his playoff beard, he said, even though that didn’t sit well with some of his more superstitious teammates—scratched my lips. “Just like you signed up for dealing with all my body image issues.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Hardly.”

  A small stream of people gradually joined us. Some brought flowers. Others merely shook Blake’s hand or wrapped him up in a tearful hug. I did my best to thank them all for coming, because Blake couldn’t seem to find the words. He wasn’t being rude—just grief-stricken.

  I recognized Brett, Lil’s favorite nurse, as he made his way toward us. He looked different wearing a jacket and tie instead of his traditional blue-green scrubs, but there was no doubt it was him. When he reached us, Brett handed us each a card.

  “They’re from Lil,” he said solemnly. “She asked me to give them to you both when it was time.”

  I was so taken aback that I had to blink away a fresh wave of tears, so I couldn’t imagine how the latest turn of events must be affecting Blake. Mutely, he nodded and accepted his card, then shook Brett’s hand.

  I wrapped the nurse up in a brief hug. “Thank you for all you did for her.”

  “She did more for me,” he said with complete sincerity, and he moved on down the line, making way for the next mourner to offer Blake their condolences.

  The service was small and brief.

  A few of her friends and neighbors offered their memories in eulogy. Lil’s longtime mailman stopped in with an arrangement of gorgeous white lilies.

  Mitch and Mia Quincey brought a casserole and a six-pack of beers for Blake, and Mia pulled me aside when there was a brief lull.

  “I’ve had my lawyer working with the Storm’s legal team. They’re trying to find out who initially leaked the photos. They’ve been doing all sorts of IP searches and whatnot, and they’ve found the guy. We’re suing for copyright infringement. It won’t undo what was done, but it’s better than nothing. And if we win, I’m sending it all to you.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I argued.

  “I want to
,” she insisted. “It’s the principle of the thing. And you’re the one who’s been fighting to keep your job over it. My business has skyrocketed. You inadvertently made me into a highly sought-after photographer for these sorts of intimate shoots.”

  “Really? I mean, I don’t doubt it, but…”

  “Really.” She hugged me.

  “Well, at least some good came from it, then.”

  “I hope more good came from it than just for me.” She arched a brow. “You doing any better?”

  I blushed and scanned the room to be sure no one was looking, because it felt inappropriate at a time like this. “Much,” I admitted, heat scorching my cheeks. “Better than I ever imagined.” Partially due to what we’d done in that shoot, sure…but mostly due to the way Blake loved me. It was impossible to hate my body when he loved it as much as he did.

  And it was even more impossible to hate myself because of his love.

  Even Dani was starting to come around to him, although she still threatened him with a rusty spork every now and then out of habit. But she couldn’t hate him when I loved him. She’d tried and failed. “Seeing you light up like this makes it impossible, since I know he’s the one behind it,” she kept telling me.

  “I still can’t believe all that drama with the school district,” Mia said. “It was all over the news here, too.”

  “But it’s all sorted out now.”

  In the end, I hadn’t lost my job. I’d had to sit through a lengthy suspension while it was investigated and decided, but in the end, my students’ parents had petitioned the school board for me to be reinstated. They’d argued that the pictures had allowed them an opportunity to help their children learn about having healthy body images. Plus, apparently, their kids had complained vociferously about my replacement, who didn’t bring famous hockey players to school to read to them.

  “Well, I’m glad,” Mia said. She pulled me in for another hug. “And I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

  “You will?”

  “Storm WAGs charity calendar,” she said. “Brie and I’ve been making plans. We’re going to wait for the weather to warm up a bit. I’ll be there when the kids have spring break.”