by Mj Fields
“Okay,” I say, caving.
“Okay?”
“Yes, okay.”
“You won’t regret this, Courtney.”
After hanging up, I lie on the bed and just stare up at the ceiling.
I love Christa, absolutely and totally. I also know that, as soon as she gets here, she will be all over the place with ideas and plans that range anywhere from hiring a hitman to throwing rotten tomatoes at him.
If I am going to exact revenge on Brock, I will succeed. It will not be childish. It will not be off the cuff. It will be a well thought out and organized plan.
I sit up, grab my phone, and message Larry that I want all the players’ contracts e-mailed to me. I want expense reports. I want account information. I want everything I can get my hands on so I can use whatever the hell is left at my disposal to exact revenge on the dirty baller.
CHAPTER TWO
Sweet Revenge
COURTNEY
AS PROMISED, CHRISTA FLEW IN on a red-eye. We ended up getting drunk in the suite, and I did that thing girls do when they are inexperienced drinkers, broken-hearted, and scorned. I sent a drunk text.
That text included the picture of him kissing that woman with: We’re through.
His immediate reply was: Where are you?
I didn’t answer.
The next text was: It’s not what you think.
Again, I didn’t reply.
His texts just kept coming, and yes, it made me feel pretty damn remarkable, empowered, and strong. Absolutely nothing like I thought I would feel. Nothing like I had seen in movies, read in books, and been told about heartache.
The next morning, as we waited for room service to deliver breakfast, Christa looked out the peephole, and then ran to the bed and dragged me to the door to look.
There lay Brock, asleep on the floor outside the door. It was pathetic and, for a minute, it crushed me, just like those ASPCA commercials.
Then, when Christa opened the door against my wishes, I ran to the bathroom. He begged to see me, and she told him, if he didn’t leave us alone, she would post the picture of him asleep on the floor all over social media.
He begged—yes, begged—her to let him in, and she told him to get the hell out and that he was fired.
That was when his tune changed. His tone went from pathetic to arrogant. He told her he had a fucking contract, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
I had read through the contracts and knew this to be true. He was the property of the Stallions for three long years, and that meant the Stallions were stuck with him. Worse yet, I was stuck with him if I was going to make my plan for revenge. I was going to find a way to get him to quit the team or kick him off, without making it appear I had a damn thing to do with it. And I would make damn sure, it was all done by the books.
Charlie Cohen didn’t raise a quitter...Well, I should say my mother, Elaine, didn’t raise a quitter. However, my father wasn’t a quitter, either.
To make matters worse, Christa’s nana didn’t keep her mouth closed about her only granddaughter’s whereabouts. Therefore, by noon, Christa’s and my phone were blowing up.
Our mothers were irate. So irate that they actually threatened to shut off our credit cards if we didn’t get back to the East Coast immediately.
My mother knew damn well where I was, but she now had a partner to plot against me. Mom knew I certainly could have said, screw you, but my best friend supported me when I needed it the most, and I would do the same, and she knew that too.
Larry, was getting my finances in order, so when I returned I wouldn’t have an issue.
Within two days, we were back in the Big Apple.
***
WHEN I TOUCH DOWN AT the airport, Herold, our driver, is standing beside the car. His black chauffeur cap covers his white hair as he tips it in greeting as soon as he sees me. Him and his wife Margie, our housekeeper, are employed by Ronald. They have been since as far back as I can remember.
“Welcome home, Courtney,” he says as he opens the car door. “Christa.”
“Well, thank you, Herold,” Christa says as she climbs inside the black Lincoln Town Car.
“On a scale of one to ten?” I ask Herold, wondering how much trouble I’m in and trying to get a feel of whether or not they know I took on the team.
He smiles and nods. “I’ll let you see for yourself, young lady.”
I give him a quick peck on the cheek, and he chuckles as I get in the car.
Christa and I look at each other, feeling like the weight of our worlds are about to crush us.
Knowing what I’m thinking, she gives me a small smile. “You’re going to be fine. They know you have a backup plan.”
“A what?”
“A backup plan. You really don’t need them to finish college. Heck, you own a stadium and a team.”
“That I don’t want,” I tell her. “I don’t want to face him every day now.”
“But we will,” she says patting my leg.
I nod.
It’s quiet for a few minutes as we both look out the windows, watching the cars pass as we head from JFK to Manhattan.
“Courtney, you need to do this—”
“Christa, I—”
“No, listen to me. You’re not only gonna get revenge, you’re going to do something not many in our circle does.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re gonna get out.”
“Get out?” I smirk. “You make it sound like jail.”
“More like Hell,” she scoffs. “Getting married off to someone who expects us to...And I know it sounds like petty, first world problems”—she sits forward and shakes her head—“but they’re problems, nonetheless. We may be of privilege, but we were born with the wrong parts. I mean, my parents...My parents think they’re going to marry me off to some fucking Greek because that’s our heritage and we are equally yoked. What am I, a fucking chicken?”
Knowing I should shut up, I still point out the obvious, especially after what I just went through. Stupid, naive girl. “Maybe they’re just trying to keep you from getting hurt. Maybe it’s not really trying to marry you off, but steering you in the right direction.”
I’m unsure if she even heard me.
“The fourth level of Hell—greed. But you can get out, Courtney. And there’s an olive branch, and it’s right there for you to grab before you fall into the hell that is a marriage your parents can be proud of. One where you’ll be drinking tea at the club, be the woman behind the man, and the runner of all charity events to the charities he sits on the board of.”
“Christa...” I try to interrupt, but she keeps going.
“Then kids. You’ll have two, maybe three, and you won’t have time to raise them because you’ll be too busy kissing our old classmate, Serna Rockefeller’s, ass so your husband can sit on a board and not spend any time with his kids. They don’t even like me. I don’t want to live like that!”
“Christa!” I almost yell.
“Hell, they don’t even like each other. They have rooms on the opposite sides of the damn penthouse and sent me to religion class every Friday night so they could fornicate. God”—she grabs her hair— “can you imagine?”
“Christa!” I do yell this time.
“Yes?” She seems almost shocked.
“You have an out, too,” I tell her.
“Become a lesbian?” she asks, but it’s more a statement. Before I have a chance to respond, she continues, “I thought about that. It would get me out of marrying someone I don’t know, and at the same time, my parents—formerly against homosexual marriage until it became ultra-cool when the Catholic church and Obama said it was okay—can become top donors for the LGBTQ community, and then...Well, then nothing. They’d find me a wife that fit their criteria, and I’d be the bitch, Court. I’d still have to organize charity events, sip tea, and lick pussy! I’m so screwed, Courtney! Totally and completely screwed!”
Before she can say another wor
d, I remind her, “You have me.”
“You’d marry me?” she asks seriously.
“No. I mean, I guess...if you needed me to. But you have me. You can count on me. We finish school, and if they try to push you down the aisle, come stay with me.”
She hugs me. “You don’t know what that means to me.”
I hug her back as the car comes to a stop.
“Are they out there?” she whispers like her parents may hear her.
I point out the window toward her parents who are both standing outside of her Park Avenue building.
She looks behind her and out the window, then back at me and groans, “Look at them. Like vultures dressed in couture.”
“You’ll be fine.” I give her a quick peck on the cheek as Harold opens the door for her.
Once Christa is back in the clutches of her parents, I look out the window and watch the scenery pass by as we head toward Madison Avenue and home.
New York City. Home. The place I have lived for as long as I can remember, in an apartment Mom bought right before her and Ronald married.
She met him in high school where they were in several classes together. She liked him, he loved her, and he never told her. Then she went to college and got swept off her feet by my father.
He wasn’t attending NYU where she went to school, but running several small businesses he had started and spending every cent he made. I heard Mom once say he could step in mud, and if he smiled at it, a flower would grow. Everything he touched turned to gold.
He married her, and then she was pregnant within a few months with me. She didn’t know he had been married before, didn’t know he had two sons, and when that eventually came up, everything went to hell. She hated him for keeping her in the dark about his past.
“You ready?” Harold asks as he pulls into our building’s underground parking garage.
I nod. “Yes. I know what I’m doing.”
“No doubt you do. Just go easy on her, will you? She worries about you.”
***
WHEN I STEP OUT OF the elevator and into our apartment, I nearly trip over boxes and fall to the floor. There are dozens of thick cardboard boxes atop the stark white marble floors. Why?
“I know how to handle this, Ronald,” I hear my mom whisper and then laugh.
Laugh? I can’t believe it. My mother laughed. And it wasn’t her normal, high society laugh, either. No, it was a deep, from the belly kind of laugh.
I should take joy in this. It should make me feel at ease. But it doesn’t, not one bit.
She has come unglued.
“Welcome back, Courtney.” Ronald smiles softly and gives me a quick nod.
Mom lets go of his hand, her face tightening.
Well, I guess I have no cause to worry. She’s back to her normal, stoic self.
“I’m not sure what’s going on here, but—”
“Let me clear it up for you,” my mother cuts me off. “When you chose to leave and head to Seattle without discussion, I decided...” She pauses and looks at Ronald, who reaches out and gives her back a rub as if to help relieve the horrible tension caused by my “actions.” “We decided that you’re a grown woman, and apparently, the owner of a basketball team. So, we decided: why not make your bedroom into a library?”
“Um. Maybe because we have a library,” I answer.
“Well, now we’ll have two.”
“So, you’re just going to what? Throw my things out?” I ask calmly feeling nothing but confused.
“No, not at all. The shipping company will be here later today to send them to Charlie’s home in Washington so you’ll have it all — every last item in this house that is yours. Everything down to your little baby shoes that...” She stops when Ronald stands closer to her and takes her hand.
“What your mother is saying is, she hoped to keep you grounded. That’s why she never wanted you to spend holidays or summers with Charlie. She wanted you to have a chance at normalcy.”
Normalcy? I think to myself. I have never had normalcy.
“I can tell by that look that you disagree. But it’s true, Courtney. The life you would have lived with him wouldn’t have given you a sense of normalcy,” Ronald says.
There is that word again.
“We want you to be happy,” my mom says. “If you think Brock and Seattle will make you happy, then go. You are days from turning twenty-three; we can’t stop you. All I ask is that you please”—I see her grip Ronald’s hand harder—“please don’t stop getting the birth control shot.”
I must have shown some resentment from that statement, because Ronald swoops in and acts like a buffer, like always.
“She doesn’t want you to feel what it’s like to watch your child be pulled into two different directions.”
“God, no, I don’t,” Mom says with more emotion than I have seen in my lifetime.
“You both realize I have spent nearly four years living at NYU, correct? I haven’t gotten pregnant, arrested, or an STI. I don’t have a drinking problem, and I’m not using drugs, not even recreationally. I had sex for the first time less than a year ago,” I lie. They don’t need to know about my high school indiscretion. It would only hurt them. “And you were both at the door the morning after.
“I’m safe. I’m beyond safe. I’m so safe and responsible it’s almost sickening. I could very possibly be the best daughter on the planet. I brush my teeth, make my bed, put away my dirty dishes, and—”
“I don’t want to see you throw away any amount of time on a man! I don’t want you to hurt!”
“Well, it’s really not as life-altering an experience than one would expect, having lived such a normal life.”
They both look at me as I expected they would, like I just sprouted horns.
And because I am a very good girl, I tell them the truth. “Brock and I are no longer together.”
Neither say anything. They now look at me less like I’m a monster and more like they are confused.
“I broke up with him.”
Still, dead air.
“I saw him with another woman.”
“Go to your room,” my mother insists.
She has sent me to my room a dozen times in my life. All those times, it’s been when she is trying to figure out what to say, do, or...Well, she’s cried a handful of times. Those times all had to do with my father. I know this because I tend to eavesdrop.
I shrug, glancing around at the boxes of all my belongings. “By the looks of it, I am in my room.”
“I have no idea what to do with you, Courtney! No idea what has come over you. You’re being difficult.”
“Ellen,” Ronald whispers to her. “That’s not what we want. She’s grown up now.”
Mom visibly cringes at his words, and I wait for something...anything.
I get Ronald completely doing a one-eighty, trying to save the day, or me, or Mom, or all three.
“Courtney, your mother and I would like you to come to work with me when you’re not attending classes. Then, after graduation, you can leave without any issue or argument.”
I look at Mom, but she looks down.
“Okay.” It’s all I can say.
CHAPTER THREE
The Stable Arena
TRAE
WHEN I HOLD UP THE badge, the security guard nods and smiles. “Welcome to The Stable, Mr. Rhodes.”
I give the old man a nod back. “Mr. Rhodes was my father. I’m Trae. And you are...?”
“Bill. Bill Smith.” He smiles big.
“You here full-time, Bill?”
“Yes, sir, since Charlie Cohen built this place.”
“Well, Bill”—I hold out my hand—“good to meet you.”
“You, too, Trae. Welcome to the Stallions,” he says, shaking my hand.
I have to give him props for seeming to be proud of where he works, of this “Stable.”
“You know where you’re heading, son?” he asks, grabbing a map off the podium-like stand and holding it
out for me.
I take it, although this place is like every other stadium in the entire wide world of sports. I’m pretty damn sure I can find my way to Coach’s office near the home team’s locker rooms.
I mean, why make my joke his? He’s proud to be here, so I’m going to let him have it instead of pissing on the pony pad right in front of him.
“See you around, Bill Smith.” I say his name to pound it a little bit more into my head. Nothing wrong with making people feel good about their lives. A smile, a nod, a kind word. My mom would be proud.
As I walk away from Bill Smith, security guard for Gate A at Seattle’s Stable Arena, I look around.
Charlie Cohen put a lot of fucking money into this place. And when I say a lot, I mean, from the little digging I did, I found out this place—the pony pad—cost nearly two point two billion dollars.
Charlie Cohen died of a heart attack one year to the date of the project’s completion.
Fucking sad story, man. Business tycoon; living it up; making money, hand over fist, trading stocks, buying up companies all over the world, selling them and profiting in a big way.
During one of our brief conversations, he told me that he had traveled the world, paid for his children’s educations, and gave them everything he could.
His third ex-wife, mother to his youngest kid and the only ex-wife he thought well of, told him their daughter didn’t want his damn money; she wanted to know her father. Therefore, this billion-dollar folly was his idea of planting roots.
The place is spectacular. It’s a damn shame it’s the joke of the NBA.
I stop at the wall of windows and look out over Elliot Bay.
Stable Arena is located right between Pikes Place Market and Pioneer Square. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have known that, except that my half-brother, Degan, is now the number one real estate agent in Chance Valley, Idaho, the pissant town Mom moved us to after my stepdad died. The place where I played ball because, if not for ball, there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do, except chores. With five boys in the family, chores weren’t hard to get done. The place wasn’t that damn big.
“The man knows his real estate and has one hell of a sound business mind,” Terrance told me. From the little I know about it, it’s safe to assume he was right.