Chapter Sixteen
Payton
I marched away from the breakfast table knowing that I should have been excited, even thrilled, about negotiating a deal with Dax, but instead I felt panicked. What was I doing? My mother was going to have an absolute fit when I announced my engagement, and I had no guarantee that Dax would appoint me as the Storm’s new GM once he’d evaluated his choices.
I blushed furiously as I recalled how I’d negotiated the sexual part of the contract. Never in my life had I ever done something so brazen, and yet, in my mind, it had felt incredibly satisfying to make him feel so profoundly uncomfortable. I wouldn’t deny the fact that I was incredibly attracted to Dax Connor, and when I’d added the sex clause to the negotiations, admittedly it had been about making him pay for the rejection I’d felt when he’d pulled back.
There was no question that I wanted the GM job, but what were the consequences of even asking for it? If Dax actually hired me, there would be criticism from every experienced executive in the NFL when they found out. I would not only be the youngest GM in the league, beating out the Bears GM, Ryan Pace, by ten years, but I’d be the first woman to ever hold the position in an NFL organization.
It would be a publicity circus, and would probably hamper the efforts of the coaches and staff, not to mention the players themselves. There would be questions about my age, my qualifications, and then there would be the NFL boys club. They might do their best to freeze me out and make things difficult.
Not to mention the fact that my mother was going to have a fit.
I’d grown up in a family that always had a solid reason for everything they did — right or wrong. No one ever questioned my grandfather’s decisions when it came to the Bears. Or at least, I’d never seen anyone question him. My mother had inherited her father’s stubborn nature, and then, at some point, added a tinge of nastiness to the mix. I thought about how she’d scorned Dax’s success when he’d been awarded the new franchise, and how angry she’d been when she realized she’d have to attend the ceremony. This announcement was going to fulfill her requirements, but it was going to set off a string of explosions that we might not survive.
I needed to talk to someone who knew the lay of the land, but who had a cool head. I smiled as I thought about Gus’s bald head and easy smile, and I knew exactly where I needed to go. I caught a cab on the corner of Dearborn and slid into the back seat.
“Where to, ma’am?” the cabbie asked.
“Can you take me to Soldier Field?”
“Ma’am, I’m not going to be allowed in the parking lot,” he said, giving me a worried look in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t worry; I’ll call ahead and have them open up the gate,” I assured him as I opened my clutch and quickly texted a message to the security staff on duty. Moments later, I received a reply telling me to enter on the South Side where one of the guards would be waiting. I looked up and said, “It’s all good; let’s go.”
The driver shrugged and headed towards Lake Shore. I rolled down the window and let the cool lake breeze blow across my face as we headed south. My thoughts lighted on my father.
After Jonathan died, often I couldn’t sleep. My father would find me wandering the house searching for my brother and would take me out and buckle me into the back seat of his car, turn on talk radio, and drive up and down Lake Shore until I drifted off to sleep. My mother would scold him for spoiling me, but he’d always tell her that it was a small price to pay to spend some time with his daughter. We never talked during the drives, and it wasn’t until after he died that I realized our night time drives were as much an escape for him as they were a sleeping tonic for me.
“Miss?” the driver said pulling me out of my foggy memory. “We’re here.”
“Oh, yes, thank you,” I said as one of the guards pulled up the gate and we drove around to the side of the building. I fished in my purse, pulled out a twenty, and handed it to the driver.
“Oh no, you’ve already paid,” he said pushing the money back at me.
“Keep it,” I said tucking it in his hand and smiling. “Would you wait for me here, please?”
The driver took the twenty and tucked it in his visor before turning off the ignition and leaning back in his seat. I nodded and headed into the building.
I walked down the long, dark hallway thinking about what Dax and I had negotiated and whether or not it was rational to want to accept it. Part of me felt ashamed to have treated a relationship the same way I would a business deal, but part of me was tired of trying to fulfill the expectations of everyone else while sacrificing what I wanted in the process. This deal with Dax was a way of doing something proactive while keeping my feet on solid ground. After all, it wasn’t as if there were feelings involved.
I could hear a banging noise coming from the training room as I opened the door and stepped in. On the far side of the room, Gus was pounding on something with what looked like a sledgehammer.
“Gus! What on earth are you doing?” I cried as he brought the large piece of metal up over his head and then slammed it down on the ground, making it ring like a tuning fork.
“Sweetness, twice in two weeks,” he said, setting the hammer down and wiping his sweaty brow with his forearm. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I need advice,” I said. “And you’re the only one I could think of who would give me an honest answer.”
“Go into my office and grab a soda out of the fridge, child,” he said as he worked to catch his breath. “I’m just gonna finish my workout and then I’ll join you.”
“Is that what that is? A workout?” I laughed as I looked at the contraption he was pounding and then back at him. He motioned toward the office and I went inside. A few minutes passed, but I heard no more pounding and I wondered what he was doing. I peeked out between the crack in the doorframe and saw Gus holding a pose that I recognized from one of my yoga classes.
“I told you to sit down and be patient, child,” he said without opening his eyes. I let out a small giggle and then ducked away from the door. A few minutes later, Gus joined me with a towel around his neck and an amused smile on his face.
“You have been a nosy little thing ever since you were small,” he smiled as he opened the small fridge he kept stocked and grabbed a bottle of juice. “It’s nice to see that some things stay the same. Now what was so important that you had to come all the way out here to see me?”
“I did something today, Gus,” I said, suddenly feeling shy about telling him my news. “I think it’s a good thing, but it’s going to make my mother angry, I think.”
“Well, now that’s just fantastic, isn’t it?” he grinned, holding up his bottle to toast. “You’ve done something you think is good, and you didn’t let your mother’s expectations slow you down. Now there’s a cause to celebrate!”
“I don’t know,” I said glumly. “It’s not something normal, but it has the potential to get me the job I’ve always wanted. I’m not sure it’s the right time or the right thing to do, Gus.”
“Why don’t you tell me what this thing is and then I’ll tell you why you made a good choice,” he suggested as he sat down behind his desk and put his feet up on the stool he kept underneath it.
“Dax Connor asked me to be his girlfriend,” I blurted out. For a moment, the room was dead silent. So silent that I swore if I listened closely enough, I’d be able to hear my father and grandfather rolling over in their graves. “Say something, Gus!”
“Sweetness, I’m going to say several things, but first I want to tell you that this is the best news I’ve had all year! Congratulations!” Gus said as he pulled himself up out of his chair and came around the desk to hug me. “Good on you, child. Good on you.”
“Mother is going to be furious,” I said in a frightened voice. “And what will the media say? They’re going to play this out like a huge family drama and it’s going to affect the Bears and the Storm!”
“Shush, shush,” Gus said, patting my head like my father used to do when I’d get a little too wound up on game day. “Stop that nonsense that’s running through that big brain of yours. Now tell me how you met him and why I’ve never heard of you dating him before.”
“That’s just it,” I said dropping my gaze to the floor. “I haven’t been dating him. We negotiated a deal that will give him media exposure for the team and will give me a potential husband to present to Mother. I’m not in love with him, Gus. I don’t even know the guy, really.”
“Then why did you agree to this, child?” Gus asked calmly. “You had to have had a reason.”
“He’s going to let me sit in as acting GM and learn the job,” I explained. “And then, after he’s had a chance to conduct a proper search and interviews, there’s a chance he might appoint me as the new GM, but it’s not guaranteed.”
“This sounds a bit fishy to me, Sweetness,” Gus said skeptically. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know, Gus!” I cried. “I don’t know if this is right or not, but I know that it will get Mother off my back about getting married, and it will give me a chance to learn the job I know I can do, but I’m worried about what people are going to say and how Mother is going to react. She’s going to be furious, Gus.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt she will be, but child, you can’t live your life worried about what people are going to say,” he said, shaking his head as he moved back around and settled into his chair. “If you live that way, you’ll be frozen in one spot forever.”
“I know, I know,” I sighed. “But this is a big decision, Gus. If I screw this up, there will be consequences. Do you think I’m crazy?”
Gus chuckled softly as he laced his fingers together across his abdomen and rocked a little in his chair. He silently stared down at the cluttered surface of his desk, full of papers detailing every training regimen and physical therapy routine of every single Bears player on the roster. I waited for him to speak, and after a long silence, he did.
“When I was growing up, there was little expectation that anyone in my South Side neighborhood would do anything that would enable us to get out,” he said softly. “We were young and black and the expectations were low, but my parents told me and my brother that if we worked hard and got good grades, we could do anything we wanted to do in life. And I believed them.”
I sat perched on the edge of my chair knowing that whatever Gus was sharing with me was going to help me make my decision, but, as usual, I felt impatient and wanted him to get to the point. And if I was honest, I also wanted to know that he wasn’t going to judge me for the choices I was making.
“I know you want me to get to the point, child,” he said, watching my eyes widen in surprise. “But some things just can’t be rushed.”
I nodded and ducked my head to hide the color in my cheeks.
“I worked hard and got good grades, but when it came time to go to college, I wasn’t able to get enough scholarship money to pay my tuition, so I made took a job as the equipment manager for the football team and took a side job with one of the neighborhood hustlers my father had warned me about,” he said with a look in his eye that told me he was remembering exactly what it had felt like to take the job. “During the day, I worked for the team and I did my absolute best to do everything exactly right, but there was one coach who simply didn’t like me. I don’t know why he didn’t other than I was black, and he tried to make my life a living hell because of it. Do you know what I did, Sweetness?”
“Fought back and got justice?” I offered in a tentative voice.
“Hardly,” he laughed. “I worked ten times harder to prove I was equally capable of doing the job that the white equipment managers were doing. Do you know what he did in response?”
“Came around and saw that you were a hard worker and a good person?” I tried again.
“Child, you’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies,” Gus laughed as he shook his head. “He hated me even more is what he did, and he redoubled his efforts to make my life miserable. But I stayed. I stayed because I had my eye on the finish line and I picked my battles. And I stayed because I worked nights for the hustler delivering packages and working security in one of his clubs. I knew that if the football coach hated me enough to actually get rid of me, I wasn’t going to lose my shot at education. Did I like the fact that I was knowingly doing things that were either illegal or counter to the values that my parents had taught me? No, I did not. But did I see the benefit of doing them? Yes, I did. I finished my degree and found a job working as an athletic trainer for one of the farm teams for the Cubs. It was hard work and I was on the road all the time, but I got a lot of good experience treating injuries and helping players through rehab.”
“So how did you wind up here?” I asked.
“Patience, child, I’m getting to that part,” Gus smiled. “I’d been out of college a year when I got married. My wife had insisted that I give up the hustling job and had begged me to give up the farm league job for one a steady position at Chicago County Hospital. I agreed not to hustle, but I really didn’t want to leave the farm team, but I knew that if I didn’t, my wife was going to leave me!”
“I think that’s kind of unfair,” I said as I thought about my mother’s ultimatum. “She was forcing you to give up your dream!”
“Those are the kinds of sacrifices you make when you love someone, Sweetness,” he smiled. “When it happens to you, you’ll do the exact same thing.”
“But if someone loves me, they won’t ask me to give up the thing I love!” I stubbornly protested.
“Young folks are always so sure about defending their right to do what they want,” he sighed. “But that’s not the point of the story, either.”
“Then what is it, Gus?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air in exasperation.
“I’m getting to it,” he said waving me back to the chair across the desk. “The day after I put in my notice with the farm team, I went over to County to sign all the employment papers and who should I run into in the lobby, but the assistant coach from the college team. He asked what I was doing and when I told him how I’d traded in the traveling sports life for a job at County, he asked if I’d be interested in a sports job that didn’t require as much travel. I told him that any sports job would appeal to me more than a boring hospital job, but that I wanted to make sure that my wife didn’t leave me.”
“What did he do?” I asked excitedly leaning forward.
“He took my number and told me he’d call me that night,” he said as he reached out across his desk and grabbed the cup sitting on the edge and took a sip. He grimaced slightly and then resumed speaking. “I didn’t say anything to my wife. I didn’t want to get her hopes up, and I wasn’t sure if the man was going to follow through. And honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t talk me out of it. The hospital job was a good, solid job with benefits and a pension, you know?”
“Gus, what happened?” I asked breathlessly.
“That night after dinner, the phone rang and the man on the other end asked if I’d be interested in working in the Bears training room,” he said. “I said I would and then hung up the phone. Five minutes later, the phone rang again and I answered it. It was the man asking if I didn’t want a little time to talk it over with my wife. I told him I didn’t need to, and when he asked why, I said that she was a Bears fan and that’s all she’d need to hear. He laughed and then told me where to report the next day.”
“That’s amazing, Gus!” I exclaimed. “What a luck you had!”
“Oh, it wasn’t luck, child,” he said with a knowing look on his wide brown face.
“But you were in the right place at the right time,” I said confused by his statement.
“No, that coach had been trying to track me down for months,” he said. “He’d finally caught up with me at the hospital thanks to one of the farm team trainers.”
“Did he say why he was looking for you?” I asked. “You said your life was hell in the college training room.”
“That’s why he wanted to hire me, Sweetness,” Gus said, savoring the moment and the lesson. “He said that anyone who could rise above the abuses of that training room and still want to stay in the field, was someone he wanted in the Bears locker room. So, you see, Sweetness, sometimes you have to endure the hard stuff and hustle until you can get to the good stuff.”
“Are you serious?” I asked looking at him skeptically. “That story sounds a little too neat and clean to me.”
Gus’s smile split his face in half as the laughter bubbled up from within his broad body. “Sweetness, when that man puts you in charge of his team, you are going to make the best GM any team ever had. I did clean up the story a bit, but it’s true in all the right places. It’s about making hard choices and trusting that things will turn out the way they’re supposed to.”
“Gus, are you telling me it’s okay?” I asked. “That it’s okay to agree to trade with Dax for what I need?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Sweetness,” Gus smiled. “I’m just waiting for you to figure it out yourself and then tell me what you’re going to do.”
“You are so frustrating!” I cried as I looked up at the ceiling and realized that there wasn’t anyone who could tell me what to do. I tried a different line of questioning. “What do you think my grandfather would have done?”
“Oh Lord, child, I think he would have strung you up by your thumbs for sleeping with the enemy,” Gus said letting out a low whistle as he shook his head slowly. “Loyalty was everything to that man.”
“But this is my life,” I said softly. “It’s my choice. I have to do what I think is right because, in the end, I’m the only one that has to live with it.”
“Now you’re talking some sense,” Gus said nodding approvingly. He leaned over and pulled open the door to his little fridge and asked, “Drink?”
“No,” I said standing up. “I need to get home and pack up my things. I’m moving into Dax’s penthouse tomorrow.”
“Good on you, Payton Gale,” Gus said smiling as he pulled a bottle of juice from the fridge and cracked the top. “You’re going to be just fine, Sweetness.”
I smiled, nodded and then walked out of the office and back to the side door where my cab driver was waiting. The whole ride home, I thought about how I was going to break the news to my mother.