FRANCESCA
Sleep helps.
I knew it would, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.
For our players and the fans our season is over.
For me, it’s just getting started.
And sleeping in?
That’s a waste of time.
It’s been so long since I’ve woken up with the golden glow of dim afternoon autumn sunlight pouring through the sheer curtains. I clearly forgot to pull the thicker blackout drapes closed when I collapsed into my bed.
But it isn’t the sun that woke me up. It’s my phone, buzzing on the nightstand, and just before it vibrates off the edge, my hand shoots out to catch it.
“Hey B,” I mumble, as I accept the call, letting my eyes fall shut again as I hold the phone to one ear and burrow the other side of my face deeper into my pillow.
Bianca’s been my best friend since childhood and lives inLAwith her husband, so her calls get answered, but she gets the version of me that’s still kind of asleep.
“I’m ignoring the fact that you flew right over me without stopping and staying with us for a day or two. Nothing is going on right now at work and you could definitely take a couple ofdays off, but I’m preemptively forgiving you because I just saw the alert on my phone.”
And just like that I’m fully awake, immediately rolling over and propping myself up against the headboard, putting Bianca on speaker and scrolling through my phone, trying to find it.
But I’ve been asleep too long. There are way too many texts and alerts.
“Which one?”
“The Eagles hired Charlie Avery?” Bianca isn’t a sports fan, at all, but she does keep her alerts set for my team, even back during my first job in baseball with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, one of the Dodger’s minor league affiliates.
“Ugh, did that drop already? I was hoping we’d be able to keep it under wraps for at least another couple of days.”
“Nothing official. He’s been seen around Brooklyn and apparently there’s a team source too.”
That’ll be Gregory. Stew must have asked him to leak it to the press. They’ve probably already even hammered out the broader details of his contract. Stew works fast when he wants something and, only God knows why, but he wants Charlie Avery in the Eagles’ dugout.
“Yeah, there’ll be a press conference soon, I guess,” I say, finishing my thoughts aloud.
“You knew?” Bianca asks, and I can picture my friend, all the way on the other side of the country, her dark eyebrows lifting toward her wild riot of brown curls.
“Yeah, I knew. I—” I could talk about how I saw him, about how he was the exact same arrogant son of a bitch I worked with back inLA, but despite the sleep doing its job, I don’t quite have the energy. I just let the sentence trail off, but Bianca picks it up for me.
“I know you hated working with him when you were both here, and then there was . . .” she trails off.
“It was a kiss, B. It’s not a dirty word.”
“The kiss, then. Are you okay with it? Did you talk to Stew about it?”
“I absolutely did not tell Stew about that. Besides, he loves Charlie, managed him in the minors. It’s . . . it is what it is, and I have some time before I really need to work with him on the day to day, not until Spring Training, so a few months until I’m ready to strangle him.”
“Got you. Okay, changing the subject. How was Japan? How was . . . what’s his name?”
I always love when Bianca asks about baseball, because she has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, but she’s my best friend, so she still asks.
“Kai Nakamura. Twenty-five, left-handed pitcher and he’ssogood, B. I’m going to lose my mind if we don’t get to sign him. He can spot every pitch and I swear his curve ball just drops off the table. He pitched a perfect game in game seven to win a championship. I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.”
“I don’t really know what any of that means,” she admits, just like she always does, “but I’m glad he lived up to the hype.”
