“I’m sorry to intrude. I was going to call, but I didn’t have your number,” she says, actually looking sheepish. It’s not an expression I’m used to from her. Immediately the fear becomes sheer panic.
“Stew . . . is he . . .”
“He’s okay,” she reassures me.
“Thank fuck,” I say, and let out a shaky breath before lifting my beer and chugging the last of it.
“He’s out of surgery and kind of spacey, but he’s insisting on seeing us and won’t calm down about it. So the doctors called Rita and she told them to let us in before he has another heart attack.”
“Yeah? Let’s go.”
She has a car waiting for us and I open the door and hold it for her. She slides past, her shoulder ghosts my chest. There’s a scent she wears, light and soft, like baby powder and . . . lavender, maybe? It contrasts so entirely with the hard edges of her personality that I actually let out a soft snort.
“What?” she asks, smoothing that pencil skirt under her knees as I climb in after her.
“Nothing. Just glad we didn’t kill our boss on my first day.” She opens her mouth and I canfeelher sharp retort coming, but I shake my head. “You were right. I fucked up.”
“Yes, you did,” is all she says, and it’s what I deserve for giving in, even an inch apparently. Silence reigns for a couple of blocks, the neighborhood relatively quiet until we turn past the stadium and the sidewalks are lined with people walking to dinner and their local bars. “I killed the story.”
“What?”
“I had Juan call Pete and had him kill the story about your Daniel Wilson quote.”
I can’t really believe what I just heard. Is she calling a truce?
“What’s the catch?” I ask.
“Nothing big. You’ll do an exclusive sit-down with him in the next couple of weeks in return, but you don’t have to worry about it.”
“Except onTVand sports radio.”
“Yeah, well, don’t listen to it. They’ll move on by tomorrow. It’s football season.”
“It’s that easy?”
“No, but it’ll drive you insane. New York isn’tLA. They lose their minds overeverything. You gotta learn how to tune it all out or it’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t do it again,” she says. No “you’re welcome” or “no problem”, just . . . “don’t do it again”.
So, not a truce then. Just damage control.
The hospital is operating like it’s the middle of the day. Bright lights, people everywhere in the waiting rooms, walking the halls, doctors and nurses hurrying to their next patients,EMTs heading back out in the night in their ambulances.
I’ve always hated hospitals. I lost both my parents in one and if that isn’t enough to make me loathe them, the only time I was really in one myself was when I tore my lat midway through my career and had to sit out nearly an entire season because of it.
Apparently, Sullivan knows where she’s going, confidently heading straight for the elevator instead of stopping at the desk to ask.
When the elevator doors close behind us, there’s a short gasp, followed by a “Yoooooooo,” drawn out under the breath of whoever is standing behind us. And then the voice follows up with: “Are you Charlie Avery?”
I turn and nod with a smile at the young man behind me, standing there with his wife or girlfriend, who doesn’t look like she has any idea who I am. “Yeah, man. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Bro, do they, like, make you get a physical to be the manager?”
Sullivan snorts next to me and murmurs, “We probably should.”
“Nah, I’m just here to visit a friend,” I say, ignoring her.
