Page 45 of The Strike Zone

Scout wasn’t distracting me, my stats already this season could attest to that. My on-base plus slugging was .568 so far. I’d had six home runs in seventeen games. I’d been catching well and hitting well. I’d been training my ass off.

In fact, I’d never felt better.

Nothing to do with Scout.

I peered around, everyone looked way too serious. What exactly was I supposed to say? Hey, I like a girl that works here, d’you want my signature?

Yeah, no.

I was still staring at the board, trying to figure out what to do, when the elevator doors pinged behind me.

“Parker?”

I spun around and came face to face with the reason I was standing here in the first place. Or chest to face, given that’s about where she reached.

Was this a coincidence?

“Oh, hey.”

“Hey.” Her smile lit up her face. “What are you doing up here?”

“No—oh, um, nothing. Ace needed me to come up for something,” I spat out the first thing that came to mind. “He’s not allowed up here. It’s a whole story.”

Scout gave me a look that said exactly what I was feeling right now. Dumbass.

“What are you doing here?”

“This stopped working, I need to get a new one.” She waved her access card at me. “Are you on your way back down, or just got here?”

I thumbed behind me. “Heading down.”

“I’ll be two minutes if you want to wait for me?” She shrugged.

“Yeah. You bet,” I replied, then wished I hadn’t been so enthusiastic. But fuck it. “I mean, sure. Go and I’ll wait here.”

I stayed where I was as she rushed off.

Visiting HR hadn’t been quite as dumb as I’d originally thought.

TWELVE

SCOUT

You know you can build a house out of Twizzlers?

They’re kind of like Lincoln Logs, except red. And instead of being made of plastic logs it’s made of candy.

If you lick the ends, you can get them to stick to each other, which makes it easier to create stability in the structure. It’s a great way to pass the time when you’re supposed to be concentrating on anything else.

Plus, at the end you can eat it.

It’s something I learned while reading through the very extensive job description I’d finally been sent: develop strategy, create content, analyze data, manage channels. All the usual roles. It was what I did now.

Except, right now, I only had one brand to oversee. This would add another two: the Jungle Kings, and this new brand—the New York Lions corporate brand, which currently didn’t exist.

I would need to build it.

I’d started working on my Twizzlers house while staring at my screen because it stopped me from flicking between the job description, the New York Lions corporate website, and the Jungle Kings website, and any other website I could read to pass the time.

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