Page 96 of It Happened on a Sunday
“I want jam,” I tell the waiter.
“No jam,” Vivian snarls, and the waiter scampers away before I can once again assert my right to grape jelly. “You’ve got to shoot that suit campaign next week.”
I glance down at my still-flat stomach. “I don’t think a little jam is going to mess up the suit.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to keep you in the game here.” She gives me her most innocent face, which isn’t very innocent at all, before piling a bunch of fruit onto the plate in front of her. “From what I understand, Sloane likes pretty boys.”
“Sloane likes me just fine,” I answer mildly.
“Yeah, so I hear.” She shoots me a dark look. “A fifty-thousand-dollar fine? Really? You couldn’t hurry it up a little bit?”
“First of all, most women appreciate a man who can take his time. And second of all, we were on a date.”
“You went on a date at one o’clock. I know that because I’m the one who negotiated the terms. The team meeting was at seven p.m. That’s a hell of a long first date.” She makes a point of checking the Cartier Tank watch I got her when we won the Super Bowl three years ago and Sanchez retired, making me starting QB.
“What can I say?” It’s my turn to give her an innocent look. “We hit it off.”
“Is that what we’re going to call it? Hitting it off?”
“Vivian—”
“Can it, Sly. You wanna pop a pop star with a string of dead exes? Fine.” She shrugs. “Personally, I don’t see why you can’t go for a nice, midlist model like the rest of the players, but whatever. Date her. Sleep with her. Do whatever you want to do. Rack up the brand deals.” She points her fork at me, a lone grape stabbed through its tines. “But donotlet her interfere with your career.”
“She’s not interfering with anything,” I tell her in the mild voice I normally reserve for sportscasters trying to get the best of me in interviews. Most of them take it as the warning it is, but Vivian just plunges ahead.
“I can’t believe you said that with a straight face. From the second that woman showed up, you—”
“That’s enough.” Since she didn’t pick up on the warning tone, I decide to just flat-out say what needs to be said. I don’t raise my voice, but she still looks like she wants to stab me, rather than fruit, with that damn fork. “First of all, I’m giving you a lot of latitude here because you and Joe have always done rightby me. But you need to stop talking shit about Sloane. And you definitely need to stop calling herthat woman. The way you say it is disrespectful, and I’m not having it.”
To underscore my point, I lean forward, take the grape off her fork, and pop it into my mouth before she can object. “And secondly, she’s not interfering with my career. I missed one meeting, which wasn’t even about the game. It was about today’s fundraiser. I apologized to Coach, and I’m paying the fine without a word.”
I break off when her phone rings.
Three years as one of Vivian’s clients has taught me that her staff knows never to patch calls through when she’s in a meeting, so if they’re doing it now, in the middle of her taking me to task, it’s got to be important.
She must think so, too, because her face goes blank as she swipes to answer, then holds the phone to her ear. “Are the kids okay?” she demands.
She listens for a moment, and then her green eyes focus on me like a damn laser—intense and bent on absolute annihilation.
“What?” I mouth across the table, but she just continues to glare.
“Uh-huh,” she says to whoever’s on the other end of the line. “Absolutely, we need to do some damage control… Call Stacy… I don’t care if you’ve already called her. Call her again and keep calling until she answers. I expect to hear from her in no more than fifteen minutes. We need to get ahead of this thing… Oh, believe me, he will… Tell her I want a full plan, not just to cover this, but for whatever ridiculous thing he does next… Oh, yeah, there’ll be a next time… How do I know? I’m sitting across from him… Yeah, fine. Put her through as soon as she calls.”
She hangs up without saying goodbye, then points one French-manicured finger across the table at me. “Let me get this straight. In the space of one night, you blew off a team meetingandcurfew for this woman? You? The guy who’s never been so much as five minutes late to anything in his life?”
“I didn’t blow off curfew. It’s not until eleven, and I was in my room by nine—”
“Where you should have stayed.” She gives me a steely-eyed glare. “But that’s not what happened, is it?”
“It’s nobody’s business what happened,” I reply. “I’ve never missed a goddamn thing. That should give me at least a little credit—”
“Maybe it would have, if you hadn’t missed the meeting, gotten your ass chewed, gotten fined, and then turned around and headed right back out.”
“For the record, I didn’t head right back out. I was in my room until a few hours before curfew ended—”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what ESPN plans to break in half an hour. They’re going to lead with a story about how the Twisters’ quarterback and biggest star—who also happened to be Super Bowl MVP three years ago when he took over for Sanchez in the middle of the game—blew off both a meeting and team curfew for the bad girl of pop.”
I grit my teeth in frustration at being treated like a recalcitrant teen. Yes, I hired Vivian to represent me and keep all my business shit in good standing, including my reputation. But that doesn’t mean she gets to jump down my throat like I’m her kid who stayed out all night. I’m a grown-ass man, and if she thinks I didn’t consider the consequences before I headed over to Sloane’s, she’s sadly…correct.
