Page 2 of A Shot at Love
I tilt my head and try to sound at ease, like Jadea would. Or Lynn. Or almost any of the other badass women on my team. “Hi, Misty. Yes, it was a tough win today against Phoenix, like it always is. I respect them and their style of play so much. Fortunately for us, we were playing our best basketball.”
I mentally high-five myself. Mike, our team's PR guy, would be delighted by my answer. I notice Misty’s fingers unclench and clench around her mic. I’m not even sure if she heard my response. “Annie, I apologize in advance if you find this next line of questioning too personal, but we would like to give you a chance to respond to new allegations.”
I instantly stiffen, reacting to her pointed choice of words. Apologize? Personal?Allegations? These interviews are essentially fluff, a few questions about the game and the season, maybe a joke or two. Hard-hitting journalism it was not. I steel myself, but even then, I’m wildly unprepared for what she says next. “Would you like to respond to a report that came out today about your father?”
Your…father?
Immediately, my eyes begin to fill with tears. A knee-jerk reaction to stress, one I haven’t been able to kick since I was a kid. I blink several times and manage to croak out, “My father?”
Misty presses on, but the look in her eye is apologetic. “An anonymous source came forward this afternoon saying businessman Jack Smith, owner of theSt. Louis Archers and Arrows, is your father. Care to respond?”
The tears become nearly blinding, and I can hardly think of a response; I’m trying so hard to keep them from falling. Jack Smith?My father? He’s in his seventies. He’s a billionaire. I’ve only met him in passing a few times, and there was zero indication that we had any hidden father-daughter bond. Misty is waiting, and now some of the crowd, who had been filing out, are also waiting, and I can see Jadea and Coach Rembert’s worried faces in my peripheral vision, and I finally blurt out the truth. It comes out husky and broken, not clear, not easy. Not sounding like the confident woman I want to be.
“I don’t know who my father is.”
There is a sudden flurry of activity. Jadea and Coach come into frame, Coach stepping in front of me, Jadea ripping the mic out of my hand and dropping it. She hooks my arm with hers as the tears fall down my face, and pushes me across the court, towards the locker room.
I can hear Coach Rembert’s cold voice behind me. “That was uncalled for, Misty.”
As Jadea ushers me off the court, I can’t feel my fingers, and a chill has once again settled in the pit of my stomach. Just as we enter the tunnel, I look up to where I know my mom is sitting in the 100 section. I can see her frozen figure for just a moment, decked out in my jersey, sitting next to Jadea’s mom who is whispering in her ear and clutching her arm. I wish I could see her expression, but they’re too far away. My eyes drift up to the VIPboxes, and I imagine that Jack Smith is up there, looking down at the chaos.
It’s not possible. It can’t be.
That’s not why Mom wouldn’t talk about him growing up. It’s not because my mysterious, absentee father was abillionaire. A billionaire who owns me. My team.
My dream.
As soon as the crowd can’t see me, the tears really start flowing. Jadea pulls me towards the safety of the locker room. “Are you alright?” She sounds worried, a tone I rarely hear from her.
“I don’t know.” I try to wipe a few tears away with trembling fingers. “It must be a big misunderstanding, right? Jack Smith is married. He has a son who’s older than we are. Why would he know my mom?” I’m stumbling over my words, unsure what to think. I can’t shake the cold, nerveless feeling sweeping through my body. “It has to be a mistake, right?” I look at Jadea, ready to feel comforted by her dismissive attitude towards the report, but she still looks worried.
I sit down by my locker room stall and wait for my mom to come down like she always does after a home game. Wait for her to tell me it’s crazy, that Jack Smith, the owner of my team, isnotmy father.
But she never comes down. And the cold feeling never leaves.
2
I decide the only strategy against a scandal of this magnitude is to hide in my apartment indefinitely. The night of the game, I stumble home and head straight for bed. When I wake up, this will all be gone, I reassure myself. My mom and Jadea will figure it out, and my life will go back to the way it was. Point guard of the number one team in the league. Best friend to a megastar. Daughter of a kind, hardworking social worker.
Instead, I wake up the next morning to someone pounding on the front door. I know without checking that it’s Jadea. She lives in the nicer building across the street, a perk that comes with being the first pick of the WNBA draft, but that short walk never deters her from coming over. What I don’t expect when I open the door is to see our shared agent, Jermaine Flowers, standing with her. He and Jadea met at a gay bar they both frequented at Stanford where he impressed her with his knowledge of women’s basketball and business acumen. She waited for him to finish graduate school and then plucked him to be our agent.
Seeing the two of them with their game faces on already exhausts me, and I fight the urge to shut the door. Jermaine and I have never clicked the same way he and Jadea have. They’re both confident, brash, and bold. He admires her no-holds-barred style of play, and sheadmires his similar style as an agent. However, my subtler style of play grew on him, and he bluntly told me as I entered the draft, “It never hurts to have a straight, white girl on my roster.”
“We’re coming in,” Jadea announces. Jermaine follows behind her. I glance around the apartment, hoping there isn’t anything too embarrassing that Jermaine might comment on. My books are shelved nicely, my gray sectional clear for sitting, no visible garbage or laundry in the living room. My kitchen also looks clear, except for the Twizzlers package that I demolished last night as a stress-induced 2 AM snack.
Jermaine gives the Twizzlers a cursory look, which is his way of being kind. We all headed to the living room in silence. Jadea considers me as we sit down. “How are you doing, Annie?” I know I look like a mess. My braids from last night’s game are still in, frizzier than ever—a clear sign I never hit the showers—my eyes are puffy from numerous bouts of crying, and I’m wearing my most worn-in Stanford sweat set, which I’ve never stepped out of the house in.
“My mom texted.” My lip trembles, but I viciously blink back the tears. I pull my phone out of my pocket. “This is all she said.”
I pass the phone to Jadea, who reads it with Jermaine peeking over her shoulder. “Please, honey, let me explain. There’s more to the story.” Jadea’s eyes widen as she hands the phone back to me. “So, she’s basically admitting it’s true.”
I nod glumly. “I haven’t responded. What is there to say? I’ve been on the Arrows forthree seasons now. It seems like she could have mentioned that the owner is my mysterious absentee father before I got ambushed with it.”
Jermaine sighs, leaning forward to look me in the eye. “Even without your mom’s texts, the feelers I put out confirmed the report. They were unable to find the source who leaked it to the press, but the word on the street is that it’s someone close to Jack Smith. No one seems very worried about the validity of the story.” My head is already spinning, wondering who would spill Jack’s secret. Why now? The affair between Jack and my mom would have happened decades ago. Did someone just find out about it?
“Has Jack released a statement?” Jadea asks.
Jermaine and I both nod at the same time. I haven’t been able to stay away from social media, watching masochistically as people report and react to the news. Jermaine is the one who answers first. “His publicist basically said that it was a personal family matter and asked for privacy from the media.”
