Page 109 of Vegas Heat

“Right back at you, kid.”

“You doing okay, Coopster?” she asks.

“I’m okay,” I lie. She’s got enough going on. She doesn’t need me droning on about how heartsick I am over Gabby.

“You call me if you need anything,” she says.

“I will,” I assure her, but the truth is Ididcall her because I needed something but she’s busy with twin babies and caught up in her own shit and I’m not going to burden her with my shit, too.

I swing by my house to check the progress, and there are two trucks in the street in front of the place, signaling that somebody’s there working. I hang out in my car for a while as I dream up all the things I can do once I’m not fighting against myself every goddamn day.

I feel like I don’t have anywhere else to go, so eventually I head back to Troy’s place.

And when I pull into the driveway, I spot a car I haven’t seen before…but the woman leaning up against it sure looks familiar.

“Stacy,” I mutter as I pull in behind the white Lexus and put my car in park.

What the fuck is she doing here?

CHAPTER 23: GABBY

Joanie had interviews today for the final intern position, which means my spot was added in thanks to my father. I’m not sure how to feel about that.

She said she felt like she needed better organization with the intern program, so I suggested a focus department each week for us. This broadens our knowledge and it gives the different departments access to our skills, and apparently the idea never occurred to her. She’s smart and great at what she does, but the interns were sort of thrust in her lap last-minute, so she’s been struggling with where to place us.

The way she praised my idea felt wonderful.

My father has barely acknowledged that he’s been seeing her, and I’ve certainly never seen themtogether, but the fact that someone in a semi-maternal position over me had something nice to say to me felt surprisingly good.

Any time I did something worthy of praise before, my narcissistic mother would either claim responsibility for it or she’d find something about it to nitpick.

This wasn’t like that. It was a simpleI love that ideafollowed by a hand on my shoulder.

Admittedly my normally sunny disposition has had a bit of a cloud over it since Cooper Noah broke up with me, but her words helped lighten those clouds just a little.

I felt something good pull at me again—a feeling I haven’t felt since I turned around after digging around in the refrigerator and Cooper was standing in my dad’s kitchen.

He was there to witness the moment, though, and that seemed to steal something from it. The clouds darkened a littleagain, and when he left, they seemed to settle in for the long haul.

“I’ve made a short list of all our departments here,” she says, handing out slips of paper with all the departments listed. “Write your name on the top and rank the top five you think would most benefit you. I can’t guarantee you’ll get all of them, and this is still a general internship program, so you’ll deal with every department at some point, but I’d like to place you a little better based on your strengths.”

I’m not sure if this applies to me, too, or not since I’ve already been tapped to shadow Cooper and work on social media. Still, I glance over the list. Business development and analytics, baseball operations, marketing and social media, broadcasting, fan experience, guest services, community relations, corporate sponsorships, public relations, ticket operations, finance, planning and development, HR, IT and video…the list goes on. There are way more departments than I ever realized that are involved with a baseball team, and I look over my options.

I have no idea what I want out of my future. Working at a ballpark would be fun, sure, but I’m not sure how good a fit it is if it means I’m going to be around Cooper more often. I like the idea of working with my dad, but he’ll be busy on the game side, not on the front office side.

And I don’t really know all that much about baseball. I’m learning, and I’m a fairly quick study, but that doesn’t mean this is a good fit for me.

I mark marketing and social media as my top choice, followed by community relations and business analytics. I like the fan experience and corporate sponsorships, too, so I add those on as my fourth and fifth choices, though most of the options listed sound interesting to me in some capacity.

I glance over at Justin’s list. He has numbers listed next to business, marketing, corporate sponsorships, finance, and IT. Ialmost erase my choices and choose the same as him so we can work together, but I don’t. I want to learn from this internship, and picking the same things as my friend doesn’t seem like the best way to do that. Besides, finance and IT sound boring.

I guess I’m just finding myself clinging onto him, and it’s as I stare down at my paper that I realize that. My entire life, I’ve had difficulty choosing direction. I defer to other people when I don’t want to make a decision, and I become clingy when someone shows me positive attention.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing with Cooper. Maybe it was never about love at all between the two of us, but someone stepped in, made me feel good, and I clung to that.

Maybe it’s time for me to let him go.

It’s what he wants, and I’ve been stuck in neutral the past week as I’ve tried to deal with the loss.

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