Page 71 of The Thing About My Rival

“It’s okay. I can just move,” Dad says, shuffling his chair out of the shaft of yellow light and a little closer to me.

I fight the instinct to shuffle mine the same distance in the opposite direction.

“So, I hear you want to start a youth academy.” He peers at me over his steepled, drumming fingers.

Oh, Jesus, here we go. If he still wants a say on how the club’s run, he shouldn’t have sold it. And damn whichever of the Fab Four told him my idea. It has to be one of them. I know they’re in touch and have given him an open invitation to the owners’ box for any game he likes.

I turn the hem of my napkin back on itself and slowly roll it up. “Just trying to think about the future. The longevity of the club. And how we can develop and nurture our own talent.”

He makes ahuhnoise. I dread to think what his face is doing so I force my eyes to focus on the slow, tight rolling of the napkin.

The table shifts a little as he leans forward on it. “How could the club ever afford it?”

Has he forgotten he sold to four guys with the combined wealth of half a continent? “We’re the only team in the league without one. So I don’t think it’s something we can affordnotto do. And the guys seem open to investing in it.”

“Financial suicide.” He picks up his glass and drains the remaining red wine from it. “I can’t see a condo guy, an actor, a prince, and whatever the hell it is Leo does wanting to throw good money after bad like that.”

I dig my nails into the napkin as I look over at him. Iexpected his eyes to be hard and combative, but they’re not. They’re more tired. Perhaps I mistook his tone.

He looks less like he’s worried I’m trying to misspend the club’s cash and more like he’s sad he’s not involved any more.

Does he regret selling? But he knows he had to. His cardiologist threatened to stop treating him if he didn’t get rid of it.

“They love the club,” I tell him, feeling the need to reassure him that he’s left it in good hands. “I mean, obviously not in the same way that you and I do.” And here I go again, searching for a connection, trying to convince him we have things in common, throwing it out there like a lifeline I hope he’ll grab the other end of. “But they appreciate that nothing instills loyalty in a player like training there as a kid and growing up on the youth team.”

My napkin roll gets tighter by the second. “The connection you have when you’ve spent your formative years around a club is like nothing else.” And if anyone knows that, it should be me. That place was like my third parent—or actually my second, since I guess my mom doesn’t count.

“I know if we can get great players young, they’ll have the Commoners running through their veins the way I do. The way Ryan Giggs was Manchester United to the core, and Paolo Maldini was AC Milan through and through.”

“Is that what you’d prefer to do, coach a load of kids?” Dad asks. “Do you think they’d be easier to manage than a bunch of men?”

And there’s the dagger, glinting in the sunset and poised right over my soul. I’m not even sure he knows he’s doing it. But that doesn’t stop it from hurting. And there’sonly so much of it I can let go for the sake of family harmony.

The napkin springs away from my fingers, unfurling along with my clenched insides.

“I have absolutely no problem managing a bunch of men.” Despite every effort to not sound defensive and keep my tone calm, there’s a quaver in my voice. “It has nothing to do with that. That’s never even crossed my mind. I wouldn’t run the academy, anyway. I’d put a manager in there. And I can do two things at once—have an overview of the academyandcoach the team.”

“Of course she can,” Suzanna says, walking around the corner carrying a tart atop a stack of three plates. “Your daughter has coached women her whole career.” She stands tall as she strides over and places everything on the table along with three forks and a large knife. “You don’t think women are as hard to manage as men?”

“It’s okay, Suzanna.” The last thing I want here is to be the cause of a marital dispute. All I want to do is eat a polite amount of that lemon tart and get the hell out of here.

“Not at all,” she says, picking up the knife. “Your dad’s never managed women in his life, have you, Brent?”

“Well, I…” He shifts in his chair.

“All I can tell you”—she inserts the pointy tip in the dead center of the tart—“is that in my thirty-five years at Cross and Co, I consistently found men to be considerably easier to manage than women.”

Suzanna was a vice president at the biotech giant, and I can’t imagine her having trouble managing a herd of raging buffalo, never mind a bunch of women.

“I don’t know what it is.” She makes two swift, clean cuts and slides the knife underneath the slice. “Maybe it’sbecause the women always had more thoughts of their own than the men did.”

Her eyes meet mine for an almost imperceptible moment before she eases the perfectly cut segment of lemon tart onto a plate.

“Everyone at the US women’s team was full of their own theories and thoughts, that’s for sure.” I feel the need to back her up for showing me this kindness and support. “And in Portland. And Dijon.”

“Well.” Dad leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest, his mouth turning up slightly at the corners as he gazes at his wife while she cuts two more crisp-edged slices. “The women in my life have always proved pretty challenging.” He turns to me. “So maybe you have a point.”

I’ll take that for now.

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