Page 16 of Play Like a Girl

“I don’t believe I made a request.”

“I’m going to visit Penny. I told you about it two months ago.”

He carefully removed his glasses and set them down on his desk, then his gray eyes met mine.

“Kenny, do you want to run this team when I retire?”

I let out a frustrated breath. He gives me this lecture anytime I push back on doing something. I heard it a lot when I first started working here but through the years, I’ve learned to pick my battles.

My dad is old school and to him that means putting work and the team ahead of everything and everyone. He wasn’t a bad father, but I always knew not to call him for anything on a game day.

“Yes, I want to run this team when you retire,” I said when I realized the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Then you have to be available to take care of business when the need arises.”

“I understand that, but these plans are already in place.”

“Son, I like Penny, always have. But you can’t let her distract you from the job that needs to be done.”

“She’s not distracting me. I just don’t understand why I have to go on what’s basically a recruiting trip when we have a perfectly capable GM who can handle it. If I didn’t have plans, I wouldn’t care, but I do.”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes before looking at me again.

“You have until next weekend to decide,” he said, then looked down at the papers in front of him, essentially dismissing me.

I left his office, fighting the urge to slam the door behind me.

7

Penny

I grabbedmy iPad off the bed and smiled at Kenny’s face on the screen.

“Hey,” I said as I swiped to answer his call.

“Hi.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked when his smile didn’t reach his eyes. The look on his face told me he was going to try to evade my question, so I pushed. “Kenny, I can see something is wrong so just tell me. Otherwise I’ll spend our whole call wondering and worrying.”

He looked down and dragged his fingers through his hair then met my gaze again.

“My father wants me to go on a scouting trip next weekend.”

“Oh.”

“I’m trying to get out of it, but he’s digging in with this one.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I hope he’ll see reason in the next couple days.”

“I didn’t realize that was something you normally did.”

“It’s not, but I have done it,” he said. “You know how my father is.”

“I do know.”

Look up old schoolin the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of Mr. Hanover. He’s definitely not one of those fat-cat owners who sits in his suite and lets other people run the day-to-day aspects of the team. There’s not much that goes on with the Waves that he isn’t involved in and he’s grooming Kenny to be the same way.

“Do I have your latest schedule?”

I nodded, but recited it anyway.

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