Page 65 of High Notes & Hail Marys

“In your car?” he twirls his pen. “Is it especially distinctive?”

“Not the one that I drive every day. It’s just a white Tahoe.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he concludes. “Less likely that an opportunistic photog is just hanging around Miami and willing to drive several hours away. That guy was tipped off. I’d bet on it. Are you sure it wasn’t one of your friends?”

“My… friends?” Your voice catches the word, almost tripping on it. Like you don’t understand.

“The gentlemen at the cabin with you,” he elucidates, no-nonsense. “Is it possible that one of them sold you out?”

“I really don’t think so…”

“Do they have any debts that you are aware of? Child support, alimony? Gambling issues? Student loans?”

Your poor inner cheek is raw from all the gnawing you’ve been doing. “I don’t think so? Sir, I’ve known these guys for years. We go way back. I don’t think…”

He clears his throat, interrupting you. “Frankly, Mister Reinhart—and I mean this with all due respect—I feel like your judgment on this kind of thing may be a bit… naive? Most people of your profile wouldn’t have opened the door for that utility employee.”

You’re not sure what burns more, the wordnaive, or the insidious implication inmost people of your profile.

“I was just trying to be nice,” you argue, feeling lame even as you say it. “He said…”

“He said exactly what he needed to say to gain access,” the lawyer finishes smoothly. “And it worked, didn’t it? I think you’ll find, Mister Reinhart, that beingniceisn’t always the best course of action nowadays.”

***

The young lawyer—or his office, you have no idea—sends some cease-and-desists, and the photographs get taken down on the main sites hosting them. It’s too little, too late, however: the internet remembers everything, and millions of people have already downloaded the picturesand are passing them around like trading cards. You are told that a “deep scrub” of the pictures would not only be expensive, but make it seem like you had something to hide. To the best of your knowledge, nothing punitive happens to the man who called himself John Deere. Your friends noticeably overlook a few of your posts on your private social media accounts.

On a phone call a week or so later, your mom casually drops the bombshell that reporters keep trying to talk to her in the Fresh Market. That’s when it really hits you: your private life is cooked.

***

It seems like you’ve been waiting forever for Tokyo. Sterling’s last stop of the tour is a week away, and you arepumped.The Goalposts Tour has been going on longer than your entire relationship. You’ve never experienced the luxury of Sterling staying in one place for longer than a few weeks. You two have talked casually about things you want to do: the places you want to go before you have to report back for training camp, the people you want to see. You feel like a kid starting summer vacation: the boundless excitement and wishing-on-stars feeling.

With everything going on, it kind of snuck up on you. When Sterling Facetimes you that night, you are scheduling social media posts for Kefi and working in your office. You take his call on youriMac, and his face fills your big monitor. It’s 7 PM in Miami, and it’s freshly six in the morning the next day in Tokyo. When Sterling angles his phone, you see that the sun hasn’t even risen yet through his hotel windows.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” you say, leaning back in your chair. “What does Thursday feel like?”

“It’s too early to say,” he grumbles, rubbing his eyes. “How’s your Wednesday going?”

You fumble in the open drawer beside you for the open bag of apple slices that you’ve stuffed in there. You haven’t planned dinner yet, but you’re hungry and trying to make good choices in the wake of your ill-fated boys’ weekend. Like sticking to a clean diet could wash away all that bullshit.

“It’s tolerable,” you say, munching loudly on two pieces at once. The juice explodes brightly across your tongue, laced with the lemon juice that you added to keep the apples from browning.

He leans in close and squints. “What room are you in? I’ve never been there.”

You look over your shoulder, leaning in your chair. “It’s the extra bedroom. I hardly ever use it.”

He’s still peering into his screen. “What is on that shelf behind you?”

The chair’s back squeaks irritably when you pressit back further. “Lotta crap. I have some old high school varsity football awards. Some pictures of Mama and Pops. I got a Magic 8 Ball there that Sandy gave me as a joke back in college. And, uh. Oh…”

Sterling points at the screen. It’s an inexact science, given that you have no way ofactuallypinpointing the trajectory of his finger, but somehow, you know anyway.

“Is that me?” he asks.

Guiltily, you grab the object that you know he’s indicating, and pull it in front of the camera. It’s a small plastic figure, maybe five inches tall. It has long brown sculpted hair and wide-spaced black eyes, with no expression on its cute little face. It’s wearing a sparkly turquoise bodysuit cut down to its featureless navel, with pants that flare at the knee and a pair of truly impressive stacked silver platform heels. Its apricot skin is dusted in glitter, and its nails are painted a darker blue. A bedazzled microphone is clutched in its fingers.

“I am pretty sure I didn’t license a Goalposts Tour Funko Pop,” he says, bemused.

---