Page 28 of Catch Me
I shrugged. “Interpretation isn’t my business. People misinterpret things all the time. A lot of things are ambiguous.”
“They don’t care about your explanations,” he said. “Everything you say reflects on the team.”
“Alright, then I need a detailed list of things I can’t do. In writing. Once you get me that, I’ll take it into consideration.”
“Take it into consideration...This isn’t negotiable. You’re under contract. In a few more years, you can be a free agent and hope that there’s a team who’ll be supportive of your endeavors, but right now, this is where you are. Do you want to screw up your career?”
I gripped my phone tightly. “Get me a list, Pete.”
He said my name, but I continued out of his office. I wanted to march into the board room and talk to those bastards myself, but that would definitely get me sacked, especially if I went in with this attitude.
By the time I reached my Jeep, my hands ached from making fists. I started the car and put on some music, then navigated to Instagram. After taking a picture of myself, I added some text.
Stress relief. What’ve you got?
I already knew there’d be quite a few comments about sex. It only took a few minutes for a handful of them to come through. They weren’t wrong, but I wasn’t a casual sex person. It didn’t matter to me enough, plus if someone recognized me, it became a whole thing. I didn’t like to be a conquest for them to brag about.
When my phone buzzed, I started to wonder what the fuck was happening.
Roman:Hey
Trav:Hey back
Roman:You always say that
Trav:Because you always say hey
Roman:Oh
Fucking hell.
Trav:Did you just text me to say hey?
Roman:You didn’t respond about the drawing
Trav:Shit. I have a bad habit of that. My bad
Roman:It’s cool
Trav:It was perfect. They loved it. Just doing their boring business stuff etc., etc. I’ll let you know when there’s an official decision
Roman:Ok
That was enough of that. I needed to go on a run or head to the river. It was getting way too cold for it, but we might have a couple decent swims left. Quick ones.
If I didn’t do something, I’d grind my teeth to dust.
*****
Roman:Hey
Dear god.
I dropped my forehead into my hand and laughed. It wasn’t an enjoyable laugh. I was kind of annoyed at this point. This was six days in a row. I didn’t even know what to say, and it wasn’t clear why he kept texting me. Every time, I told him I’d let him know. He said ‘Ok,’ and we did the same thing the next day.
Yesterday, he asked me if I’d decided where to have him draw me with Tessa. I hadn’t even thought about it since he offered. Most things that got deposited in my mind pranced away, never to be seen again until someone brought it up. My working memory was trash and I was easily distracted. My brain was a curse or a superpower, depending who you asked.
This week, it’d been the former. Stress and the constant pressure from Pete about my social media resulted in a recipe for constant irritability.
