Page 1 of The Player Penalty
1-Lily
Rivers Motorsports Headquarters, North Carolina
I don’t want to be here.
“Have you ever been in a go-kart before?” Sarah asks me, and I shake my head. “Well, you’re doing me a big favor. Julian Murphy will be your partner for an upcoming charity race. Do you remember him?”
It’s my first day interning at Rivers Motorsports, and my new boss is already bored with me. It took her two minutes to foist me on someone else.
I don’t want to be here even more.
My expression sours. “We met.”
Sarah notices my unenthusiastic response. “Was he an ass? Please don’t hold that against him. Julian improves with exposure. He’s like poison in the movies where you need to build immunity first.”
What movie is she talking about? In all the ones I’ve seen, people die after ingesting the poison.
“We didn’t speak to each other.” There’s also no reason to expect his opinion of me to have improved. Will I spend myentire first day with him? “Do you want me as an intern? You can say no.”
I’m only here because my father, Pete Webb, demanded it. Some might say I’m lucky he can provide this for me—those who don’t know me.
“Why would I say that? It was my idea. We always need extra help,” she says. Sarah Rivers doesn’t want me here either, although she’s polite enough to disguise it.
My feet grow heavier as I follow her to Julian Murphy’s office. He will make fun of me all over again; I know it.
His office is neater than my bedroom. Stacks of paper cover his desk, and another stack sits on an old metal filing cabinet. A coat rack drowns beneath its coats. It’s still messy.
I want to go home.
“Visitor for you,” Sarah says.
Julian Murphy wears jeans and a perfectly fitting white tshirt. It’s the same outfit he wore for my father’s surprise birthday party a year ago. We didn’t speak, and I’ve never forgotten him. After all, he’s the reason I returned to therapy.
He’s good-looking, and he knows it. His red hair is dark enough to trick you into thinking it’s brown. His blue eyes are friendly but indifferent.
Sarah Rivers introduces us, and Julian offers his hand. I reluctantly accept it and pull away. He forgot who I was, and my palms are sweaty.
He ignores my discomfort, steps away, and says, “We’re about to make go-kart history. The first step is video games. You play?”
“Sometimes.”
He ignores that, too. “Perfect. First, we practice with Mario Kart, a classic in its own time. Then, we work in person. We’re guaranteed to win this.”
“I’ll leave you both to it,” Sarah says, shutting the door behind her.
I want to go home.
“Do you remember me? We met a year ago,” he says.
“It was at my father’s surprise birthday party. We didn’t speak.”
I planned the event perfectly, and then the bakery misplaced the order, and I almost missed the deadline for a college assignment. The misplaced order rattled me, and I accidentally wrote the wrong age on Dad’s birthday cake.
I met Julian Murphy at that party and thought I had stumbled upon the prettiest man in the world. He did not feel the same way about me.
“Right. It was a busy night,” he says, putting a controller in my hands. “We’ll start with Mario Kart and see how it goes.”
Julian busies himself, turning on the television and loading the game.
