Page 45 of Off Camera
AVERY
“That was an incredible speech, Avery,”Meredith tells me when I walk off the stage to a round of applause. It’s the largest speaking event I’ve ever done, and their enthusiasm lifts my confidence.
“I’m not sure I’d call rambling about the human connection social media creates incredible, but I’m so grateful for the opportunity. Sorry if I derailed the conversation a bit at the end,” I laugh.
“Please. Last year the keynote speaker went on a rant about who would win in a fight, Deadpool or Wolverine. Trust me when I say you didn’t derail anything.”
I think of Reid and bite back a smile.
I wonder who he would pick. He’d probably have a twenty-minute argument ready to back up his decision. Comic books would be used as references, and there would be a PowerPoint presentation.
He strikes me as a PowerPoint guy. Slide after slide of data and graphs and hard evidence.
I should text him.
I should ask how his trip is going and if he’s hanging in there despite all the ass kissing.
Maybe I can ask when he’s free again to fulfill the parameters of our casual arrangement. He seemed eager about it when he had his hand between my legs the other night at his apartment. There was a look of wonder in his eyes when he told me how badly he wanted to fuck me.
My cheeks heat at the memory, at the thought of his fingers and warm mouth, and I fan my face to try to cool off.
“I’m glad everything went well,” I say. “Thank you for having me.”
“You’re giving another talk this weekend, right?” Meredith asks.
“On Saturday afternoon. It’s a conversation about engaging with fans and learning how to draw a boundary when online discourse turns negative. It’s a topic close to my heart, especially for the women in a male-dominated field. The amount of times I’ve wanted to call out grown men for living in their mother’s basements and hiding behind their keyboard while they talked shit would astound you, but I keep it professional.”
She laughs. “We call someone out, we’re a bitch. We keep our mouths shut, they ask, ‘what? Don’t you have something to say?’ We can’t win.”
“We really can’t. We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
“Sums up being a woman, honestly.”
“Gosh, it’s good to see you, Meredith. I’ll try to catch up with you later this weekend,” I say.
We exchange a round of goodbyes and I make my way for the main hall of the convention center. With nothing on the agenda for the rest of the evening, I’m excited to settle in with some room service. Maybe I’ll add a bottle of wine and have a nice night with my vibrator and shitty television.
My feet ache. The new black heels I’ve been waltzing around in all afternoon were a bad decision, and my toes are killing me.My social meter is dropping lower and lower as I make my way down the corridor, and I could use a little peace and quiet.
I can feel my smile straining around the edges. I can hear my voice turning less friendly the longer I stand, but I keep going.
Working in pageantry and theme parks prepared me for this. I do the dance I’ve done for years as I pass people:Hello. How are you? It’s good to see you. I talk to everyone who stops me, giving them five, ten minutes of my time before I’m handed off to the next person for another round of introductions.
I should love the attention.
Twenty-five-year-old mecravedthe attention, but I know it’s not totally genuine. They don’t want to get to know me. They only want to pick apart my brain and find my deep, dark secrets, like I wrote a manual on how to be successful at my job when, really, it was a stroke of luck.
I had low expectations when I took the Thunderhawks job. I figured we’d have a losing record for the first five years like most expansion teams do. I thought we’d be at the bottom of the standings, hanging on by a thread with a bench of mediocre players on their last stint in the NFL before retirement.
Then,the songhappened.
It was a right-place-at-the-right-time moment. I never thought a drunken night out with a Grammy-winning producer from Baltimore who used to go to Thunderhawks games as a kid before the team moved out west would end up changing my life.
After four margaritas and a hundred YouTube listens of the original Thunderhawks’ soundtrack, we came up with an idea: a new and improved theme song that was fresher. Poppier. Catchy and recognizable enough where you’d stop scrolling to listen if you heard it playing on your phone.
I posted it after our first win, syncing it to a clip of the guys on the team celebrating by dumping a cooler of Gatorade on their coach, and it became an overnight sensation.
It went viral in a way I’m still struggling to comprehend.
