Page 56 of The Longest Shot
“Galloway is fighting on two fronts using the same weapon—bureaucracy." I shrug. "But bureaucracy has rules, and rules have loopholes.”
“Morgan, I'm a terrible student," he laughs for the first time, the sound ping-ponging around inside of me. "Explain it simply, or draw it in crayon…”
“Then shut up and I’ll speak plainly," I say, firmly, although I can't hide my smile. “You need someone who understands academic bureaucracy well enough to game it, and then you need to hit theexactmetrics that matter while expending minimal effort. Because, let's face it, sociology isn't your future, right?”
"Fuck no."
“So you need me," I say, realizing there could be a double interpretation there. "And I need something you have in abundance…”
"What?" His eyes narrow, and I can see the gears turning, until his eyes widen again. "You need gear?"
I nod. "Your program has resources in embarrassing abundance, three times more of everything than you need. No one inventories your shit, so equipment that gets over-ordered and forgotten or… misplaced… won't be an issue for your program but will be survival for mine.”
His eyes sharpen, all that chaotic energy suddenly focusing. "You want me to steal for you.”
“I want you to redistribute resources already allocated to athletics,” I correct, my voice prim as a librarian explaining late fees. “It’s not theft if it stays in the department. Think of it as… communist hockey. From each according to their surplus, to each according to theirdesperateneed.”
The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. “And in exchange, you’ll tutor me?”
“God, no.” I actually shudder. “Tutoring implies patience and hand-holding. What I’m offering is academic triage. It'll be like emergency battlefield medicine for your GPA, showing you exactly what you need to do to get you the minimum grade required. We're not aiming for A's here, James.”
“What about Nash? Stiles?”
I hadn't thought about them, but it's a fair question. If I'm asking him to to steal for me and my team—and, niceties and word games aside, thatiswhat I'm asking him to do—then it's only fair that his players all get looked after as well. But three idiots are exponentially more work than one, and I don't have the time.
"I'll get two girls on my team to work with them." I shrug. "But if I hearanybullshit,especiallyfrom Nash, they'reout."
"Nash is an asshole, but he'll know how serious this is," James says. "He's counting on hockey to pay his way, so he'll knuckle down."
"Deal, then?" I say.
“Deal.” The word exits so fast he might have been physically holding it back. “Whatever you want. However you want it. I just—” He stops, hands diving into his hair again before catching himself. “I can’t lose hockey. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
The raw honesty in his voice melts me, because I now know that he had a terrible home situation growing up and pretty much constantly feels like an imposter. And if he lost hockey and his future in the NHL simply because he stood up for me…
“You won’t lose it,” I hear myself say, immediately wanting to perform a self-tracheotomy for sounding like I care.
He stands abruptly, and the space between us compresses dangerously. He's too close, as if he's staring over my hastily-repaired but not yet fully patched emotional walls. I can see the pulse jumping in his throat, and some primitive part of me wants to put my mouth?—
“So how do we do this?” he asks, and I have to mentally shake myself back to rationality.
“Invisibly,” I manage, stepping back to reestablish a safe distance. “Everything happens off-radar. We meet where Galloway would never look. You order small batches of extra stuff that won't trigger an alert for some bean-counter. And absolutely no one finds out.”
“A secret alliance,” he says, and his voice drops half an octave in a way that makes my stomach perform acrobatics. “You and me against the system.”
“This is a transaction,” I say, my voice sharp. “A temporary, mutually-beneficial business contract. Nothing more.”
But even as I say it, I’m catastrophically aware of how the terrible light somehow makes his eyes look darker, how he’s radiating heat like a space heater set to ‘seduce.’ The stairwell memory tries to surface again, like the water level only inches from flowing over the top of a dam.
“Fine. Transaction. All business.” He extends his hand, and I stare at it with the suspicion it deserves. He waits a second, then barks a laugh. “What, we’re not even going to shake on our completely professional business arrangement? Come on, Morgan. I don’t bite. Unless you want me to…?”
The flirtation is so unexpected my brain actually stutters. The smirk on his face says he’s testing me, and my pride rears up, offended. I’m not afraid of James Fitzgerald or his hand or the way he’s looking at me like I’m a particularly complex equation he’s determined to solve or a snack he wants to eat.
I take his hand.
The plan: brief, professional, half-second acknowledgment.
The reality: I'm stuck in a palm-sized tractor beam, and might not escape.
