Page 79 of Nothing Less Than Everything

WREN

“My face hurts,” Jewel whined through clenched teeth. Her smile never fell. Being a Lady in Red was half-professional dancing and half-ventriloquism. There were more situations than not when we couldn’t let the façade of elegance and grace fall. We had hand signals, head tips, and code words. Most of us could talk without breaking our glamorous smiles. Case in point—the fan wedged between us was either too buzzed or giddy to notice.

I peered out of the corner of my eye at the line of Red Cocks fans waiting for a picture. “Five more.”

Week6’s game was away. While Tatum and the team were off playing in Georgia, Jewel, me, and the rest of the squad were working a Red Cocks block party. Kick-off was just after four in the afternoon. Tatum would be on a plane back to T.F. Green International by nine, and he’d be in bed by midnight.

I shifted my weight between my boots and flipped my hair off my shoulder. The security guard—a burly, mustachioed man named Burt, politely told the guy having his picture taken with the two of us to move along, then replaced him with a scrawny kid wearing a “Bryant Jr.” jersey that was four sizes too big. He was missing his front teeth and had the first signs of adult teeth beginning to sprout. It was adorable.

“Hi!” he said, chipper as a hummingbird.

“Hi, big man!” Jewel said as she squatted down beside him and tucked her pom-poms in her lap. “Are you having fun at the block party today?”

He gave a fervent nod that was most likely fueled by one too many snow cones. “Uh-huh! The Reds are gonna crush Atlanta!” he growled ferociously.

“Yeah, they are!” I said and offered him a high-five.

He slapped my hand with all the vigor of a hyper seven-year-old.

“Who’s your favorite player?”

The kid spun, showing off the back of his jersey. “T.J. Bryant Jr. is the coolest! Did you know he has the record for the most career receptions in the league?”

“I did know that!” I laughed. “Did you know that he is one of the fastest players in the league? He can run twenty miles an hour!”

The kid’s jaw hit the patch of AstroTurf we were standing on. “That’s so cool.” He launched into a blitz of words detailing what he likes about each starting player on the Reds. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that the Red Cocks’ number one fan showed up for a photo-op today.

While Jewel dove headfirst into player stats and game highlights with him, I cut my eyes to one of the media team assistants milling about. Her attention moved to the boy who was talking with his hands as much as his mouth, and nodded. She’d track down the parents, then see if she could put him on the official Reds social media accounts. The online fan base would eat him up. He’d get season tickets, merch, and a meet-and-greet with some players at a home game out of the deal.

The underpaid lackey behind the camera corralled the chaos and snapped a usable photo for the kid before Burt whisked him away from the photo op line.

The next three photos were faster. Mostly fans who wanted a piece of franchise memorabilia to take home. One of them—a very shy college kid sporting a blue and yellow JWU sweatshirt—had a copy of our swimsuit calendar for us to sign. I took the permanent marker out of his hand and scrawled my name in looping cursive on the corner of the February photo, punctuating it with a heart. He blushed a deep shade of red when Jewel signed her month’s photo.

Finally, the line ended with a middle-aged man in a Red Cocks polo. Thank God he had actual clothes on and no body paint. There were few things I hated more than taking photos with fans sweating through dollar store paint.

“Hi!” I said cheerily, rustling my pom-poms together. It was a little thing that made fans think we were excited to see them even if there was no game happening live. “What’s your name?”

The man chuckled and tipped a little too far to the left. He stood up straight, gaining his bearings and sliding between me and Jewel. I felt skin against my bare lower back and tensed. His hand moved lower, onto my ass. “Darren. And the last name’s Blankenship,” he slurred. “Better learn it, sugar. It’s gonna be your new last name.”

Jewel’s smile was lethal. She wrapped her hand around the guy’s wrist and removed it from my ass with the team’s party line of, “Now, that’s not very nice. Let’s take a photo so you don’t miss any more of the game.”

It was the fifth time I had been groped today. The alcohol starts flowing and common sense goes out the window. People saw the team use us as marketing gimmicks. They too believed they were owed a piece of us. The team didn’t want us to flag down security, though it was a nuclear option. It would blow the aura of the “sweet, all-American girl” fantasy.

The click of the camera shutter rattled something in my brain. Was this what my mom would have wanted? This season was for her, after all. I wasn’t dancing for my personal glory. I wasn’t dancing for Tatum. Hell, I wasn’t even dancing for the Reds. I was dancing for her memory. To keep a piece of her alive for my dad.

Nothing about having my ass grabbed by a sweaty receding hairline honored her, and bullshit lines like, “That’s not very nice,” would have set her on a warpath.

“Let’s get one more,” the photographer said. “The sun was moving behind a cloud and there were weird shadows.”

Jewel plastered on one final fake smile. I did too, but when Handsy McAss-Face touched my butt cheek again, I lost it.

Snapping my hand around his wrist, I yanked it off my butt and shoved him against the Red Cocks logo backdrop. “That is sexual assault.”

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he said, stumbling backward. “Look at you.” His eyes barely made it past my boobs. I stifled the urge to cross my arms. His mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. “Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?”

A crowd began to form at the sound of an altercation.

I did nothing to help him as he staggered back toward me. Burt had left his post by the turnstile gate and was heading toward us. “Do not touch anyone without their consent,” I said calmly. “You do not have my consent, Mr. Blankenship.”

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