Page 74 of Offsides

“Cowboy asked me not to include the whole Dash thing in my feature,” Theo answered, swallowing hard.

Looking away from Dana, she looked over at the screen, frozen on a still of Gunnar and Cowboy, both of them smiling like it was Christmas morning. They were out on the pitch, the team a blur of paused motion around them. Her heart squeezed, wishing she remembered this exact moment. There were so many like it that it was hard to know exactly what it was they had been chatting and laughing about, but Cowboy’s smile couldn’t be beat.

“Okay…again, it’s a nonstory, so who cares?”

“I care! He was trying to censor me. Trying to influence what I cover and say about the team.”

Dana shrugged, the look on her face telling Theo she still didn’t see the issue. Was she crazy?

“Dana, he doesn’t get to dictate what I report on.”

“Follow me.”

Pushing up from her chair, Dana exited the editing bay, not offering up any more explanation. Theo hurried to follow her, powerwalking down the hall trying to keep up. They turned into Dana’s office, stopping right in front of the large curio cabinet filled with all of her awards.

“See that one,” Dana said, pointing at the glass. “Second from the right. Got that one when I was up in Boston, covering a certain pitcher’s recovery from Tommy John surgery.”

Theo nodded. She remembered the story. Boston’s rookie pitcher had torn the ligament in his elbow on a fastball against New York, resulting in the need for surgery and calling into question whether or not he’d ever be able to pitch in the pros again. Dana had followed him all the way through his operation and recovery, highlighting one of the greatest pitching comeback stories ever.

“I’m sure you remember, the first time they went to go do the surgery, they couldn’t. Medical complications,” she continued. Theo nodded again. This wasn’t new information—where was Dana going with this? “He had gonorrhea. From sleeping with a hooker.”

“What?”

“Yup. They couldn’t operate because the dumbass got the clap. Required a couple of rounds of antibiotics, and a month later, surgery was rescheduled.” Dana paused, looking at her award sitting behind the glass, then turning back to Theo. “I’m telling you this, not because I think you’re particularly interested in the sexual history of a baseball player from almost twenty years ago, but because his PR team asked me to leave out the STD.”

“And you did?”

“I did. It was a tough call, believe me. I wanted this story to be as truthful as possible. This kind of recovery can be hard, and I was prepared to tell the whole thing, no matter how raw and gritty it got. And that was going to include STDs. But then they asked me not to. Kid was going through enough; he didn’t need the whole world to know that he was paying for sex or that he forgot to wrap it up. In the end, I agreed. It was just as easy to say ‘medical complications,’ and it didn’t really have any bearing on the story. Plus, then I didn’t have to explain to my grandmother that I knew what gonorrhea was.”

Dana laughed at her own joke, but Theo’s head was spinning too fast to join in. Dana had glossed over something. The woman who had taught her to “dig, dig, dig” and “not be afraid of upsetting” people had let a team influence how she covered a story. Sucking in a breath, Theo held it for a moment, hoping it would somehow help her think straight. It didn’t. She needed to sit.

Plopping down in one of the leather guest chairs, Theo still felt off-kilter. Had she really been wrong about everything? Her words to Cowboy this afternoon rang out in her mind—accusations of trying to censor her, using her for sex, making her the bad guy. Well, maybe she was. Would it have been that hard to just do him this favor? Or to have even simply said “let me talk to my boss?”

“Why?” Theo asked, still trying to wrap her head around everything. It was all too much.

“At the end of the day, I decided that my relationship with the team was more important than an insignificant detail. Would the detail have been fun and entertaining? Absolutely! But not worth shooting myself in the foot over.” Dana sat in the other guest chair, perching herself on the edge of the seat. Leaning forward, she rested her hands on Theo’s knees. The touch was oddly comforting, a connection Theo hadn’t realized she needed. “Things like this happen all the time. You’re not compromising your convictions by choosing to ignore it. It’s not like he drove drunk and killed three people, or stabbed someone in a club. He got drunk; it happens.”

It happens. Why couldn’t she have seen that hours ago, before she’d lost her temper?

“Dana…I…I fucked up.”

“What do you mean?”

Closing her eyes, Theo sat back, sinking into the leather chair. She didn’t even know where to start. How exactly did you tell someone that your heart was breaking? That your soul felt like it had shattered into a million little pieces, and all because you had a fight with someone. The one person you cared about more than anyone else, ever. That you both had said things—really horrible things—that could never be taken back, no matter how much you regretted them. There weren’t words for this.

“Just tell me this,” Dana began when Theo didn’t answer. “Did he rock your world as much as you thought he would?”

“What?!” Theo exclaimed, sitting straight up in her chair.

“Theodosia, I have known you since you were twenty. I have watched you lust over Cowboy Callahan for, well, forever. Every time his name was mentioned or there was a clip of him playing, you’d get these hearts in your eyes like Bugs Bunny. So, let’s not pretend like you haven’t spent hours fantasizing about that man and all the things he could do to you. All I want to know is did he live up to those fantasies?”

Theo opened her mouth, wanting to deny it. But she couldn’t.

“More than. He exceeded them in every way, Dana. Every way.”

“Then I do not see what the problem is.”

“I fell for him. Hard. Like, all the way fell for him.”