Chapter 35: Thad

Chapter 35

Thad

With Kelley gone and my position at King Sports rocky, I don’t really have anything else to do but throw everything I have into proving to Damon that I can do this job.

Sure, I was lazy in the beginning, bitter toward clients, and I wasn’t much of a go-getter. I didn’t want to stand out because I was sure every single flaw would be ridiculed, but if Kelley has taught me anything, and if I’ve learned the one most important quality I need to have to be an agent, it’s that I can’t half-ass it and hope I coast by.

I need to stand out if I want to be the type of agent who signs clients and keeps them. I need to push. I need to woo. And I need to show that I’m as passionate about my clients’ careers as I would be if I was in their position.

Which is why I’m in the office every day before anyone else. I proof senior agents’ contracts, get them coffee, do whatever errand they want me to during office hours, and then after hours, I stay behind and do whatever I can to show Damon that I’m not just showing up, I’m putting in the work.

Bonus to this is I make myself so busy I don’t think about Kelley. I don’t have the time to.

Brady has been staying behind a lot too, but he and Damon get up to super-secret business in the conference room.

I leave before they do though, and while I want to be nosy and stick my head in to see what they’re doing, if it’s some freaky-ass uncle-and-nephew incest porn, I don’t want to know. Not that it would be actual incest, as Damon’s only Brady’s honorary uncle or whatever, but still. No, thank you.

Damn it, now I’m picturing it. I don’t need to see that. Though the imagery is hot.

For fuck’s sake. Maybe I need to get laid. I’m so focused on work, and being here for such long hours, all I have the energy for is to go home and go to sleep. I barely have time to even jerk off, and when I do, all I can think about is Kelley Afton and the sounds and noises he makes while we’re having sex. Which then makes me feel sad after I come. And no one wants that. No one wants to have to wipe up tears as well as cum.

Tonight, I’m not the first to pike out of here. Brady runs from the conference room, yelling, “Kit is coming home.” Then he sees me in the bullpen and stops, shrugs, and then keeps on running all the way to the elevator.

“If you didn’t catch that, one of his boyfriends is visiting from LA,” Damon says, and it makes me jump.

Ever since our talk about Kelley, about his warning, and knowing he’s not exactly impressed with me, I’m jumpier around him than Kelley ever was. I’ve caught the intimidation.

Damon smiles at me though. “You’re here late.”

“Yep,” I say oh so articulately.

Damon pulls over Brady’s chair and sits next to me. “What are you working on?”

“At the moment, I’m working on ideas on how to better protect athletes from public scrutiny after coming out and looking at contractual law to see if there’s any other protections that are possible to be implemented.”

Damon blinks at me. And then again. “Did someone ask you to do this?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. This is on my time, but the resources in the office are a lot better than I can find on my internet at home. I’ve been here late every night, researching.”

“I’ve also noticed in the system that a lot of the agents’ proofreading has been completed by you. More than you were doing before.”

“I almost don’t want to admit to you that I’ve been coasting, but I have. I’ve been doing the bare minimum because—and please don’t hold this against me—when I first got this job, I was bitter because it wasn’t my first choice. This was my backup plan, so I didn’t have a lot of passion for it. Now that I’ve put that behind me, I’m ready. I know I need to prove myself and put myself out there.”

“Not going to lie, I’m happy to see this change in you, but what happened to turn it around for you?”

I bite my lip.

“Ah. Kelley Afton happened.”

I nod. “Yep. But not in the way you might be thinking.”

“Then explain it to me.”

So I do. I tell Damon all about why I was bitter at Kelley—not only saying he had what I wanted but going into the resentment I held toward him, not understanding that it was his poor mental health that was making him seem ungrateful.

“Shouldn’t you have known all that from his file?”

“I should have. But I didn’t. “

Damon tries to cover an inappropriate smile. He’s either entertained by my dumbassery or my ability to get away with not doing a lot of work for him in the first six months of my employment.

“What I learned from my time with Kelley is that I have to look deeper than my preconceived notions. I need to get to know a client and tailor my approach to their case to fit them. I know we talked about this briefly after the Catskills trip, but that’s what I mean when I say Kelley changed my outlook. It had nothing to do with us hooking up. In simpler terms, he made me pull my head out of my ass and realize not everything is about what I want or what I’d do in any situation. Because of him, I want to be a better agent, and I want to give it my all. So I’ve been doing that. First with the prospects from Trenton, then Zaka, and now this.” I wave to my computer screen, which has some case law on discrimination in the workplace. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to prevent trades from happening, like it did with Kelley. Not only for him but for Zaka as well. If he ever feels the need or want to open that closet door. It’s still just a hunch, but even if he isn’t queer, this firm represents a hell of a lot of clients who are.

“And what have you found so far?” Damon asks, quickly skimming my screen.

“Not a whole lot. The issue about bringing in LGBTQIA contract ruling is that if we do that for them, we have to for heterosexual players too, so unless the leagues put a bylaw in place with a baseline stat athletes have to maintain to protect them from being traded, it’s a no go.”

“I’m impressed,” Damon says, and it makes me preen. “And while it’s admirable that you want to do this for your clients, I can’t help thinking that’s not who you’re doing this for.”

“I’m not doing it for Kelley if that’s what you’re getting at. His trade is done, he’s in LA, and there’s no going back from that. But there could be something in the future to protect other players.”

“Okay, I have a question for you. Do you think Philly traded Kelley because of his sexuality?”

That’s a hard question to answer because it’s not that simple. “If I take my personal feelings out of it and look at the stats, then no. They had every right to trade him.”

His lips quirk.

“But,” I continue, “to me, they gave up on him way too quickly, and there might have been a reason for that. It was almost as if they were looking for the excuse to get rid of him. And after that horrible drama around Cooper saying an angry slur online, it wouldn’t surprise me if Philly thought it would be easier to get rid of the one they saw as the problem. It couldn’t have been the homophobic dickweed.”

“Cooper has the most runs out of anyone on that team this season.”

“I know. That was a bad example because the stats are on the team’s side, and I’m not saying they did anything wrong by trading Kelley. I just … I want to try to make it better for future athletes going forward. ”

This time, Damon’s smile is wide. “I love it when I’m right about people.”

“Uh … right?”

“I knew when I hired you that you were going through a lot. I knew there could be some teething problems with you settling in because I saw a lot of my bitterness from when I played inside of you. But I also knew that if you could grow past that, that you would make a great agent one day, and I really think you will.”

Weight from all of my insecurities, all my downfalls, my fear of failing … it’s all lifted when Damon says he has faith in me.

“Have you spoken to Kelley lately?” Damon randomly asks, and I’m worried it’s a test. It won’t matter if it is, though, because I can tell the truth without feeling any shred of guilt.

“There’s been a few texts, but not really. He told me when he was all settled into his new place. I congratulated him on a few of his wins. Things like that.”

They’ve been friendly but more toward the side of cordial.

“Oh, other than one that said he was burning my roommate’s itchy suit and sending Josh a replacement for the one he borrowed from him.” When the Armani suit showed up, Josh wondered if he could sell it and buy a cheaper one so he could put the rest of the money toward this month’s rent. His job as a party clown did not last very long. Sorry, party Batman . Not clown. He is a bit touchy about that. Something about clowns being scary. Either way, I gave him the money for rent from my Kelley fund, and he kept the suit.

“All itchy suits should be burned,” Damon says and stands. “Okay, I’m going to leave you to it. Don’t stay here too late. You’re an intern. You have the rest of your life to work. If you don’t find the right work-to-home-life ratio from the jump, it’s a struggle. Take my word on that.”

“Thanks, but other than going home to an apartment with four ex-baseball-playing roommates where the whole place still somehow smells like locker room, I don’t really have much going on in my life other than work.”

“How are your parents doing?” he asks.

At least I can smile about that. “Really good.”

“And your brother? ”

“Haven’t heard from him, but Mom can keep an eye on him on social media, thanks to a catfishing account I set up for her. To Wylder, Mom is a twenty-year-old college student who loves spring break.”

Damon shudders. “I really hope he’s not sending your mom all the kinds of pictures my nephews send people they’re interested in.”

“Fuck. I didn’t think of that. Maybe I should log in and do a sweep of the DM folders.”

Damon laughs. “There you go. Something else to put your energy toward. Go home. Get some rest and maybe some therapy for whatever you see on that account, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Now that he mentions it, I’m really tired, but I have this urge to keep going until I can find something that will protect our queer players better.

It’s going to be a long road though, so I should listen to my boss and come back tomorrow refreshed.