Playing the Field Read online

  Playing the Field

  Lark Maren

  Copyright © 2019 by Lark Maren

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  26. Epilogue

  Thanks for Reading Playing the Field

  COMING JANUARY 2020

  Chapter One

  Tonya:

  “Hit the showers, ladies,” my coach, Savannah, said, grabbing me by the hand and helping me up off the yoga mat. My legs felt wobbly, and my hair was drenched in sweat. I loved these optional afternoon workouts, even if they rendered me a little sore the rest of the day. The kind of high you could get from running up and down stadium steps and tossing a medicine ball against a cement wall until your arms turned to noodles was generally the highlight of my life. I could just zone out and push my body to the limit. No judgment. No reality. Just that sweet release of endorphins and adrenaline to carry me through to job number two.

  It was only my teammate Lucy and I who made it to the gym today. I didn’t fault the rest of my team. It’s not like we got paid to be here. It’s not like anybody had the luxury of taking off from their day jobs. Everybody wanted to be here, full-time. That’s not how life works when you play for a women’s football team, though. We might sacrifice our body just as hard as men who play professionally, but it’s only at our own expense. We do it out of love of the sport.

  And at this point in my life, the love of the sport was about the only thing I had going for me. That and the prospect that Lucy and I were going to get to hit the showers alone together.

  Her tight black ponytail bobbed up and down as she trotted off to the locker room, and I knew by the way she smirked when she looked over her shoulder at me she was thinking the same thing I was. The door swung shut behind us, and she peeled off her sweat drenched sports bra, flinging it at me.

  “Oops,” she said with a giggle.

  I licked my lips and paced towards her, grabbing the elastic of her running shorts between my thumbs and forefingers, slowly starting to peel them off.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “You promised me you’d give me an answer today.” I pressed my lips to her neck, and she threw her head back, her little coos turning the sweat on my body ice cold. “I’m not playing, Tonya. Are you coming with me to Ali’s wedding or not?”

  I sighed and backed away, shaking my head. I wasn’t the kind of chick you took to a wedding as your date. She knew that getting into things. I never once gave her any indication that was something I was interested in.

  “Come on, Lucy,” I whined. “I already told you no. I probably have to work that day anyway. I don’t dance. I don’t have anything to wear. Why don’t you take someone you can actually have fun with?” I started for the showers, and she chased after me, wrapping her hand around my stomach, her fingers traveling downwards over my spandex shorts.

  “I have a lot of fun with you, Tonya,” she said seductively. “I’ll lend you a dress. I won’t make you dance.”

  I let out an audible grumble that was a little ruder than necessary, but I thought she was smarter than this. There was not one thing she could do or say to convince me to go out on a date for her. I was Tonya Fields. I didn’t date. I didn’t go on dates. I had too much other shit going on to have to worry about being a good girlfriend.

  “Why don’t you like me?”

  “Don’t act like this, Lucy,” I pleaded. “You know I like you.” If I disliked her, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. She bit down on the side of her lip, blinking back tears. “Dude. What could you possibly be crying about?”

  “I thought I was different,” she said. “I thought I could change you.”

  “Well now I’m offended. If you really liked me, you wouldn’t want to change me.” I knew it was a rude power move I just pulled, but it was easier than admitting the truth. I did like Lucy. I liked her as a teammate; she was the best wide receiver I’d ever played with in my life. I liked the way she looked. Really liked the way she felt, tasted, smelled, even after a brutal workout in ninety-degree weather. That was it, though. Never once in the duration of our fling did I ever imply it was anything more. I wasn’t like that. Tonya Fields didn’t settle down.

  I turned on the water and grabbed my gym bag, digging through it as she watched with a glare that looked like she was trying to stab me with a million daggers from her eyeballs.

  “You used me,” she shouted.

  “Babe,” I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. “You can’t even pull that card. You knew exactly what you were getting into. I thought we were just having fun.” She jerked her arm away from me, and I shrugged, my signature ‘suit yourself’ sneer on my face. “Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.”

  I slid out of my tank top and sports bra, stepped out of my compression shorts, and ran my fingers through my long red hair as I shook out my ponytail. “You trying to save some water with me, or not?” I asked, licking my lips.

  “Fine,” she said. I had to stifle my giggle. Did I feel bad about what I was about to do? Maybe? “Just this one last time.”

  I leaned in to kiss her on the lips softly, lacing my fingers with hers. “Just this one last time. Then you need to go find a woman who can give you exactly what you deserve. You don’t need to keep slumming it with me.” We started for the shower, when my cellphone rang from my bag. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”

  She rolled her eyes at me as I fished through my clean clothes until I pulled out my phone. I cringed when I saw the number on the screen. It was my sister, Areal’s, school. I’d grown to know the number by heart after last year. She wasn’t even a week into her sophomore year, and I felt like the vicious cycle was starting all over again.

  “Is this Tonya Fields?” the secretary asked.

  “Yes,” I muttered begrudgingly.

  “This is Ms. Hawthorne from Brighton High School.” I knew exactly who she was. We’d had this conversation about thirty-six times before. Now was the part where she transferred me to the principal so I could hear what new mid-level misdemeanor Areal had committed this week.

  Brighton wasn’t exactly the best school. I knew it, because I’d lived it. I personally wasn’t the exemplary student in my time there, but I was a lot sneakier than Areal. I think the staff was well aware after the first few times I got in trouble that my mother wasn’t going to answer the phone to bail me out, so I kind of just slipped through the cracks. They just wanted me graduated and out of their hair. I didn’t want that for Areal. She was so bright, so creative. I didn’t want her to end up like me, working a bunch of shit jobs just to survive.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Fields,” Principal Keith said. “I couldn’t get ahold of your mother, and you’re listed as the next emergency contact.” I wasn’t sure if he was just saying that out of habit, or they’d really tried to
reach my mom. “I have Areal in my office. Is there any chance you can come down here?”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Is she all right?”

  “She threw a chair across a classroom and nearly hit a teacher.”

  And what do you want me to do about it? I wanted to shout. Tell her how dangerous it is to throw chairs and send her to her room? It was so frustrating feeling this powerless. I didn’t know why she did the things she did, and I knew she needed a lot more help than I could give her. Didn’t they have guidance counselors for this kind of stuff?

  “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes,” I said, hanging up the phone as I hastily threw on my black polo shirt and tight white jean shorts so I could go straight to work after I picked her up. I sprayed myself down with way too much body spray and wrung the sweat out of my hair onto the tile floor.

  “Do you need me to come with you?” Lucy asked.

  “I appreciate it,” I said, pecking her on the lips. The fact that my teammates were willing to go to the end of the world for me when it came down to serious stuff was probably the only way I retained my sanity. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Just Areal being Areal.”

  “Text me and let me know how it goes,” she said, stepping into the shower.

  I tried to walk out of the locker room with my head held high, ready for war, ready to walk into that principal’s office and stand up for my sister, but I knew that wasn’t the solution. She was out of control; I was doing the best I could with the limited resources I had, and obviously that wasn’t good enough. I needed to do better for her. I needed to get her into a school where she could thrive. Somewhere she could get the help she deserved. I needed to save up enough money to move out of this dump and get her into a school district where she wouldn’t feel the need to throw chairs or start fires or punch lockers. I worried for her future, even more than I worried about my own.

  I sped out of the parking lot, praying the cops weren’t out today. When I got to the school, I nearly burst into tears when I looked at the time. I was going to be late for work. Again. Getting ahead in the world was going to be damn near impossible if I got fired for not showing up to my job.

  “I’m sorry,” Areal said, her voice devoid of any emotion as we walked to my car.

  “I know,” I said with a shrug. There were a million things I wanted to tell her. Part of me wanted to scream at her. Part of me wanted to hug her and tell her everything was going to be all right. None of that was going to fit into my current timeline. “You’re going to have to come to work with me until somebody can pick you up.”

  She nodded and slid her sunglasses down. I nodded and slid mine down, too. We could talk about this later. Figure out an escape plan so she didn’t end up in jail. I was going to give her the life she deserved.

  Chapter Two

  Ella:

  “There’s my cupcake.” My father, Richard Morgan, jumped up from his desk as I swung open the door to his corner office. “What do we owe this great pleasure?”

  I stood in the doorway holding two white bags. “Mom’s outta town. I was bored. I figured I’d bring you lunch.” There was a woman sitting on the other side of his desk. She didn’t look much older than me, her black hair tucked in a professional upsweep, her make-up muted. I could tell her black blazer was from a discount store. If she ponied up the cash to have it tailored, it would have fit her a million times better. Some people just didn’t know any better, though. “I can come back when you’re done.”

  “It’s fine,” my father said, motioning for me to join them at the desk. “Ms. Ross was just leaving.” He pulled out a chair for me, grabbing the bags from my hands. “You’re lucky your mother is out of town. She’d have a conniption if she knew we were eating this delicious garbage.”

  “Mr. Morgan, you haven’t even looked at our quarter three projections,” Ms. Ross said, her tone filled with defiance. Maybe I misjudged her. Maybe she dressed from the bargain rack, but she had the temperament of some of the best lawyers I’d ever met.

  “I have them right here,” he said, flipping through the stack of papers. “I’m looking right at them. I’m not impressed.”

  “We’re trying to rebrand,” she said. “That takes time and money.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Ross. My time is worth more per hour than you’re projecting to make in the entirety of quarter three. What do you want me to tell you?”

  “Tell me that my staff is still going to have a job in the next six months. Tell me these talented football players who are training their asses off aren’t going to end up screwed. Tell me that all this effort I’m dumping into this project isn’t just some joke to you.” Her tone never wavered. I could’ve sworn she was standing a little bit taller than she was a minute ago. It was so hot, I began fanning myself inadvertently.

  “Nothing’s a joke to me. It’s business. Next time you come back here, give me a reason to keep dumping cash into this clusterfuck. Now if you’ll excuse us,” he said, walking over to the door and holding it open, gesturing for her to leave, “I’m going to have lunch with my darling daughter, and that’s worth all the money in the city.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Morgan,” she muttered under her breath. As the door swung shut, he smiled so hard he was beaming. My dad was so cheesy. In one breath he could be shitting all over someone’s dreams, and in the next he was just some dad eating sandwiches covered in french fries and coleslaw with his kid like it was nothing. I guess you don’t become the biggest business mogul in Pittsburgh by not being able to compartmentalize. He definitely excelled in that field. He had his hands in a little bit of everything from industrial plants to strip clubs to apparently women’s football. I never knew what he was working on, just that he was always working, and that he was always happy to drop everything for me.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that in front of people,” I said, watching him intricately take apart his sandwich and smother it in the Tabasco sauce he kept in his desk.

  “I don’t. I kicked her out first, didn’t I?” He picked off the tomatoes and plopped them in the trash can. “Did you want those?”

  “I mean that princess stuff. It’s just, you know I’m in between things, and nobody is going to take me seriously if you keep doing that in front of them.”

  We both knew I wasn’t ‘in between things.’ I was a twenty-six-year-old woman wearing a pair of cutoff overalls and a sports bra, clothes that would get anybody else laughed out of this office. I was hanging out with my dad at one pm on a Tuesday afternoon because I was bored. The only things I was in between was my morning latte and my afternoon nap.

  I had graduated from college over four years ago with a degree in Sociology that I had no intention of using. My resume consisted of exactly two jobs since I’d turned sixteen. The first was at a gas station for boats my father owned. He was trying to ‘punish’ me one summer by showing me what a hard day’s work looked like. I walked away with more free boat rides than I could count and a killer tan. Dream job. I was so pissed off the day he sold the place I didn’t speak to him for a month.

  My other job was as a professional pierogi racer at the local baseball field. Something about dressing up like a potato-filled dumpling and sprinting across right field after the fifth inning while a packed stadium cheered me on was a transcendent experience. The pay wasn’t anything to brag about, but the street credit was well worth the effort. Being a pierogi is pretty much like having the keys to the city. I got canned when I took a summer off to go to Greece with my sorority sisters, but I still applied every year in hopes they’d take me back.

  “I’m sorry,” my dad said, taking a huge bite out of the stacked sandwich. “How mad would you be if your mother and I got a divorce?”

  “What?” I stammered.

  “I’m just playing. This sandwich is so good, though. Why your mother wants to keep me from such a perfect creation is insane to me.”

  “Judging by the sounds you’re making, she probably th
inks you’re going to run off and have an affair with the guy who owns the shop,” I teased. “Only you would leave a woman as pure as Heidi for a hunk of salami.”

  I picked at the french fries falling out of my sandwich, not really hungry anymore. I watched the hustle and bustle of his office through the glass doors—men and women who weren’t much older than me, walking through life with a purpose, a goal, even if it was just to put food on the table, and I couldn’t help but feel that emptiness again. That jealousy. I knew it was a terrible way to feel, and that just led to self-loathing. I knew there were millions of people in the world who would give their left arm to be in the position I was in. I was a spoiled brat with rich parents who didn’t care if I spent the rest of my life doing laps in our indoor pool and throwing ragers on our yacht. As long as I was happy, they didn’t care what I did.

  Except, I wasn’t. Not genuinely. And that made me feel even worse.

  “Who was that woman?” I asked.

  “She’s engaged. To a man. Sorry, love,” my dad said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” I said, although I appreciated the fact that he kept an eye out for me. “I meant, what is this football team she works for? I never heard of that before.”

  “Exactly. Nobody’s ever heard of it. And when they do, they don’t seem to care. I figured investing in sports was always a slam dunk, especially in this city, but the last three months have proven otherwise. I’m not upset. It was a minimal risk.”

  “Three months? That doesn’t seem like enough time to get a good feel for something. When does the season start?”

  “I don’t even know,” he said. “I’m not trying to be the bad guy, but sometimes you have to cut your losses before they start getting out of hand. It’s just business. It’s nothing personal.”

  “Dad!” I whined. “It’s so personal! Didn’t you listen to her? There’s staff! They need jobs.”

  “They’ll be fine. Everyone will get a nice severance package to tide them over until they find something else. You know I don’t just leave people hanging.”