Kat’s cell phone rang even as she hit the button for the elevator of the apartment building. Michael wouldn’t be home yet, not for another hour or two by Aileen’s estimation. But she hadn’t wanted to wait around. Her stomach was still in knots from the game, and she needed to get out before she did something ridiculous like go around the stadium to find one of the Seahawks’ defense, push one of those three-hundred-and-fifty-pound linemen on the shoulder, and yell, “Stop hitting him!”
Sanity would need to return before she would be ready to see Michael’s face again.
But even as she toed off her shoes, she felt the vibration of her phone in her pocket. She dug it out and sighed at seeing her old coach’s number on the screen. “Hello, Peter.”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” her coach demanded in his thickly accented broken English. “Do you think we sent you out there to middle of nowhere to get samba lessons from a saber-toothed tiger?”
“Okay, Peter, first off… it was a bobcat.” She held the phone away from her ear as she listened to her coach go off in Russian. You’d think, after over four years with the man, she’d have learned more than just a few Russian curses… but no dice. When he seemed to finally calm down, she tried again. “And secondly, I didn’t know the cameras were filming the crowd. Why would I know that?”
“Because anyone who has watched five seconds of American football knows they do these things? Have you not heard of a Kiss Cam?”
She was getting lectures about American football now from a Russian. Oh, how screwed up her life was. “Peter, I was blowing off steam. I don’t know why this is even a big deal. I danced with a mascot for a few seconds. I didn’t take my top off and breastfeed an adult male greased up with pig fat while riding a Slip ’N Slide. Perspective, maybe?”
“You are a party girl. You aren’t being serious. We sent you out there for calming influence, and instead, you are making a fool of yourself.”
“I was off duty.” God, her teeth were going to crack from the clenched jaw she was sporting. “I wasn’t exactly mooning the queen of England on the greens of Wimbledon.”
“Not yet,” Peter said darkly.
Jesus. “Okay, you know what? I have to go. I’m getting a call from my second job. Phone sex operator. Shift’s about to start. Bye, Peter,” she added, hanging up on the Russian tirade.
And immediately groaned when the phone rang again. “Yes, Sawyer?”
“I’m not sure what to do with you, Katrina.”
“Sell me to gypsies.” Flopping on her couch, she covered her eyes with a forearm. The whole Bad Kat act was getting old. Which, she supposed, was her own fault.
“You get a job in a bar, for fuck’s sake, and a wild one at that. You go to a football game and draw attention to yourself shaking your ass with the mascot. Let me tell you, there are already a dozen or so lovely puns on sexy pussy and Kat Kelly floating around.”
“I wasn’t wearing a name tag, you know. I didn’t hold up a sign asking people to look at me. I was having a bad moment, there was an opportunity for fun, so I took it.” After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “The bobcat started it.”
Sawyer’s silence was frightening.
“Sawyer, I get that this is potentially costing me some connections, but—”
“You got an offer for a dance workout video.”
That made her sit up. “A what?”
“Your little hip-sway dance with the ball girl during the last tournament caught the eye of some made-for-home DVD production company. Maybe the dance with the mascot was the icing on the cake for them since they called about thirty minutes after halftime. They’re expanding to more streaming videos and need more personalities. They asked if you’d be interested in doing some athletic-stylized workout videos… essentially choreographed dance routines with some workout moves thrown in.”
It wasn’t quite up her alley, but it wasn’t exactly a shitty offer either. “I don’t think that’s for me, to be honest, but that’s an interesting concept. Please tell them thank you but no.”
He said nothing.
“So you’re saying sponsors aren’t shying away from me because I’m not the strong, silent type.”
Still nothing.
“That maybe the sex tape”—which I had nothing to do with—“won’t kill my career.”
More silence.
She had a sinking feeling. “Sawyer, have there been other endorsement offers?”
He grunted.
“Sawyer. You’re my agent. You can’t hold those secret from me.”
“Just bullshit stuff, nothing you want to be attached to.”
“Like?”
“Office supplies, a few websites for shit, and some rip-off energy drink that hasn’t even been FDA approved and likely won’t, given the ingredients. Who thinks jet fuel is a good idea to ingest?”