Chapter 11: Boss of You

Wednesday February 22

I came back from my morning run to find I had a text to call Scarlet.

“When were you going to warn us that you’d opened your recruiting back up?” she asked, sounding unhappy.

“How about now?” I asked, trying to be smart.

“How about next time you keep me in the loop? Did you forget I’m your PA while you’re going to school here?”

“Sorry. I’m not used to you being my go-to person yet. I should have called you,” I admitted.

“I called Lexi, and she suggested that I get in touch with Frank. She said you need to handle the narrative ... whatever that means,” Scarlet said.

“It means we need to make sure the true story is out there. I don’t want someone from the University of Michigan trashing my character because they’re upset with me,” I explained.

“Is that possible?”

I remembered Coach Title saying that I would be labeled a problem. Hard to imagine since I’d never stepped foot on campus as a player. Yes, recruits could be fickle, but guess what, they were teenagers. I at least had a reason not to go, and Mike being a douche nozzle only made up half of it. The whole ‘my way or the highway’ attitude rubbed me the wrong way. Coach Title might preach that we all get along, but that wasn’t happening on either Mike’s or my part. Mike beating the crap out of my little brother was the last straw.

“Unfortunately, yes. Then there’s me wanting to explore the possibility of playing baseball instead of going to college. If that isn’t handled right, it might become a big deal,” I surmised.

I then explained everything that had happened to catch her up.

“Is it okay if I get Lexi to help me?”

“She works for Frank at the management company. You’ll have to ask him, but I think it would be wise,” I said.

“No, Caryn is running the management company now. Brook’s grandmother did some restructuring, and Caryn wanted to move back to California to be closer to her family,” Scarlet said, giving me news I hadn’t yet heard.

I understood the logic in that. Frank would be able to focus on his PR side, and Caryn really didn’t have a spot within the organization once they bought me out. Moving her to head the personal management business made a great landing place for her.

“That’s great news. Caryn will do a good job.”

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” Scarlet asked.

“Did you have a good time on your date with Paul?” I asked.

“None of your business.”

“If there were a problem, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” I asked.

“Yes,” was her one-word answer.

“Then I don’t have anything else to mess up your day.”

I chuckled when she hung up on me. Scarlet was about to get a taste of what it really meant to be my PA. Up to this point, it had been pretty easy. I’d made sure that Lexi handled my Oscar nomination workload; that fit better with her expertise and made sense. Lexi had sent me messages that the studio and several reporters wanted me to make myself available. I’d held firm to this point, with the promise that when I took my trip to LA, I would do whatever they asked.

Scarlet was about to find out that football had its own set of issues. I suspected that the Michigan message boards were in meltdown mode. I imagined that across the country, football fan sites were speculating where the three of us would land. I could hardly wait until I announced my intentions to look into going pro in baseball. Yep, this would break in Scarlet.

When I got to school, Gina was waiting for me.

“How’s pouty?” I asked.

Dare had skipped lunch yesterday because Gina and I had, in fact, gotten a higher score on our math test. He was a funny kid, sometimes. Dare was even more competitive than I was when it came to academics. I remembered my nerd days in middle school. If it hadn’t been for my circle of friends, I might have been an outcast like Dare. Being the smart kid tended to piss people off.

For Dare, being the smartest kid in the room was something to cling to when he was being bullied. At the very least, he knew that his brains would pay off down the road.

So, when the inconceivable happened—not just me but also Gina getting a higher score—he hadn’t handled it very well. I wished Brook was still here to help him through this. It wasn’t like he could come to me and complain that I’d done better than him. Well, he could, but he would get the tough love my mom thought he needed.

“Still in meltdown mode. I talked to Chrissy, and she said to leave him alone until lunch. If he tries to skip out again, she’ll make him join us,” Gina shared.

That sounded like a plan.

Joey went old-school on me today. She took me out to the football field, where an enormous tire sat on the goal line. Joey demonstrated how to flip it over safely. If a girl could do it, so could I. The reason she stressed safety was that the behemoth weighed close to 500 pounds. If I lifted it wrong, I might mess up my back.

Joey directed me to flip it end-to-end until I reached the far goal line. By the time I made it there, I was sure I would rather be tortured on the rowing machine at level eleven.

“Good job. Take a quick break and rehydrate. When you’re ready, put the tire back where you found it,” she ordered.

She didn’t seem amused when I wanted to stand it up and roll it back. At least Cassidy thought it was funny. Because of my plan, Joey upped the ante and complained I wasn’t going fast enough.

I found that by mixing up my training, she was preventing me from falling into complacency. Once you had learned how to do an exercise, there are techniques you can use to make it a little easier. Joey kept introducing new ways to work me out that required me to go full out. While I hated her for it, I loved the challenge.

When she took my measurements on Friday, I discovered that I’d lost weight but had gotten stronger. I also knew my endurance had improved. Joey was turning me into a lean beast. I wished I’d met her sooner.

“There he is. Everyone, welcome back Dare,” I announced when Chrissy all but dragged him to the table.

We ignored Dare for the first half of lunch. His body language radiated his desire for everyone to leave him alone. Finally, Cassidy had had enough.

“What’s your problem?” she asked Dare.

The whole lunch table got quiet as Dare mumbled something. My eyes got big in horror.

“Shit, is this it? Dare just declared there’s a zombie apocalypse coming,” I said.

Tim and Wolf helped sell it by looking scared. I would have to work with them on their acting skills. Dare couldn’t help himself.

“If zombies want brains, they won’t be coming after you,” Dare said, trying to cut me to the quick.

Everyone burst out laughing. Dare didn’t talk the rest of lunch, but he would glance up every now and then. He would be fine.

After baseball practice, Paul was there to pick me up. I’d agreed to go with Cassidy to the dojo tonight, so she was at my side.

I had almost reached the car when a large man rushed towards me.

“David Dawson!” he yelled and reached into a bag.

“Gun!” Cassidy yelled and knocked me to the ground.

When I finally looked back, Paul had taken him down and had him subdued. Cassidy ran to the back of the SUV and got zip ties to restrain the man. I was in shock when Paul took two guns off of him, one on his hip and the other in an ankle holster. While they did that, I called 911.

Cassidy made me get into the car while she released the drones to make sure no one else lurked nearby.

A police car came roaring into the parking lot with lights flashing and siren blaring. You can guess what that did to my fellow students ... they decided that watching Cops live beat going home and playing video games.

I was happy to see that the police officer was Billy, my friend on the force. That stopped him from shooting Paul with his one bullet. With Billy on the scene, I figured it safe to get out of the car. I cringed when I saw a news reporter with his phone out taking pictures. I started to have a bad feeling this was a setup.

“Well, look who we have here. Deputy Sheriff Anson Park,” Billy said.

“Get these restraints off of me,” he barked at Billy. “I want to press charges against this man for unlawful restraint and assault of a police officer.”

“Three quick questions,” Billy said.

I noticed that he hadn’t made a move to release Deputy Park. When he started barking orders, I had a bad feeling this might go south in a hurry.

“Did you identify yourself as a police officer?” Billy asked.

He glared at Billy in response.

“Are you on duty?” Billy asked next.

Another icy stare.

“What were you trying to do?” Billy asked.

“I have papers to serve on David Dawson,” he finally said.

I smelled a rat. I wondered where Thomas Fox was lurking. This was the same tactic he’d used when they served me the restraining order to stay away from Pam a year and a half ago. That explained why the reporter was taking this all in.

“Bringing guns onto school grounds is reason enough to arrest him. I subdued him because he was rushing David, and he was armed,” Paul explained.

Even Deputy Park blanched at that. Every time there was a school shooting, the politicians postured and made noises about one side of the issue or another. They didn’t agree on much, but they all agreed that if you brought a gun on campus, it was something you should do serious time for.

Billy became all business and put his cuffs on Deputy Park and called his supervisor. Great! I wasn’t getting to leave just yet.

While the entire local police force showed up and Detective Kitchens took charge, I did what I probably shouldn’t have: I talked to the reporter.

“Care to comment?” he asked.

“I’ll give you full access if you answer one question for me. Who tipped you off?” I asked.

“I can’t do that.”

“I’ll just call another reporter and give him my story,” I said like I didn’t care.

“Wait!” he said when I pulled out my phone and showed him that I had Jeff Delahey’s number on speed dial. “Thomas Fox.”

That confirmed my suspicions.

“I was walking to my car in the school parking lot when an armed man called out my name and rushed me. Luckily, I had my security team with me or who knows what he would have done,” I said dramatically.

Frank was always preaching to get out in front of the story. I made sure I mentioned the man rushed me, was armed, and on school grounds, to do just that. Lost in all the noise that would create would be the reason Deputy Park had been there: to serve me papers of some kind.

The reporter nearly peed himself when I told him that my security team wore bodycams, and I would see if I were able to get him the video. Of course, I would have to ask. He gave me his card and then rushed off because he had to get his story in before he got scooped. I promised I wouldn’t give the video to any other reporters before he saw it. I left unsaid that he probably wouldn’t see it, either.

Once he left, Cassidy suddenly appeared at my side.

“Aaron, your former manny, is suing you.”

I was suddenly mad all over. Aaron had signed an agreement not to sue me, or anyone else for that matter, if my parents didn’t press charges against him for assaulting my son and dog. In return, we made sure his medical insurance was paid for, and we picked up any additional fees due to his injuries. Cassidy had popped his elbow out of its socket, which was both painful and potentially life-threatening if he’d ruptured a blood vessel and bled out.

He had recovered and moved on with his life, from what I’d heard. Aaron did get in a spot of trouble when the soccer mom he was banging at our house turned out to be married, and her husband found out.

I suspected that our little weasel Thomas Fox was desperate for cash and figured he could get me to pay Aaron off to make him go away. Thomas Fox had become more than a problem for me. He needed to learn that he shouldn’t expect me to play nice when he tried stuff like this. I planned to fix this problem once and for all.

I made a phone call.

After that conversation, I made my next call to Scarlet.

“Ready to be my PA?” I asked.

“Megan tossed your recruiting phone into a drawer this afternoon. We’re hoping the battery runs down overnight.”

“That’s what I always suggested, but Caryn was a glutton for punishment and thought it unprofessional not to answer it,” I shared.

“Oh.”

I smiled because I could almost hear the gears grinding in Scarlet’s head when she heard that Caryn felt it ‘unprofessional’ to ignore the deluge of calls. Personally, as long as they weren’t calling me, I was okay with it. I would make sure they found out who had called so I could call them back when I was ready.

“I need you to do something for me and not tell anyone else,” I said.

“No problem.”

This was much different from Caryn. I should have put Scarlet in charge a long time ago.

“Book a round-trip ticket for Pádraig O’Malley out of LAX and into Chicago. Text him the information when you get it booked. He’s on the way to the airport now and will return tomorrow night. Also, rent him a car at O’Hare and a hotel room locally.”

“Anything else?” Scarlet asked.

“I need you to get cash for Paddy when the bank opens,” I said and gave her the amount.

“That’s a lot of money. Are you sure you don’t want me to just write him a check?”

“No. That’s his requirement. I’m not sure why he wants it in cash. It’s not like people wouldn’t be able to figure out we’re paying for his travel if they looked hard enough,” I said.

“This isn’t anything illegal, is it?” Scarlet asked.

“It might be a gray area,” I admitted.

I was hiring Paddy to go speak to Mr. Fox, and Aaron, if needed, to fix this before it became a thing. I’d hoped to never use Paddy’s services as a fixer. But Thomas Fox wasn’t going to stop his efforts to get his pound of flesh from me, however he could.

When I finally got home, Cassidy and Paul stayed for dinner. Everyone else had already eaten, but my mom and dad joined us.

Cassidy told them about the sheriff’s deputy and that he was trying to serve me papers.

“I’ll call Ms. Dixon in the morning,” Dad said.

“No need,” I said without thinking.

“I thought you’d finally figured out that it’s better to call your lawyers early rather than when it’s too late,” Dad said.

“I think one of you also told me not to spend money until I had to,” I said to deflect.

“But...” Dad started, and I held up my hand.

“I haven’t been served yet.”

I thought I was brilliant. I’d headed off my dad’s argument for starting to pay lawyers.

“You should call Fritz and warn him that your ‘fixer’ is showing up tomorrow,” Cassidy said.

“Fixer?” Mom asked.

Shoot me now.

That led to a whole discussion of how I knew a ‘fixer.’ I might have glossed over how I’d gotten Zander to agree to the settlement when I talked to my parents.

“David Allen Dawson!” Mom said, signaling I was in trouble.

“I know where the popcorn is,” Cassidy told Paul.

My dad saved me from a public dressing-down when he barked out a laugh at Cassidy’s comment that said, in essence, our show was about to start. She and Paul planned on sitting back and watching our family drama unfold.

“Office, now!” Mom said, pointing.

Cassidy started to get up to follow until my mom gave her a pointed look.

“Uh, I need to get home and do my homework,” was her witty response.

Even my mom didn’t buy that Cassidy ever actually brought homework home.

“I’ll give you a ride,” Paul said as they left.

We never made it to the office because Mom tore into me before I got out of my seat.

“What the hell do you need a fixer for? You aren’t paying to have Thomas Fox’s legs broken, are you?” Mom asked.

“I wish,” I said, and my dad reached over and smacked me on the back of the head.

“Hey, if someone did it, you wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, would you?” I asked.

“Maybe not, but you have be careful about how you handle something like this,” Dad said.

“That’s why I hired a professional. I met him because Zander sent him after me, to begin with,” I said in my defense.

“Just because someone else does something doesn’t mean you have to respond in kind,” Mom said.

I groaned. Next, I would hear the whole ‘not jumping off a bridge if my friends did it’ line, or even better, ‘turn the other cheek.’

“David,” Dad warned.

I put my face in my palms and rubbed my cheeks before looking up to respond.

“Here’s the deal. Paddy is being paid to talk some sense into Thomas Fox. If you ever meet him, you’ll understand why a visit from him will make a believer out of you. Heck, Fritz had almost everyone that works for him attend a meeting I had with the guy. They were loaded for bear and still nervous they might not be able to handle him.

“If Fritz gets that worried, think about what a pencil-neck like Thomas Fox will do. My hope is that Paddy will convince him that messing with me is futile, and we can stop worrying about nuisance lawsuits every time something happens.

“In the long run, one visit from Paddy will be far cheaper than hiring Ms. Dixon and her team,” I said as my parting shot.

If my mom was anything, it was tight with a dollar.

“Why do you think it will only take one visit?” Dad asked.

I chuckled.

“If you don’t believe me, call Fritz.”

“I want you to call this off,” Mom said.

“He’s already on his way. I’ll have to pay him regardless of whether or not he has a quick talk with Thomas Fox. I’d hate to waste so much money,” I said, and then told my parents how much it cost.

When Mom heard the amount, she got a determined look on her face. Wait until she found out that I was buying Pam and Tracy a Mustang to drive at school in California. When she had jokingly said I owed her a Cadillac, I think I’d said something along the lines of, ‘if I wasn’t buying them a car, then she wasn’t getting one.’ I might just need to go ahead and have her pick her’s out.

I called Lisa Felton and was disappointed when her phone went to voicemail, so I left a quick message. Next, I flipped through the channels on my TV, finding nothing of interest, and tossed the remote on the coffee table. I stared at my phone pathetically for a few minutes, hoping Lisa would call back. Then I decided to call Tami instead.

“It’s been over a week since we talked. I wondered if you had forgotten about me,” she chastised.

“A phone is a two-way street,” I responded.

“Wow. When you were younger, that would have worked,” Tami teased me.

“When I was younger, you were the boss of me.”

“Who’s the boss of you now?”

“I think that depends on who you ask.”

That was true. Right now, it was my mom.

“What did you do to make Mike mad again?” Tami asked.

“I threw him under the bus with Michigan. I tried to get them to pull his scholarship,” I admitted.

From his perspective, that was a pretty sucky move on my part.

We spent the next fifteen minutes catching each other up on what had happened since Valentine’s Day.

“Someone told me you plan to go to Stanford for your undergraduate,” I said.

“Looks like it, assuming I get in. Everyone says I’m a slam dunk, but we’ll see. I just got word that a couple of my scholarships have come through, though I’m still waiting to hear on the grants. My mom is hoping that I won’t have to get loans to pay for school. I just have to keep above a B average for the scholarships, and I should be okay,” she explained.

“You would have to become a serious partier for that not to happen. Do you even have a party animal anywhere inside you?” I asked.

“Just shut it, ‘stupid boy.’ You’re more straitlaced than I am.”

“When are you starting?” I asked.

“My mom asked me to come home for the summer, so I’ll start in the fall.”

She and I had talked about powering through and going to summer school when we were in college. I’d assumed that that would allow me to graduate early and use my football scholarships to help pay for either law or graduate school. Tami planned to be a doctor, and a significant amount of education was needed to become one. The faster she completed her schooling, the sooner she’d be able to practice medicine.

My original plan had been to take it slow and not hurry to grow up. Since then, I’d been taking AP classes and had a ton of kids. If the kid factor didn’t make you realize that you needed to grow up, I didn’t know what would. When my parents had agreed to raise Coby for Pam and me, I’d only had him. Now our lives were in constant flux because of five little ones, plus Greg’s three demanded serious time commitments from my parents. I needed to hurry up and take over the full responsibility for my children.

This became even more apparent when my dad had his heart issues. While he loved all of his grandkids, they were just that—grandkids. Watching all their grandmas interacting with them last Saturday night made me realize that was what my parents should be able to do. That is, kick back, drink some wine, and enjoy the little rug-rats from afar. It made me recognize that they were going way above and beyond for me, and frankly, I didn’t know what I would do without them. My best guess would be I’d have to hire a bunch of help.

All I had to do was remember what happened with Aaron to determine that was probably not the best course of action. Someone being paid to watch your kids was completely different from having someone who loved them watch them.

I didn’t stress about it too much, however, because my mom seemed to relish the role of hands-on grandma. All I had to do was look at what she’d done when the flu had gone through the daycare. She watched all of them for a week and didn’t break. If she could survive that, I expected she could survive just about anything. Then again, I dreaded their becoming surly teenagers. Especially when one of them was my little princess. What did you do with girls at that age? Lock them in a closet?

“If you decide you need a break from home, let me know. I’ll be traveling all over for the Bond movie. I might not have time to hang out, but I bet you’d figure out what to do and act like a tourist. I can send you a plane ticket to come join me,” I suggested.

From what Lexi had passed on about the shoot schedule, I was going to be a busy boy. It usually took upwards of eight months to shoot a James Bond movie. I would only be on set for three of those months before I had to fly to New Zealand and film the Star Academy movies. Chubby was making a considerable effort to accommodate my schedule, so the deal was he could work my butt off.

“I would enjoy that. Thank you, David.”

My phone told me I had another call. Lisa Felton.

“Hey, I gotta go. New girlfriend calling.”

“At some point, we need to talk about that,” Tami said.

“Can’t wait,” I said and hung up to her laughter.

She knew I would rather go to the vet and get fixed than to have that conversation.

Thursday February 23
When Paddy got into town last night, we arranged to meet at my house first thing this morning to talk. Paddy wasn’t too excited about the early meeting because of the time difference. For him, it was five in the morning.

Fritz, Paul, and Cassidy showed up a few minutes early.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Fritz asked.

“That was my question last night,” Mom chimed in.

The gate call buzzed, and Paul went to let Paddy in. When Paddy walked in the back door, my parents looked at each other and then at me. Paddy looked like the movie version of mob muscle in a thousand-dollar suit. He had a beard, shoulder-length hair, and wore a white button-up shirt without a tie. Instead of business casual, he had pulled off classy hitman casual.

“Mr. O’Malley, I would like to introduce my parents, Rob and Carol. Of course, you’ve met my head of security, Fritz, and these are two of his people, Cassidy and Paul.”

“Morning,” he said back.

“Can we get you something? Coffee? Some breakfast?” Mom asked.

“No. I’m good,” Paddy said. “I would like to talk about what we’re dealing with.”

I had Fritz run the video of when Aaron knocked down Coby and then kicked Duke. It also showed my avenging angel, Cassidy, come in and all but snap his arm off. Dad handed Paddy the contract Aaron had signed. I was surprised when he read the whole document before he looked up.

“You say he’s trying to sue you?”

“Mr. Fox, his lawyer, is the problem. He tried to have me served yesterday, which started all this. It’s my guess he’s trying to shake me down,” I explained.

Then my mom launched into everything she knew about our dealings with Thomas Fox and her low opinion of him. I’d been right yesterday that if someone broke his legs, she wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. I think that overnight, she’d come to grips with how I planned to approach this.

“You don’t plan violence, do you?” Dad asked.

“I doubt it will come to that,” Paddy said.

The room became silent. Dad and I had fallen into the Dawson silence routine. I think everyone else just tried to wrap their heads around me hiring a fixer.

“Fritz told me he knows how to take care of a dead hooker if they turn up in my trunk, so if...” was all I got out.

“David Allen Dawson!” Mom snapped.

Wow, I’d gotten the full-name treatment two days in a row. I hadn’t done that since middle school.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Paddy said and then left.

We all looked at each other. Paddy seemed dead serious when he answered my offer of Fritz helping dispose of the bodies. I vowed this would be the last time I did something like this. If I’d given myself a day to think about it, I would never have called in the big guns for Thomas Fox.

For some reason, I was put in charge of making breakfast. While I did that, everyone else speculated about what Paddy O’Malley would do to get Thomas Fox and Aaron to agree to back down. I’d also asked that Paddy see about convincing Mr. Fox to stop his nonsense. Everyone felt he would be successful.

Fritz took me aside and suggested I never mention his name and dead hookers around my mom again. I’d already come to that conclusion due to her reaction this morning. My excuse was that when I got nervous, I tried to joke around. Like Wolf, I was hit or miss.

In PE, Joey had her hair down. I was reminded of how much I was attracted to her. The truth was, Joey’s long soft waves had taken me by surprise. Usually, she wore her hair up in a ponytail, and I’d never noticed the curls like I did this morning. When I was close enough to take in the scent of Joey’s hair, I’d leaned in to get a better smell when she turned around. I let out my breath when I figured out I hadn’t been caught sniffing her hair, as I startled her when she saw how close I was. Well, Joey didn’t catch me. Cassidy was another story.

“Sorry,” I mumbled and tried to play it off that I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going.

For once, Cassidy kept her mouth shut about my perving on Joey.

Today, the gruesome twosome had me running sprints. They used my morning PE class for cardio types of activities, and then after school, I usually lifted. This was the opposite of what most of the other players did. Joey reasoned that lifting took longer than an hour to do right. I think they just enjoyed torturing me twice a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Before Joey had come along, I lifted five days a week. I would alternate between legs and upper body. She wanted my body to ‘rest’ between using weights. It was a little unorthodox, but I felt better because of her approach. Of course, the cardio tended to be all body types of exercises, so I needed the breaks from lifting.

Joey contended that for baseball, I had to be more explosive and concentrate on my core, which was critical in batting and throwing. I didn’t need to beef up as I did to take a pounding on the football field.

At lunch, Tim and Wolf stopped me before we joined the table to show me the text Frank planned to send out. I’d told Frank to get their approval before I saw it, since the whole mess involved them too.

‘The road to your dreams is often not straight and narrow; frequently, it has bumps, curves, and dips. Thank you, Wolverine Nation. You made us feel welcome, and we looked forward to joining the team, but circumstances outside our control have caused us to reopen our recruitment. We want to thank the University of Michigan, their coaching staff, and fan base, and wish you luck moving forward. Please respect our decision as we reopen our recruitment. #WhyNotUs’

“Why did he add the last line about respecting our decision?” Tim asked.

“So that we don’t have a bunch of trolls doxing us, which leads to people showing up at our homes to give us grief,” Wolf explained.