Chapter Text
"Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her." -Mia Hamm
“Fuck you.” - Leon Darisaitl to Matthew Tkachuk after scoring a goal together in the 2020 NHL All Star Game
Toni doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Washington D.C.
It wasn’t as cold as Minnesota, but it was full of people asking questions. And they weren’t even smart questions, or pertaining to hockey half the fucking time, and she was expected to give a shit about all of it. The only upside was that the play was good, and the fans weren’t outrageous, and the people actually cared about the women’s team. So she didn’t voice her greivances, and she tried to be as courteous as possible to the press by not telling them to go fuck themselves. And she was recognized. That was nice.
It felt good, being noticed and respected for the work she did.
And she had Martha.
So she tried to complain as little as possible.
Which really wasn’t fucking easy sometimes, like when she signed a deal with Nike, but they didn’t want her to talk about going through the foster system with a junkie mom and an absent dad, unless it was on their terms. Or when half the reporters asked her about girl shit instead of hockey (which she couldn’t’ve answered if she tried), but the other half made her off as a some 3rd wave feminist wet dream because she was androgynous and “unafraid to speak her truth”. Or the realization that she was too famous for Tinder but not famous enough to have girls after her all the time. That one really hurt.
It could definitely be worse, she knew. She could be in Montreal or Toronto, where the fans tear rookies apart as pre-season fun. She could be in L.A., with half empty rinks and a city that only asks about the Lakers or the Dodgers. Or, honestly, she could’ve stayed in Minnesota, where they would’ve undoubtedly made her do shit to promote the wellbeing of other rez kids. Where when someone she grew up with finally tired of her shit and leveled with her, she would’ve had to look them in the eye and take it. Where the Wild may have tried to get her mom out to a game, to sit in the box with owners and publicists and guys with sons who get sent to fancy rehab in Southern California for their coke problems and come back to invest in JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley or Citigroup or fucking whatever.
Or Anaheim. Fuck Anaheim.
So it’s Wasington, then. It could be much worse. It would probably be fucking better if she was allowed to just go to the rink, shoot until her wrists cramped, skate laps until her knees buckled, show up for games and never have to be interviewed again.
When she tried to explain this to the team psychologist, he pursed her lips and looked at her the way men do when they think you don’t understand something. She refused to go back, electing to stay after practice to skate coast-to-coasts as fast as she could with Rachel until they couldn’t walk instead.
Hockey wasn’t a love story. She’s tried, and she doesn't know how to explain it.
She started playing with a local church group when she was four, joined a co-ed league when she was seven, and played in every game in every rink across the state until high school. Then, she was invited to some state camps, shook hands with a recruiter, and was told that she could end up going to college after all if she could pass all her classes and really perfect her slap shot. High school was a slow type of hell, and she got suspended once, but only for two days because the other girl actually deserved it. She met Martha. Her teammates liked her, as long as they were in the top of the conference and she was scoring. Martha didn’t always like her, but she was loved and she always had someone to talk to.
So she kept playing. She likes how the cold sets into her bones, and she likes walking around with bruises. She proves to people that she’s tough, she’s smart in an unconventional way, and useful. That’s the word she looks for when her coach briefs her - she’s wanted in this lineup, needed for this play, she’s an asset to the team. She hangs up the medals, Ovechkin, Megan Duggan, and Hilary Knight posters. But she keeps the copies of scouting reports in a shoe box in her closet and she’s read the critiques enough that she can quote all of them from the particular game and minute, but she’s read all the affirmations twice as much. Quick, agile, on track to be one of the top scorers in the state with her in-game decision making. So good from both sides of the ice, flexible with each hand, the best stickwork in her age group. Potential to be a once in a generation talent for her region, if she can control her temper and get better on the defensive transition. It feels like acceptance.
She’s small, that’s what keeps coming up when they talk about her, but she’s scrappy as hell, a natural game IQ, and her hands - great, strong hands, accurate shots with varying power, perfect passes. She gets on the ice, she scores. She assists. She gets slammed into the boards so hard she fears she’s bitten through her mouthguard. She sits on the bench for half a period. She gets put back in, slips between the defense, and scores again. Over and over and over.
She graduates with four black eyes, three cracked ribs, two concussions, and a full ride to play D3 at Gustavus Adolphus college.
It’s a good team, a really good team with a winning mindset, she likes the campus, and it looks like they’re going to win their conference.
After months of the most intense practices she’s ever had, they do. She breaks the freshman scoring record in the second period of the semi-final. They win the championship on home ice in 2nd overtime, when Toni draws the goalie too far to the near post, and slots the puck back to one of the A’s for a top corner slapshot. The team explodes off the bench, rushing the scorer, but the goalie (an academic, quiet redheaded junior who helps her with her statistics homework) goes to her instead, crushing her in a hug, then shoving her into the dogpile. When the captain raises the cup, the crowd is still cheering. After it’s been passed to the assistant captains and the goalie, it goes to her. The crowd somehow cheers louder, the coach claps her on the back and for a few minutes, everything feels like it’s going to be alright. It’s the happiest moment of Toni’s life thus far.
They party in the locker room, then the coaching staff leaves to give them deniability, and they go off campus to drink and keep it going. None of them take off their gold medals, and she falls asleep on a couch in a sorority house basement. She spends the next day nursing her hangover and running her fingers over the cool metal around her neck. Then she’s back on the ice, practicing her defensive transitions and shooting every type of shot from every angle for hours. Two weeks later, she wins the Laura Hurd award. A week after that, she gets a phone call from a scout at the University of Wisconsin.
Six months later, she’s spending her summer at a training camp for the World Juniors, wearing a team USA sweater.
There’s a lot of buzz about her, this unknown rez kid from Minnesota, and there’s a soundbite from an interview with the Swedish coach where he mentions her in passing with a chuckle, not caring to remember her name, as a way of shrugging off any fear of playing them in the group stage.
It pisses her off. She scores some great goals in team scrimmages, has the best stickwork of her life.
She’s put as the right wing in the second line, handed a sweater with the American insignia on the front, ‘Shalifoe’ in big letters on the back, and it's the same number she played in for Gustavus Adolphus.
She’s not the first one in the rink, but she still leaves last, and stands for half an hour under the locker room showers, letting them tap the bruises mercilessly, watching the sweat and quick streaks of blood flush down the drain. She eats what the team nutritionist puts in front of her, sleeps when an A knocks on the hotel door and tells them goodnight. Each player has a session with the team psychologist, and the doctor warns about something to do with masochism, but they’re already on the plane across the Atlantic before the coach can really be informed about it.
They tie Sweden in the group stage, beat them in the quarterfinals, and lose the championship to Canada. She’s playing better than she did in college, and it’s enough. Her name shows up in the news breakdown. Wisconsin gives her a formal offer for a full scholarship. Higher up team USA coaches and NWHL affiliates congratulate her, shake her hand. She’s done something right.
That fall, she stands in front of her locker at Wisconsin for five minutes in silence. There’s a duffel bag full of gear sitting at her feet, and a handwritten note of welcome from an athletic director in her pocket. She pulls on the red and white, laces up the same skates she wore before, and goes to play.
She graduates with a degree in political science and a Patty Kazmaier award. Anaheim drafts her as the first overall pick. It’s a team of veterans clinging to the highs of their peak seasons, and she knew she wasn’t going to be in the first line before the coach told her. She plays with them for one year, putting up some great opportunities and a few braces when they put her in. They don’t make the playoffs, and then she gets traded to the Capitals for the fourth overall draft pick, three third round picks, and 250,000 dollars in allocation money.
So she packs up the tiny apartment she rented in Anaheim, and moves to DC. They told her it was coming before it happened, the GM mentioning an outstanding draft class behind her and the need for a little financial wiggle room. She didn’t care, she was just waiting to be excused to call Martha and tell her they were going to be in the same city again.
She goes where they tell her to go, and she plays. The burn of the rink air in her lungs, the bruises across her thighs, are the most natural things she knows. It feels like affirmation, like a homecoming.
The Caps are good. They’ve been good, and it looks like they could go into the late stages of the playoffs, a conference final if they all stay in good health. She’s on a billboard in the city, and people buy sweaters with her name on the back. She’s in the same city as the person she knows the most, the only person she loves unconditionally.
It occurs to her that it all shouldn’t feel this lonely.
***
Shelby didn’t think she could love DC more.
Soccer in Texas was a cruel affair. Even without the humidity and threat of heat stroke, they had to compete with football and baseball and every other men’s sport before being given a shred of attention, then had to compete with each other for every open team spot and US development program roster because of the sheer size of the state and number of girls playing.
But she pushed through, and she made it. She prayed every morning before breakfast, thanking Him for blessing her with the resiliency and the opportunity to live the life before her.
She laced her boots up the same way every day, took a big breath in and listened to her heartbeat, then set off onto the pitch with a smile. It was colder here, and sometimes she shook in her puffy, but when she thought of running out in RFK stadium, it only made her excited.
Texas had always been cruel. It was always going to be for girls like her.
Glances in the locker room that were held for a beat too long, practices moved to the field behind the church rec center, pre-game recitations of the Lord’s Prayer where they all held hands and looked at each other to see who didn’t know the words.
For a while, it fit. Then one day, it didn’t.
She was fourteen. She was at a US Soccer magnet camp in Houston. She took the water break during one of the long, torturous days of summer, and saw a girl two years older - a brunette center back with a booming and deep voice despite her age - splash the water across her face, raise her shirt to wipe herself clean again. She saw a soft stomach, a bikini tan over a sharp v-line, the beads of sweat stubbornly clinging to her jawline, and felt a pang of hunger.
She shook her head, blaming the delirium brought by hours in the wet heat, and adjusted her shin guards. She went back to her position in midfield. She didn’t look at the center back again for the rest of practice, even when her coach called her out for not dropping the line for the set piece like the brunette had yelled at her to. He shook his head and looked at her with narrowed, confused eyes, muttered something about the heat and her out of character action, and marched back to the sideline.
That evening, she ate more dinner than she wanted to, showered and hoped it would be enough to knock her out for the night.
The next day, they ran the set piece drill again. They huddled up, the defense gave instructions and when they broke, the center back patted her head twice, told her she was doing a good job. It was just a passing word of encouragement from an older girl.
Shelby fucked it up again. It’s so simple, she didn’t know how she was able to. But her feet, the quick, strong feet she had been praised for, just couldn’t move the way they were supposed to when she was so unfocused.
The confused, concerned eyes of the center back flipped something in her gut worse than the sound of the coach scribbling something down on his clipboard after he yelled at her.
Then it got worse.
It was assumed that older players in the camps would help out the younger girls, because it’s competition, but when they’re not on the pitch, they’re still a bunch of teenagers who are constantly being judged. Besides, helpful, encouraging teammates are more likely to get put on rosters when there’s a draw between skill level. That’s what all the coaches said, and every word from them was sacred.
There was a knock on her door after dinner and Shelby froze when she opened it.
The drill is harder than it looks, you know. It really wasn’t, but it was clearly an attempt to make her feel better. It’s just that… The center back really thought about it for a second, leaning into the door frame. You’re so good, Shelby. The way you cut up the midfield and you’re such a hassle to defend? You are so…so fucking talented. The low voice, the spatter of freckles that were now visible in the light of the hallway, the shock of a curse word from the mouth of a teenager after years of church league, the utter conviction behind them - I love playing with you. You’re just so good. That’s all there is to say about it. The brunette shook her head, gathering her thoughts and smoothing her hair back from where it had fallen in front of her face. It’s just that one drill. That’s the only thing. I can draw it up for you, walk you through it? Sometimes it’s just a matter of communication. There was a desk in the room, but only one chair, so that means they would have to sit on the bed, leaning into each other over the notepad, faces inches away from each other, and the older girl would be so kind and supportive, laying out expectations in that voice she used in huddles when taking charge, but she’d keep assuring her through it, -
Shelby shook her head. She wasn’t supposed to have this.
Are you sure? It’s whatever you want, Shelby . She’d never had someone tell her it was her decision before. She shook her head again, made up an excuse about a headache and just wanting to get some sleep before morning practice.
The older girl nodded. Alright. She took a step out of the doorway, but stopped to look at her again. Well, I wanted to check in on you anyway. These practices have been rough for everybody. They weren’t, not for her. You’re doing a great job out there. She looked at the number printed on the side of Shelby’s shorts (that’s what Shelby told herself, the shorts, not her thighs). I’m really proud of you, Shelby. You’re so fucking good. Then she left, walked back in the direction of her own room.
And that was it.
She took another shower, even though her hair had just dried. She laid in bed, pretending to be asleep when her roommate came in an hour later. Laid perfectly still under the covers no matter how much every inch of her ached for something she didn’t have words for.
For years after, up until she graduated college, she could still hear the voice in her head . I’m really proud of you, Shelby. You’re so fucking good. It still made her stomach drop, made her feel a little bit dizzy, shifted something in her chest that she didn’t want to acknowledge.
The next time she was called into a US Soccer camp, the center back had aged out and was already on the U18 roster. Shelby stayed up to watch them win the World Cup in Germany with a dozen other girls in another hotel room on the biggest laptop they could find. They all cheered when the final whistle blew, but Shelby bit the inside of her cheek when the camera panned to the defense, the smiling, relieved center back who caught one of her midfielders in her arms in celebration. She was too busy to see her much after that until three years later, at a huge US Soccer scouting camp for college kids. When she heard Shelby Goodkind? while shaking hands after a scrimmage, the center back limping behind her team with a taped up shin. They shook hands, exchanged ‘good games’ and Shelby felt like a fourteen year old again, choking on her own words, chest crushed by shame and something she didn’t know the name of.
I’m so proud of you, Shelby. You’re so fucking good.
The center back looked at her up and down, shook her head and laughed. Shelby Goodkind. She started to shuffle forward in the line again. I always knew you were the real deal. I’m so proud of you, kid. She patted her on the back, already extending her other hand to the midfielder behind Shelby, heartily exchanging a ‘good game’.
It was need, Shelby realized then. The thing she felt all that time ago and couldn’t recognize. It was just need. In what form, she wasn’t willing to admit yet.
(She was eighteen and saw her again. She was eighteen and touched hands roughened by the years of weight room bars, square tipped fingers that gripped into the thin skin of her wrist. She was eighteen and she hadn’t lost her best friend yet. She was eighteen and her roommate fell asleep watching a movie in a different room, so she conceded to this need just once, just enough to take the edge off. She threw her head back into the sheets, biting her lip so she wouldn’t gasp, and gave in just once. Then she showered, and fell asleep crying into her pillow from the shame of it.)
Washington meant an official new chapter of her life.
She loved the Dash, and she was always going to love the Dash, but it gave her family the choice to come to enough games to stifle her individuality, and Houston was still learning how to capitalise on outstanding players and developing rookies.
She’d been floating the idea of a trade for two years before it happened. She tells her agent it’s because they’ve had a spectacular showing recently and she wanted to see where it’d take them. Anxiety had become a second nature to Shelby, the aspirins and melatonins becoming something of old friends. Leaving Houston meant leaving Texas, and completely removing herself from her family’s house. She worried and agonized over the knowledge of what leaving would mean she had the opportunity to do, and that to leave would mean she would never be invited back.
So she delayed. She played in Houston even though it was so damn hot, and took her long weekends and bye weeks at her parent’s house, offering insight to her brother’s college midterms and her sister’s upcoming AP exams. She stomached family dinner because it meant she could keep her mother and little siblings on her side a little longer, because she could compliment the food instead of looking her dad in the eyes.
She could have an early dinner before hugging them all and excusing herself with the sad reminder of an early practice, drive all the way back to her apartment, throw it all back up from making herself sick, then prepare herself some type of nutritionist approved salad and go to bed.
Over and over and over again, even when the team medic told her she looked too pale and flushed to properly go all in for drills, even when she stayed too long and had to drive through the better part of the night and came to practice looking like death, even that one time when she didn’t have anything for a make-up dinner in the fridge, so she nearly collapsed during practice that morning, blaming the humidity and her own lack of drinking enough water, even though she’d already downed a bottle, it was an early morning spring practice, and she was the player most acclimated to the weather.
She knew it was time to leave, and she’d known it since college. She was overdue, and her body fought her for it.
She spent hours in prayer, the deep kind of meditation that southern baptists and seventh day adventists do, asking and begging for a sign to guide her future.
She kept getting sick, and she was running out of excuses for it.
3 John 1:2, James 5:14-15, Proverbs 17:22, Romans 5:3-4, Psalm 41:3, 1 Peter 5:7, Isaiah 40:29-31, dozens of verses in both Testaments, marked with a slim orange post-it flag. She reads them all ten times, in between lapses of prayer and trips to the bathroom to dry heave. Any sign, she asks tearfully, anything to tell her what she needs to do next.
She couldn’t hide it anymore, not from her teammates, the medic, or her dad. So right when she thought she’d lost it all, throwing up her lunch in a PNC Stadium gender-neutral restroom because she was going back home that evening, she calls her agent and says she’s in, she’ll leave, start over somewhere else.
That night, she breaks the news at the dinner table, and she’s met with silence. After a few beats, her mom reaches over to pat her arm and tell her she’s proud of her. Her dad calls her into his office afterwards and asks her why she didn’t talk to him about all of it first. She’s an adult, he knows, but family is family and it hurts him that their opinion wasn’t included. He lets her go after a hug with a hand on the back of her neck, the recitation of an Old Testament verse about fulfillment and guidance.
When she’s about to walk out the door, Melody hugs her as tight as she can ever remember and Spencer asks about sneaking away to see her in a hushed tone, just the three of them, during one of their school breaks. Shelby loves them both so much, she pulls the car over when she passes the edge of town to sob.
So it’s Washington. It was always going to work out like this. Besides, she gave herself a deadline to fuck it all up.
***
Fall in Washington isn’t nearly as cruel as it could be.
The trees begin to shed their leaves, and the wind that sweeps through the streets finds the crevices of the pedestrian's light jackets, just threatening what could come in a few months.
Fatin hates how much she likes it here.
The shoot is on time, because she’s more or less running it, and she’s really fucking good at her job.
“I'm here for the Nike shoot.” She shows her ID and the lanyard Nike gave her before she flew out here to the guard at the front desk of RFK Stadium, already moving towards the elevators before he nodded in approval.
It’s a relatively small shoot for Nike, but it’s got a lot of room for creativity and self-autonomy, and if everything goes well, it could potentially become something highly impactful on Nike’s regional presence and overall image.
The three Caps players are in a little huddle on one side of the room, and the two Spirit players are conversing over their water bottles on the other. There’s a photography team finishing setting up the backdrop and talking about the use of props, a small herd of wardrobe people sifting through a rack of athleisure clothes, and only a few journalists from the approved outlets, clicking their pens and checking their recorders.
She was put in charge, and it’s a huge deal for her career. She’s young, but she’s hungry, and she’s got a great business intuition. That’s why she’s here, this is what she does. The other workers here are older than her, and twice as experienced, so there’s a level of self-correction and margin of error taken out of the equation for her. And it’s only the first shoots and interviews. So who knows what the players will give her, what will come out of this.
“Alright, everybody,” Fatin says loudly in her business voice, clapping her hands together to get their attention. “My name is Fatin Jadmani, and I’m the Nike rep. Are we all ready to get this going?” The staff look at each other and nod, because this is rehearsed and a shoot like this is too easy to fuck up.
“Great, can I see the athletes please? Then we will be underway.”
The huddle breaks in a whispered chuckle, and the duo make one last comment to each other before coming over. Fatin looks over them.
One of the Caps has a mean, stoic face and eyes that are only looking for efficiency, so Fatin decides she’ll do the photography round first. The brunette with wide shoulders is next to her, fighting a knowing smirk. Fatin can immediately tell she won’t be much trouble, so she’ll go after the mean one. The last Cap is the one they specifically told her about, Toni. Nike doesn’t make hockey gear, but they wanted these rookies to give their locker room postgame interviews in Nike undershirts, post photos from the weight room in Nike shorts and shoes. They wanted these three specifically, because of their story, but this one, the disinterested brunette with hands shoved in her pockets, was the catalyst. No brand had gotten good, raw material out of her because she hated the press and just wanted to play. She even tried to turn down the Nike deal when it was first offered, until her agent detailed her about the contract and its financial aspect. Nike had been looking for opportunities to break into hockey for years, and this was their chance - through their social activism focus and through the league’s talented young blood.
She knew the soccer players, too. Shelby Goodkind was the NWSL’s darling, a fierce talent in a pretty package. She had yet to give an interview that really cut to the core of her character, and she already had a National Team cap under her belt, so that simply wouldn’t do. Nike was going to show her off, and they were going to make everyone love her while they did it. The brunette next to her was more of a mystery; a reclusive introvert who turned down pregame interviews to read in her locker, but who had the second most yellow cards in the league last season. Up close, she seemed more thoughtful than Fatin had expected her to be, but there was something in her eyes and the way she held herself that made her want to learn more. She knew she was going to capitalize on whatever that is.
“I’m Fatin, and I’m going to be your Nike point of contact. You’re all here because you’re probably notoriously difficult to interview, and because you’ve each proven yourselves to be more than just a one-tournament wonder. You’re all good athletes, and we want to understand the people you are off the rink or off the field. If you just work with me, be honest and open to new shit, there’s a good chance you’ll make both of us a lot of money. Hockey, you will be doing photos first, and soccer, you will be doing interviews first. Any questions or concerns?”
A quiet chorus of shaking heads and “No”s meant that they were probably still processing what was going on, so Fatin pulled out a smile and gestured for them to go to their spots.
From there, it was mechanical. Rachel stepped in front of the backdrop and tried to work with the photographers while Dot and Toni whispered things to each other and giggled like thirteen year old boys. Shelby immediately sat across from the representative from the Athletic, flashing her signature smile and extending her hand to be shaken. Leah watched this happen while she slid into her own chair opposite the journalist from Just Women’s Sports, half-smiling and nodding that she was ready.
It was going great, for maybe ten minutes.
“I’m sure you’ve been asked this a dozen times, Shelby, but I’d love to know with as much detail or nuance as you want to give: Why Soccer?”
Shelby immediately dove into her answer like a practiced pageant queen. “Soccer is the best sport out there. I’ve loved it since I was little, and kept going back to it above everything else I tried.” She thought for a moment, fishing for a better choice of words. “It’s the apex of sport. It’s a combination of tactics and physical ability, without the brutish whims associated with contact sports.”
“Brutish?” Toni asked incredulously, stepping away from Dot and pointing a finger at the blonde. “You guys fall all over yourselves and throw tantrums over taking little knocks, and you call us brutish because we’re tough enough to take a punch? That’s pretty fucking rich if you ask me.”
The whole room fell silent, save for Rachel’s unsurprised sigh.
Dot grabbed Toni’s arm, already apologizing to the journalist while tugging Toni back to the photography setup. The blonde opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out, like she had been stunned into silence.
Fatin gave a reassuring nod to the Athletic journalist, motioning for them to continue the interview, while stepping towards the hockey players.
“Okay, what’s going on here?”
“I’m sorry, really,” Toni looked out the window and tapped her shoes on the floor in annoyance, burying her hands back in her pockets again. “Soccer players just annoy me. And I really can’t stand the fucking ‘Holier than thou’ attitude from anyone.”
It was Shelby, she was saying. Shelby who wore a white gold crucifix and had a bible verse in her instagram bio. Shelby, who was a pacifist and who all but disappeared from social media when the country went through the ringer during the election. Shelby, the all-american golden girl who was loved by everyone she met, and everything came easy to. That was the problem.
And Shelby probably didn’t like her either - she could be crass, she was almost anarchistic in her confrontations with authority, and she had publicly called out athletes from her league and others when they hesitated to support the Black Lives Matter movement when all that threw down. Toni, who repurposed her instagram page into a political machine with links to websites and charities, voter registration help, and a story highlight focused around an indigneous artist from her hometown that she grew up with and heavily implied was seeing romantically until it was unceremoniously deleted one day. Just last week, Fatin saw Toni tweet a criticism about the NWSL’s owners protecting abusers within the coaching staff and cultivating a toxic environment for players.
They hadn’t even properly met, and they were already at each other’s throats.
It was an opportunity, Fatin realized. They hated each other, and that was a real emotion that could be channeled and repurposed to get more views. She had to hold herself back from the enthusiasm.
“I totally get that, Toni, but you’re going to have to work with us to be able to do this sponsorship.”
Toni glared at her for a second, then kicked the ground lightly again.
“Yeah, alright. Can I just stay in my lane and with my teammates when I can?”
“Of course, Toni. We’re not going to do anything you’re not comfortable with, and we want this to be the best experience possible for all of you.”
No fucking chance, Shalifoe. The two of you are hot, and you’ve got tension, and I can already see the Sports Illustrated cover now.
Shelby glanced over them with big doe eyes that narrowed when focusing on the brunette, then gave her full attention back to the reporter.
That was the dumbest fucking hill to die on, Toni. You guys hate each other so much, you look stupid. This is one of the best damn days of my career.
They day staggered on, and the two continued to flash nasty looks at each other in their immovable discontentment. Finally, the last thing to do was a choreographed group picture of all the athletes for the cover of the sponsorship announcement.
Fatin strided over to the photographer while he was prepping the exposure settings, whispering to him to put Toni and Shelby right next to each other in a knowing tone. He looked at her in confusion for a few moments but shrugged and nodded.
The next day, Fatin yelled in excitement into her pillow when she received the google drive with the photos. They were really good, especially the group picture with Toni sitting on the ground and Shelby sitting on a box, the former leaning into the blonde’s legs in casual intimacy, and the one right after, an in-between shot of Dot laughing at her own joke and the pair glaring at each other when they thought everyone else was distracted.
This was going to be the campaign that cemented her career, Fatin already knew it. She pulled out her phone, already calling her manager in New York about the next time they could throw an event together, and an extension to stay longer than originally planned.