Only One Touch (Only One 4)

My parents would take me out when the cameras were around, but Fernanda raised me. Slowly and quietly, I grew up. The press would follow me from time to time. Those embarrassing photos of me in college doing things I shouldn’t be doing are floating around somewhere. I mean, everyone else did them, but I just got mine caught on camera. No one reported that I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master's degree in foreign communication.

They were on wedding watch as soon as I officially moved back to Dallas. It all became worse when my father gave me the Dallas Oilers. I was the youngest team owner ever. I had just turned thirty, and I had no idea what to expect. I knew what I didn’t want, which was to be the laughing stock of the league. The team was a fucking mess. Even with our draft picks, they’d placed last in the league for seven years in a row. It was a shitshow.

Being twenty-seven and the owner of a professional sports team made me an eligible bachelor. The headlines were either Nicolas Edward Is dating so and so or Nicolas Edward just made another stupid trade.

I was over it all. It was almost like a downward spiral. I knew my father was waiting in the wings to swoop in and make it better, even if it was his fault that the team was so bad.

“Hey,” Frank, the general manager for the team, says as he comes into the room with a coffee cup in his hand. “I thought I would be the early one.”

I look at the phone and check the clock and see that he is two minutes early. I try not to roll my eyes at him and instead just nod. I’ll wait until the meeting starts to get him in line. Frank has been with the team for the past seven years, and if you ask me, I would have fired him five years ago. But his contract is ironclad, so until it’s up for renewal next year, I have no choice but to fucking keep him.

Grabbing my bottle of water, I drain it all, and I’m tossing it in the trash when Lizzie comes back with two cups of coffee in her hand. “Left,” she tells me, so I know which coffee is mine. She nods at Frank and walks to the head of the table and takes a seat next to me.

The coach is the next to walk in. “Michel,” I say to him, and he sits beside Lizzie. He has been my coach for the past two years. I got him when Montreal fired him. Of course, Frank didn't want to hire him, but I give zero fucks what Frank thought about anything.

Usually, your general manager acquires the rights to player personnel by negotiating their contracts and reassigning or dismissing players no longer desired on the team. They may also have responsibility for hiring the head coach of the team. But not Frank. And not on my watch. It was rare to have an owner at the team meetings. It was also rare to have an owner negotiate the contracts, but I did. And sometimes I did it without even informing Frank, which didn’t go over well with him. Again, I had zero fucks to give him.

“Okay, let’s get this meeting started,” I say, looking at my Rolex watch and seeing that it’s precisely three on the dot. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“How long is this meeting going to last?” Frank asks, and I look up at him. “It’s a budget meeting, so I figured two hours tops.”

“You are free to leave at any time,” I say and then look over at Lizzie, who hands me the first file. “Six contracts will be expiring at the end of the season.” I look down at the list and then back up. “Six that we need to keep.”

“This wouldn’t happen if you made me do my job,” Frank says to me, and I lean back in my chair.

“Your job?” I laugh. “Was it your job to sign a thirty-seven-year-old to a six-year contract for forty-two million?” I ask. “The guy was one step to being retired.” Frank just glares at me.

“He was a first round pick.” He leans his arms on the table.

“When he was eighteen,” I counter. “Let’s look at this one. Kistoff.” I open the file. “Another crazy fucking contract.” I look down at it. “Five years for ten million, and he was thirty-five.” I don’t even bother letting Frank talk. “He had three fucking knee surgeries before he was signed.”

“If you just play these guys …” he says, and Michel groans.

“Do you know how many times they had to sit out because they were hurt?” he asks Frank, and I just watch.