WILLIE WAS HEADED OUT OF WORK ON FRIDAY, READY TO BE DONE. Colin was meeting her outside so that he could take her home. She noticed Ted and Rebecca talking when she headed out and furrowed her eyebrows a bit at the sight. She did not want to interrupt, so she was trying to quietly pass by them to wait on the sidewalk when a beautiful sports car slid into the parking lot.

The beautiful Keeley Jones stepped out, her long legs shown off very well in the skirt that she was wearing. She raised her eyebrows at the group in front of her as she closed the door behind her. She questioned, "What would you rather be, a lion or a panda?"

"I don't have time for this," Rebecca muttered, rolling her eyes in response as she just turned around and walked toward her car. They all watched her go cautiously, wondering what had gotten her so upset. Maybe she really did not have time for that, even though it really could be a five minute conversation.

Keeley almost jumped at her sharp tone, and she turned back to look at the two remaining people. "Ted? Willie? What about you? Lion or panda?"

"Lion," the girl replied. She had always been very fond of cats, especially big ones like panthers and lions and tigers. On the very rare occasions that her parents took her and her brother to the San Francisco Zoo, she always dragged them immediately to all of the cats and would just sit there and watch them, even if they were not doing anything particularly interesting. She just thought that they were very pretty.

Ted went for the other option. "Gotta go panda."

"Are you mad?" Rebecca exclaimed, whipping around and joining the conversation as she stared at her new coach with an almost horrified look. She scoffed, "Pandas are fat and lazy and have piss-stained fur. Lions are powerful and majestic and rule the jungle. What's black and white and red all over?"

"I don't know. What?" Ted asked her, but Willie already knew where the joke was heading.

She could not help but chuckle a little bit when the woman delivered the punchline before storming over to her car. They had found something that Rebecca was really passionate about, apparently. "A panda that gets anywhere near a fucking lion. The answer is lion."

"All right," Keeley responded, and she turned back around to look at the other two with panicked looks as the woman climbed into her car. "That Rebecca is an intimidating, very tall woman. I mean, the minute she locked eyes with me, I started sweating."

"She's terrifying. I shake when I talk to her," Willie agreed. She could not even be in the presence of the woman without freaking out and breathing really heavily. She always felt like a teenager who had just got caught sneaking out .

Ted shook his head in disagreement even though he had been on the other side of her cold sartre a number of times since his arrival. Maybe it was just the optimist in him. "Oh, no. She got some fences, all right, but you just gotta hop over 'em."

"Hi, babe," Keeley greeted as her boyfriend stepped out of the door. Willie suddenly felt very uncomfortable in the conversation now that he joined.

His coach raised his eyebrows at him curiously, wondering what his view on their discussion was even though he probably could not give less of a crap about pandas and lions. He was too busy worrying about the amazing life that he lived. "Hey, Jamie, what would you rather be? A lion or a panda?"

"Coach, I'm me," he responded, and he sent the Carlisle girl a glare when she scoffed and rolled her eyes at him. She was probably being petty because it was not the most annoying thing he could have said, but everything he did just made her mad. "Why would I wanna be anything else?"

"I'm not sure you realize how psychologically healthy that actually is," the Lasso man told him with a small nod. He just shrugged and walked away, leaving the other three to discuss how much of a lion he was. He was full of pride and really aggressive at times. However, he did not seem like the most loyal person in the world.

《❂》

THE NEXT DAY, TED DISCUSSED A PLAN WITH WILLIE TO CHEER UP SAM. The boy had been in a kind of funk recently, and his birthday was coming up. So, the Lasso man decided that it would probably make him feel a lot better if they celebrated it properly, even though it was on the day of their first game.

Willie knocked on the door of the locker room, and once she got the okay from the coach that no one was naked or anything, she stuck her head inside and looked at the Obisanya man. "Hey, Sam. You gotta go upstairs real quick. Higgins wants to talk to you."

"Thanks, Willie," he replied, and she nodded, stepping further into the room and out of the doorway so that he could slip past her and out into the hall. Once he was gone, she closed the door.

"Yo, hey, guys. Listen up, listen up. Okay, Sam's birthday is on Saturday. So I was thinking we'd all chip in and get him something nice. Nice gift or something. Right?" Ted explained to the team, and they all nodded, thinking that that seemed like a pretty good idea. He gestured over to the kit man, Nate Shelley, a shy man that Willie had had very few interactions with. The boy stepped out with a colorful and decorated box in his hand. "So, Nate's gonna be coming around with yet another impressive box. Look at this. It's got a face!"

Nate swiftly corrected, informing them that his box had a gender and was not just some object. It had a monster face and a slot where his mouth was, and the Carlisle woman assumed that that was where they were supposed to slide the money. "He has a face. You put the money in his mouth."

"Okay, you hear that, y'all? You put the money in his mouth. Got it? Okay, good. Go get 'em, Nate. Okay? Help him out," Ted told all of them, and Willie was the first to donate. She slipped a twenty into the mouth and patted the monster on the head, which seemed to make Nate happy.

Nate smiled as he went around, collecting the money from all of the footballers, most of them happily donating to do something nice for their friend and teammate. "All right. Lovely. Thanks, Colin. You put the money in his mouth."

"Yummy for you," Jamie said in a really weird voice, and Willie watched with a disgusted and honestly unsurprised look as he took the gum out of his mouth and shoved it into the mouth of the box. He smiled up at the boy holding it. "It's spearmint. Make the money smell nice.

"Thank you, Jamie. That's incredibly thoughtful," the kit man muttered, moving onto the next person with a discouraged expression after what had just happened.

The only female in the room stormed over to him with an annoyed and truly over it face as she informed him for maybe the hundredth time in the past couple of years over the limited amount of time that she had spent with him, "You are a complete and utter asshole."

"Oh, did you want a piece of gum?" he questioned with raised eyebrows, holding out a stick for her as he shoved another piece into his mouth. She stared at him and his stupid ICON hat, wondering how someone could be such a prick and so clueless about it and seriously considering punching him square in the nose. She might have done it if thousands of fan girls wouldn't come after her for ruining his perfect face.

"It's a gift for your teammate, Jamie," she reminded him. She then reached out her hand expectantly. He stared at her for a minute before finally reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet so that he could place a bill in her waiting hand. She smiled back at him sarcastically. "Thank you for your contribution."

Later that day, there was another press conference before the Crystal Palace game the next day. This time, Ted was doing fairly well in front of all of the journalists, and they all seemed to like him now. He raised his eyebrows and pointed at a man in the second row. "Marcus, what you got?"

"How are you feeling about taking on Crystal Palace this weekend?" Marcus questioned, his notepad at the ready even though his phone was right in front of the man, recording the entire thing.

"A palace made out of crystal seems mighty fragile if you ask me," the coach answered, earning him a couple of laughs from the room, which was a good sign. He pointed over at Trent Crimm, which made Willie nervous because the last time that Trent had asked a questioned, it had made the entire interview fall apart with journalists yelling angry questions. "Yeah, right there."

The man stood up, pulling off his stupid glasses like he did every time he asked a question, making a dramatic show of it. Could he not listen and see at the same time? the Carlisle girl wondered. He announced, "Trent Crimm, The Independent."

"I remember, Trent," Ted assured him. They all remembered.

The Crimm man nodded and offered a smile that seemed almost unpleasant, despite the common connotation of a smile. "I'm just curious. Could you explain the offside rule?"

"Well, Trent, I'm gonna put it the same way the US Supreme Court did back in 1964 when they defined porn. It ain't easy to explain, but you know it when you see it," the Lasso man responded, and despite the fact that Trent seemed angry at the lack of an answer, a couple chuckles echoed throughout the crowd at the joke. "Yeah, this gentleman right here."

"Ernie Lounds, The Sun. Thank you. This question's for Ms. Mannion," the man informed them. As he stood up, pretty much everyone in the room groaned, including the other journalists. No one really liked the man. He was an asshole, ugly, and annoying, which was an awful combination.

Rebecca stepped forward, curious and a little scared. She kept a calm and pleasant smile on her face as she corrected him, "Actually, it's Welton."

"Of course. My apologies," he said, but he really did not seem sorry. The brunette girl stood in the corner knew that he was about to ask a question that only an dick of a journalist would ever ask a woman who got cheated on by her husband. "Any thoughts on the newest Rupert girl?"

"Well, Rupert and I are no longer together, so he may consort with whatever model-actress, actress-model he pleases," the woman replied. It was a good move. She did not want to seem jealous or stalkery, so she pretended like she did not know that there was a new woman while also acting like she did not care.

Ernie shook his head with a smirk like he was the luckiest man alive since he got to break the news to her. "No, the girl who came forward today as another one who was with Rupert while you were married. I mean, she says it started five years ago. And they kept it going until, well, still."

"Oh. And all this time I thought men couldn't multitask," Rebecca joked, saving herself after the smile that was on her face turned from pleasant to more panicked. "I'm afraid that's all we have time for. Thank you so much."

The game against Crystal Palace probably could not have gone worse. It started off with the crowd yelling 'wanker' at Ted, and it ended with them losing 4-1. Despite the fact that they scored a goal, it had kind of given all of the Richmond fans false hope that their team could pull through.

On the bright side, Colin told Willie that Sam had really enjoyed his gift, especially the NIgerian snack. That made her a lot happier because she was the one that found those at the market by her house. After the game, they all celebrated and ate some really good cake.