"Selina!" Pam had to jog to keep up with the other woman's rage fueled pace. "Selina, hold on. Let's figure out a game plan here."
"My game plan is those degenerates lost me a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and they're done," Selina shouted over her shoulder, continuing her warpath down to the locker rooms.
Pam had to swerve to avoid a security guard, the combined sound of she and Selina's heels thunderous in the hallway. "Selina, come on, you and I both know this is on her piece of shit manager. The crowd loved her! I think she could be a val-,"
"Pamela," Selina stopped and whipped around to face her. "I need you to be thinking with your head right now, not your clit. She's a liability who clearly can't follow even the simplest of instructions."
"First off, fuck you," Pam shot back, raising a finger to poke Selina hard in the chest. "It's easy to see who's pulling the strings if you'd spent more than 5 minutes in a room with them. With a different coach I'm sure Harley could be exactly what we need her to be, but you have to stop making rash decisions based on what's in your bank account."
Selina looked beside herself. "This is a business, Pamela! Of course my decisions are guided by my fucking bank account! That's how this works!"
"Well then look at the long term!" Pam threw her hands up. "She's 23 years old! This is an investment in the future! Kate's not going to be our shining star forever, I can promise you that, and this girl filled half the goddamn arena for her debut match! She made you more money tonight just because of that then you would have made off that bet."
Setting her jaw, Selina glared at Pam, her expression angrier than her usual cold and calculating.
Pam took that as an invitation to continue talking. "That contract was carefully worded not to include Jared in any legally binding capacity. Harley is our employee, not him."
Selina's eyes narrowed and she was silent for a long moment, Pam's heart quickening slightly under her scrutiny. Eventually, she spun on her heels once more, continuing onto the locker room and leaving Pam standing in the hallway.
She got to enjoy a momentary respite before someone else was yelling at her.
"What the fuck, Isley?! That bitch just lost me my bonus!" Kate had exited the press room, wisely waiting for the door to close behind her before making a scene.
"Christ," Pam turned. "Katherine Kane, I wear many hats for this organization, but payroll isn't one of them. Selina is dealing with it."
"Yeah, I'm sure she has my best interest in mind," Kate scoffed.
"Of course I find you two together," a third angry woman joined the party, Renee's voice echoing down the now busy hallway.
Kate said, "Let's talk about this at home" at the same time as Pam said, "Can we not do this right now?"
"Fine," Renee responded...to both of them. "But what happened out there?"
Pam couldn't go through this again. "You guys will be fine. One lost bonus isn't going to put your gratuitous mansion into foreclosure. Harley's experiencing a bit of a learning curve, it seems."
"OK, well, tell her to speed up her process," Kate made sure her discontent was painfully obvious. "The rest of us play by the rules, she's not special."
"Great," Pam acknowledged. "Are we done here?"
Kate rolled her eyes, slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder and sliding her sunglasses on (despite it being 10pm by this point). "Let's go, Renee."
Renee followed, but not before flipping Pamela off.
What a night this has been. Pam felt somehow both exhausted and relieved. The exhaustion
made sense, but the relief? Not so much. Maybe it was because she and Kate's affair was now painfully obvious to all affected parties. OK, 'affair' sounded a bit romantic. 'Extracurricular activities' seemed a more accurate description. Again, Pam hadn't felt guilty, per say, but she did respect Renee, so…maybe that was it. Who knows, Really? Pamela certainly wasn't a psychologist.
She started for the exit, deciding it was time to get home. Whatever fallout remained could wait until the morning.
But the morning came considerably sooner than Pam expected.
She'd set her alarm for 7am like every morning, but the incessant beeping that woke her was not the alarm on her phone, but rather the motion alarm connected to her front porch sensors, and it was 3am, not 7.
Pam reached, bleary eyed, for her cellphone, pulling up the security app and blinking at the video feed.
There was certainly someone out there, but they were wearing a hood that obscured their face thanks to the shadow her porch light was casting. Pam watched as the figure bounced nervously from foot to foot and reached a tentative hand up to ring her doorbell. Pam switched her view to the doorbell camera, which gave her an unobstructed view at the possible intruder.
"What in the world?" Pam said aloud to her empty bedroom, sitting up quickly and slipping into the warm slippers she had ready by her bedside. On the way out, she grabbed her house robe, cinching it tightly around her waist to cover her silk chemise.
She turned lights on as she went, her sleep addled mind thinking it would be wise to make it appear like she wasn't at home alone with only her plants.
With her hand on the deadbolt, she paused for a beat before unlocking it, running through a few possible explanations and scenarios, before finally pulling the door open to reveal Harley on the porch.
Pam looked past her to the street, scanning the upscale residential neighborhood for a car she didn't recognize, thinking maybe Jared was lurking somewhere in the darkness…but the street was empty. It was just she and Harley here.
"What do you want?" Pam asked, none too kindly, pushing away her odd sense of panic.
Harley winced at the greeting, her gaze immediately dropping down to her feet. "Uh…Selina fired Mistah J, and I…well…he dumped me out on the street."
Pam's attention fell to overnight bag Harley was holding. "That's…awful," she admitted. "But certainly not my problem. How do you know where I live?"
"Well, I—I'm so sorry," the young woman was clearly embarrassed. "I went to Selina first but she told me I was your charity case now. She said she'd tell you I was comin'."
"She most certainly failed to do that," Pam let her know, catching sight of something when Harley's shoulders drooped. "Take that hood off."
Harley didn't need to be told twice this time, and obeyed, pulling her hood away from her face to reveal a gash running along the line of her cheekbone, an injury Pam didn't recognize from the fight with Kate. The blood had dried some, but the wound was still open.
The blonde shook her head, knowing exactly what Pam was studying. "It just stings a little."
With an exaggerated sigh, Pam opened the door wider, stepping back from the threshold to allow her in. "Come on, let's get that closed up."
Harley grinned at that—perhaps the first outward display of happiness Pam had seen from her—though the movement seemed to pain her as she accepted the invitation, stepping into the foyer with her bag held tight to her side.
"Follow me," Pam instructed, leading her up the stairs and into the open kitchen. "Sit."
Again, Harley did as she was told, pulling her bag onto her lap as she sat on a stool at the bar. "This's a real nice place, Red," she remarked, almost sheepishly.
"Yes, I know." Pam left the kitchen for the bathroom, kneeling to grab one of her first aid kits from under the sink before returning. "Has it been cleaned yet?"
Harley shook her head and so Pam retrieved an alcohol swab from her kit, wiping the skin around the wound before dabbing the wound itself with a separate swab. The blonde had no reaction to any of this.
"Are you high right now?"
Harley shrugged. "Probably."
"How'd you get here?"
"I walked."
"I'm an awful long way from Selina's."
"It's OK. Nobody's gonna mess with me."
Pam closed the wound with three butterfly bandages which pulled the skin taut and sealed it together. "I know this isn't from Kate."
Harley confirmed that with a shake of her head.
"What happened?"
"Mistah J said, since he couldn't be my coach anymore, he'd teach me one last lesson…He forgot to put his gloves on first."
"Forgot. Right," Pam closed the lid on the first aid kit, stepping back slightly to admire her handiwork. "And you were living with him?"
"Well, he was—uh—kinda my boyfriend," Harley admitted.
Gross. "Seems he wasn't good for you in any capacity, then," Pam decided. "You can have the couch for the night, I'll make it up. I would put you in a guest room, but I converted one to a gym and the other to an office. No matter what, I want it clear this isn't a boarding house."
Harley looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. "Yes, ma'am."
In the morning, after Pamela had already taken her shower, applied her makeup and blow-dried her hair, Harley was still sound asleep on the couch upstairs—one leg flung over the side, foot planted on the ground, an arm over her eyes and the other one tucked awkwardly under her body.
Pam watched her from the kitchen island as she drank her coffee. What an odd creature. The bandages had done their job holding her face wound together, though Pam could see the beginnings of a matching pair of black eyes—one likely from Kate and the other from Jared—forming. Pam had some very expensive face cream that could speed up that healing process a bit. Harley would need it if Selina was planning on having her do interviews before her next fight. People loved watching the pain be inflicted on these athletes but tended to find the aftermath off putting.
When Pam rose to rinse out her coffee cup, she also filled a glass with cold water, reaching into the cabinet near the sink to grab her bottle of ibuprofen and crossing the kitchen and living room to place both items on the coffee table within Harley's reach.
Silently, she turned, heading back to where her blazer and purse were waiting, but before she could make it there, something caught her eye. It was Harley's overnight bag sitting by the side of the couch, the one the blonde had held so closely to her chest last night. Pam supposed whatever that bag contained was all she'd had time to grab when Jared kicked her out. Curiosity got the better of her and Pam leaned down to pick the bag up, zipping it open at the top, wondering what Harley deemed 'necessities.'
Pam blinked at the answer. There was literally nothing in the bag but her sweaty hand wraps, boxing gloves and a loose tube of red lipstick.
"Christ," Pam zipped the bag back up and dropped it where she'd found it. This girl really is a charity case. She grabbed her blazer and purse and wrote a quick note on the screen of her refrigerator before taking one last look around, committing the placement of all her expensive items to memory so she'd recognize if anything was missing when she returned.
I'm at the office. I left you some ibuprofen and water. You can leave the sheets as they are, feel free to take a shower, towels are on the rack. Call a cab if you need a ride, Selina should have wired you the money for the fight already. 609-555-0100 is my phone number if you have any questions.
-Pamela