We received news the following Wednesday afternoon at practice that Northshore had beaten Caulfield. Part of me was annoyed because it meant Connor was moving into the next round but a bigger part was concerned with beating him in the Championship. I’d be damned if some amateur team took that chance away before I’d even got a taste of it.

Ridgemount had played two other schools since Northshore and won. Coach had upped our practices to three times per week. I’d met with him in the weeks prior to discuss implementing new footwork and levelling up our drills.

“Woah,” Keegan whistled as I returned from my seventh lap around the field. The rest of the team was cooling off in their two-minute break. “You’re really going for it.”

“You don’t get to be the best for no reason.” I took a desperate gulp of water from my drink bottle before dumping the rest on my head. Sweat clung to my body and my uniform felt like a second skin in the late summer heat. “I skipped dinner last night to nail this drill.”

“Speaking of dinners,” Keegan said, “my parents want to know if your family is still on for Saturday?”

“What’s Saturday?”

Keegan snorted a laugh. “Brunch at the club? Both our families are going? Ring a bell?”

I rolled my eyes. “Why would it? My parents are there more often than they’re home. What’s special about this weekend?”

My parents were members of the exclusive Cadwallon Club, a high society for whose membership came only through birth right and an extensive registration fee. All the men in Dad’s family had been members, going back generations to the club’s establishment in 1869. Mum wasn’t a member herself seeing as women couldn’t join independently, but her marriage to my father made her an honorary member for the past twenty-one years.

Given the club’s elitist branding, children were an unwelcome feature in the elegant dining rooms and on the lush greens. My first time at the club had been in attendance of a corporate lunch with investors for Dad’s company when I was thirteen. The past lustrum had accumulated a string of memories with brunches, tennis matches and golf rounds that were really a front for Dad’s business deals.

Keegan’s parents were members of the Cadwallon Club too, which had founded our friendship when we were kids. If we weren’t dragging our feet through yet another tedious brunch that spoke only of business dealings and trade, we were challenging one another to competitive tennis duels, coercing the gift shop employees into handing out free sodas, racing golf carts down by the lake, and flirting with young girls lounging by the pool. Or boys, in my case.

I’d always wondered how my father would feel if he knew of the summer I’d spent making out with the seventeen-year old pool boy in a supply closet when I was fifteen.

The club upheld traditional standards, so it was only my duty to constantly stoke that fire with the spark of rebellion. After all, angering the right-wing heteronormative bigots had become a passion of mine from the time I was fourteen. Their looks of disdain about any mention of a ‘dishonourable lifestyle’ fuelled that riotous spark in me that I’d happily let burn, if only to see the looks of horror on their faces when they realised the world wasn’t as linear as they’d thought.

Still, none of that stood out as something to prioritise in my mental calendar. “If it’s another bougie symposium on the significance of reducing oil trade taxation, spare me the sales pitch.”

Keegan laughed. “No, nothing like that. Dad didn’t tell me much, just that it was important we be there on time. I assume it’s a new client.”

Lifting my jersey, I wiped a sheen of sweat from my forehead. “Same old, then. I don’t know why we have to be there. Hey, we could swipe Vodka miniatures from the snack bar and get drunk in the back of the movie theatre?”

Keegan snorted, “And risk the day manager forcing us to shower in the men’s locker room again because we reek of alcohol and bad decisions?”

“Well, if you hadn’t thrown up all over yourself and the back row, we would’ve gotten away with it.”

“You had two vomit stains on your blazer and could barely stand up.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“So, rather than eat lunch with our families, you’d rather get pissed in the back of a movie theatre and spend all afternoon throwing up in the clubhouse toilets?”

“Hey, don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Quinton was glancing between us, his pecan curls tightly coiled beneath a layer of sweat. “If it’s just to meet a new client, why do you two have to be there?”

I sighed, lifting my right leg into a quad stretch. As luxurious as the Cadwallon Club was, my purpose had never been to indulge in the chilled rosé and caviar on blinis. “Presumably because they have a daughter.”

“Meaning?”

“That my dad only acknowledges my sexuality when he can close a deal on it.”

Quinton frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“He means,” Keegan said, dousing himself with his water bottle before shaking his hair out, water droplets splattering across my jersey, “that Dakota flirting with the daughters of clients may not be totally unrelated to the reason as to why his dad’s company has so many investors.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“It’s future prospects.” I lazily toed a soccer ball in small circles with my foot. “Not literally, but Dad seems to think that men in business are more willing to invest in something when it pleases the females in their family. Taking their daughters for a stroll around the grounds or pulling out their chair helps sell the ruse. That’s the reason he makes me go.”

Quinton looked horrified. “Your dad is making you take girls on dates to upsell a business you don’t work for? Dakota, that’s sick.”

“Not dates,” I kicked the ball to Keegan, who passed it back, “just a little harmless flirting. Buy them a drink, compliment their outfit, that sort of thing.”

“How long has this been going on?”

I shrugged. “A year, give or take.”

Quinton’s eyes widened. “A year?”

“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be. I never lead them on, and they never ask for more. Sometimes it can even be nice.”

Quinton shook his head in frustration, curls falling in his face. He pushed them aside and peered at me over the black rims of his glasses. “You said that’s the only time your dad acknowledges your sexuality. Does he make you flirt with boys too?”

My thoughts drifted back to the pool boy from three summers ago. I snorted a laugh, “God, no. He’d rather see me date a cactus than another dude. It’s just that he has no problem capitalizing on my sexual identity if it’ll put him ahead of his competitors. Otherwise he’s happy to pretend I’m as straight as Hugh Hefner.”

A look of indignation overcame Quinton’s face. “And how is that okay?”

I shrugged again. “It is what it is. Dad and I have never been close. I’m pretty sure that chance went down the drain when I came out to him and shattered all his dreams of me being the ultra-masculine, heterosexual, domineering CEO that will take over his company one day. Maybe it’s a generational thing but quite frankly, I don’t care. I’m just biding my time until I finish school and can move out. Plus, I still have my mum.”[JM1] 

Quinton sighed, seemingly choosing his words carefully. “I get the need to want to impress your parents. But Dakota, you don’t have to take that. Call your dad out on it. Your sexual identity is something that should never be exploited.”

I mock saluted him. “You got it, kid.”

“I’m serious, D.”

With an awkward laugh, I kicked the ball a few feet away and began to jog after it. “I know, and it’s freaking me out. Learn to let loose, Q.” Then, “Alright team, break’s over! Form a line and get ready for agility drills!”

Behind me, Quinton sighed.