Starstruck

Chapter 15

Connor parked his car in the parking garage and turned off the engine and sat there for a minute. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and tried to steel himself for this meeting. Sitting there he thought back to his senior year in high school.

FLASHBACK TO SENIOR YEAR

Connor smiled as the rest of the team piled into him as everyone celebrated their win. Not only had they won the state championship, but Connor had been named MVP. This had been an amazing year for him with baseball and he had already been talking to several college coaches who were trying to convince him to sign with them.

"Connor Stevens?" a crisp woman's voice said from behind him. Turning around Connor saw a professional woman, dressed smartly, in her early thirties, standing there smiling at him. Connor didn't recognize her but he smiled anyway.

"Yes ma'am?" he said politely.

"My name's Tanisha Jones" the woman said with a bright smile. "I am very impressed by what I saw today and at your last several games."

Connor smiled. "Thanks! You have seen several games?" he asked her.

"Yes...and quite a bit of tape of your games. I am an agent with All Star Sports Agency and I would like to talk about your future" she told him.

The next few days Connor had met with her and his father as they talked about his future. He didn't sign anything to keep his options open for playing at the college level, but Tanisha set up a meeting for him with the Padres team and they were definitely interested in him starting Single A immediately if he was interested. They explained to Connor how they worked with young players to bring them up to MLB level in a few years.

Connor had talked with his old coach more than his dad because he actually trusted Coach Riley's opinion about it and after some serious thought, Connor decided to skip college and play professionally. The team told him that he would need an agent and he could either work with Tanisha or anyone since he hadn't signed yet.

However Connor felt loyalty to her for all her help. She had gotten him the meetings that helped convince him without any guarantee that he would be a client and after looking in to things, All Star Sports was a pretty well-known agency.

So Connor called her to make a formal meeting to talk about being his agent. It was just the two of them in her office and she had gone over how she would negotiate on his behalf, including trying to get him endorsement deals as he gained in popularity. She had just finished talking about social media training and scrubbing to make sure there was nothing on any of his accounts that would be embarrassing.

"Tanisha" Connor interrupted her in the middle of her examples of really bad tweets.

"Yes?" Tanisha smiled reassuringly.

"There is something that you should probably know" he said not looking directly at her. He hadn't only really talked to one other person about this before but after all of her comments about living in the public eye, he felt he had to. "I'm, well...that is, I mean to say" he took a deep breath, "I'm gay" he said looking at her.

Tanisha froze for a moment. "I see" she said sitting back. She looked at him carefully. "Connor...you know that there are no out MLB players?" she asked.

"I know and I'm not out" he said quickly. "I mean I'm not dating anyone or anything. Baseball has been pretty much everything for me and I want to play at the top level."

Tanisha took a deep breath and looked a little more relaxed. "I'm not saying that there are no gay players Connor. In fact, I know of three for sure that are, but they are all in the closet. They avoid publicity and attention, and definitely are not public with their...situation" she warned him. "They take...steps to avoid issues."