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The legion of Miami doubters—and there are plenty of them to go around—are pushing the narrative that Reinhart is washed, that his much-publicized contract extension was bad money, that he wasted too much of his recuperation spending time with Sterling Grayson, and that the Cyclones should bench him in favor of promising rookie James Wainwright III.

We dislike that kind of reactionary talk.

The season is young, the Beausoleil-coached Cyclones are historic contenders, and maybe Reinhart just needs a few weeks to get his feet back under himself.

Miami has a bye week next week. Let’s see how Reinhart looks on the other side of it.

If he’s not back to making tracks by Thanksgiving, maybe we’ll sing a different tune.

***

With October comes Halloween decorations and cooler weather, two things that you normally appreciate. It turns out that crêpe paper ghosts and carved pumpkins can’t distract you from the absolute shitstorm that the month brings along with it.

“Hi?” she says, staring at the toes of her Converse. She has the same exact accent as Kai. “I’m Chanel? I don’t know if Kai told you about me?”

It takes a moment of carding through the files in your brain labeled KAI’S FAMILY AND LOVED ONES before it hits you, and you thank the almighty for your good memory.

“His goddaughter,” you say, smiling big to try and set her at ease. “You got him that amazing custom Goalposts Tour Pop figure. I told him that I’m going to steal that thing one of these days.”

“And you sent me a bunch of stuff,” she says, blushing. “Merch and a signed poster. I wanted to say thank you. I never thought I’d meet you in person.”

You didn’t know that you still had it in you to be charmed by a fan interaction; you assumed you were too jaded for that. But seeing Chanel’s eyes light up is maybe the highlight of your whole month. You pat the seat beside you.

“You are very welcome. Will you sit with me for a while?” you ask. “I’m really nervous about Kai getting back on the field, and I’d love some company.”

Chanel plops down beside you cautiously.

She’s tall for her age… 13 or 14? All the Reinhart clan are tall people, minus Kai’s mom.

It takes maybe three minutes—you wish you had timed it—for her star-struck awkwardness to evaporate and for her to start chatting your ear off.

She’s starting high school in the fall, she tells you.

Her dad, Damian, is Kai’s cousin, and broke his leg playing football with him in the backyard when they were teenagers.

She loves, in no particular order, a boy at school named Ocean, her puppy, named Goldie, her dance lessons, and old episodes of The Vampire Diaries . And she hates Gabrielle Rose.

“Don’t tell my grandma I said this,” she whispers, sotto voce. “But she’s the biggest bitch for what she’s doing to you and Kai. I blocked her new single on Spotify.”

This snaps you out of the sweet, comfy lull that you were in and shoots your anxiety straight to a 10. The Cyclones are also taking the field. It’s a combination of stimuli that you can barely handle.

“Did you know,” you motormouth out of nowhere, “that I keep every costume I’ve ever worn in a temperature-controlled vault?”

It’s a total non sequitur, but Chanel is also an enormous Grayling. You can almost see her ears prick up in curiosity.

“ All of them?” she drawls slowly.

The way you nod your head is still probably frantic. You will your racing heart to calm down. To ignore the whooping of your suitemates when Kai runs out onto the turf with his teammates, a fist raised in triumph.

“All of them,” you echo. “Nobody knows where it is, for security reasons. I can tell you that it’s underground. There’s a massive battery backup to keep the fabric cool and dry in case the power ever goes out. I pay for an armed guard ‘round the clock.”

Chanel’s eyes are the size of saucers. “Is the Mugler illusion-net bodysuit from the Stargazer tour in there?”

Goddamn, this girl is hardcore. You feel yourself blink in astonishment.

“Sure is,” you say, dropping your voice to a confidential level. “There are two of them, actually. I had to keep an extra on standby because that mesh was always ripping on stage, and I needed one to wear while the other was getting mended.”

She raises an eyebrow. “How about the harlequin Gucci suit you wore to the iHeart Radio Awards in 2018?”

“Absolutely.”

“Last one,” she promises excitedly. “Tell me that you still have the rhinestone Archie Alled-Martínez denim coverall from the Jingle Ball when you announced your second album?”

“Ooh, a deep cut,” you chuckle, relieved to have to rack your brain a little. To distract yourself. “I’d have to text my curator, but I’m, like, 99 percent sure it’s in there. Not that it fits me anymore. I was… what? Eighteen when I wore that?”

“Seventeen,” she fills in helpfully.

“I should put you in charge of the catalog,” you tell her.

She tosses her hair. “I want to go to school for fashion on a dance scholarship,” she replies. “I need to know my references.”

Eventually, Chanel’s grandma sweeps by and tells her sternly to stop bothering you.

She won’t listen to you insisting that the girl is absolutely no trouble at all, and Chanel skips off towards the food in the back of the room, buoyed by her private nugget of Sterling Grayson lore.

Unfortunately, that means that watching the Cyclones get absolutely destroyed is something that has your undivided attention.

With Kai back on the field, it seems like the crowds of haters picketing his games get even thicker and louder. You know that all their anger is really directed towards you, and hate that it’s being reflected not only on Kai, but his teammates as well.

Between Week 6 and Week 7, you make a five-million-dollar donation to The Trevor Project and release a statement dedicating it to all your loyal queer fans who have stuck with you.

(You don’t add through all the bullshit surrounding being cancelled, but hope your silence speaks volumes.) The donation was not made to court good press—ever since No Kid Hungry dropped you, you’ve been looking for the right fit for a charity to throw your support behind—but it buys it nonetheless, and there’s maybe five minutes of radio silence from most of your detractors…

the ones who aren’t accusing you of using the organization for attention and to distract from your many wrongdoings.

Inside your fragile bubble of positivity, life goes on.

Arch Rubin, the illustrious Hollywood director you are fortunate to call a friend, extends an invite to you and Kai for his 75th birthday party in LA in December.

It’s quite a ways out and will require getting Kai to the West Coast on a weekday, but you impulsively RSVP affirmatively after talking with Kai.

Things are, after all, looking up. Renovations are almost done on the second villa in Miami, and you are already planning on flying your parents down for their wedding anniversary.

Your other favorite producer, Graham, sends over some musical demos that really inspire you.

You write a few songs. The Cyclones lose again during Week 7, but that feels like a speed bump at worst. Kai is doing better, you think. Things are going well.

In retrospect, things were going too well.

When Maeve calls you at four in the morning on a Tuesday, you almost miss the call.

Your phone is set to Do Not Disturb and is charging in your office, a habit that you’ve established to keep you from doomscrolling endlessly if you happen to stir in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, Kai only puts his phone on vibrate.

By some strange miracle, the low-pitched hum of five straight phone calls wakes him up from where he’s sleeping beside you.

It’s the Tuesday following the seventh game, and he’s staying over at your place, which he wouldn’t be doing if this coming Sunday wasn’t the bye week.

He jostles your shoulder, more asleep than awake.

“Babe,” he rumbles. “‘S Maeve.”

In the darkness, you blink at the clock beside your bed, and at the phone that he’s handing you. The pieces don’t click until you put the device to your ear.

“Hello?”

“Don’t freak out,” Maeve orders briskly. Which, of course, means that you automatically are wide awake and on high alert. “I need you to get on the plane and get up here.”

With the bleariness of being disrupted from dreams, up here doesn’t immediately register. Up here. Oh. Maeve is in New York. You’re in Miami.

“The plane?” you repeat dumbly. “What’s going on?”

Her voice is low. It sounds like she’s trying to stage whisper through the receiver. You’ve never heard Maeve talk like that. “It’s Artemis.”

“Artemis?” Again, you sound like a brain-dead parrot. At the sound of his sister’s name, Apollo jerks his head up from where he is sleeping at the foot of the bed, sprawled over both your feet and Kai’s. “What the… is she okay?”

“Someone broke into the house,” Maeve says.

“They took her, Ster. Drugged her and carried her out like a baby. Thank god that the fucking paparazzi were camped out outside and know exactly what your goddamn dogs look like. A pap asked the woman why she was with her and if something was wrong with her, because, thank god again, the person was too stupid to use the back exit. She dropped her on the sidewalk and took off running.”

You barely register the thunk of your scalp colliding with the headboard. Shock propels you backwards like it pushed you, like it had hands and jagged jaws that it could sink into your chest.

“Oh, Christ,” you mumble. “Art must have been so scared. She hates strangers.”