One For The Money [REWORKED]

TWENTYEIGHT {The Instigation}

"It's Now Or Never"

{Tara's P.O.V}

"I just feel belittled by everything," I tell Roy as I toss another batch of sweaty towels into a large hamper in the back area of the training room. We had just finished our first game without Andre- and lost. It wasn't a great night for anyone. The sad taste of the hole that was left when Andre went to Cleveland was still very pungent, and didn't feel like it was going to go away anytime soon.

"I can understand if this was a trade that had an actual plan behind it, but it doesn't, it's just Tom wandering around upstairs thinking of ways to mess this team up even more" I rant.

"It's not ideal, but it's what we have to work with" He says as he pulls some ice packs out of the freezer. I used to ramble to Roy the second most, but now with Andre gone, Roy's the one I go to first.

"It almost scares me to watch what happens next, he just fired another secretary yesterday, and it makes you wonder who's next. It was only last week when he said that he might be downsizing the staff as a whole"

"He's not really doing anything wrong," Roy says "Even though he's doing nothing great, he's the big boss, he would have to do something really bad to get attention from the NBA council, and they're the only ones who could do anything"

Maybe Tom wasn't doing anything wrong by the rule book, but like Roy said, he wasn't doing anything right.

"Eventually we'll get a new owner, maybe in a couple of decades if we're lucky" He says as he bends down to look for something in a lower cabinet.

"You think we'll even last a couple of decades? I'll be like, a hundred by then" I say as I take a seat at a nearby table.

He gets back up. "No, not that old"

"Couldn't we sue him, or boycott him, or something like that?"

"Man, are we out of resistance bands?" He asks, barely even paying attention to me.

I sigh. "Did you look in the storage room?"

"Yeah, I was just there before I came here, I think we're out," He says, disappointed. "Our next shipment doesn't get here until the next quarter"

"Just place another order"

"I did, I asked the storage manager but he says it'll take too long and that we'll get the original shipment before the second one"

"Well why do we have to wait so long? I thought our shipments came in faster than that"

"They come in quarterly," He says "But whenever I need to request another order aside from our regular planned one, the storage manager needs to get that approved by his manager, and then by his manager, and then by big old Tom Gores from upstairs"

"Why am I not surprised," I say as I let myself slug even more into my chair.

"Besides the approval, he's been cutting our supplies to save money" He rolls his eyes as he says that "Which I don't know why, we've been able to manage for years now without cuts, I'm not sure what changed"

"A lot. A lot has changed"

He sighs. "A lot has changed"

"Can't we do anything about this?" I ask "We work here, don't we have some extent of power? At least power in numbers?"

"We're just trainers you know, our only job is to keep the players alive and healthy, it's none of our business to say what should or shouldn't happen upstairs," He says to me, almost in a scolding tone "I know you think you have a little more say in things because you and Shay used to be so close, but Shay isn't here anymore, and you have no inside scoop anymore"

I almost felt hurt, and a tad belittled.

"I never had the inside scoop in the first place, we were just friends," I say, missing her a little more thinking about it.

With Andre- and Shay both gone, I had no one to talk with.

I missed Shay, and when Andre was here we could at least look back on the old memories of her, but now I had no one to keep the thought of Shay alive. Granted Blake was here, but Blake barely liked being talked to in the first place, let alone about her.

I had come to the conclusion that the two of them had to have had something between them. When I asked Andre about it after he talked with Shay, he told me that he wouldn't say anything on Shay's behalf out of respect, which told me everything that I needed to put two and two together.

Maybe Blake was heartbroken. He didn't seem like the type to be heartbroken. He was this big tuff guy, and yet he was hurting.

"Doesn't matter if you were friends or not" Roy says "We just can't do anything about it"

"Your really okay with just letting things slip through the cracks? This is our team too, we don't just work for them, they need us just as much as we need them, if not more"

"I don't like it, but it is what it is right now," He tells me. He didn't do it in a mean way, just enough for it to get through my head.

I didn't like it. I didn't like that I couldn't change it. Maybe I could change it, but it felt too out of reach- and I was one of the shortest people here.

"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"