But, last night, as I was reading the comment section filled with the scum of the world, an idea popped into my head. And sitting in front of him, seeing that this is something he actually cares about and not a publicity stunt, I know it’s the only angle I have with him.

“You don’t have a foundation.” I open my email and click on one of the six messages I sent myself for this meeting. “Why not?”

He shrugs his shoulders, but that’s all he gives me as far as answers go.

“I think you should start one.” I open one of the links in the email, a player’s foundation website, and hand him the iPad. He tentatively takes it from me, another win in my column. “With a foundation of your own, you can put actual action in place. You can raise money and help the causes you’re so passionate about. I put together a list of about fifteen different player foundations, just go back to the email and you can click through the list.”

I don’t say anything else as he scrolls and reads. Instead, I watch him. I watch the way his eyebrows furrow together, the slight tilt of his lips, the way his spine seems to lengthen. He’s into it. This might actually work!

“I started to set up a foundation last year.” His words catch me all the way off guard. Not that he would notice, because he still hasn’t looked away from the screen. “I did all of the paperwork and was approved for 501(c)(3) status at the beginning of the summer, but let it fall off after that.”

“Wow. Okay, good.” The paperwork would’ve taken us half the season, so this is great for my plan. But even though it makes things easier on me, I can’t help but be irritated that normal people can’t get approved before they have all of the details. Of course, for the rich and mighty Quinton Howard Junior, he can just make things happen with no real intent to follow through. “Do you have anything else for it?”

“Nope, just the approval.” He glances down at the iPad again, like more than a few seconds of eye contact with me is impossible for him. “I filed the papers and then life happened and I didn’t do anything else.”

Life happened?

By that, does he mean he signed a ginormous contract guaranteeing he’ll make more money in a month than I’ll likely see in a lifetime? When life got in the way for me this past year, it was because I was burying my father next to the plot where we buried my mother thirty years ago.

How sad for him.

The embers of leftover anger and irritation begin to spark and I struggle to smother them.