Him & I

The Climb

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it  move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb
——The Climb, Miley Cyrus

July 14, 2018

After talking to Grayson about her new project, Cait was spending their remaining time in Vegas working on a plan. She set up office space in their suite and she was constantly on the phone or reading documents and organizing information.  Grayson smiled and kissed her head, brought her coffee or Diet Coke, told her he was proud of her and headed out to deal with his responsibilities. 

Cait even enlisted Rae to help her with some tasks and Rae had dived in.  It beat sitting around while Luke was busy.  And she did persuade Cait to take the occasional break and go get some sun by the pool.

Between the work she was doing and running to games, Cait certainly hadn't been bored.  In addition to the Jazz games, she had tried to catch as much of the kids as she could, plus some of Amile's games.  She'd seen Harry and Matt too, since they played with Marvin, although Marvin had been sitting out now.  Unfortunately, Frank, like Luke was hurt and sitting out too.

Grayson was stretching after a warm up session but before the game.  He wasn't playing again, so he was just relaxing a bit when the Jazz GM wandered by. "Don't let me interrupt," he told his first round draft pick. "Just wanted to tell you that we're really happy with your progress.  You're making me look good so far."

"Hoping to keep it up," Grayson smiled at him. He hadn't seen Dennis Lindsey much since he first arrived in Salt Lake City and he knew that a GM didn't really interact much with players. But he did have something he wanted to discuss with him if the opportunity came up.

"I know you want to play, but we've seen enough. We'd rather you get totally healthy and get your conditioning in. Will you be headed back to Salt Lake at any point before September?" Lindsey asked politely.

"We're planning to spend at least some time there in August. We've got a few things to do, including deciding on a place to live," Grayson told him. "Cait would prefer to have that settled. And I want to put in as much extra work as I can.  We've also got some things to ship from Durham.  Then we'll be back before the end of the month.  Just taking a vacation."

"Your fiancée's been at a lot of games but I haven't really seen her otherwise. I suppose the shopping and the spas keep her busy enough," he smirked.

"Actually," Grayson frowned slightly, "she's working on a proposal for a meeting she has in August with the management at Park City."

"Is she going to ski?" Lindsey's eyebrows shot up.

"Not competitively," Grayson told him. "She wants to start an outreach program to introduce at-risk and low income kids to skiing. Kids in foster care, kids who've lost a parent, child abuse victims. Kids like that. She knows that skiing can't cure all their problems, but it teaches discipline, self-awareness, self-control, balance and can apparently be pretty liberating. Cait started skiing competitively after her mother's death and she feels very strongly that it can be therapeutic."

It was a long speech for Grayson, who had proven to be pretty quiet off the court, and he watched his general manager's jaw drop.  "That's amazing," he said quietly.  He studied Grayson.  Clearly, he'd misjudged the young lady that had sat quietly to the side for so much of Grayson's introduction to the Jazz. After his only interaction with her, he'd pegged her as a snooty, spoiled rich girl. Competitive, like the player in front of him, but not exactly a philanthropist. But there was apparently much more to her than he'd thought.