From the Author: This episode was crafted in response to the news that the USWNT team will be attending the 2024 Paris Olympics without Alex Morgan. As a dedicated fan, especially one who included Alex as one of this book's central characters, I had to address this news and, while I wish the team luck in the upcoming Games, express my frustration for leaving one of the most prolific strikers in history out of what could have been an impactful and successful closure to her Olympic history. From my perspective, I feel like this action disgraces and diminishes Alex Morgan's prolific achievements within the sport, as well as the leagues of fans who were eager to see her play in what would have been her fourth Olympics. Despite this rather tactless end placed on Morgan's Olympic career, I wish to voice how impactful she continues to be in the world of soccer and sporting history, being a near-heroic role model to many fans worldwide. 

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It was as immoveable as concrete to tell a difference in Alex. For someone so engaged with the world, she had a dual ability to be as enigmatic as George, Wil, Isaac, Freddy, or Ben at will. Such was the most difficult case; that of her exclusion from that year's Summer Games.

Not that I really followed soccer all that much, but seeing it in print – in Cosmopolitan Magazine, of all places – rendered my very core into some kind of petroleum jelly substance. The unspoken words, the three weeks of vacation that'd been slated into the Staples desk calendar Isaac was the keeper of being suddenly axed, Alex's driven quest to get more TRXs moved off the lot, it was all...

"A slap in the face!" I cried out, brandishing my phone around the breakroom-slash-meeting room.

Frederick and Ben, the only two dudes I trusted to hear me out at that moment – George was still writing up some kind of letter next door to us in his feng-shui office – sat pensively, ready to intervene when I was in need of some large gulps of that fancy FIGI water stuff that we got for the conference area. I certainly knew Ben had been through the wringer a time or two in golf, and had a rather upsetting retirement eventually from the sport – although Wil and Alex never did go into detail on this matter, and I totally knew better than to ask Ben himself – so once Alex had gone home that evening, I wanted to keep the others a few minutes and tell them the news. Apparently, they'd already heard.

"Grisly, the shock will run a good deal deeper than that for you," Freddy delivered, his finger marking the top of his water bottle with pointed precision. "George is having us over tonight to discuss the fate of the dealership."