Peyton Quinn Foster

New York City was supposed to be a fast-paced city.  Peyton Quinn Foster never understood how a city full of people moving at hyper-speed managed to be so damn late all the time.  She abhored tardiness.  She blamed it on all those years of strict basketball practices in high school and college. Peyton smiled as she remembered those times.  The good old days.  She’d moved to the East Coast from Cleveland at age 14 and found solice on the basketball court at her high school.  She had been one of the fastest, toughest point guards in the Philadelphia area and was recruited to Temple University for college. Peyton was a tiny 5′4″ Freshman, but she let it be known from day one that she was not going for any of that Freshman hazing crap.  She was instantly pegged as a fighter.  A girl with a Napoleon complex that was not to be screwed with, an attitude that served her well both on and off the court.

But then came the career ending injury in the middle of her sophomore year.  That season, Peyton watched with a broken heart as her team made it to the Sweet Sixteen without her. By the end of the season, however, she’d found a new place in Temple athletics as an intern in the marketing department.  A position where her toughness and hardcore work ethic came in handy as she competed with the male interns.  Peyton was a natural competitor with sharp sales instincts.  By the end of her junior year, she’d been offered an account manager position and had become a part-time student, working in the office during the day and completing her degree at night.  It had required a lot of hard work, but two years later, it paid off when she was hired by the Philadelphia 76ers as a marketing rep.

Now, at 28, Peyton was a senior marketing rep for the NBA.  Though she missed the thrill of the game, she didn’t believe in regrets and was more than satisfied with her career.  She had shed her tomboy looks over the years in favor of a classic, no nonsense style, but even that had a level of discipline and organization to it.  Peyton still favored a powerful suit over a dress, but her suits were tailored perfectly to fit her petite body.  No bright colors, they were too girly.  She mostly stuck with black, white, and gray, with the occasional red when she wanted to make a statement and remind people that she was indeed all woman.  Her hair stayed styled in a short, blunt bob that barely grazed her chin.  Where Peyton allowed herself to play was with her collection of toys.  Nothing made her feel more powerful than rolling like a big boy, especially since she was the youngest senior marketing rep and the only woman.  She loved pulling up in her black Infiniti truck with her system blaring early 90s era East Coast hip-hop, then stepping slowly out of the truck, allowing her designer black pumps to hit the pavement as men  watched in shock.  Even her apartment looked like a bachelor pad with its black leather furniture and black and white photos of the Rat Pack decorating her walls.  She absolutely loved it. Not bad at all for a petite 28 year old Black girl from Cleveland.

No matter how far removed Peyton was from her hooping days, that player’s discipline still lived within her.  She often wished she could take it back to the days of basketball practice and make people run suicide drills when they made her wait.  Maybe then they’d learn to respect her time.  Peyton pulled out her Blackberry Curve and sent a warning text to her lunch dates, “You bitches have 10 min to get here before I roll out.” So what if they were only five minutes late? That was five minutes of her life that she could never get back.