The Love Playbook

by Suze Winegardner

  Avery breezed back in again, and just to prove himself wrong, he actually articulated some real words. “Where’s your mom?”

  Her face fell, and instantly he realized his mistake. Had she left? Were they divorced? He knew what that felt like, so at least he could empathize.

  Avery’s gaze touched on the photos around the room. “She died last year.” She held her lips in a slightly unnatural line, and he guessed she was trying not to cry. Absolute weariness and uselessness turned his guts inside out.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said with the understanding that his words meant nothing. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be anywhere that real, live people were. He was a piece of shit. He couldn’t even start a conversation without fucking it up.

  He opened his mouth to apologize again, but it was too late. Coach and Colin had come in with the food. He’d been hungry a minute before, but the expression on Avery’s face was like a gut punch.

  Forcing himself to eat, he tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him even once. How did he apologize for something so stupid, anyway? Then he thought about this whole family. Colin didn’t seem like anything bothered him—how could he possibly have dealt with something like that? What about Coach? Shame and anxiety flooded through him. He was worried about fucking football while sitting with a family who was dealing with something legit horrible? He stopped eating and stared at his food, unable to look at anyone.

  Finally, Coach set his knife and fork down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Let’s talk about your game,” he said, planting his elbows on the table.

  Okay. I can handle this.

  “Extenuating circumstances are demanding that I fill a hole in my offense this Friday. I spoke to the school board, and they said that you could play instead of waiting the requisite eight weeks.” When he said “extenuating circumstances,” he looked hard at Colin, who tucked his head down and played with his food. What was that about?

  “So, I need to know. Have you actually caught a ball in your high school career? Because I might be better playing my defensive tackle if you haven’t.”

  Lucas could feel his face flushing. He couldn’t believe his ability was so far down the toilet that his new coach wanted to know if he’d ever caught a ball. He wanted to tell him how many receiving yards he’d made last year, which was nearly 2,000; how many touchdowns, which was thirteen by the way; and how many MVP trophies he’d gotten over the years. But he couldn’t.

  “Yes, sir. I can,” he said, hoping it was true.

  “Okay, then. You can come to practice the rest of the week, and I’ll let you know on Thursday if I’m playing you or not. We need a decent receiver if we have any chance of getting to the playoffs this year.”

  Lucas opened his mouth to say something, but a sharp clang from Avery’s end of the table stopped him. Everyone looked at her.

  She grabbed for her dropped fork. “Sorry,” she said and dipped her head down again to the book she was reading.

  Lucas was so far out of his comfort zone that the room felt half the size and twice as stifling as it was when he’d sat down. He tried to breathe. He had to get out of there.

  …

  One by one, they stopped looking at Avery and went back to what they were doing. Her dad interrogating Lucas and her brother trying not to look at her father after the pointed reference to the party Colin had attended where one of the team’s receivers had broken his ankle mis-timing—well mis-everything—jumping off a roof into the pool.

  Her gaze was on her planner, but she was laser-focused on what her dad was saying. She’d been hoping this guy could help the team win more and help her dad keep his job and just keep things on an even keel for a bit.

  But if her dad was so unsure about him that he’d asked if Lucas could even catch a ball?

  Her father didn’t usually ask players back to the house for dinner. What was different about this guy? Also, now she came to think about it, why had he been chanting his own name over and over as he was waiting to cross the sidewalk?

  “I can see you’ve got moves. I can see you have the training. I can see you’ve got some speed. What I can’t see is you catching the ball. What’s the problem?” Her father seemed genuinely interested.

  “I…I don’t know, sir,” he replied in a low, almost cracking voice.

  Avery couldn’t help but look up. Colin did, too. Lucas put his napkin on the table and looked for anything as if he were about to bolt for the door. But her dad began to talk again.

  “I looked for you online. I wanted to be sure you understood what’s at stake here in Hillside.” Her dad rubbed his nose in a way that Avery knew meant that he didn’t understand. “You have no social media that I can find. Which is strange, I think.”

  Yeah, no kidding that was weird. That couldn’t be right. Everyone she knew had some kind of social media, even if they just reposted the same memes over and over and over.

  “I was going to warn you about your social media presence. Hillside is small. Everything you post, every time you forget to use your turn signal, every disabled parking spot you use, and every time you don’t say please and thank you, or if you shout at someone down the main street—people will notice that. Judge you. The local papers will write about you. Brady’s Balls will be all over you. Being on the team is a big deal here. If you think they won’t think the worst of you, you’re wrong. If you think they won’t find and talk to your ‘romantic friends,’ you’re wrong. If you think those headlines won’t mess with your head, you’re wrong.”

  Lucas looked down at his empty plate. Avery felt for him.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “And if you make the team as a regular, you have to give up your girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever floats your boat, at least while the season is in play. We practice most nights, and when you’re not on the field, you need to study the playbook. It’s called commitment, son. You’re in or you’re out.”

  “In, sir,” Lucas said almost before the last word was out of her dad’s mouth.

  Avery saw a small fire in his eyes as he said the words. Lucas must need this. He must need to play. His fast response bordered on desperate.

  But was he as desperate as she was to get the team to the playoffs?

  Dad is going to lose his job if the Hillside Hammers don’t finish the season high up the bracket in the playoffs. Dad can’t lose his job. The Hammers have to get to the playoffs.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  Chapter Three

  “Avery. Why don’t you put away your planner for a few minutes and take this young man home?”

  Before waiting for either of them to agree, her dad stood and started stacking plates.

  Lucas watched emotion run over her face. He imagined that she was outraged over being tasked as a cab driver. She was probably calculating how quickly she could get home, resigned that she had to do what her father asked.

  She grabbed a set of keys from a peg in the hallway and nodded him toward the front door. “Come on.”

  Lucas looked over his shoulder to make sure Colin and Coach were out of earshot. “You don’t have to take me—it’s okay.” As he said the words, he realized he had no idea where he was or how to get home. “But tell me one thing: Who the actual fuck is Brady, and why are his balls going to be all over me?”

  Her face relaxed into a short laugh. “I’ll tell you in the car.” She nodded him to the door. “It’s okay—I don’t mind. Where do you live?”

  “Greenbrier,” he lied, naming the slightly less drug-den-filled neighborhood next to his.

  “Come on,” she said, opening the door and walking out into the dull yellow wash of the streetlights. He was entranced by her long dark-blond hair swinging with every step. The fingers on his right hand spread as he imagined running them through the heavy-looking strands.

  What was he thin
king? Nope. No way. She was Coach’s daughter, and that made her 110 percent off-limits. Every girl was off-limits.

  …

  Avery drove really slow…like really slow.

  Once she’d explained that Brady’s Balls was a football Facebook page—and half the reason anyone in town was even on Facebook—they’d lapsed into a weird silence.

  Which gave Avery a chance to actually think.

  Maybe this was some kind of karma, fate, or destiny. She’d asked the universe for him to come back to help her, and he turned up so close that she nearly sat on his lap.

  There was no forgetting her bare leg against his, either.

  Ugh. She needed to focus on the problem at hand, not on the butterflies pinballing around her stomach.

  He looked at her a couple of times as if to ask why she was driving so slowly, but she ignored him. How could she help him so her dad could keep his job?

  “So, you used to be a good receiver?” she began, trying to smooth her tone so it didn’t shriek “I need you to be better so my family isn’t destroyed!”

  He looked out the side window. “I still am,” he said, in a voice that was less convincing than anything she’d ever heard.

  “Uh-huh?” She left it hanging there.

  He shook his head. More to himself than to Avery.

  “What do you think the problem is?” she asked.

  “I. Don’t. Know,” he muttered under his breath. Then he looked at her again. “If I knew, don’t you think I’d fix it?”

  Good point. Her brain ran through the options and landed on one she knew something about. “Why did you move schools halfway through the season? My…” She was about to say “therapist said” but swallowed the words. “If something bad happened, it can affect your muscle memory, the way your brain works—everything, really.”

  He stared at her.

  She snatched a look at him, but he looked interested instead of annoyed. So tentatively, she began to tell him what Dr. Roberts had told her after her mother had died.

  “When something really bad happens, you can forget how to do the things you do every day. Even things like how to start a car. You brain is too busy processing other things—the bad stuff—I guess. But you can feel depressed and anxious and forgetful and even feel physically ill. It’s all normal, but you have to give it time to work its way through.” For her, the worst had been over within about eight months. Waves of sadness still washed over her sometimes, though, but the numbness and tears and tiredness had gone.

  “You sound as if you know what you’re talking about,” he said in a soft voice. “Look, I’m really sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He’d shifted in his seat so he was facing her, as if he was trying to gauge how she was reacting to his apology.

  Reflexively, she reached over and put her hand on his arm to reassure him. “It’s okay, really. You had no way of knowing.”

  He flashed a smile, and she went to remove her hand, but the friendship bracelet Lexi had given her stuck on his sweater. It snagged and pulled a thread. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to get herself free while still watching the road. “Hang on,” she said, flicking on her turn signal with the same hand she was steering with.

  She pulled over and cut the engine and then put the overhead light on to see how she could get her hand back.

  “It’s okay—it’s just a sweater I keep in my bag…” he began. “Look, I’ve got it.” He pulled the bracelet in one direction, but it didn’t come free.

  “It’s okay, I can just…” She bent her head closer to his arm and then looked up at him to get him to move his other hand because, come on, guys were shit at that kind of thing.

  He had bent over, too, and now their faces were like a couple of inches apart. She should have jerked away, but the humor in his eyes tightened something inside her stomach, something she didn’t even know was loose, and she hesitated. They looked at each other for some long-ass seconds until the expression in his eyes slowly changed to something else.

  Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

  Oh God, he thinks I want to kiss him.

  Oh God, I think I do want to kiss him.

  Lucas’s eyes roamed her face for a second, but then he seemed to shake himself out of it. In a second, she realized that he was breaking out of that weird moment, and she dipped her head toward the clasp on her bracelet at exactly the same time as he did.

  Their foreheads banged together with a dull thunk.

  “Ow,” she said, her hand flying up to her head. The movement jerked Lucas’s hand toward her, and he pulled it away just before it hit her square on the head, too.

  Her bracelet broke, and it fell to the floor of the car between her legs.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Lucas said, rubbing his own forehead. He shook his head. “You know, I just shouldn’t be in any kind of polite company.” He slumped in the seat and looked out of his side window.

  All at once, Avery remembered why they were there. That she had basically asked if he’d suffered from some trauma, and he hadn’t denied it. Her heart ached that somehow she’d managed to make him feel worse than he had when he got in the car with her. “Don’t worry—I’m not at all polite company. Fuck off. See?”

  Even though he was faced away from her, she could tell he was smiling by the rise of his cheek.

  “Shit crap. Shit crap ass.” She shrugged. “I mean, I’m just not sure you could find anyone in Hillside less polite than me,” she said.

  It worked. He laughed. “Sorry I broke your bracelet,” he said.

  “Well, I think we can agree that we both broke it, so don’t worry. Lexi can make me a new one in about ten minutes.” In truth, she knew that Lexi would be thrilled to hear about what had just gone down in the car. Not that anything had. But Lexi would still be able to talk about it for a whole evening, no doubt.

  “I should go,” he said, opening the door.

  “No. I can drive you. I absolutely swear I won’t stick any part of my body to you again.” Wow, that hadn’t come out quite the way she planned. “I promise,” she added, a little lamely.

  “Seriously, it’s okay. I can walk from here.” He got out and shut the door.

  What had she done? The universe had brought him back into her life, into her car. She couldn’t let him walk away. She opened the window.

  “Open your eyes!” she half shouted.

  It stopped him in his tracks. “What?” He looked around as if he were about to walk into something.

  The lamplight made his eyes shine. She wanted to look at him a second longer, but she only had that second to help him. “Open your eyes when you see the ball. Look at the air around the ball, imagine your hands there, and then keep your eyes open as you catch it.” She was parroting what her father used to tell Colin when they played catch in the backyard. But she’d seen it work.

  “Sure,” he said with a half-hearted wave.

  Anger flared at his wild dismissal of her attempt to help him. Was he brushing her off because she was a girl? “Who are you, anyway?” she said as she put the window up again. Rude! She took her foot off the brake and coasted around in a giant U at the lights where she’d first set eyes on him about five hours previously. Where did he get off being rude to someone who was just trying to help?

  She didn’t look back as she drove away.

  And then she did look back.

  He was standing in the lamplight staring at the ground. She looked at the road again and then back in the mirror. He was looking up at her, watching her go.

  Her butterflies returned. Had she just nearly kissed him? She swatted the butterflies back into larvae and vowed not to think about his eyes. How his eyes had changed from laughing, to…something else. How his gaze had slowly dropped to her mouth… Stop it.

  As she took the road toward her neighborhood
, she flashed another look in the rearview.

  He was still standing there, still watching.

  Chapter Four

  Lucas’s mind stuttered. He’d nearly kissed her. He’d like…nearly kissed her. Her taillights disappeared around a corner, and he looked up at the sky. Why was he such an idiot? The absolutely last thing he needed to do was kiss Coach’s daughter, and yet it was the only thing he’d wanted to do. It had been as if she was a magnet to something deep inside him.

  In those seconds that their faces had been so freaking close, every thought he’d had about football, about his mom, his old school, their new house—everything—had disappeared from his mind. For a few seconds, all he’d wanted was to touch her hair, to hold on to that feeling, to her.

  And then he’d headbutted her, and if that wasn’t the universe telling him to stay away, he didn’t know what was. But then she’d made him laugh, and damn if he didn’t want to kiss her again.

  So he’d walked away. She’d tried to talk to him, she’d tried to help him, and he’d walked away, against the pull of every cell in his body that had wanted to lean in to her.

  He was a complete tool—yet again. It was like he had a total inability to stop screwing up. Maybe he got this screwing-up gene from his father? Maybe the best thing for him to do was just stay away from people. At the very least, stay away from Avery.

  Lucas wanted to kick the fire hydrant he’d leaped over on the way to practice. He’d been so cocky on his way back to the school that afternoon.

  Maybe he just had to reset. To commit to being Lucas Black. To forget about what happened before. But he needed to play. Needed the entire focus he had on the field. Football was his medicine. Not for the glory or for what it could bring him—which was nothing anymore—but for the peace and pure love of the game.

  He just needed something to help him find that again. Or someone.

  He started running, a slow comfortable pace that barely elevated his heart rate. Every step he took brought him further into darkness as the streetlights became fewer and farther between. But for once, the darkness brought warmth and comfort.