“What? You were late,” she said as if that explained everything.
He pressed his lips together, and she got the impression that he was trying not to laugh.
He handed back the muffin, and with both hands free, he grabbed her shoulders.
For a split second, she panicked. Was he going to kiss her for real this time? What would she do? Her heart beat kicked up…and then he merely shuffled her over so he could open his locker.
Holy hell. Thank God she hadn’t closed her eyes and leaned in. Small mercies. Seriously, was she going to think he was going to kiss her every freaking time they were together? What was wrong with her?
He grabbed his books so fast she couldn’t believe he’d even looked at them.
“Cool. Thanks. Come to practice tonight, okay? We’ll talk after,” he said, tucking them under his arm.
She nodded, and he ran back down the hall, leaving her holding the muffin, all alone, and late for class.
Then she realized that she hadn’t told him that she only had twenty minutes to give him. Shit. Now she’d have to go to practice and waste more of her time just to tell him she had no more time to give him.
Her head started aching.
Chapter Nine
Lucas felt like shit. His arms hung like weights by his sides, his head so heavy he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to raise it again. People’s faces were overrated anyway. So was watching TV and movies, looking where he was going… He pulled his head up, eyes closed, and rolled it around his neck.
It didn’t make a difference, though. No one was looking at him, and those who acknowledged him didn’t meet his eyes. He was shit. He had caught a few balls, and he’d obviously improved from his first practice, but not so much improved that it felt good.
He saw Avery perched on the bleachers, a book on her lap and hunched over it as if she were cold. He noticed the air vapor coming from his mouth and nose and realized that it was indeed cold now the sun had disappeared. It was a good thing he hadn’t noticed her before because he would have sucked even worse—if that was even possible.
He didn’t recognize himself. At his last school, he would have been the hero of the team, even at practice. His friends would be waiting for him in the parking lot, they’d slap him on the back, and they’d talk about the plans for the weekend after the game. No one would ever be in doubt that they’d be celebrating a win.
But here he had no friends. He couldn’t get his head around the plays, and there was a good chance he’d be benched in favor of the guy who could catch but couldn’t run. Poor guy was a walking bruise since nearly everyone on the team had tackled him at some stage in the past two practices.
He took his time and waited for the rest of the team to hit the locker room or their cars before making his way over to Avery. He couldn’t help but think there was something very wrong hiding in his future. Hanging around the coach’s daughter, when he’d been told specifically to can the girls, definitely wasn’t a good start. Pissing off Colin, the one guy he had to rely on him to pass him the ball, was also a ridiculously bad move.
He no longer knew what to tell his mother on the odd occasion that they crossed paths. Football was going great, school was pretty much the same, and his friends were nice. Basically, he spent the few minutes he had with his mother every other day lying to her.
But he didn’t want her to feel responsible for his shit life. She’d moved them to take a job at the hospital when she couldn’t find work on the other side of the state. He wasn’t going to burden her with his crap, too. He’d done enough to fuck up their family in the past year.
He looked up at Avery again. It was the football letting him down. Success on the field brought friends, and he knew very well it also brought better than deserved grades. He’d already seen Colin’s grade on his last paper in English. He’d got a B when he could barely string a sentence together. Lucas had gotten a C and had written a paper much better than Colin’s.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew that was the way it worked.
Football was the key to his life—everyone in Hillside’s life—and his future, too. If Avery couldn’t help him, he was out of options anyway. He’d just have to face the fact that he might never feel like himself again.
She got up and walked down to the field. “Hi,” she said with a small smile.
He returned a weak smile. “Help me, Obi Wan Avery, you’re my only hope.”
“Now there’s a name I’ve not heard in a long, long time,” she replied in a grave voice. “Come. The other players are easily startled, but they’ll soon be back.” She looked dramatically toward the tunnel where the other players had gone to their locker room.
He laughed, but the effort exhausted him all over again, even though it felt good to laugh at something after the day he’d had. He sighed. “You really think you can help me?”
“I think you’re too far in your own head. We’ve just got to get you out.”
“Okaaay?” he said in a disbelieving voice. “Why did you change your mind?”
She shrugged but didn’t meet his eyes. “My friend reminded me that if someone asks for help, and you can, you should.”
That was it?
It didn’t entirely ring true, but she was here, and he had nothing to lose. “Remind me to thank your friend,” he said. “And you, of course.”
She took a step toward him. “Look, I’m not my father. I don’t live for football. But I think I’ve absorbed enough of his instruction over the years. I know his playbook, I know the other players, and I can probably at least set you in the right direction.” She grinned. “Get in your head. Push the old stuff out. Un-squeak you.”
“Un-squeak me?” he asked.
“You know, like a squeaky door,” she said, turning away and looking up into the bleachers. “It’s something that’s wrong with something very ordinary.”
“So, you’re going to oil me?”
She looked back at him, and he could have sworn that she was trying not to grin. “I did not say that.”
“In my head, you did,” he said before engaging his brain.
“Well, I’m going to push that out of your head, too, while I’m in there.”
Well, better her than the other crap that was bulging out of it. “I don’t mind. Come on in and make yourself at home.”
She hesitated as she stared at him for a second, and then she frowned. “Also there’s another thing. I have like one hour to give you a week, which allows for my travel time. Twice a week for twenty minutes, okay? That gives me ten minutes travel time from home and will get me home in time for…” Her voice trailed off.
“In time for?” Already his mind was skipping along to the realization that forty minutes a week wasn’t going to help him much, especially if he needed to make a decent impact on Coach in the next game or so. But he was out of options.
“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we make the most of our twenty minutes right now.” She looked at her watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Okay.”
She heaved a net of balls onto her shoulder and walked up the bleachers until she was half way to the top. Then she set them down and loosened the drawstring so she could access them all.
“Take a few steps back and face the Duchamp billboard over there.” She pointed to the one opposite her, which was good because all the ads were for Duchamp. This one was for oil changes.
He stretched and crouched very slightly, ready to run as soon as she gave the word.
“Okay, turn to me now,” she yelled.
He turned back to look at her, and a ball whacked him right on his forehead. He staggered back, just saving his ass from falling. “What the fuck?” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“I can’t throw as well as Colin, obviously, so I need the height,” she said as if that explained why she’d just hit him with
a ball. “Also, you saw the ball, didn’t you? You didn’t close your eyes as it came toward you, which is what you’ve been doing since you got here, right? Also, I didn’t mean to actually hit you. I couldn’t do that again if I tried. Sorry.”
“Sorry,” he muttered to himself. She didn’t sound sorry. Like, at all.
He ran to pick up the ball and tossed it back to her.
She didn’t even attempt to catch it but just bent sideways at the waist to avoid it and let it sail right past her and over the edge of the bleachers. “Yeah, I’m not getting that,” she said, watching it disappear. “You throw really well, though.” She took out another ball from the net. “Turn around.”
He planted his fists on his hips. “No, you turn around,” he said in a kids-at-recess way.
“Don’t make me brain you again,” she replied.
“Like you even could.”
“You literally just invited me into your head. I could just explode it from the inside if you’re not careful.” She mimed her head exploding.
“You’re not a vampire. I can uninvite you,” he protested weakly. With the state his head was in, he was pretty sure she could easily blow it up.
She shrugged. “Agree to disagree,” she said as she threw another ball to him.
He caught it and threw it to the bottom of the bleachers to make it a little easier to do clean-up. “I don’t think you can agree to disagree with something I literally just said.” He couldn’t help but smile. She looked like an angel above him, with the floodlights catching on her.
“So, which is your favorite Star Wars movie?” she asked, throwing another ball at him.
He caught it and tucked it under his arm. “There’s no way I’m falling for that.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“It’s a trick question. If I say the most recent ones, you’ll accuse me of being populist. If I say the original, you’ll accuse me of being a traditionalist and a misogynist—which couldn’t be farther from the truth, because I love women.” He paused to appreciate her mouth falling open and catch her next ball. “If I say Return of the Jedi, you’ll say that I didn’t see the plot holes, and if I say The Empire Strikes Back, you’ll say I’m boring—like the movie. So I’m going to come off this pretty badly whichever I pick.”
She took another ball from the net and threw it to him. He barely managed to chuck aside the ball he was holding and caught the second ball one-handed.
“What would I say if you’d picked episodes one, two, or three?” she asked.
He paused, and then they both laughed. “Yeah. You’d know there was something seriously wrong with me then.”
He threw the ball underarm back to her. She caught it. “Hey, look—you can catch the ball,” he laughed.
“Hey, look, so can you.” She held the ball and tipped her head to the side. “You just needed to get out of your head for a bit.”
Shocked, he looked at the balls that had amassed at his feet. He looked back up at her. “Did you just fix me?”
She checked her phone and hurriedly gathered together the net and ran down the steps. “I have to go. See you here tomorrow?” She dumped the net at his feet and ran through the entrance and out to the parking lot.
“Tomorrow,” he murmured to the empty field.
Now all he had to find was someone to talk Star Wars to him while he was actually in the middle of a game.
…
“Hey, Cookie. How was school?” her dad asked as soon as he heard the front door close. He didn’t often call her Cookie anymore, not since she hit high school anyway. This was his monthly check-in with her mental health.
“Okay. Same as usual,” she said, pushing through the swing door into the kitchen to take one for the team. Or at least that was how it felt. She used to get upset at his quizzical looks, slightly too long stares, and questioning, but now she just let it go.
He was at the kitchen table, glasses perched on his nose, looking at a beaten-up file filled with football set-plays.
She had her planners; he had his playbooks. Except her planners were all about the future, and his playbook was all about the past. It even had the Power Rangers stickers that Colin had plastered over everything when he was about five. She paused for a second. What did his future looked like? Why didn’t he have a planner for himself?
Maybe he should have one. But then, he’d fill it with the football team. And only she knew that might not be a good idea. Unless she could fix Lucas.
She dumped her backpack on a chair and took a Coke from the fridge.
Avery knew what was coming next. It had been about a month since the last time he’d waited for her in the kitchen. She could give him all the answers he wanted upfront—no, she didn’t feel sad, yes, she had friends, no, nothing was bothering her, and yes, she was looking forward to the weekend. Only one of those was a lie.
“What do you have planned for the weekend?” he asked, as casually as he could. Which, for her dad, wasn’t all that casual.
She always let him think he was on top of everything. It made him more relaxed and, therefore, made her life a little less tense.
“Well, I’m going to the game Friday with Lexi, and Sunday I need to study for a world history test. That’s it, really.” She knew it would sound okay to him, even though she didn’t really know what exactly he was looking for when he asked these questions.
“What does your planner have you doing this month?” He gazed back at his file, even though she was sure he wasn’t really looking at it.
“SAT words all month,” she said without thinking.
His head snapped up. “Are you studying them? How far have you got?”
Damn. She walked into that one. “My Gs,” she replied, meeting his eyes dead-on. It was another lie.
“Because you have to go beyond E, you know,” he said.
Yes, she did know. He mother had made flashcards for her to learn, but she had stopped at E. She had died before she had written any words beginning with F. The cards had been hidden in her sock drawer, as if she’d started them early so that there would be a complete set by the time Avery would need to study them. And then she’d gotten a cough. And then she was gone. Avery had missed her first shot at the SATs because of what happened, and she was due to sit them along with people who were retaking them later that year. She knew she had to study past E…but she just hadn’t.
Her stomach turned sour, and the same old heaviness weighed on her heart. She swallowed a gulp of soda, trying to ease the tightness out of her voice. “I said I was at G. It’s fine.”
“Hmmm.” He cleared his throat. “I picked up this today. Will you read it? Put your old man’s mind at rest?” He passed over a thin brochure. Its title was “Are you depressed?” It had emojis on the front, everything from a laughing face to an angry face. No eggplant, though.
She wanted to roll her eyes. To complain. But her dad had lost her mom, as well.
“Sure, Daddy. It’s no problem. But I’m fine, you know?” she said, grabbing her backpack and standing.
“I know you are, sweetie.” He smiled and went back to his playbooks.
She grabbed her Coke and went to her room. She really was okay. But the more she tried to convince him of it, the more suspicious he became. And frankly, the more suspicious he became, the more awkward she would act trying to prove that she was okay. It was one hell of a vicious cycle.
By the time she’d laid out her school books, noted all the assignments due in her planner, and planned the following week around the assignments she’d gotten today, her father and Colin had already left for bowling. It didn’t start until seven p.m., but they always left early to get chili fries and corn dogs at the alley before the games started. They’d started doing it as a family after her mom died, but then Avery had stopped going because she wanted more time to study, plus she’d been
undeniably crap at bowling since she’d gotten too old for the bumpers. It also left her free to grab a couple brown sugar Pop Tarts for dinner without getting the “basic food groups” lecture from her dad.
She pulled out her mom’s flashcards and flipped through them. The familiar handwriting made her warm and sad at the same time. She knew all the words on them backward and forward, but she was reluctant to move on from them to the SAT prep books. It almost seemed like another step away from her mom. She sighed.
But as she flipped them between her hands, she had an idea. Maybe flashcards would help Lucas? And then she looked at her planner, and the homework listed for tonight that she was itching to put a checkmark next to, and shoved the flashcards back in the drawer. She’d think about that later.
Maybe she’d do her assignments with a Star Wars marathon in the background. But should she watch them from episode one or in the order they were filmed? She tapped her pen on her teeth and smiled to herself as she remembered her conversation with Lucas. She’d never been called out on Star Wars as hard as he had.
She kind of liked it.
Chapter Ten
Lucas sat with his feet up on an unpacked box in his living room. They’d inherited a sofa from the people who’d lived there before, and his mom had draped a sheet over it, explaining that a white cover would “lift the room.” He suspected it was less to do with interior decorating and more to do with hygiene, because in reality, nothing short of a crane could lift the room.
He’d unpacked their old TV and an even older DVD player—something neither of them had had the energy to do before—and put in his copy of The Return of the Jedi, just so he could make note of the many, many plot holes. Just in case it came up in conversation again.
The reflection in the blank screen of the TV showed that he was smiling. He actually felt good about catching that evening. He’d been able to run, catch, and throw since he was a kid. He’d never really been on the sharp end of any training at all. Everyone had told him he’d had natural talent. He just needed to find it again.
The Love Playbook Page 6