We eat dinner with my parents at least three or four nights every week, just because it’s more fun to eat with them than just the two of us alone, and now that my mom is retired, it gives her something to do during the day, while taking dinner prep off my job to-do list. I honestly don’t think I could have succeeded as a single mom half so well without my parents.
“Yay! Lasagna! I’m gonna eat pretty much the whole thing by myself. I’m starving!”
I laugh. “Well, you know Grandma. She probably made you a whole dish to yourself.”
He takes off his pads on his way to the locker room; a millage rate on taxes from a few years ago paid for a brand-new equipment and locker building for all the various sports that happen at this complex of fields. The building services sports which range from baseball to soccer, football, and softball, with youth, middle school, high school, and adult leagues in each. The building is amazing, actually, with room enough for lockers for each team and each sport, laundry facilities for washing jerseys, and equipment storage. It is great, because I don’t have to haul around stinky pads and jerseys, and Aiden doesn’t have to worry about forgetting his pads at home, or in my car.
Once he’s changed, he climbs into his booster and buckles up, chattering a mile a minute—I have a feeling he’d be running a commentary regardless of whether there was even anyone around to hear.
“—And then I was playing DB against Jimmy, and I intercepted him like six times! He was getting mad, but it’s not my fault I’m so much better than he is! And know what? During school today, Mr. Trent came around to all the classrooms and read his favorite book. His favorite book is Fox in Socks, and it’s super funny the way he reads it. He goes really, really fast, almost like he’s rapping, and we were all laughing so hard. And then, because my class was so good today, he read us an extra story. And know what he read, Mama? He read a Star Wars chapter book! He’s the coolest. I thought Mr. Townsend the janitor was the coolest, but now Mr. Trent is the coolest and Mr. Townsend is second coolest. It’s kind of a tie, though, because I’ve known Mr. Townsend for pretty much ever and Mr. Trent is new.” He barely pauses for breath, and then he’s off again. “And know what, Mama? Mr. Trent played football in college! He was on TV! Mr. Henry who teaches art—but you know that, duh, because he taught you art too, only that was like, forever ago—and anyway, Mr. Henry was like, Mr. Trent was a quarterback in college. Mr. Henry said something about Big Ten, whatever that is, and he showed us some parts from an old game from when Mr. Trent was in college, and he could throw the ball so far! Like, all the way across the field. But I guess he doesn’t really talk about that too much, or something. But how cool is it that our new principal was like sort of famous?”
“So…you like Mr. Trent just because he played football?”
“No! I mean, yeah, but that’s not the only reason I like him. He’s just cool. He talks to us different than other adults do. You know how some adults talk to kids like we’re all still in kindergarten? I hate that. Mr. Trent talks to us like we’re…I don’t know how to say it. Not like we’re adults, but just…normal, I guess. I don’t know. Plus, he comes out to the playground during recess and he throws the football and shoots baskets and pushes kids on swings and all sorts of stuff. He doesn’t just watch. Plus, he’s super great at reading to us. He did voices when he read the Star Wars book. His C-3PO voice was almost like from the movie!”
I only just barely stifle a sigh as Aiden keeps singing Mr. Trent’s praises all the way to Mom and Dad’s house.
It’d almost be easier to shut this whole thing down if Jamie wasn’t so darned amazing.
But, alas, he is, and putting him out of my mind is going to prove difficult, very difficult.
8
A few days later, I’m running a few errands in town—grabbing some groceries, dropping bills off at the post office, things like that. Aiden’s at practice, and once I’m done with my errands, I head back to the field. After parking, I head for the fence to watch the last few minutes of practice. And, lo and behold, who’s there on the field, helping coach? None other than Jamie Trent. He’s in athletic shorts, running shoes, a sleeveless tee shirt, and a ball cap. He’s working the runners and catchers—receivers and running backs, he called them, while Coach Barnhart works with the boys who line up in front, whatever they’re called. Jamie has his group of boys clustered around him, each boy on one knee, hanging on his every word. They’re nodding, and shouting “Yes, Coach!” every few seconds, and then they all clap once, in unison, and jump to their feet. They form a single file line to one side of Jamie, who has a pile of footballs at his feet. He bends, grabs a football, spins it in his hands, and then calls out in a loud, commanding voice, “READY—GO!” and the boy in front sprints forward, and then cuts a hard right turn. Right as the player makes the turn, Jamie dances backward a step, and then rockets the ball at the player, who catches it and jogs to the back of the line, tossing the ball at Jamie’s feet. Jamie calls out encouragement to the next player in line—my Aiden. At Jamie’s signal, Aiden sprints forward and cuts right, catching Jamie’s throw easily. I watch as Jamie goes through the entire line of boys, and then they start again, running a different pattern. Jamie throws easily, naturally, each movement lithe and smooth.
This Jamie is at odds, in my mind, with the Jamie I’ve known so far, a button-down and pressed khakis and loafers kind of guy—a principal, an educator. It makes my heart skip a beat, watching him coach the boys. He’s encouraging to everyone, even when he makes corrections or gives tips for making a better catch. When a boy misses a catch, he tells them it’s fine, offers advice, and claps him roughly on the pads or slaps him on the helmet.
Dammit, he’s making this hard.
After a few minutes of this, Coach Barnhart calls the end of practice and the boys all gather around him on one knee, helmets off now, sweaty heads bobbing as they listen to him. Jamie hangs back; lets Coach Barnhart make his statements. With his background in football, Jamie could probably take over coaching if he wanted to, but he doesn’t seem interested in cutting in over Bob Barnhart’s authority, just helping out. Bob has been coaching the youth league since I was a little girl, and he hasn’t changed much in the intervening twenty, thirty years—a few extra wrinkles on his weathered face, a little more white to his hair than steel-silver, but he’s as he’s ever been: red track pants with white strips on the sides, white T-shirt, battered gray New Balance running shoes, a red Nebraska Cornhuskers ball cap, clipboard in one hand and a whistle around his neck.
Coach Barnhart dismisses the boys, and the two men spend a few minutes chatting, discussing football with lots of hand motions and pointing at diagrams on the clipboard. One by one, and two by two, the boys trickle out of the locker room and head for their parents. Aiden sees me at the fence, waves, and half jogs, half walks over; Jamie joins him, a football in his hands, tossing the ball in the air and catching it one-handed.
“You did really great today, Aiden!” Jamie says as they both converge at the fence near me. “Made some really great catches.”
“Thanks, Coach!” Aiden is vibrating with excitement, beaming up at Jamie. “I have a question, though.”
“Hit me with it, buddy,” Jamie says, tossing the ball to Aiden, who catches it with absentminded skill.
“You’re my principal, but now you’re also my coach, so do I call you Mr. Trent, or Coach, or what?”
Jamie grins, shrugs. “Either one is fine, kiddo.”
Aiden tosses the ball back. “I’ll call you Coach, then. It’s more fun.” He takes off running. “How far can you throw it, Coach?”
Jamie laughs. “Farther than that, pal! Keep going! Go deep!” He takes a couple dancing steps forward, the ball cocked back, cupping it. “Here it comes, Aiden!”
When Aiden is at the far end of the field, Jamie takes a hopping lunge-step forward and sends the ball arcing in a perfect spiral through the air—his form is perfect, and I can see the ex-quarterback in his movements. Aiden is wa
tching it while running, checking his forward progress every few steps and then glancing back up at the ball. And as far as he’s run already, the ball is clearly going to sail past him.
“Get it, Aiden!” Jamie encourages, more to himself than to anyone else, dancing on his toes as he watches Aiden sprint for the ball. “Come on, kid, make the catch!”
Aiden glances forward one last time, and then leaps into the air, the ball landing in his outstretched hands. He impacts on the ground, the ball tucked against his belly, and rolls with it across the grass a few feet.
“YES!” Jamie says, leaping into the air excitedly. “He got it!” He turns to me, beaming. “Did you see that? That’s a ninety-yard bomb he just caught!”
Aiden, however, isn’t moving. He landed so hard, I’m worried he got the wind knocked out of him, or hurt himself.
“Is he okay?” I ask, worried.
As soon as the words leave my mouth, however, Aiden thrusts the ball into the air triumphantly, still laying on his back. “I got it!” he shouts.
He leaps to his feet and jogs slowly back across the field to us; when he reaches us, he’s still gasping for air.
“Holy cow, Aiden! I honestly didn’t think you’d make that catch! Way to go, buddy!” Jamie catches him in his arms and ruffles his hair. “That was awesome!”
Aiden is absolutely thrilled. “I know! It was like, the whole field! I thought for sure it was gonna go past me and so I jumped for it and it just landed right in my hands! It was like something from an NFL game!”
“OBJ couldn’t have done it better himself,” Jamie says. “You’ve got a heck of a future ahead of you, Aiden. For real. I played football for a long time, and I haven’t seen anyone with as much raw talent as you have, like, ever.”
“For real?” If Aiden vibrates any harder, he’ll jitter away across the field. His grin is ear-to-ear, so wide and bright it’s contagious.
“Think I’d lie to you, kid?”
“I dunno. Adults say things they don’t mean all the time, especially to kids.”
Jamie laughs. “You have a point, unfortunately. But no, I’m telling you the god’s honest truth.”
Aiden circles around the end of the fence and slams up against my legs, wrapping sweaty arms around my waist. “Did you see that, Mom?”
I kneel down and wrap him in a hug. “Heck yeah, I saw it! You’re a rock star, Aiden!”
“Is there any food, Mama?” he asks, his voice hopeful.
I laugh. “How many times have I ever picked you up from football without a snack for you?”
“Never.”
I ruffle his hair as I stand up. “There’s a protein bar and some chips in the car, on the seat next to mine.”
“YAY!” he shouts, and takes off running to the car.
I laugh, shaking my head. “He just spent a solid hour and a half running, and he’s still got more energy than I’ll ever have,” I say.
Jamie smiles, balancing the football on its end on his index finger. “Right? Boundless energy.”
“What you said about him being talented at football…” I prompt.
Jamie’s eyes lock on mine. “That was no exaggeration, Elyse. I played with guys in college who couldn’t make that catch.”
“I knew he was pretty good, but some of these kids…” I shrug, chuckling. “They’re awful pumped to be playing, and I don’t know anything about football, but even I can tell they’re not…”
Jamie flips the ball in the air. “They love the game, but probably won’t be playing past high school, if that.”
“Right.”
“When it comes to kids this age, it can be hard to tell. Some kids, they get close to puberty, and they just…bam, they discover athletic ability they didn’t know they had. Other kids, like Aiden, are just obviously born with it.”
I want to stare into his warm brown eyes for as long as possible. Instead, I twist to glance back at Aiden, who is sitting on the bumper of the car, eating his protein bar and watching a pair of grackles chase a crow away from their nest.
“You know,” I hear myself saying, “honestly, when I first met you, I wouldn’t have pegged you for the football type.”
Jamie laughs, not at all offended. “I was never the quintessential jock. In high school, I was in chamber choir and the drama club and all that. I went to practices and lifted with the team, but the crowd I hung out with wasn’t the jocks, it was the drama nerds and choir dorks.”
“I bet that went over well with the team,” I say.
He snorts. “Yeah, about as well as you’d expect. But they couldn’t ostracize me too much and risk making me quit, because I was pretty much our entire offense simply because I could put the ball right in the hands of even the worst catchers, and I was also fairly quick and not afraid of getting hit, so I could run a keep for a few yards. They knew if they alienated me too much, I’d quit and play for the rec league instead, and they’d be screwed.”
“Honestly that makes me feel a little better,” I say, laughing. “I always thought I was a pretty decent judge of character, so if I had you pegged for one thing and you turned out to be something else, I’d start questioning my judgment.”
“Nope, I think you had me just right,” he says, and I feel myself blushing at the unintended innuendo; Jamie catches on and rubs the back of his neck. “Oh, god. Um—I mean…” he trails off. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I should go.” I make myself say, before I say anything I’ll regret.
“Yeah, me too. There’s a board meeting and I probably shouldn’t show up wearing this.”
My eyes flick over him—tanned, muscular calves, strong arms, a five o’clock shadow. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind, if I was on the board.” I so didn’t mean to say that.
“Are you on the board?”
I laugh derisively. “God, no! I don’t even go to PTO meetings.”
“Too bad. I’d enjoy seeing more of you.”
My heart thumps, twists; I feel the same way. But Aiden’s already getting attached to Jamie as coach and principal. I can’t add another layer of complexity to that, not for something with no substance or basis beyond a night of hot sex and a little chemistry.
“Jamie…” I sigh, unsure what to say.
He holds up his hands, leaning back against the fence that stands between us. “I’m sorry, Elyse. I know you’ve said more than once now that it’s best we’re just friends or whatever, but I just…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. We had an amazing night, and I like you a lot.”
“I like you too, Jamie, but I can’t complicate things with Aiden. His father leaving us was very hard on him, and he’s just now starting to really find his equilibrium, you know?”
Jamie nods, not looking at me. “I get it.”
“If it was just me…”
He shakes his head, pushing away from the fence. “You don’t need to qualify it, Elyse. I really do understand.”
“MOM!” Aiden calls. “Grandma probably has dinner waiting. Come on!”
I laugh. “Bottomless pit, that boy.”
“All boys are bottomless pits. Just wait till he’s a teenager lifting weights and practicing for two hours a day.”
I fake a whole-body shudder. “God help me. He already eats me out of house and home.”
“Start saving now, Elyse. It’ll be like feeding an army. And if he brings over his football buddies, you really will be feeding an army.”
“Are you trying to scare me? I just want him to stay this age forever.”
He laughs. “I think I’ve heard parents say that at every age.”
“Because we never want our kids to grow up, and it just keeps happening faster and faster.”
“That’s definitely how it seems to go.” He’s quiet as he says this, and there’s a distance in his eyes, in his voice.
I want to ask about it. He obviously loves kids, but yet he’s divorced with no kids of his own. There’s a story there, but I dare not ask. I dare not get that close.
“I’m gonna go. Aiden will start eating the car if I don’t get him dinner soon.”
“Okay. I’ll see you around.”
He turns away first, striding easily across the field toward the administrative building. I watch him longer than I should.
We’re in the car heading for my parents’ when Aiden pipes up. “Hey, Mama?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
“Can we invite Coach Trent over to Grandma and Papa’s for dinner sometime?”
I swallow hard. “Um…I don’t know about that, kiddo.”
“But he’s so cool, and you guys are friends, right? And everybody likes Grandma and Papa.”
I have a vision: Jamie at the table at my parents’ house, laughing as he passes a dish, talking football with Dad, him and Aiden tag-teaming the dishes.
I shake my head to clear the vision. That’s not happening. “We’ll see, Aiden.”
Aiden sighs disgustedly. “I know what that means.”
I laugh. “Grandma made chicken pot pie,” I tell him, in a blatant attempt to distract him. “Are you looking forward to that?”
“Heck yeah! I love Grandma’s chicken pot pie.” He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “You know who else would love it? Coach Trent.”
“Aiden, let it go, okay? Please?”
His eyes search mine, and I’m afraid he’ll see through me, that he’ll see how much I’d like that too. “Okay, Mama.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
I’m distracted at dinner, that fleeting vision of Jamie is stuck in my head—him, here, in my parents’ house, eating with us.
When Daniel and I were together, we didn’t come over here very often—he didn’t really ever get along with my dad, and the tension made it awkward to bring him over. Then, when he left and we divorced, Mom and Dad became my support system, along with Cora, and I’m here more than I was even during high school. Making up for lost time, I guess.
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