Keeping Score: A Sports Romance

by Dee Lagasse

  While Jake reached down to open the cover of the big plastic cooler, I looked through the almost-empty wooden shelves for the pre-packaged watermelon slices I saw earlier in the week. There were assorted berries, vegetables, spices, and even freshly cut flowers, but no watermelon.

  Jake grinned, holding up two glass bottles of lemonade. The water from the melting ice in the cooler dripped from the bottles as he made his way over to me. “Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, the sound of crunching gravel behind us stole our attention. At the sight of a hunter-green minivan pulling up behind Jake’s truck, I laughed. With raised eyebrows, Jake turned to me for an explanation.

  Sure, there were plenty of other hunter-green minivans in Fox Hollow. After all, I was fairly certain this town was the central hub for suburban football moms. Though, I was also quite sure there was only one mother in town that listened to nineties hip-hop on full blast in hers.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s Salem,” I explained, still laughing.

  Sure enough, before the door was even fully open, I heard her high-pitched squeal. Stepping out of the van in a pair of ripped denim shorts and a navy-stripe swing tank, Salem clapped excitedly as she waited for the back passenger door to slide open.

  She dipped her body into the vehicle for just a moment. When she emerged, she was joined by a smaller redhead—her three-year-old son, Finnegan.

  “Tia!!!!” he exclaimed as he ran toward me.

  As I scooped him into my arms, I felt some of the tension that had settled in my shoulders loosen. It’s amazing what a hug from an adoring toddler can do to one’s state of mind.

  I hadn’t gotten the chance to text Salem to update her. For all she knew, I was still at Retro.

  “Well, this looks like trouble,” she mused, beaming as she opened her arms. “Listen, I don’t care how many Super Bowl rings you have, superstar. Hug me, damn it.”

  The whining demand would probably be obnoxious if it came from anyone else on this entire earth. Somehow, Salem made it endearing.

  It didn’t surprise me that she knew just how to approach us. She’d always been good at reading a room. It was one of the reasons she made such an amazing preschool teacher.

  Well, that, and her never-ending patience for small children.

  I loved my nephew—her son—more than life itself, and I wanted kids of my own one day. But despite that, I knew I didn’t have what it took to be in a classroom with four-year-olds all day and then go home and mom the heck out of a three-year-old. By yourself, nonetheless.

  One thing I knew for sure: Salem O’Sullivan was a badass.

  “Takes trouble to know trouble,” Jake shot back playfully, before pulling her into a hug. “Hi, Salem.”

  With Finn secured safely in my arms, Salem grabbed a container of blueberries. After pulling out a small stack of cash, she pushed it down into the slot at the top of the box labeled “Cash & Checks.”

  “I have the day off tomorrow, so, I promised Finn pancakes,” she started. “And we all know you can’t have pancakes without blueberries from Sunnycrest. But, you know what would make my day off even better? If Tia Izzy came over in the morning,” she hinted, not so subtly. “I always make enough to feed a small army, so you’re more than welcome to come by too, Jake.”

  I expected Jake to make some sort of excuse. With training camp starting in the next couple of days, I would assume buttery pancakes covered in maple syrup weren’t exactly his go-to breakfast right now.

  “I have to meet my trainer for a session at one, but I can come by for a bit before that.”

  I tried my best to mask my surprise as Jake accepted her invitation.

  I should have made some sort of excuse. Unlike the incident with the club, I could see this was a setup from a mile away. But she just had to go and throw Finn into the equation, knowing damn well I couldn’t say no when it came to my favorite fella.

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  Jake

  After Salem said her goodbyes, I placed the lemonades on an almost-empty shelf in the farm stand. I stopped when a bouquet of sunflowers wrapped in twine caught my eye. If my memory served me right, sunflowers were Isa’s favorite.

  “I already paid for the lemonade.” Isa smiled. “And for the watermelon they didn’t have. It’ll probably cover the flowers, too.”

  “Like hell I’m going to let you pay for your own flowers.”

  Her eyes widened with surprise as I handed them to her. “These are for me? I just assumed…well, actually, I didn’t know who they were for, but I didn’t think—”

  “I mean, they are your favorite, right?” I asked as I picked up the lemonades again, hoping I remembered correctly.

  “They are,” she confirmed. “You didn’t have to, Jake.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t have to.” I grinned as I sent twenty-five dollars from my phone to the farm stand. “I wanted to.”

  I didn’t even check to see how much the bouquet was before paying for them, but I chuckled to myself when I saw the sign that read: “Sunflower Bouquets - $10 Each” as we walked back to my truck. The smile on Isa’s face was well worth blindly paying double the amount.

  “I think it’s safe to say there’s only one place we should drink these,” I began, opening the passenger side door for Isa.

  With the flowers in one hand, she used the other to pull herself up into the front seat.

  “Whatcha say, Bug? You in for a little adventure?”

  “With you?” she said. “Always.”

  The flickering rays from the setting sun danced in her eyes when she turned back to face me. My stomach tightened as she nodded. Being around her again was easier than I thought it would be.

  The original plan for tonight was to simply break the ice. I just wanted to make sure that when our paths crossed naturally for the first time, it wouldn’t be painfully awkward. There were so many emotions to still work through, and I wasn’t delusional enough to think we could just pick up where we left off six years ago.

  Hearing her side of what happened gave me hope, though—something I didn’t think was possible earlier in the evening. Now, all I had to do was keep myself in check.

  It was easy to fall in love with her.

  During a game of tag on the playground in kindergarten, I fell on the pavement. My legs shook as I stood up. Both of my palms and knees were covered in bloody scrapes.

  The tears welled in my eyes, but I tried so damn hard not to cry.

  Until the sweetest little voice next to me whispered, “I’m going to act like I have a headache and feel dizzy and you’re gonna help me walk to the nurse’s office, okay?”

  I could still see her big brown eyes pooled with worry as she waited for me to agree. When we got to the nurse’s office, she handed over the hall pass given to her by the recess monitor and explained why she lied.

  In all the movies I’d seen and stories I’d been read up until that point, the hero was always the guy—a prince, a knight.

  It was in that moment I learned that sometimes it was actually the pretty princess who saved the day. Isa Coleman was the hero of that story, and so many of our stories after that as well.

  Our paths crossed often, as they do in a relatively small town. We were in the same class a few times in elementary school. I found myself sneaking glances at her across the cafeteria in middle school.

  Like most kids, we found ourselves surrounded by people with similar interests. Naturally, I hung out with other athletes. Isa was creative. Her friends were writers, actors, and artists.

  I spent my Saturday nights at the mall. Isa’s were spent at the skate park. There wasn’t anything that brought us together. Until high school.

  And, that was all thanks to her dad.

  Roger Coleman took a huge leap of faith in me. As my high school football coach, he took me into his home under the guise of going over strategy. I was the only freshman on the varsity team. He said he wanted to make
sure I knew all the plays. At least that’s the story he told the other coaches.

  He did a good job of hiding it, but I knew it was because my mom called and asked him if there was anyone that could give me a ride home after practices. As a single mom, Ruth Pierce tried her damnedest to take care of things on her own. As an emergency room nurse, she was expected to be on time for her shifts. When she realized there was no way she could be in two places at once, she swallowed her pride and asked for help.

  Coach Coleman not only kept his promise that he, personally, would make sure I made it home safe every night, he went well beyond that.

  “Can I ask you something, son?” he started as we walked to his truck. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably frozen pizza. Maybe leftovers. Mom usually sleeps while I’m at school, so I just wing it when I get home.”

  “Have you ever had real tacos? I’m not talking about the fake crap you can get from a drive-thru…”

  Coach and I had just walked in the door when Isa barreled down the stairs. Headphones on and skateboard in hand, she was completely oblivious. Coach tried to warn me. The words just simply didn’t leave his mouth fast enough.

  Her tiny little frame slamming into my backside was nothing compared to getting pulled down and sacked on the field. It was, however, enough to send Isa tumbling back right onto her ass. The memory of her eyes widening with embarrassment as she reluctantly reached for my extended hand still made me laugh to this day.

  “You know what I was just thinking of?” I chuckled while I waited for the oncoming traffic to pass. “The first time I had dinner at your parents’ house.”

  “Oh God.” The groan of embarrassment that came from the seat next to me made me laugh. “Whyyyy?”

  During the ten-minute drive, we reminisced like we were old friends catching up after not seeing each other for a while. Talking about our memories together—the good times we’d had—made any remaining tension seemingly dissipate.

  “Do you remember the first time I convinced you to sneak into the bog?” she asked. “You were so scared we were going to get caught and you would get kicked off the football team.”

  “And your parents were worried about me being the bad influence!” I scoffed playfully as I pulled into the street that led to our final destination.

  Fox Hollow was known for two things: football and cranberries.

  The stadium sat on the east side of town. The cranberry bog took over fifty acres of the west side. The Arthur J. Fairgrounds Stadium was known by most people in town and NFL fans alike simply as “The Fairgrounds.”

  Which was not to be confused with the family that owned both the stadium and the Fairgrounds Cranberry Co.

  The Fairgrounds family might be small in size, but they were undeniably the biggest success story of Fox Hollow.

  Over time, a small family-run bog passed down from generation to generation expanded itself into one of the region’s biggest cranberry distributors. Hugh Fairgrounds turned cranberries into a football legacy when he purchased the Bluecoats and their home stadium.

  Thanks to Hugh, I was back home now. He could say it was smart for business, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think my trade didn’t originally stem from the personal connection I had to Fox Hollow.

  His son Matt was one of my closest friends growing up. We played football together as kids, but Matt loved the game a different way than I did. He loved the business side of the sport. As soon as high school was over, so were Matt’s days of playing.

  As the new Director of Player Personnel, Matt was the first person to call me and congratulate me when the trade was official. He was also the person I texted while at the farm stand, asking if I could go sneak into the cranberry bog. I didn’t even have to tell him who it was with.

  Within a minute of me texting him, I got a response.

  Matt: Haha yeah man. My dad’s actually at the bog house with Aunt Lou. I’ll let him know you’ll be swinging through. Tell Isa I said hey.

  As we pulled into the parking lot, Isa’s words the first time she brought me here came flooding back.

  “This is the place I go to when I feel lost. I come here and I feel safe. I find myself again. I don’t know if the bog will do the same for you, but I figured if it works, I can share.”

  “I have a confession,” I started when I saw Hugh’s white Cadillac Escalade parked outside of The Bog House. I wanted to “sneak” in for the nostalgia. However, I knew I would have to at least say hello to the owner of the team I played for. “I may be here with permission.”

  A sigh of relief left Isa. “Don’t get me wrong, I would sneak in. I just haven’t since…”

  Her open-ended sentence didn’t need to be finished.

  I couldn’t bring myself to come back until now either.

  “I know.” I nodded in understanding. “We don’t have to go in. It’s just…someone once told me that the bog was where they went when they needed to find themselves.” I shifted my body to face her. “And I don’t know about you, Bug, but I’ve been feeling pretty fucking lost.”

  Isa

  “Okay.”

  I wished I had something witty or more profound to say in response. That seemed to be the overall theme of this evening, though—Jake Pierce leaving me without words.

  But, he was right.

  This place meant so much to me. For years, it was my safe place. Until it became our safe place.

  I was thirteen the first time I saw the bog. The Bog House had been open to the public since Hugh and Louisa Fairgrounds took it over in the early nineties. The bog—where the cranberries were harvested—was not.

  Right in the middle of the October harvesting season, my eighth-grade science class took a field trip to Fairgrounds Cranberry Co.

  Looking back, I imagine I was the only one in my class who listened to Louisa Fairgrounds as she walked us through the marshy wetlands. The process of flooding the beds and pumping hundreds of thousands of floating red berries fascinated me.

  I’m not sure why I ran back there later that night. I was devastated. I was scared. I thought I was going to lose my mom to ovarian cancer. For the first and only time in my entire life, I screamed at my father. I called him a liar. Then, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me to the bog.

  I didn’t stop until I found the fallen tree. Louisa found me sobbing. She didn’t say anything as she sat down next to me. Terrified that she was going to call the police on me for trespassing, I began to apologize and explained what brought me back to the bog.

  For the rest of my life, I’ll never forget the compassion in her eyes when she told me I was always welcome there. I imagined, more than anyone else, she understood how calming the quiet stillness was. And we never spoke of it again.

  In all the times I saw her after that, Louisa never mentioned it. Not to me or my parents. No one ever questioned my presence on the old, downed tree any time after that either. Not when it was just me, or when I started bringing Jake with me three years later.

  Which was why, when her eyes lit up at the sight of me and Jake now approaching, I didn’t think anything of it.

  Not until she gasped and squealed with excitement.

  “You’re back! Both of you! Together!” She sighed happily as she walked over to us, but she stopped short, her face falling as she assessed me and Jake. “Oh. Just shopping today? I imagine in those shoes you won’t be headed out back to the bog.”

  Jake chuckled when he looked down and realized she was talking about his bright white Nikes. “I’m not worried about my shoes,” he said, waving her off as he reached for one of the wicker baskets that customers used while shopping. “I figured we’d come in, say hi, grab a few things, and then head back. If that’s okay?”

  Before Louisa could give us an answer, the loud voice of Hugh Fairgrounds came from the second floor.

  “All right, who let the riffraff into the store?” He laughed at his own joke as he made his way down the st
airs, and I couldn’t help but grin at my godfather.

  In the football world, he was known as the owner of the five-time Super Bowl championship winning Boston Bluecoats. To the town of Fox Hollow, he was simply one half of Fairgrounds Cranberry Co. He was also my dad’s best friend—a friendship that began when my father played for the Bluecoats himself.

  They only had a few seasons together before my dad retired from professional football, but when Hugh’s wife and my mom got pregnant just weeks apart, they found another reason to bond.

  Especially when Matthew Fairgrounds was born a week late and I was born a week early—both on June thirteenth. My mom and dad were chosen as Matt’s godparents, and his as mine.

  For a long time, our parents would joke that it was fate we were put on the earth together. We didn’t necessarily disagree with them. It certainly wasn’t in the meant-to-be together kind of way, though—for either of us.

  We found that out when we were fifteen, after being pushed to kiss each other during a game of truth or dare. The conversation that followed was both awkward and relieving.

  “It takes riffraff to know riffraff!” I teased as Hugh joined me and Louisa at the center of the store.

  Jake, just a few feet away, loaded cranberry scones into his basket.

  “She’s got you there, big bro.” Louisa laughed as she returned to her place behind the counter.

  There was no mistaking that Louisa and Hugh were siblings.

  Both of them had the same vibrant silver hair. Their weather-beaten faces, worn from days of wading in the bog, showcased prominent crow’s feet. The crooks in the middle of their thin noses and the bluish-gray color of their eyes were identical too.

  “I was just about to head out when Matty texted me and said you two were stopping by.” Hugh grinned as his arms opened for a hug and I obliged on cue. “But, now I’m not too sure why I stayed.”