THE HARDEST YARDS (A BAD BOY FOOTBALL ROMANCE)

by Andrea Rose

  Put one foot in front of the other and prayed I was headed in the right direction.

  My feet carried me toward caffeine.

  I spent two hours alone in a coffee house going over my case file before the hearing. I’d stopped at least fifty times from reaching for my phantom phone to call for company.

  The clock on the wall told me time to go.

  Dino and Bentley, Mommy’s coming.

  I hurriedly crammed my notebooks in my bag, wrapped my scarf around my head and hobbled to the door. If nothing good came from today, as least I’d get to see my babies.

  Three blocks away, I trudged up the courthouse steps phoneless, jobless, friendless and drenched in melted snowflakes.

  The next time I stood on these steps, I could be dogless too.

  My teeth chattered from the cold, my body beckoning for a hand dryer to warm up under.

  With ten minutes to spare, I locked the bathroom door, hunched under the blasting, hot air and cried out as many tears as possible before seeing Braydon’s face.

  “You can do this,” I said, flattening my hair and wiping away my mascara. “You’ve got this. You can do this.”

  As ready as I’ll ever be, I went to find out the fate of my canines, stopping by the Info desk first for directions to my courtroom.

  “Thatcher versus Maldova…” The guard read his computer. “Says hearing’s tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Mm-hm. Friday.”

  “It is Friday.”

  “No ma’am.” The man tapped his pen on the desktop calendar reading:

  THURS

  12

  I skulked off to the bathroom for one more hour, knees hugged into my chest. I couldn’t even keep track of my days anymore.

  No tears.

  No Tyler.

  No telling if I’d be able to win this time.

  “Oh, the water…” I hummed the song into my knees.“…Hope it don't rain all day…”

  35

  I swayed on my feet in the corner of the room. Miss Juniper, Mistress Extraordinaire, more dressed and pale than I’d ever seen her, sat at the edge of her bed.

  She pulled the silk of her robe to cover marks on her arms. I sat back on my hands and dropped my head, finding it hard to be in the same room as her.

  I prayed Ariana wouldn’t catch wind of my being here— Who knows what ideas she’d get and if she’d ever forgive me for returning. I’d taken a big risk showing my face here but hoped it’d be worth it.

  Chrissy hooked her feet around a wooden chair. “We’re here to ask if you know of Gavin Spiros?” she said.

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.

  “Big, sweaty guy, gold tooth,” Chrissy added but Juniper’s shoulders stayed high.

  “Describes most of my client base.”

  I eyeballed Chrissy, head shaking.

  Lord have Mercy that Gavin wasn’t a client of a girl I’d ever been with back in my crazier days.

  “Him?” I asked, holding up a photo.

  Juniper turned over her shoulder to me. I couldn’t stand to make eye-contact, whether out of regret, anger, guilt or how much more sickly she appeared these days.

  “Oh…Him.”

  “He a client?” I needed to know.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Did any o’ the girls ever fuck him?”

  “Tyler.” Chrissy stood when I did.

  “What?This place was the one fucking thing in my life that had nothing to do with fucking football and this bullshit. But he couldn’t keep his damn nose out of it.”

  “I didn’t fuck him.”

  “Is your legal name Jennifer?”

  “How did you…?”

  I waved the highlighted last years statement at her, nine-hundred dollars being my usual fee with her.

  JENLANG SERVICE $900

  “Oh,” she said crestfallen. “You found that.”

  “Scheduled payments right up until a month after the accident. What’s the deal, June? He your pimp or something fucked up? Lord knows the man loves having his fingers in as many fucking pies of mine he can.”

  “I have no pimp.”

  “Then what is this?”

  Juniper walked to the window the spark a cigarette and poured a drink. “You guys want one?”

  “It’s seven AM,” Chrissy pointed out.

  “And?”

  “We’re alright,” I said and reassured Chrissy.

  “Suit yourself.”

  She took a long drag and leaned out the window.

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “I don’t know the whole deal. I ain’t bright. The guy approached me after I’d met you, said he knew a way to clean up my books, make me seem more legit to the tax man. If anyone asked my relationship to you, he asked me to call me your spiritual advisor. Seemed a fair deal.”

  “Oh?” I bit at the dry skin on my lips and flicked my nail on the crystal whiskey decanter.

  Pennies dropped.

  Heat rose on my neck.

  Choosing ignorance was definitely easier than this.

  “That’s why you stopped taking money from me. He started paying you. Thought you said it was ‘cos I didn’t put out anymore.”

  “You were nice to me. But, yes, he wired me regular payments that covered your appointments.”

  “The cash tips I’d give you…”

  She glared at me. “I only accepted them when you forced me to.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Nothin’. Just my legal name and to agree to do this business-y shit.”

  Palms up, Chrissy had as few answers as me.

  “Why?”

  Cigarette hanging from her mouth, she shrugged. “Do I look like a girl who’d know?”

  I removed my hand from her doorknob.

  “You invited me to come in that day I got shot,” I realized and planted my hand to my head.

  “He asked me to.”

  “You text me to say you wanted my company right after I ditched practice that day. I never text you first.”

  “This Gavin dude came back a few months later for another visit. Said he had a better job for me. I needed money. Desperation makes you do…things you don’t think you’d do.”

  I slapped the doorframe. “You knew it was going down? You let me visit you knowing I was gonna be shot. In fact, you invited me here.”

  Chrissy had her hands on my arms to cool me off.

  “No, I didn’t. I swear. Gavin showed me what he could do to me if I talked—He said keep quiet and lock the door so I did what every girl from this side of the tracks would do—I shut my damn mouth shut and locked the door.”

  “He planned the hit.”

  “I ain’t sure,” she said. “My deal was that I’d get you here, keep you ’til his crew showed then Jennifer Lang, Spiritual Advisor would get clients and fifteen large every year she kept her mouth shut.”

  I gave a dismissive wave of my hand, climbed into my coat and helped Chrissy in hers.

  “You’re leaving me already?” Juniper held my forearm.

  “You left me for dead.”

  Her hand went to her mouth. “Tyler, please don’t say goodbye like this.”

  “People already got word I’m back in the city. I can’t be seen here.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I don’t care.”

  Me and Chrissy descended the stairs out into the chill. She already had her phone out, typing notes to add to the Gavin case we’d been building in our downtime.

  “Wait,” Juniper said hanging over the stairwell.

  “I made that mistake with you last time, June. I’ll see you.”

  “You’ll wanna wait this time.”

  She took off towards her room. I helped Chrissy down the icy steps and opened the passenger door.

  “Everything alright, Boss?” Martin asked.

  We slid into the back seat and did up our belts.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The door sw
ung open beside me.

  “I’ll give a statement,” Juniper said, a scarf around her neck and her body half way into a long coat.

  “No. Don’t do that.”

  “You and your friend showed me the value of kindness, Tyler. Let me pay you back somehow. I know I fucked up. I need some redemption, please.”

  “Gavin was kind to you?”

  “Jacqueline…Jacquie.”

  Juniper climbed uninvited into the passenger seat.

  I let out a harsh breath. “What about her?”

  “Thank her for me.”

  “Thank Jacquie for you?”

  “There was a pretty big hole you left, not just in my heart, Tyler but my whole life. You were something to look forward to every once in a while. Seeing your face, it made me forget things.”

  “What’d Jacquie do, Miss Juniper?” Chrissy asked.

  “June, please. She visited for a while after Tyler’s attack, kept me away from the investigators, helped me out, took me out to dinner a few times. Then I stopped hearing from her.”

  I clasped my hands on my head.

  “She did that for you?”

  “Tell her thank you. I wouldn’t’ve made it without her there to see if I was OK.”

  Martin checked me in the rearview. “Where we headed, boss?”

  “Nearest police station,” Juniper said before I got a word in. “Please.” She looked back at me. “Please.”

  We sat in the police department’s waiting room. My knee bounced thinking of everything I needed to plan and whether or not brining Jennifer or Juniper here was even a good idea.

  So much had to happen…

  Conversations I needed to have with people I didn’t want to speak to anymore,

  An investigation into all mine and TKE’s bank accounts,

  How to fire Gavin,

  Finding a way to get Ari to accept my damn help.

  ‘Oh the water…/Oh the water…’

  “Phoebe…” I answered and straightened in the seat. Chrissy reached for my arm, worrying. “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  “Tyler, there’s so much to say but I can’t talk long—got a flight to catch. Did Ari tell you anything yet?”

  “Only that you’re safe. Where’ve you been?”

  “I’m coming back on the next flight to New York but you have to help me with something.”

  “With what?”

  “Ariana’s court date is tomorrow. You have to be there for her since I’m the shittiest friend and won’t be like I promised.”

  “Ms. Lang?” an officer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re gonna need to take you back here for a while to ask a few questions.”

  I jerked out the chair. “You can’t take her.”

  “Everything OK?” Phoebe asked in my ear.

  A calm Juniper turned to me smiling as an officer cuffed her hands.

  “Have a few warrants. Time I paid for some of my own mistakes.”

  “Tyler, go help,” Phoebe said. “But please be at the courthouse. Please. I’ll see you in Baltimore.”

  Juniper got tugged away by the officers.

  “Phoebe, I’m glad you’re safe.”

  My phone went into my pocket and before her other cuff went on, Juniper’s hand rested to my face. “This is my debt to you. For the hope you brought me and because I left you for dead on my stoop.”

  “You did do that.”

  We sniffed and I held her in my arms. “I’m glad you made it.” She arched her neck into me. “I hope you find happiness one day, my King.”

  Chrissy pulled me back as the cops took her from my arms.

  The statement she wrote stayed in my hands when she walked away. That could not only get Gavin arrested but evidence that could take this to trial and put a criminal away for good.

  “This is a surprise,” a grating voice spoke.

  “Jacquie,” I said and kicked my foot on the carpet.

  “How’ve you been, Ty?”

  I fell into my bed, crossed my legs and stared out over New York, killing time before Chrissy got back from the public library.

  “This is…weird,” I said.

  “It is.”

  Her breath blew into the phone.

  “I won’t be long. Reason I’m calling is to thank you.”

  “Thank…me?” she said and groaned in disbelief, probably never having heard me say the words before.

  “You made sure they were OK when I couldn’t anymore,” I said. “…And I’m sorry for perhaps not appreciating how much time you spent on me.”

  I pressed my fingers into my eye-sockets and bent forward, hating every part of having to be a bigger man right now.

  “Oh. Ty, don’t thank me. Please.”

  “I have to. I wanted to go visit, see how June and the girls were doing, but you get why I couldn’t.”

  “It’s the least I could do after finding out how much time you spent with them over the years. In a way you grew up with them.”

  “Hey, don’t make it like that. I had a girlfriends. Brommer House was when things got a little crazier for me, a’right? But, whatever…”

  “Tyler, I’m not trying to upset you. I know you want to live a certain kind of life.” Her voice softened.

  “You never gave a fuck about me for real, did you?” I said. “Tell me I wasn’t crazy thinking that.”

  “I gave more fucks than I should toward an adult male client of mine. You weren’t easy.”

  “So it was easier killing me off?”

  A clearing of her throat caught and turned to a cough.

  “Th—the guilt is too much to bear.” I banged the phone on the side-table. I wasn’t about to put up with Jacquie Coster crying in front of me.

  “Tyler?”

  “Stop crying. I haven’t got sympathy for you. You get that right?”

  “I know. But it’s hard to accept what I was willing to do for forty thousand dollars a year cash. I watched a man die, I lied to officers and then I went home and I cooked my two boys their favorite supper. Single mom, y’know. Let a client die or feed those kids.”

  “Gavin couldn’t just drop me?”

  “Would you’ve let him? He was all you knew out of college.”

  “And you think that woulda counted for something.”

  “He’s a business man, Tyler. You were nothing more than a liability. I’m sorry. I know I messed up but some people can do some pretty funny things.”

  The lamp from beside my bed smashed across the immaculate window. I scrunched my fists and stomped toward the kitchen.

  “Ty?”

  “It’s Tyler to you, Jacquie. I wish this was my biggest problem right now. I gotta go.”

  “Wait!”

  “I appreciate you telling me. I have to go.”

  “L—Let me make it up to you.” She caught me before I’d hung up.

  I pressed the phone back to my ear. “How?”

  “What do you need? Anything. Paperwork, manual labor, your laundry ironed for the rest of your life? Forget Gavin’s money, I’ll get a job again. Let me sleep again at night knowing I did everything I could to apologize to you.”

  “I don’t need anything. In fact, I wish I had less so I could focus on winning this goddamn, fucking final championship game on SUNDAY!”

  An idea. I huffed and puffed through nostrils, slowing down breathing time.

  “I forgot you had that.”

  “I bet you did.”

  She stayed quiet while I regrouped and hung on the line.

  “You give a statement to the police that day?” I asked.

  Silence.

  Then her sigh in my ear. “A fake one, yes,” she said.

  “Got any other dirt on Gavin, about planning the hit?”

  “I have a-plenty dirt on Gavin Spiros.”

  “Can I have some of it? That would hold up in a court of law?”

  “That’s all you want?”

  “That and you get to Baltimore b
y tomorrow.”

  “I mean, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Friday?”

  “As soon as you can.”

  36

  Nobody would be waiting for me outside that courthouse today, real Friday, either.

  My feet kicked the carpet on the way out the courthouse door. If only yesterday Friday were actually fake, then I’d have a job to go back to come next week.

  Nobody sat behind me in that courtroom to hear the verdict.

  I pushed the heavy door leading outside. A month ago, Phoebe promised me she’d be the one standing here on those steps when KK couldn’t.

  A barren, beige courtyard— Nobody waiting.

  The sun shone for the first time in weeks but the air chilled me. Not nearly as much as Braydon’s presence, though, leaned against a column, huffing a cigarette.

  A state-appointed judge granted this stranger I knew three years fifty-fifty custody of my dogs.

  “Convenient the SUV’s in the shop,” I said, fanning his cloud of smoke as I walked through it.

  Dino and Bentley had to miss the trial today. He made sure to tell the members of the court how bad he felt about having his bigger car at the garage. I knew he crammed them guilt-free in that tiny Porsche of his. I made every effort to get it on camera. The other week, my team sent someone to investigate for dog fibers in his back seat. It was spotless.

  “Do I win yet?” he asked.

  “Don’t you always in the end?”

  Arms wrapped around my elbows, I skulked further into the icy chill breath billowing in white puffs.

  “See you back here in a few months, bitch.”

  “Suck it!”

  “He gets half of their time, just like that?” Tyler’s standing up from a nearby bench stole my breath away.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just like that.”

  Of course he’d be the one here for me today.

  “I’m late, I’m sorry. I had to figure out which courthouse you were at. Took me some time.”

  “Don’t follow me.”

  Tyler’s face beckoned for a better reaction.

  “What do you want? A medal for being here for this fucking useless damsel?”

  “Why you don’t look more upset is what I’m trying to milk from you. This was a big day for you.”

  He’d wanted me weak so he could rescue me again. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him here saving me the same way Braydon did— With pity money.