Heart of a Champion

by Kelsey MacBride

  “I mean it, Grody. Leave her alone. What’s the matter with you? Are you too cowardly to pick on someone your own size?”

  That was all Grody needed to hear. “Fine, Porter. You want to stop me? You’re going to have to make me.”

  Scott knew what was coming. Before he could say anything, Grody had sealed his fate by yelling to everyone that Scott wanted to fight him the following day in the parking lot after school. Like all high school gossip, the news was all over campus before the first bell rang. That day ticked by one minute at a time, and Scott felt each one creep along with agonizing slowness. People looked at him as he walked down the hallways. Grody, surrounded by his football buddies, grimaced and taunted Scott. He was even worse with his posse around him.

  At three o’clock, Scott reluctantly made his way to the parking lot. His friends were with him, telling him he didn’t have to do anything. He didn’t have to prove a thing to anyone. Grody wouldn’t play fair, and even if Scott got in a good lick or two, Grody would have his teammates jump him. It was a lose-lose situation. But still, Scott felt he had to go. He mustered up every bit of courage he had from the bottoms of his feet to the tips of his ears and stepped onto the pavement into a circle of kids.

  Within a matter of minutes, the fight was over. Grody had punched Scott in the nose and started it bleeding like a faucet. Scott fell to the ground, holding his face, his eyes streaming tears as the pain from the pop in the nose swirled and finally nestled behind his eyes.

  No one laughed at Scott for getting licked. No one cheered Grody on after he hit him. Instead, they dispersed quickly. Scott, getting up from the ground with a little help from his friends, found himself face to face with the assistant principal and assistant football coach, Dean Markels. Markels had thick legs and a barrel chest with a small head perched like a melon on top. He took one look at Scott, glared at Grody—who was no longer smiling—and dragged them both to the principal’s office. They received a three-day suspension for fighting and, worst or best of all, depending on who you asked, Grody was removed from playing the next three games of the football season. The following day, he showed up with a few bruises of his own.

  The high school gossip was that Scott had waited for him that night and jumped him when he was alone, doing a tap dance on his face. The reality was that Grody’s father had given him a whipping, not for fighting in school but for being dumb enough to get caught and suspended. Scott had two black eyes for the next five days.

  So what was he planning on doing now? A trained mobster who made a life out of not fighting fair was skulking along after him in a dark, empty parking lot, and he was hiding in the bushes to do exactly what? Maybe he’d imagined the whole thing. While crouched low, Scott listened. No. He heard the footsteps, and they were getting closer. Maybe this person could be reasoned with? That was possible, right? Of course, Scott, he thought. That’s what they show in all the mafia movies—how reasonable and patient those guys are.

  Now the steps were just twenty feet away.

  Maybe I should just stay hidden.

  Fifteen feet.

  Maybe I could get in one quick punch and get lucky, buying enough time to run back into the skating rink.

  Ten feet.

  Glancing to the left and right, Scott realized he couldn’t have ducked down a more inconvenient set of bushes. Behind him was a low, chain-link fence that ran the entire perimeter of the parking lot. If he wanted to slink off unnoticed, he’d have to scale that little fence, and it was just enough to put him in view of his stalker.

  Five feet.

  Well, there was no alternative. Scott was just going to have to fight. Taking a big gulp of air, he tightened his muscles, clenched his fists, and before he could spring into action, he froze.

  “Scott? Scott Porter?” The man’s voice wasn’t menacing. In the movies, they show mob hits as being jobs done quietly. The goons rarely call their target by name.

  Still, Scott didn’t move.

  “My name is Phillip. I’ve been sent by your father.”

  What? Scott’s head spun, and he nearly lost his balance from where he remained crouched behind the bushes.

  “My name is Phillip, and I’m a friend,” the man clarified.

  Scott stood up quickly to find the man within arm’s reach. It seemed to Scott the man had known where he was the entire time, and an ambush would have been a miserable failure. Plus, Scott thought, if the man really had bad intentions, he could have easily executed them with no effort and no witnesses.

  Scott stood there, trembling slightly as the sweat that had broken out on his body chilled him in the cool night air. “What do you mean you know my father? My father is dead. He died—”

  “It’s okay, Scott.”

  When the man spoke again, Scott recognized him. He was the man he’d seen at the rink during his class and on the way to the Pantry with Brenda.

  “I know where your father is. He’s alive. And he hired me to keep an eye on you.” The man’s scary features softened, especially around his eyes as a slight grin pulled his lips up at the corners.

  Stepping out from the bushes and still keeping a good distance between them, Scott looked Phillip up and down.

  “Your father’s a good man, Scott, a brave man who sacrificed everything for you and your sister. It wasn’t easy, and I know the money is hard to scrape up, but he asked his contact at the FBI to help him find someone to sort of keep an eye on you both, for lack of a better term.” The man extended his arms, opened his hands, palms up, pulling his coat open just enough to reveal a shoulder holster with a shiny black gun nestled there.

  This was all very weird, Scott thought, afraid to let his guard down completely. “So, you spend your time bouncing from here to my sister’s place just to make sure no one is following us?”

  “That’s about it, in a nutshell.”

  “Who pays you?”

  “Oh, that isn’t anything you need to worry about.”

  Scott nodded, and, finally, with shaking limbs, extended his hand to Phillip, who shook it firmly.

  “What if I’d had a gun? I could have killed you or at least severely hurt you. It isn’t very smart to be sneaking around behind people in parking lots.”

  Phillip let out an amused laugh and looked right in Scott’s eyes. “If you carried a gun, Scott, and actually knew how to use it, your father wouldn’t have hired me.”

  Feeling a little embarrassed, Scott smiled sheepishly.

  “That was some amazing stuff in there.” Phillip jerked his head in the direction of the skating rink. “I never was into ice skating. I’m more of a football fan, myself. But that really was something amazing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And your partner, she was really something.”

  Despite his nerves still being a bit on edge, the mention of Brenda made Scott feel a wave of warmth. He smiled. “Yeah, she is.”

  “You two look good together.”

  “On the ice we do.”

  Phillip’s bushy eyebrows nearly met in the middle as he looked quizzically at Scott. “You looked pretty good all the times I saw you together, too. What? She’s not interested?”

  Scott felt like a person who recognized a good friend at a funeral. He wanted to smile because he felt happy to see them, but the occasion was so sad that it prevented real joy from entering his heart. So his smile was more reserved. Plus, it was a little awkward telling a total stranger who’d been tailing him for so long about his affairs of the heart.

  “Look, you don’t have to tell me. Who am I to offer any advice?” Phillip said, apparently reading Scott’s expression perfectly. “But, before I was an agent, and before I became a private bodyguard,” he said, using his fingers as quote marks, “I was a man. And a man can always tell when a woman is interested. That woman in there is very interested in you.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I’m Italian,” Phillip replied, smiling broadly. “If there’s one thing we kn
ow, it’s young love when we see it.”

  This man was Italian, and Scott’s father was hiding from the mob. It sounded like the punch line of a bad joke. He looked at Phillip, and once again the man seemed to read his thoughts. His eyes twinkled kindly. “Don’t believe what they say. We aren’t all gangsters. Most of us are good guys. Not like in the movies.” He chuckled a little at his own joke, referencing the classic gangster movie.

  “Do you normally talk like this to the people you’re watching over?” Scott asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Normally, I don’t say anything. Normally, I don’t see guys walking away from a lifetime of happiness like I saw with you. Plus, your father is a good man. He worries about you all the time. It’s killing him that he can’t be near you and your sister. But at least your sister has a husband, someone to help shoulder the burdens of life. You, he feels, are all alone.”

  Scott looked around the parking lot. He could hear people as they filtered out the front of the building where the general public parked. It was such an exciting night. So much had happened. Scott felt like the electricity from his performance with Brenda, the thrill of their routine and ultimate success had followed him outside.

  “Are you going to talk to my father soon?”

  “I’ll talk to the agent in charge of his case. Why?”

  “Would you tell him that ... that I love him?”

  Phillip said nothing but nodded his head. He reached out his hand to Scott, who shook it and watched as the man walked away in the direction he’d come, disappearing into the night.

  He’s so right. Scott thought. What am I doing?

  As Scott reached his car, he felt a vibration in his pocket. Pulling out his phone, he looked at the number, which was listed as “unknown caller.” Scott knew immediately who it was. “Hi, Dad!”

  “Scotty, I’m so proud of you! I saw the tryouts or qualifications whatever they call it on the television. You were amazing!”

  “Thanks, Dad. I just met a friend of yours. Phillip. He just wanted to say congratulations. I wish you could have been here.”

  “I was, Scotty. I was right there in the front row. Believe me. And you know I have a couple of buddies in the FBI, and they were telling everyone to pray for you and Brenda.”

  “Well, tell them their prayers worked.”

  “Right. Oh, Scotty, I can’t wait to check in with them again and brag about my boy.”

  “I wish I could see you, Dad.”

  “Hey, you know the rules. Don’t get sad, Scott. Not today. Not now. Let’s not talk about sad stuff. So tell me real quick, how are things with Brenda? You guys looked like there might be some wedding bells in the future. Do you think? What’s next?”

  “Well, there will be several months of really hard training and getting ready—”

  “I’m not talking about the Olympics. I’m talking about Brenda. Even from here I could see it in your eyes. Are you going to marry her?”

  “I don’t think she’ll go down that aisle with me, Dad. To skate with me is one thing. To marry me is another. I think I blew that pretty much to smithereens five years ago.” Scott thrust his other hand into his pocket as he leaned against the cold metal of his car door. “But we’re friends, and that’s probably more than I deserve. I never told her the truth, Dad. I kept my promise. I never said a word.”

  “Scotty, you can’t live your life like that. Tell her what you can, what will make her understand. This isn’t over until it’s over.”

  Scott laughed a little.

  “Never give up, Scotty. Never ever.”

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you, too, Scotty. I’ll call you again. And Merry Christmas.”

  The phone line went dead. In the quiet, Scott looked up and saw a clear night sky with a million stars twinkling in the blackness.

  “Daddy?” Brenda said from behind him.

  Chapter 13

  Scott whirled around to see her looking at him with a perplexed expression.

  “Whose Daddy?”

  Scott hesitated and then said softly, “My father.”

  Brenda blinked. “What? You told me when we met that your father was dead.”

  “Yes, that’s what I told you but—”

  “You told me he was shot in some gang shooting. That he was shot and died. Died, Scott.” She glared at him and was panting through her open mouth. “Who makes up stuff like that?”

  “He did. I mean ...” Scott tried to back-peddle, but he just ended up stuttering and stammering over every word. Nothing was going to make sense. Nothing but the truth, and from the look of confusion and frustration in Brenda’s eyes at this moment, he wasn’t sure even that would do it.

  He moved nearer to Brenda, took a deep breath, and began to speak. “That was my father. He’s in the witness protection program. That shooting wasn’t just some sloppy drive-by with some idiot firing a gun into a crowd. My dad saw a real hit, by a real professional. A guy that was targeted by some mafia scum. And when that scum found out my father could identify him, it was only a matter of time before they’d find him and kill him. And if they didn’t find him, they’d draw him out by finding his family. Me. My sister. Our mom. They think my father is dead. He did almost die.” Scott stopped and looked at Brenda, who stood there in front of him with wide eyes.

  “What?” He could see the distrust in Brenda’s eyes, and her rising anger. “He almost died? He is dead! But you’re saying you just talked to him? This isn’t how things were supposed to end tonight.”

  Scott had just been thinking that exact same thing. But he knew Brenda wouldn’t see the humor in it.

  “His name is Walter. I hear from him once, maybe twice a year. He was the reason I had to miss our wedding. You see, Brenda, he almost died of a stroke five years ago. I had to leave immediately because the doctors weren’t sure if he was going to pull through or not. It was the scariest day of my life.”

  Scott stepped closer to Brenda and looked deeply into her eyes. The way he would have on their wedding day. He wasn’t nervous like he’d been this morning before the competition. There was no need to sneak glances at her now, to pretend he didn’t see her beauty or the pain in her face. He saw it. And now it was her turn to see the emotion on his face.

  “Not only was I afraid I was going to lose my father before I even got there to hold his hand or tell him I loved him, but I might also lose the girl I was about to marry.” There were tears in his eyes that glinted in the light of the overhead lamps scattered across the parking lot. “I didn’t lose my father. Thank God. But I lost you.”

  Brenda shook her head. “So, you want me to believe that after all this time, you didn’t marry me because you had to fly off not to meet a friend but to see your father who had a stroke? Why should I believe you? Why should I put any stock in this crazy story?” Brenda pulled off her stocking cap and stuffed her gloves into her pockets, then looked off into the distance.

  “Brenda, aside from this, have I ever lied to you? Then or now? Have I ever told you anything that wasn’t true? You know me better than anyone else. I came to your skating competitions knowing you’d snub me every time, not that I blamed you. But I never stopped—”

  “You made me hate you, Scott! Why?” Tears came to her eyes. “Why couldn’t you have just told me in a way I’d understand? I’m no blabbermouth. I can keep a secret, you know,” she said in between sobs.

  “My father made me promise.”

  “You made a promise to me, Scott.”

  “He’s my father, Brenda! What would you have done if it had been your father? Would you have left him alone in a room full of strangers, scared and possibly dying? The man who took care of you all your life—would you have just left him to die by himself? I couldn’t live with myself if I’d done that, Brenda.” Scott wiped his eyes.

  Brenda looked at him and let his words sink in. Thinking of her own father, she knew the answer to his question. Of course, she’d have done the same thing.r />
  “I thought if I ever got the chance, I’d try to win your heart again,” said Scott. “Because the truth is, I never stopped loving you.”

  Brenda became aware she’d been holding her breath. When she heard Scott say those words, she felt a little dizzy. This was too much. First the competition, then a ticket to the Olympics, and now the man who’d broken her heart—and whom she’d loved from a distance, whether she wanted to admit it or not—was saying that he loved her too? It was too much.

  She put out her hand to steady herself against Scott’s car. He took a step toward her. Taking a couple deep breaths, Brenda looked up at Scott, half of his face lit by the overhead light, the other half in shadow. He looked so handsome.

  “What do we do now?” she said through tears. Her voice was frustrated and angry. “I mean, now that I know this secret. Now that I know why, what am I supposed to do with it? Just file it away and let it collect dust in my memory?”

  What was she supposed to do now that she knew his father was still alive but not accessible? And what about the bizarre circumstances that would be in play until the man really did die? He couldn’t come to the house for holidays or birthdays. He wouldn’t be able to see his grandchildren, if he ever had any, just like he couldn’t see his son and daughter.

  “Brenda, I love you so much,” Scott said, “but it wouldn’t be fair of me now to ask you to share your life with me and keep this heavy burden to yourself. It isn’t normal.” Scott looked around and then back at Brenda, who was looking up at him.

  “I don’t know what has got me more turned around, Scott. The story about your father still being alive or what you just said.”

  Scott smiled at her. “You mean, the part where I said I love you so much? That part?”

  She looked down, and Scott took another step closer to her. She stood perfectly still. “Yeah, that part.”

  “I don’t know what to do either.”

  Chuckling just a little, Brenda looked up at him again. “I didn’t realize until just now how tired my legs are. Are yours?” She nervously rubbed her thighs. In one swoop, Scott slipped his arms under her and hoisted her onto the hood of his car.