Johnny Deeper: A Sports Romance

by Tabatha Kiss

  Ty nudges my ribs, practically giggling to himself with a full plate of fried food. I have no idea how any of them can eat right now. I can hardly even breathe.

  “I’m coming in a little late here,” Pierce goes on. “The semester has already started and your first game is this Saturday. It was unfortunate to hear about your old coach. From what I’ve been told, he was a good man but from every tragedy comes opportunity. You know, when I told people I was moving here to be your coach, they looked at me and asked — Why? You’re Cary Pierce. You can coach anywhere you want. Why go to that school? They’re just a bunch of losers.”

  I glance around, feeling the air shift and team’s morale plummets. We won one game last season and even less than that the year before. The term loser is more spot-on than we’d care to admit.

  “No talent, no wins,” Pierce says. “You know what I said? I said they were right. You are a bunch of losers…” He glances around again, letting it all sink in on us. “But so was I. When I played college ball, I was nothing. We were nothing. We had stats not so different than yours right now. Then one day, a new coach came to town and changed everything. He trained us harder than we’d ever thought possible. He motivated us to not only change our minds about how we saw ourselves but to change everyone else’s mind as well. I want you to let me be that coach for you.”

  I feel a boost of confidence, one I haven’t felt before in my entire life. The rest of the team stands a little taller, too.

  “We went all the way to the top that season and the next one and the next one and this season, I’m going to do the same for you. My old coach died two years ago. Before that happened, I made a promise to change a few lives just like he did. I want to start with yours. How does that sound?”

  The team erupts with shouts and applause, myself clapping louder than anyone.

  Cary Pierce, our new coach. It’s a dream come true, an absolute fairy tale made a reality.

  “All right!” he shouts, clapping with us. “I like the enthusiasm!”

  I expected this semester to be awful in many ways. My classes aren’t great and I wasn’t planning on the team doing much better than last season, but now, with Cary freakin’ Pierce leading the charge…

  We might end this year as gods.

  Movement draws my eye towards the house, along with a sudden flash of light as the kitchen fluorescents flick on. A shape passes by the windows, short and petite with feminine curves. She rounds the island counter towards the refrigerator and my breath catches in my throat.

  I step towards the house, my gaze locked on her body. She wears tight yoga pants and a baggy sweater that hangs off one shoulder. Her bare feet glide along the floor with bright, pink-colored toes. Long, brown hair sits on top of her head in a sloppy bun.

  Complete, casual elegance.

  I slide the outer door open to walk into the kitchen and she spins around with two bottles of water in her hands. I gulp my saliva down as her stunning, blue eyes flash at me.

  “Hey—” I choke.

  “Hi,” she says, kicking the fridge door closed.

  “Who are you?”

  She raises a brow. “Excuse me?”

  “I mean…” I step closer to the counter. “I’m Junior.”

  “Junior of what?”

  “Just Junior,” I answer.

  “Your parents named you second best?” she asks, giving a short smirk.

  “My big sister used to say that,” I chuckle. “I proved them wrong.”

  Her eyes jut up and down with skepticism. “Have you?”

  “Junior!” I spin around as Cary Pierce walks inside. “I see you’ve met my daughter, Eliza.”

  Eliza.

  “You interrupted the introductions, actually,” she quips. Her eyes move from his to mine. “I’m Eliza.”

  She holds out her hand but his thick palm slaps my shoulder again.

  “How about we head on back outside, Junior?” he says, not really asking. “I’ve got a few more motivational speeches in me and I’d hate for you to miss them.”

  I nod. “All right.”

  He tilts his head at Eliza. “I thought we agreed that you would stay upstairs tonight…”

  She gives a quick smile. “Relax, Dad. I’m just getting us some water.”

  “You have a sink upstairs.”

  I glance up at him, jarred but the sudden hardness in his tone but it doesn’t seem to faze her at all.

  “Whoops. My bad,” she says, spinning on her pointed toes. “It was nice to meet you, just Junior.”

  “You, too,” I add, feeling another tight squeeze on my shoulder.

  As she leaves, the coach guides me away from the counter towards the back door. I crane my neck until it hurts just to watch her leave, aching to see more of that tight body but it disappears into the shadowed hall before I can memorize another detail of her.

  “Junior…” He clears his throat. “I’m going to expect three very specific, yet simple, things from you guys this season.” He holds up a hand and counts on his fingers as he talks. “Hit the gym hard five times a week. Don’t fuel your body with crap. And…” He shifts around to stand in front of me and drops his hands from my shoulders. “Stay away from my daughter.”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  His eyes keep a hard edge. “Does that sound simple enough?”

  I glance over my shoulder into the kitchen again, stunned and confused. “I’m sorry, Coach. You’ve got the wrong idea. I was just being polite.”

  “Good.” His lips curl into a forced, almost menacing, grin. “It’s nothing personal. Don’t think I’m singling you out — it goes for the entire team. I’d rather not have my work life mixing with my family life.”

  “I understand completely, Coach.”

  “Excellent.”

  He turns away and marches back into the yard, leaving me with a very annoying chill racing down my spine. In any other situation, if a person of authority spoke to me like that, I’d be all about getting them back for it but this is Cary Pierce. The term childhood hero doesn’t quite cover the admiration I feel for the man. He could have told me to drop and lick his shoes and I’d immediately ask whether he preferred the laces or the soles.

  And yet, there’s a magnet on the back of my head, drawing my eyes into the kitchen, hoping for just one more glance at Eliza Pierce.

  Ty hops out in front of me. “I fucking told you, man!” he shouts, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “This is going to be the best year of our lives.”

  I laugh. “Looks like it might be.”

  We walk out onto the lawn where Cary Pierce’s booming voice fills the air again. I hang on every word that falls from his mouth, soaking it all up, because Ty is right.

  If Coach does what he says he can do and we go all the way to the top then nothing can stop all of our dreams from coming true.

  Hairs stick up on my neck and I glance up at the house. Curtains move in a window on the third floor and I catch sight of that feminine shape again.

  Eliza Pierce stares down at the lawn, looking right at me from behind the glass, sitting next to… some guy?

  Figures.

  I look forward at Cary Pierce and focus on him instead.

  Chapter 2

  Eliza

  “Tell me everything.”

  I chuckle and kick my bedroom door closed. “Well, I went downstairs, grabbed two bottles of water, and came back.”

  Grant narrows his thin eyelids. “You left out the chapter about Junior Morgan walking inside just as you happened to make it to the kitchen.”

  I shake my head. Of course, he was watching from the window. “He walked in and introduced himself.”

  “And?”

  “And then my dad interrupted us and yanked him back outside with the rest of the good dogs.”

  Grant sighs, relinquishing his love for decent gossip. “Damn.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  He pauses, blinking quickly. “Oh, honey. He’s
Junior Morgan.”

  I hold out his bottle of water and he takes it from me. “And?”

  “I keep forgetting you’re new around here,” he mutters, leaning back to peek out the window again.

  When he heard there would be several dozen young footballers gathered in my backyard tonight, he basically invited himself over to watch. Not that I mind the company. It gets lonely up here on the third floor.

  “Junior’s a player, in every sense of the word. Throw a rock in the quad and you’ll probably smack a girl he’s hit and quit.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, collapsing onto my floor cushion and reaching for my script. “We should keep running lines—”

  “Shush,” he snaps, his eyes still focused outside. “Ty Fisher just bent over to tie his shoelaces.”

  I push off my cushion to join him by the window. He scoots a bit to the left to give me room and we stare down at the lawn below. My father stands tall above them with a pressed suit; his big, thick hands waving around as he spews out more words to them than he’s ever said to me in my entire life.

  “Your dad seems cool,” Grant murmurs.

  I shrug. “I suppose.”

  My eyes fall on the only familiar face in the crowd other than my old man: Junior Morgan. A player, in every sense of the word. No wonder he practically broke his chain to nip at my heels.

  Grant sighs. “Ty is gorgeous.”

  I laugh. “Something tells me you might not be his type…”

  He raises his thin eyebrows at me. “I beg to differ.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “A gentleman never kisses and tells…” he jokes, “but I have a friend who does and let’s just say Ty is going through the experimental phase of his college social experience.”

  I look down at the lawn again, zeroing in on Ty and his perfectly-styled black hair, not unlike Grant’s neatly-trimmed blond locks. “I can see that.”

  Grant lets out another sigh and spins away from the window, lost and lovelorn. “All right, let’s do this.”

  I shift back down onto my cushion with my script in hand, ready to dive into this scene. Auditions for the fall show are this Friday and I’m eager to make a good impression on the theatre director, Mr. Young. I would never have gotten into the program at all if it weren’t for my father’s influence and Young made it pretty clear that I’d have to impress him right out the gate or he’d boot my ass to the curb.

  “Okay…” I clear my throat. “Page twenty-nine. You read Danny, I’ll read Nora.”

  Grant puffs out his chest and flips to the page before reading his first line. “Don’t you see what you did, eh?! You made a fool outta me.”

  I chuckle. “Maybe drop the De Niro accent and try again?”

  “Too much?”

  “Just a smidgen too much,” I say. “Good impression, though.”

  ***

  “Move, move, move!”

  I hear my father’s voice before I even step out onto the football field. He’s got the team running drills with a third of them running to catch a pass, another third throwing the ball, and the last third racing to tackle to thrower before he gets the chance to throw the ball. A few seconds of watching it and I start to feel dizzy. If I can say one thing about athletes, it’s that they’re coordinated as hell.

  “Hey, Dad!”

  “Come on, guys!” he spits at the field. “Pick up that speed!”

  I linger next to his shoulder, my eyes flicking back and forth at the nameless faces behind helmets. They react to my dad’s voice as if their lives depended on it. I suppose they think it does. He’s Cary Pierce, after all. I wish I could admire him the way they do. To me, he’s just my father.

  I clear my throat. “Hey, Dad.”

  He looks over this time. “Eliza… what are you doing out here?”

  I can’t tell whether he’s annoyed I’m here or if he’s happy to see me. Story of my life. “I just wanted to come say hi and see if you wanted to get some lunch later.”

  “Not today,” he says, shifting his focus back to the field.

  It’s the answer I expected. Bring an idea to my father within twenty-four hours of it needing to happen and he’ll reject it outright. “Okay,” I say. “How about tomorrow?” Once you set the time, you have to bring the incentive. What’s in it for him? “We can go to the student union during the lunch rush. Loads of people will see us hanging out and you’ll gain a rep for being the charming dad on campus…”

  He pauses and looks down at me. “That’s not a bad idea, Eliza.”

  “I’ll meet you at the athletic center and—”

  The sound of colliding bodies brings my attention to the field. A player is on the ground, pinned down by another one nearly twice his size. He must not have gotten his toss off in time before getting tackled.

  “Get up, Junior!” Dad shouts at him. “Walk it off.”

  I stare at just Junior as he pulls himself off the grass. His shoulder padding is somewhat askew and there’s a brand new grass stain trailing down his tights but he doesn’t seem to care.

  He’s looking at me instead.

  “What were you saying, Eliza?”

  “Um…” I pull my eyes away from the field. “I’ll meet you at the athletic center and we can walk to the student union together.”

  “Sounds good.” He pats my shoulder. “Now get going, you’re distracting my boys.”

  A quick glance at the field again tells me that he’s right — Junior Morgan is still staring at me but he’s doing a good job at making it look like he’s not. I add a little flair to my hips, giving my skirt a sway as I leave. Might as well make the view worth taking another tackle for.

  “Come on, Junior! Get your head in the game!”

  I chuckle and step off the field.

  Chapter 3

  Junior

  It’s way too early in the morning for geometry. I’m not sure what I was thinking when my academic adviser talked me into a math class at nine-thirty in the morning but here I am. At least there’s a coffee cart stationed between me and the lecture hall.

  “I need coffee,” I mutter at the barista. “With a shit-ton of sugar.”

  He nods and snatches an empty cup to fill up. I glance over my shoulder at the quad and flinch at the dull pain firing through my back.

  That tackle at practice yesterday never should have happened. It wouldn’t have if Eliza Pierce wasn’t standing on the sidelines. One look at her and the next thing I knew, I was on the damn ground and the coach was shouting at me.

  I scan the quad while I wait and my eyes land on her, Eliza Pierce, like fate itself dropped her in front of me again. She’s sitting alone on a bench with a paperback book in one hand and a pen in the other, scribbling down notes on a pad balanced on her crisscrossed legs. Her lips move as if she’s reading aloud to herself as her eyes pass back and forth on the page.

  Cary Pierce’s little, darling daughter. Untouchable Eliza. His voice echoes in my head; that phrase of warning daddies just love to throw at unsuspecting prom dates to scare the piss out of them.

  Stay away from my daughter.

  But I’m not scared. Hell, I’m more curious than anything.

  The disposable coffee cup beside her topples to the ground and she bends down to pick it up, exposing the gentle upper curve of her breast for one single, wonderful moment before throwing the empty cup into the trash can by her bench.

  “Hey—” I nod to the barista and point at Eliza. “Do you remember what she ordered?”

  He follows my gesture into the quad. “Black coffee.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep,” he confirms.

  “Her?”

  “I thought it was weird, too.”

  “Give me one of those, too,” I say, passing my debit card to him. He steps back to fill another cup with piping hot brew and slides them both to me. “Thanks.”

  I walk across the grass towards her and with each step, her voice gets louder and louder. She is r
eading aloud to herself, repeating the same phrase over and over again, sometimes with closed eyes to recite it from memory.

  I clear my throat to get her attention. “Looks like you could use a refill, Eliza Pierce.”

  She turns up and recognition instantly crosses her face. Her eyes bounce between mine and the coffee in front of her. They’re soft and blue, like digitally-altered photos of the ocean beside a tropical island paradise. She takes the cup from me and holds it to her nose to smell inside.

  “It’s black coffee,” I explain.

  Eliza nods slowly and takes a quick sip. “How did you know?”

  I stand up taller. “A magician never reveals—”

  “You asked the barista?” she quips.

  “I asked the barista,” I nod.

  “Well, thank you, just Junior Morgan.” She slides the cup between her crisscrossed legs, nestling it against her inner thigh. I force my eyes upward so she doesn’t notice me trying to glance up her skirt.

  “Do you mind if I sit?” I ask.

  It takes a moment but she nods, reaching for her messenger bag and sliding it onto the grass beneath the bench. I sit down beside her and take a quick drink from my own coffee, cool and relaxed. My nose detects her perfume; something faint but flower-scented. “So, why are you over here talking to yourself?” I ask her.

  Eliza flips her hand to expose the front of her book. “Trying to choose a monologue.”

  “The Bigger Book of Comedic and Dramatic Monologues,” I read the title and quickly look at her. “You act?”

  “Occasionally. It’s for a class.”

  “What class?”

  “Theatre 375.”

  “375? Okay, so when you say you act occasionally, what you really mean is…”

  “It’s my life,” she smiles.