Besides, who cared if Steve didn’t appreciate my hard work? The fact that Jake had gotten so many likes was clearly evidence that my re-branding plan was working. If Steve couldn’t figure that out, tough beans.
For once in my life, things were starting to look up. I was succeeding at my main project, I was meeting Amy for drinks again like the tough city girl I was becoming, and I had a sort-of boyfriend.
Or, shoot, maybe it was too early to talk about him like that. But with everything that had happened between us, there was no denying something more than just pure physical attraction.
26
I walked through the sliding doors of South Side Hospital to the emergency wing and scanned the seats of the packed waiting room, looking for Tate. The little guy was curled up in a chair, all by himself. I took in his exhausted face, bleary eyes, and hair in disarray. He’d probably been here all night. He was in a worn, ill-fitting pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt, and he looked completely hopeless.
“Tate.” I smiled slightly, more due to the fact that nothing else had happened to him other than the situation he was having to endure. When his eyes tagged me, his face lit up.
“Coach!” He rose up from his chair and ran toward me. I lowered to my knees, and he all but bulldozed into me and gave me a hard hug.
A wave of emotion went through me, half anger, half relief. Tate didn’t let go for several long minutes, and I felt his little body shaking. I’m not a touchy-feely guy, but I only let go when he was ready. Sometimes a hug did wonders. Tate wiped at his eyes, which leveled me, and once again, I hated this whole situation he was in.
After I was sure that Tate was okay, I stopped by the front desk to check on the status of his aunt. The guy, Simon, was a lanky black guy in scrubs and constantly busy, either on the phone or his computer. It took about five full minutes to get his attention, and then another few minutes to get an answer to my question.
“Well, she’s in a coma right now,” Simon said. “The bullet did a number on her. We really can’t say when she’ll be conscious. Could be hours. Could be days. Could be months. Could be…”
“Months? She’s this boy’s guardian. What the hell is he supposed to do until then?”
Simon shrugged, and I realized I’d yelled at him. I calmed down, and to my relief, he didn’t take it personally. “Look, Sir, around here, we see a lot of these cases. But he can’t stay here. Not your kid, obviously?”
I shook my head. “I’m his coach.”
“No other contacts are listed…the woman who came with Ms. Straub’s nephew didn’t know much. Maybe you can ask the boy to tell you if he has other relatives somewhere, anywhere. If not, well…” And I knew what he was going to say. Those words I hated. “You could try DCFS. I don’t know, man. You know how it is on the South Side.”
I nodded, numbly. I did know how it was here. “He’ll be put in the system…” I said, swallowing hard and trying to be strong, for Tate, but for myself too. All of this was bringing back horrible memories of my own experiences with DCFS, of how Eva and I had to deal with the choices made by complete strangers who cared, but who were also so overwhelmed and tired they couldn’t care about every case, every lost child.
“If he’s got family, hopefully they’ll take him in,” Simon offered. “I’m sorry. Wish I had a better answer.”
I ran a hand through my hair but nodded in resignation. This wasn’t Simon’s fault, and he was doing what he could. I had to remember that too. “Thanks…”
“It’ll work out, man,” Simon said, giving me a brief smile. “You’re looking out for him, so I hope you figure out something…”
“Thank God you’re here,” a woman interrupted, speaking from behind me. I recognized her voice as the woman I’d spoken to on the phone. I turned to greet her.
“Janice, I presume?” I stuck out a hand for a shake. She was a middle-aged woman with glasses. “My name is Jake. I’m so sorry to hear what happened to Keri.”
“I know who you are,” she said, almost dismissively. “You’re the boy’s coach. He wouldn’t stop talking about you. Listen, Tate needs someone to take care of him. I would love to bring him to my place, but frankly, I have enough mouths to feed as it is. Now, do you know any place he could stay while his aunt gets better? I just…I can’t.”
“Well, you’re in a pickle, aren’t you,” I said, mostly to myself, but Simon gave me a sad look. I looked back at Tate, who was now standing next to me. I couldn’t tell if he was tuned in to our conversation or not, but kids always picked up more of the conversation than you thought they did, absorbing it like little sponges.
“I wish I could take him in, but I can’t. I’m asking you. Begging you. I’m going to get fired if I miss another shift as it is, so I have to go soon.”
I considered my options. Tate’s options, really. No way in fucking hell was I going to let him be taken by DCFS. Going through that was a nightmare. Having my sister with me had made it a little easier, but Tate was small for his age, and he was also sensitive. He wouldn’t make it in there. He’d slowly die, like so many kids who didn’t get mean right away or didn’t enter it already tough.
Fuck it, I decided.
“Tate can stay with me,” I said.
“Thank you, thank you!” she said, already hustling toward the front doors without a backward glance.
I was the only person in this whole city who gave a damn about him, and at this time, he needed to be around someone he knew, not around a bunch of adults who were as beat down and hopeless as the kids going into that machine.
Yeah. There was no other choice. I wasn’t going to let Tate go through what I had.
Simon arched an eyebrow, but clearly this wasn’t truly going to be an issue for him. Sometimes, in the ghetto, you just had to live and make due.
“Tate,” I said, ruffling the kid’s hair. “You ready for a little sleepover?”
“Yeah,” he said. Tate was never one to use a ton of words. But he smiled from ear to ear, and fuck if the kid didn’t have a bull’s-eye for my soft spot.
27
My phone buzzed on the table as my boss waited for my response. I glanced down and saw Jake’s name flash across the screen.
“I’m going to have to take this,” I said.
Steve turned his head toward me. “Where are you going in the middle of a meeting?”
“Just trying to keep my number one client happy.” I flashed him a fake smile and showed him Jake’s name flashing across the phone.
Steve rolled his eyes but reluctantly waved me out of the conference room.
“Jake. Everything okay?”
“No, it’s not.” He spoke with noticeable weight in his voice. That put me on alert, hearing his distress. Jake was the happy-go-lucky frat guy. When he was serious, something was really wrong. Also, there was a pain in his voice that I hadn’t heard before. Not when he’d been in jail or talked about Dani or his gang tattoos; not even when he’d been suspended from the team. Not ever.
“Oh my gosh. What happened?”
“It’s Tate. I need you to pick him up from school today.”
My skin erupted in goosebumps. “Tate? Why would you…? Why would I…?”
“I’ll explain everything later. Right now, it’s almost eleven, and I’m going to be late for my warm-up before the game. Just please. Trust me.”
Despite his seriousness, I smiled. “Since when have you cared about being late?”
He didn’t answer for a long second. “I’ve always cared,” he said. “I know that’s my fault for not getting that across, because it does matter to me—my job, this game. You made me realize the things that matter to me, I have to fight to be a lot better than I have been. And there’s nothing wrong with people knowing that I care.” He sighed. “Just...pick Tate up later today and bring him back to my place, please? I’ll be home later, and I’ll explain everything.”
I exhaled, just letting his words sink in. “Okay. But… I don’t have a key.”
Something wasn’t adding up. Something was going on, enough to freak Jake out. This was a highly irregular request, but Jake was asking for help. My help. I had a feeling this wasn’t easy for him. “All right…” I said. “I’ll pick him up.”
His relief was so visceral that I felt it. “You’re the best, Andrea. Gotta go.”
He hung up, so did I. A half-second later, he texted me the address of Tate’s school. I slid the phone back into my pocket and stood there, not sure what that had been about.
When I got back into the room, Steve was drumming his fingers on the desk like I’d kept him waiting an hour. Everybody else in the room gave me a glance before turning back to Steve and the other managers.
“How’s Jake?” Steve asked. The corners of his mouth curved upward in a smile that could not have been more fake.
“He’s good. Just called to say that he’s been thinking over the new strategy, and he thinks the new community service aspect of his campaign is a good idea. He was fighting me pretty hard on it at first.”
“Impressive,” Steve said. “How did you get him to change his mind on that?”
Oh, I dunno know…letting him pin my body against the couch? Me getting under his skin? Oh, nothing all that revolutionary.
“I gave him the pitch,” I said, with a boost of confidence, because I was proud of Jake and how far he’d come. He’d fought me, hard, but now he was realizing that I was here for him, on his side. “He’s finally buying into my strategy.”
Amy, from her spot near Steve, just smiled knowingly. “Well, I’m just glad people will finally see the full, unfiltered version of The Big Unit,” she said. “He’s clearly got some really great aspects to him that not a lot of people get to see. I’m just glad you were able to find them.”
Steve looked at Amy and, surprisingly, nodded in agreement.
“I agree with Amy. Not a bad job, Andrea. Sorry for the freak-out earlier. You’re starting to turn this around.”
I was shocked that he was dishing out a compliment. With Steve, I was never sure what he was up to. He did things so sly and under the table that I’d started to question his honesty and integrity. All of the interns and hardworking employees worked our butts off, but Steve seemed to do little other than tell us we needed to be better. But I held back and went for diplomatic. I was in a room full of my peers and bosses. I had no other choice. After getting robbed at gunpoint? Please. Dealing with Steve and his shadiness was a cake-walk.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” I said brightly. “Because I’m going to have to leave early today to take care of something with Jake.”
Steve frowned and raised a brow very high into his forehead, then he pursed his lips. He should trademark that look. It’d rival Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel signature pose. “What exactly are you doing with him?” he asked, almost suspiciously.
A lot of R-rated things, I hoped. “We are, uh, doing another photo shoot for his Instagram.”
Steve pierced me with another look. “Excellent. Just get results.”
“I will, I promise.”
Amy bit her lip, holding back her laughter.
I knew that the food situation in Jake’s apartment was dismal (did he eat out for every meal?), so I had stopped at Whole Foods before I picked up Tate. I remembered what my brothers always liked to make when we were kids, and one thing stuck out: pizza.
So I’d picked out flour, tomato sauce, some pepperoni, and mozzarella cheese, as well as other ingredients to create different kinds of homemade pizzas. I didn’t make any money as an intern and was totally relying on what my dad had given all of us kids after the divorce. I was a tight budgeter, but with Tate, I just wanted him to not worry about a thing.
Besides, this would be a time-consuming process, and I needed an activity that I could do with Tate from four p.m. to whenever Jake got back from his late-afternoon home game.
“First, we have to smash the dough and let it sit for a while,” I told Tate. I didn’t cook or bake as often as I used to, but I’d always found it relaxing. And cooking with kids was even more fun.
“We just let it sit there?” Tate repeated, dubious.
“Yes. Which will be perfect timing, because we’ll be able to wait for Jake to get home. That should give us some time to get through your homework.”
“Homework?”
“Yes, don’t you have any homework?”
I felt a little bad talking about homework when the woman who was evidently his only living relative was in a coma at the hospital. But what else could we do?
Tate had been matter-of-fact when I’d asked him what was going on. And just like when he’d told me and Jake about his cousin getting shot a few days ago, he was sad but accepting of the situation. I couldn’t believe it, but I was starting to understand it. And it was devastating that he almost expected everyone he knew to just…die. And leave him. I thought about Jake and how he’d become a foster kid. I couldn’t imagine how much it would have hurt to have your sibling adopted but not you. Rejection was the worst feeling ever. And I realized that was why Jake had taken Tate in. To not have to go through whatever Jake had gone through. It broke my heart, twice over. My childhood had been hard, but this was harder.
He looked reluctantly at his backpack before he finally unzipped it and pulled out a textbook, staring at it. I patted the seat on the couch, inviting him to take the cushion next to me.
Tate slowly took a seat on the couch.
“Are you doing okay, Tate?” I asked again, brushing my fingertips through his hair. He shied away a little.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, without the slightest conviction in his voice.
He held the book in his lap but put his arm over the cover, shielding it from my view. It was a spelling workbook for third graders. He had a sort of glazed look over his eyes, and he didn’t want to make eye contact with me. I wondered if he’d learned that from Jake.
I opened the book up to one of the first pages. There was red marker everywhere. But that wasn’t what scared me. What freaked me out was that every word—every single word—was spelled wrong. The words weren’t even close.
I was sure the little guy was smarter than he let on, because he saw me reacting to all the red marks, and his eyes got a little teary.
“What happened here?” I asked, with the warmest smile I could.
Tate didn’t look at me. “I don’t like spelling. Spelling sucks. Ain’t good at it.”
I looked again at the letters. He had drawn shapes—basically nothing was legible that he’d written. He appeared to not know a single letter.
Did Tate not know how to read?
I mean, I knew South Side schools were bad, but no letters at all? Tate sat next to me, closed off. Glancing around the room, I noticed that Jake had signed his no-hitter jersey from last year. It’d been framed and hung on the wall.
“Well, let’s start somewhere. What letter is this?” I pointed to the N that began Jake’s last name.
“That…that’s Coach’s jersey!” he said excitedly.
“Right! And what’s Coach’s last name?”
“Napleton,” he said without hesitation.
“Good. How about we learn how to spell that first?”
We went through all of the letters of Jake’s name, and I’d never seen a boy’s eyes light up with such enthusiasm. For a few seconds, he forgot that he was in third grade and still didn’t know almost any letters of the alphabet.
So for the rest of this tutoring session, he copied “Napleton” into his notebook. Several times.
Maybe tomorrow we would make an anagram of Jake’s name.
Tate and I had just put the finishing touches on the pizza fifteen minutes before, and we were checking on it in the oven when we heard Jake’s key rattle in the door.
“Coach!” He ran to the front door, and as soon as Jake came in, Tate wrapped his arms around him, his head barely reaching Jake’s chest.
&nbs
p; “Hey, buddy,” Jake greeted, exhaustion clear on his face and in his voice. But he grinned down at Tate with affection. “Did you have a good time with Miss Andrea?”
“Yeah! She taught me how to spell your name!” Tate led Jake to his notebook, which was open on the coffee table. We’d gotten bored of just copying Napleton (even though that was almost too hard for Tate to do), so I showed him how to do an acrostic out of Jake’s name. My cheeks flushed red as Jake picked up the notebook and read Tate’s ideas. They were transcribed in my handwriting, so he probably thought I came up with them:
Not a bad guy.
Always eating pizza.
Player (of baseball).
Laughs.
Eats Pizza.
The best player in the world.
On suspension a lot.
Never lets me down.
Jake shot me a funny look. It wasn’t worth explaining to Jake that the first letter of his last name was about the only letter this kid knew in the world.
“Pizza’s ready!” I smiled from the kitchen.
“Smells great, Miss Andrea,” Jake said.
“Well it should,” I said and pulled the pizza out of the oven. “We made it fresh, here.”
“Wow. You cooked pizza from scratch? Well, that’s a plus one.” Jake smiled as he kissed me.
I always felt a little weird displaying my cooking talents, but it was true: I kicked butt at cooking and baking. I didn’t like to show it off, though. I wanted guys to like me for me, not my cooking skills, as ridiculous as that sounded. I cut it into slices and put some plates out.
I felt Jake’s hand creep its way down my back as he grabbed a slice.
His brown eyes seared through me, and he brought the piece of pizza to his mouth. “Oh wow, that’s hot.” He smiled and grazed my hip with his other hand.
“I think we had better go sit on the couch and eat this like a civilized family, don’t you think?” I said, grabbing Jake’s hand to stop it from going places where I wanted it to go, just not in front of the kid.
Ten Night Stand Page 41