One Good Play

by Meredith St. James

  "I don't think—"

  Wallace held up his hand to halt Coach Mack's attempt at interrupting.

  "It's too late to get you into the undergrad teaching program this year, but I don't think there'd be any problem moving you into a history major. Then you'd be clear to do a master's program in teaching, and you'd already have the content covered. Most teachers nowadays end up getting a master's during their careers anyway."

  "I appreciate you trying to help, but it really isn't necessary. I've enjoyed the broadcasting courses," I said, more for Coach's benefit than my own.

  "I wouldn't call it helping you. I'm just raising the expectations. You could easily be one of our promising students. Instead, you're wasting away in a program that, between you and me, needs some serious restructuring."

  "Wallace, with all due respect, Carter isn't required to take more rigorous courses just because he's smarter than the average football player."

  "Of course not, but I would think Mr. Scott might be interested in taking a closer look at his future sans football. No man plays forever."

  I stared down at the nearly empty plate in front of me. I'd gotten much further along in my meal than the two men who had been dominating the conversation. It was much easier to focus on chewing than to think too hard about something as abstract as the rest of my life.

  It took a minute for me to realize that the table had gone silent and both men were looking at me expectantly. I looked from one to the other but settled on Wallace. Part of me couldn't help but wish he was my dad at that moment, despite the fact that my own dad was fine.

  I'd gotten more than lucky in the people-who-raised-me department. They just weren't exactly the sort of people that offered much guidance. They were more the, "We're proud of whatever," type. Not exactly helpful sometimes.

  "I think I'd like that plan," I admitted with a slow nod.

  It was a bullshit reason to make such a huge decision, but I honestly just liked the feeling of someone telling me they knew I could do better than I'd done. It was the same reason I'd wound up on my high school football team after a well-meaning gym teacher had told me sports might help me make friends. He hadn't exactly been right, but at least I'd gained enough muscle that people stopped thinking it was funny to push into me in the hallways.

  "Is there still time to change my schedule for this semester?"

  "Technically no," Wallace began, "But we can make it happen anyway. I'll have an advisor from the history department create you a new schedule and get it emailed to you tomorrow. We'll make sure to have everything ready to go for you by Monday."

  "Thank you," I told him graciously, doing my best not to make eye contact with Coach Mack. I could tell he was fuming.

  "I do believe it's going to be a great year, Mr. Scott."

  It was the last noteworthy thing Wallace said before diving wholeheartedly into his breakfast plate. We finished our meals with only the occasional comment about the upcoming football season. The quiet was a great relief to me.

  When we were finished, Wallace paid the bill with a black American Express card that made me nearly spit out the drink of water I'd just taken. He waved Coach and me on, insisting we didn't need to stick around for him to sign the check.

  Coach Mack stomped ahead of me all the way out of the restaurant. I braced myself for a verbal beatdown, but he surprised me by taking a deep breath before he turned to me out on the sidewalk.

  "You'll start tutoring on Monday," he muttered.

  "How do you know I'll need tutoring when I haven't even started classes yet?" I asked in a rare show of defiance.

  "Tutoring. Monday."

  His tone allowed for no more arguments. I would go to tutoring if it made him feel better, but I was bound and determined to prove I wouldn't actually need it.

  4

  Wren

  The crisp New York air swirled around me as I left the comfort of my dorm building on the edge of campus. I'd been to so many different countries that I'd lost count of them all, but nothing quite compared to New York in the fall. There was something comforting about wrapping up in a warm sweater paired with tall boots.

  Kelley University was situated right on prime real estate in the heart of Kelley, New York. The city was home to a slew of wealthy inhabitants, including an entire cast of reality TV stars. Though it didn't quite get the attention of the ivy leagues, Kelley had a great reputation as one of the best private universities in the country—and one of the most expensive.

  I barely knew my biological father, but I'd readily accepted his gift of free tuition to the elite university. It had been a long time since I'd had a consistent place to lay my head each night. Aside from that, me being there was more about my dad than me. I'd let him arrange everything from my dorm room to my class schedule.

  In retrospect, it was probably a little unfair of me not to give input on my courses. As a result, I'd ended up with an eclectic mix of classes. It was weird to see History of Organized Crime next to Intro to Animation. I'd assumed the man would just have the school give me a generic listing of general education courses, but instead, I'd gotten a smorgasbord of weird.

  I appreciated that.

  My dad might not have known much about me, but what he did know had clearly taught him that I wasn't going to fit the mold of a typical student. When I'd accepted his college offer, I wasn't sure if I intended to stick things out for the long haul. If everything was going to turn out as interesting as my class list I might just stick around longer than I'd thought.

  I'd reached the main courtyard in the center of campus when my cell phone rang. The number was unfamiliar but I recognized the area code.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi." The awkward silent lull that always happened when I talked to my dad offered easy confirmation that it was him. "Are you on your way to work?"

  "Yep. Though, I'm still not sure why the tutoring center opens on the first day of classes. How am I supposed to tutor someone before they've even gotten their first assignments?"

  My dad sighed in exasperation.

  "The first day is just about getting acquainted and setting schedules. You'll do an orientation with the tutoring lead and then you'll meet the students that have been pre-assigned to you so that you can go over their syllabi and help them plan out their calendar. It'll all be very basic, but today is still important."

  The robotic nature his voice had taken on gave me pause. "It sounds like you're reciting that answer from a pamphlet."

  "I may have picked one up," he admitted with a chuckle.

  I forced down the emotion that welled up in my throat. I wasn't a warm and gooey person, not anymore. The last thing I wanted was to emotionally invest in a relationship that I still wasn't all that sure about. I'd grown up just fine without the man. I appreciated all he'd done for me in the years since we'd come into contact, but I didn't want to rely on him any more than I already was.

  "You know, I do still have money in the bank. I would have been fine without a job." Especially a minimum wage one—though I didn't dare add that and risk sounding too ungrateful.

  "I know, but think of what a great way to meet people this will be."

  I'd never needed any help meeting people. I understood the sentiment though. He wanted me to make more than casual friendships. He wanted me to form the sort of relationships that would tie me down to one place for the next four years. It was a bit misguided, but thoughtful nonetheless.

  "Thanks for thinking of me," I said quietly.

  "Of course," he answered faintly.

  It was almost like we were in a whisper battle to see who could be the quietest. We'd been having regular phone calls for weeks, but in a lot of ways, we still felt like strangers.

  When the silence started to get too unbearable I announced, "I'll let you know how it goes." I wanted to smack myself for pre-initiating our next conversation, but it was too late for me to take the words back.

  "I'd like that." The conviction in his voice only made me feel
worse.

  After we'd hung up, the rest of my walk passed uneventfully. Campus was reasonably calm aside from the occasional panicked freshman. It was refreshing to be somewhere where I could take the time to actually look around.

  It was weird to think that for once I wasn't just passing through.

  5

  Wren

  Sometimes you meet someone and just instantly know that they were born with a big stick up their ass. Laurel Barrett was a prime example of just that.

  Kelley's tutoring center was all about some new wave style of assigning student leaders to run the place. Somehow the type A senior had been deemed the chosen one. Not only had she been chosen, but she seemed pretty freaking determined to make sure everyone remembered it. I'd barely made it three steps in the door before she was telling me I needed to take my scarf off. Apparently, my scarf was a major hazard if I needed to use the copy machine.

  "It could get stuck," Laurel had explained with a straight face.

  I'd started to laugh, assuming she was being facetious. It turns out she was not. Also, my laughter was not the least bit appreciated.

  I'd tucked the scarf into my bag and made a mental note to find some way to wear two scarves the next time I was scheduled to be there. Laurel seemed like the kind of girl who really needed to be thrown off her game a bit. It would be character building for her. It was basically my civic duty to make sure of it.

  Clearly, it didn't seem like Laurel and I would be getting along too well. My more laissez-faire attitude was bound to grate on her nerves, and her high-strung temperament was already grating on mine.

  The person I really felt bad for was Nadia, the girl assigned to work under Laurel. The mousy junior clearly didn't know how to stand up for herself. She had allowed Laurel to turn her into a glorified personal assistant. The whole thing might have seemed comical if it wasn't so damned cliché.

  "...because you'll only be paid for hours you log. So make sure you're double-checking that your clients are signing in for your sessions and that you're keeping accurate logs of end times. If not..."

  As Laurel droned on with what she'd dubbed our formal orientation—for all six of us new tutors—I'd let my eyes and mind wander. Because of that, I saw the exact moment when Carter Scott pushed through the doors of the third floor of the library. The tutoring center was in the far back corner, so I had plenty of time to admire the ambling way he moved. It only belatedly hit me that he was coming straight our way.

  As Carter passed our little group, I slid down in my seat to better hide behind the boy in the sweater vest sitting next to me. As Carter walked up to Nadia at the service desk I strained to hear their conversation.

  "Tutoring," he announced himself. He really was kind of quiet, I mused.

  "Sign in here," Nadia instructed him, looking flustered by his presence.

  The two of them went back and forth for a minute but their voices became too low for me to hear over the mouthpiece otherwise known as Laurel. I leaned further in their direction, crowding the poor, nervous guy next to me. I could see his cheeks turning pink as my side brushed against his.

  "Sorry," I whispered to him with a wink. He nodded stiffly but quickly turned his head away from me.

  I refocused on the desk. Nadia was trying to give Carter a blue folder. He seemed reluctant to take it until she'd waved it towards him a few times. He glanced down at the folder once it was in his hands and his head tilted slightly.

  "This is the name of my tutor?" he asked as he pointed at the top of the folder.

  "Yup," Nadia nodded.

  It looked like she was doing her best to emulate Laurel's stiff posture. Laurel used it to appear more commanding, but it just made Nadia look more nervous. She pointed him towards one of the study rooms dedicated to the tutoring center.

  A puff of air blew out of his lips that sounded vaguely like the hint of a laugh. "Thanks."

  I felt bad for whoever got stuck tutoring the quiet jock. He hadn't seemed dense when I'd talked to him, but it wouldn't be easy working with him considering how much he seemed to struggle with basic conversation. Luckily, Rose had mentioned he was a journalism major, so it was safe to say he wasn't getting partnered with me.

  I tuned back in to Laurel just as she was instructing us to, "Turn and meet our fellow newbies."

  Before I could even try to get a word out, my scrawny friend was dodging as far away as he could get. I might have felt offended if it wasn't for the fact that he spent the entirety of the meet-and-greet staring at me from the other side of our small circle. Just as it seemed like everyone had mostly met and chatted, I snuck up behind the guy and tapped him on the shoulder. No way was I starting the year with a co-worker that couldn't even look me in the eye.

  "I'm Wren," I announced resolutely to him while he was still busy turning towards me.

  His head shrunk into his shoulders, but he did reluctantly let me shake his hand. "I'm Matthew."

  There was no way I was calling an adult man by the name Matthew. "Nice to meet you, Matty." I left a small pause to see if he'd protest, but he didn't. "What's your major?"

  "Political Science," he murmured. The way he winced when he said it made me wonder if maybe people weren't so kind when they heard.

  "Nice. I could definitely picture you being a senator or something cool like that."

  I was laying it on a little thick but the guy obviously needed a confidence boost. I didn't mind being the one to give it to him.

  "No...uh, I just want to be like, maybe a speechwriter," he managed to get out.

  The rest of our little group had slowly started to trickle off. I was pleasantly surprised that Matty didn't rush away from me towards the service desk. That meant he wasn't a complete lost cause.

  "I'm thinking we'll make a senator of you yet," I said with a friendly wink.

  I gently tugged his phone free from his hand. "What are you doing?" He frowned and eyed me like he thought I might break the thing.

  "I noticed on the schedule it looks like we're working the same shifts a lot. If we're gonna be working early mornings then I figure we ought to take turns making the coffee runs."

  "We only got to see the schedule for a few seconds."

  It was a fair point, we'd only gotten to see the mock-up schedule briefly. Laurel had rambled off some bullshit about making sure there were no conflicts before she emailed us a finalized copy. Someone needed to tell the poor girl that we were working on a college campus, not Wall Street.

  "I have a good memory," I shrugged. From years of trying to quickly memorize maps. Nothing screamed tourist more than walking around an unfamiliar city with your map out. That was a great way to end up getting robbed in a back alley.

  "Now, as a show of good faith, I'll go first. But you better not let me down when it's your turn," I teased.

  "I won't," he said solemnly.

  Matty was definitely going to be my new friend, whether he liked it or not. I parted with a friendly smile so I could go check in with Nadia. I waited as patiently as I could behind Laurel, who was talking at super-speed to give her directions on how she should be spending every minute of every day for the rest of her life.

  Hyperbole aside, the girl really never seemed to shut up.

  "Excuse me," I finally interrupted when it became clear Laurel wasn't stopping anytime soon.

  "Yes?" Nadia and Laurel both answered at the same time.

  Laurel stared me down, clearly irritated with me for intruding. Behind her, Nadia breathed a huge sigh of relief. Clearly, one of them was thankful for my interruption.

  I pointedly looked at Nadia. "I just was wondering if there's something I should be working on while I wait for an assignment." Behind my back, I crossed my fingers that I'd make it through the first day without having to meet with anyone. Helping someone read a syllabus wasn't exactly what I considered to be a riveting use of my time.

  "You actually already have someone here to meet with you," Laurel butted in, crossing her arms as she
spoke.

  Confused, I glanced back towards the study rooms. There was still only one occupied—and that was the one Carter was in. Each of the study rooms had a large glass window separating them and the rest of the library. So, I could see him sitting in there with his back to us. I spun back to Nadia, waiting for directions to wherever my person might be.

  My confusion seemed to confuse her, too. "He's right there," Nadia pointed. Her finger created an imaginary straight line leading straight to Carter Scott.

  6

  Carter

  "I can't tutor you," were the first words out of Wren's mouth.

  I thumbed through my blue folder self-consciously. Maybe I hadn't exactly expected her to be thrilled about the arrangement, but I also hadn't expected her to be so adamantly against it.

  "Did you hear me?"

  My hands stilled. How many times had I heard those same words hurled at me? It seemed to me like unless a question was asked, an answer wasn't really necessary. Her saying she wouldn't tutor me didn't exactly require a response if she'd already made up her mind.

  "Yeah," I muttered, "I heard you."

  I chanced a quick peek at her. I couldn't help myself.

  She looked sexy as hell standing there with her ginger hair curling wildly over her shoulders. I could only imagine how great her ass must have looked in the leggings she had on under the giant sweater she was wearing. From the section I could see between the hem of her sweater and her high boots, they looked like they were molded to her skin.

  "That's all you're gonna say?" She sounded incredulous.

  "No." I forced my eyes to meet hers and pointed to the desk outside where the two girls were staring at us like a TV program. "Could you tell them I'll be needing a new tutor, then?"

  She looked dumbstruck. I could tell she'd been expecting me to fight her on it. I just wasn't like that. I wasn't gonna force her to spend time with me. No, I would salvage what was left of my pride and get the hell out of there as soon as possible.