© Copyright 2019 by Sloane Peterson - All rights reserved.
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The Red Zone
Second Chance Sports Romance
By: Sloane Peterson
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
EPILOGUE
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The Red Zone
1
Sylvia
“Allison Cheyenne Richards, you get down from there this instant! Braxton, no! You put that down! Do I have to tell you again, Madison? Adrian, stop hitting your brother!”
I'm never having kids, I'm never having kids, I'm NEVER having kids! I silently vowed to myself, as I ran frantically around my client's suburban home like a hen with her head chopped off. A hen with her head chopped off, tending to an especially rambunctious brood of chicks.
“Brendan, spit that out! You're going to choke and I do not feel like driving you all to the ER tonight in this weather!”
My eyes passed from the flecks of snow drifting silently onto the windowpane, then slowly dissolving, to the hearth a few mere feet away, flames crackling, a scene that would have seemed infinitely cozier without the half dozen or so rugrats (I was honestly starting to lose track at this point) scampering around underfoot, spoiling any semblance of tranquility that might otherwise have been tempted to rear its more than welcome head.
“Don't you kids have an off switch?” I moaned in desperation, and it was only the considerable pay I was receiving for this gig that kept me from yelling my head off at the lot of them, swearing them into submission. The Richards' brats were bad (and numerous) enough of their own right. But tonight I'd been treated to an extra helping of wild ones on behalf of their parents' friends, the Jeffersons, or something like that. I'd only seen them for a minute or two before leaving, and I kept wanting to call them “Jetsons” by mistake. But these folks seemed to me like more of a modern stone age family than any sort of futurists. Hadn't they ever heard of freaking birth control?
Anyway, the Richards and the Jetsons Flintstones Jeffersons had decided they wanted to go to an adults only Superbowl party this evening, and rather than hire separate babysitters for their respective broods, they'd decided hey, why not let Sylvia watch over the whole lot? She'll be here anyway, and our kids get along well enough. (Spoiler alert: NO. No, they most certainly did not.)
And yes, the pay was good. But four hours into my night, and I was starting to question whether that was enough to compensate for the trauma of having to try and corral these screaming little monsters. Babysitting for upper middle class families in the suburbs was one of those occupations like underwater welding or coal mining, where you could rack up a handsome sum of money fairly quickly, but the safety risks far outweighed any potential benefits.
I finally had to stop myself, and stood in the middle of the living room, giving up the chase as two or three or five more kids went surging past me, taking no heed of my attempts to get them to settle down.
“God damn it,” I permitted myself, though under my breath, so that none of the children around could hear it. Or so I thought.
“What did you say Miss Sylvia?” I heard a tiny voice call up at me. It was Christy, one of the younger girls, and one of the only kids among them for whom I truly felt any measure of fondness. My face reddened, and I just barely stopped myself from swearing again.
“Nothing, I... I said, um... Dog planet.”
She seemed to take me at my word, though her head tilted to one side, an eyebrow raised as she attempted to discern my meaning.
I sighed, and patted her gently between the shoulders. “Hey, why don't you go and change into your pajamas? It's almost time for bed,” I suggested with a smile.
“Will you read me a story?” she asked, with those puppy dog eyes of hers one simply couldn't say no to.
“Sure dear,” I said, “in a few minutes, once I get all the monkeys calmed down.” She giggled at this, and I patted her again. “Now go on up. I won't forget.” She turned, and I watched her hurry up the stairs. “And don't forget to brush your teeth!” I called after her as an afterthought.
Her presence had almost, almost been enough to assuage my blistering irritation for a moment. But then the second she was gone, I experienced the sensation of a cleaver being pushed between the hemispheres of my brain, forcing my eyes shut as searing pain burrowed from the nerve endings back into the interior of my skull.
“Gah,” I breathed, pinching the bridge of my nose, feeling as though I might topple over from dizziness at any moment. A deafening sound was filling my ears, one which I must have tuned out until now amongst the din of so many other noises competing for my attention.
“Today we have exclusive– BUY ONE GET ONE– I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm– I've fallen and I can't get–“
One of the older boys was sprawled out on the couch, his bare, too long legs folded up onto the cushion, reminding me of the limbs of a spider. He had an iPad in one hand, playing some online video game far too violent for a boy his age, and gripped the TV remote in his opposite hand, flipping through the channels incessantly, seeming to pay no mind whatsoever to what came up on the screen.
My brow furrowed. I was barely holding it together now.
“Cooper, could you please, PLEASE just put it on something? I don't care what, but you're giving me a headache.”
“Whatever,” he said, though he continued to surf, though more slowly now, as though actually checking to see what his options were before changing the channel.
I stared pityingly at the boy. He was only ten or eleven I thought, yet he'd already become so blasé, so indifferent to the world around him, more like a moody teenager than an innocent child his age should be acting. My eyes returned longingly to the fireplace once more. I thought to myself, if I ever had the option of living in such comfort as these folks, I would be in no hurry to spoil that peace of mind with a bunch of ungrateful offspring who would never even appreciate all that I'd given to them, or just how lucky they truly were.
I realize I must sound like some horrible, kid-hating person. But I swear, I wasn't always like this. I'm not always like this! I was just in a bad mood. Stressed, stretched too thin. I felt like I'd been promised one idea of a life, done everything I was supposed to in order to make that life a reality, and now I still wasn't much further along than I had been setting out.
My heart and mind felt fragile, and I was starting to get more envious than I knew I should be toward those for whom the American Dream had manifested itself into reality, while my life, up until now, felt mired in stagnation.
I blinked back to reality following several long moments out of focus. Something on the wall mounted, ginormous-screen TV had caught my attention. A familiar face, which I tried not to think about any more than I had to these days, but which drew me like a moth to a flame.
“Wait, wait, Cooper, go back! Go back! The channel you just passed. No, the next one, the next one– um,
it would be FOX I think, whatever channel that is here.”
Dispassionately Cooper found the channel, and I stared into the eyes of the man I hadn't seen in person for years– since he was a boy, I realized, now that I thought about it. Or barely an adult, in any case.
“Luc Stalworth! Quarterback for the Crusaders, and easily the MVP of tonight's game!”
The face staring back at the reporter was all man, with chiseled features, dark brown hair and a messy scruff of beard. His grin at that moment, though, remained boyish, a look of false modesty, and his soft blue eyes, no different than they'd been a decade ago, underset the ferocious beast of an athlete I knew him to be.
“Well, I don't know about MVP,” he said, though in a tone that seemed to add silently, but really, I'm well aware that we wouldn't be sitting here under this shower of confetti right now if it wasn't for me. “It's always a team effort, just like any other sport. I couldn't do what I do without them, and I like to think I'm some use to them as well out there on the field.”
The reporter laughed. “The understatement of the century, don't you think? Tell me how does it feel to have led your team to victory in the fifty-forth annual Super Bowl? Were you ever worried, at any point in the season, that you might not make it here? Or even, once you got here, that you might end up going home without the trophy?”
“I tell you, it's an incredible feeling,” said Luc, hypnotizing me deeper and deeper into his gleaming baby blues, so that I found myself leaning closer and closer toward the TV over Cooper's head as he spoke. I was vaguely aware of the kid trying to peer down my sweater as I did so, and pulled it up with an absent tug to stop him doing so.
“I'm so proud of what I accomplished out there tonight, but you've always got to stay humble, you know? Remember your roots, where you came from, and how a team is only ever as strong as its weakest member, period. And I'm not gonna lie, there are always doubts, and I don't think that's a bad thing. You know, pride comes before a great fall and all that. And I know, I've been there. In past seasons and in my life in general. And of course, early on in the season there were struggles, a lot of people counted us out before we even had the chance to show them what we were made of. I think a lot of the other teams did that, and that was a big mistake on their part, as I think our big win here tonight goes to show.
“More than anything, though, I'm just extremely grateful right now. Grateful to my teammates, my coach, my friends and family, and all the fans out there who kept rooting for us, cheering us on the entire season. In my personal point of view, sometimes you've just got to believe that the impossible can be possible, and that's the only real way to ever make it so...”
On and on, he droned like this, reading from what must have been the exact same script that every single football player utilized in these postgame interviews. I almost found myself smirking derisively at the thought, wondering when he would get around to thanking God, and proclaiming to all the world that he was going to Disneyworld after this.
But it wasn't so much the words, but the way he spoke them that drew me in. Or maybe not even that. Maybe it was those gorgeous lips, forming around the syllables, drawing me from his oceanic eyes, sending a girlish shutter through me, the likes of which I hadn't experienced in the presence of any man, not even former boyfriends, since I was a teenager.
The interview kept going on and on, the business as usual football prattle of which all such interviews were comprised. Then the screen cut to the football field, to the final play of the game. It showed men leaping on one another, falling like dominoes to the ground. But a single strident figure, player number 46, came charging toward the end zone, weaving and bobbing, eluding each and every lunging body that came soaring in his direction.
He was absolutely magnificent...
I felt transported, if only for a moment, to a life that might have been– or that never could have been, realistically. And this hard truth slammed into me like solid pavement. I exhaled hard, realizing that I'd been holding my breath, and noticed that the fine hairs on my arms were standing on end.
God, I felt like an idiot... A dewy eyed school girl, like the one I'd once been. The one who'd been fooled into believing in the possibility of limitless potential in life.
Fittingly, no sooner had I snapped back to reality than the camera panned away from Luc's beautiful face to the puffed up mug of the announcer, who announced that they'd return in a moment for more post-game coverage. Homer Simpson's bright yellow face filled up the screen, followed by his fat hands around the throat of his son. I grabbed the remote from Cooper and shut off the TV before he could give me any ideas.
“Okay kiddo, time for bed.”
To my surprise, Cooper obeyed. He didn't even give me a “Whatever,” the way I half expected him to, though his body movements were more than sufficient to express the sentiment on their own.
I stood for a moment, hand trembling as I gripped the remote, feeling totally surreal. My heart was beating fast, as though I'd just now seen my teenage crush in person, rather than through the immense disconnect of a television screen.
I forced myself past the feeling out of necessity, shaking my head, and then turning from the TV as though I hadn't missed a beat. “Okay kids, time for bed!” I called to the house in general, which was so expansive around me that I doubted whether it had reached a single one of them. I made my way through the halls into darkened corridors to corral them all up, wishing at that moment that my life could be any way other than exactly how it was.
–––––
An amber glow emanated from the streets of the suburbs, my tires crunching in the snow as flakes continued to pirouette through the air, slashed from my windshield by the slow grunt of the wipers. I was so glad to be out of that house with those kids, and those poisonous thoughts I'd had of an impossible life for myself.
The Richie Richards and co hadn't made it in until sometime after midnight, and I'd spent most of the hours since getting the kids to bed simply staring into their fireplace, pretending not to think about exactly who I was thinking about...
The worst part is, tonight was only the start of it. My teenage crush had scored the winning touchdown for the winning Superbowl team, which meant that everyone and their mothers would be talking about him for the foreseeable future, bringing up the subject again and again, just as soon as I'd gotten close to forgetting about it again.
I'd already switched off the radio two minutes into my ride home, in order to avoid the overexcited sports coverage on almost every station I turned to.
“Luc Stalworth!”
“Luc Stalworth...”
“Luuuuuuc Stalwooooorth!”
The silence was better.
I had to focus to keep my wheels straight on the slick roads, but there really was something calming about it out here, with no other cars on the roads as I hummed through the streets.
I wheeled into my little cul-de-sac about ten minutes later, parked outside the house and killed the engine. I stepped out into the street and simply breathed, letting the cold air fill up my lungs and sooth at least some measure of all this pent up angst I was experiencing. Snow fluttered onto my eyelashes, melted slowly, dripped down along my cheeks like unbidden teardrops.
It was so quiet out. The growing carpet of sheer white snow absorbed so much sound, it was almost as though I'd stepped into a dream.
A part of me, of course, wished that I could be back there with Luc among the roaring crowds of the football stadium. But with renewed clarity, I decided that exactly where I was was exactly where I wanted to be.
Quiet. Calm. Safe and sound in the only home I'd ever known.
I smiled to myself. Sometimes that was what it took. Realigning your priorities, remembering that all that glitters isn't always gold.
With renewed clarity, I made my way to the front door, keys jangling, my heart rate steady again for the first time that evening.
My parents, no surprise, were asleep when I came in. I could imag
ine my Dad, reclined back in his La-Z-Boy during the game, as my Mom lay asleep on the couch nearby. They both would have been off to bed the moment the game was over– no huge post-game celebrations for them.
I slipped out of my snow covered boots and flipped on the kitchen light, then turned to see a note waiting for me on the dining table.
“Leftover spaghetti in the fridge. Love, Mom.”
I smiled, my stomach rumbling the instant I read the words. I hadn't even realized how hungry I truly was at that moment.
For the next couple of hours I sat beneath the kitchen's dim lighting, twirling my fork through cold pasta and pulling a neon green highlighter across the pages of Jayne Eyre. Once upon a time, this had been my favorite book in the world. That is, until I had chosen to select “A Contemporary Postmodern Feminist Analysis of the Works of Charlotte Bronte” as the topic of my Master's thesis. Now, I thought, I would be all the more satisfied spending my late nights reading and analyzing One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish than to go through this paperweight for the hundred thousandth time, searching between the cracks between the spaces between the lines for anything unique or profound to say about it that hadn't been said before.
You did this to yourself, Sylvia, I thought, pressing boldly onward as my vision began to blur. A part of me desperately wanted to have the entire project finished with already, and not to have to waste a precious additional moment of my time on it. Another part of me, however, never wanted the work to end, because I had no idea what the hell I was going to do once my degree was wrapped up.
Babysitting gigs and a dead end job at the public library were hardly what you'd call a career path...
I continued to sit there into the small hours of the morning, my eyes burning and watering so badly that I could scarcely keep them open. At last admitting to my defeat I dropped the dirty spaghetti dish into the sink without washing it, then slouched quietly up the stairs to my room, feeling thoroughly exhausted by this point.
The Red Zone: Second Chance Sports Romance Page 1