The Bridge to a Better Life

by Ava Miles

  His guys were flying in soon and would arrive in Dare Valley by early afternoon. The volunteer coaches from other similar flag football programs would join them at three o’clock. His assistant was staying in Dare Valley the whole week and would lead a short meeting with the rest of the volunteers later on. But no press. His assistant would take pictures and send them to his publicist.

  Tomorrow the kids would arrive, kicking off the advent of camp. He was more than ready. He was stoked. As he tore off a tuft of turf and lifted it to his nose, inhaling the earthy smell, he could feel Adam with him. If his brother had been standing on the field with him, he would have tossed the grass at him, which would have resulted in a silly grass fight.

  “Oh, Adam,” he whispered as his chest squeezed with grief. “I wish you were here.”

  He rubbed at the tears in his eyes, and when he removed his hand, his whole body stilled. Natalie was walking across the field toward him, a soft smile on her face. The relief he felt was almost overwhelming.

  “Hey,” he called out to her, his voice rough from emotion. “I thought you were going to work.”

  Her hair was a mixture of brown, red, and gold in the morning sun. The Celtic knot tattoo on her ankle spoke of secrets, ones he wanted to know, but was still too afraid to ask.

  “I was halfway there, and then I turned around and came this way.”

  She held out her hands to him, which he took.

  “It’s a big day for you. I wanted to be here before it gets crazy. I know how you like your pre-game rituals. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “I was…just missing Adam.”

  She took him in her arms. “I thought you might be.”

  This time he was the one who cried a bit as she held him tight, bearing his grief. His chest was lighter when he finally settled. “I know he’d be happy I’m doing this. I just miss him, dammit.” He wanted his brother to be here. He didn’t want to be doing something in his memory.

  “He would be happy,” she said, kissing his jaw. “I brought you something.”

  When she pressed away to rummage through her tan leather purse, he took some deep cleansing breaths.

  “I’m going to miss spending all my evenings with you,” he told her.

  Her mouth curved. “I rather like the idea of you breaking curfew to sneak out of camp to make love to me. Makes it feel more forbidden.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t think we needed any help in that department. It’s been ridiculously good for me.”

  “Me too,” she said, and then she thrust something into his hands.

  Wrapped in burgundy paper with a black string, he knew from the shape it was a picture frame. His heart exploded when he saw what it contained.

  The photo, taken by Natalie, was of him and Adam playing catch. She’d shot it in black-and-white, so the green in their Denver backyard didn’t dazzle the eyes. What did dazzle was the depiction of him playfully extending the football to Adam and his brother grinning from ear to ear as he reached out a hand to take a hold of it. The ball linked them, the perfect sphere of it centered in the photo, showing the passion they shared for the game.

  His eyes burned again, and he knuckled away more tears. “Thank you.”

  She kissed his cheek. “I’m so proud of you, babe. I’ll wait up for you tonight.”

  Even though he knew she would, he still said, “You don’t have to. You know the guys.”

  Everyone was staying in the dorm. He knew darn well knew they would all end up hanging out in the common room reserved for the coaches. It had a pool table, ping pong, darts, and foosball. They were never going to get any sleep.

  “If I doze off, you can always kiss me awake.” She gave him one last hug, like she too was dreading the time they would have to spend apart this week. “I love you. Remember that.”

  “I love you too,” he said, pressing his face into her hair. His mind flickered back to her tattoo, to the fact he still hadn’t asked her about it. “Ah…I’ve been meaning to ask you about your tattoo.”

  Her body stilled. “I…ah…got it after…a year or so ago.”

  He realized she didn’t want to say the word divorce any more than he wanted to hear it.

  “You don’t have to tell me what it means.”

  She cleared her throat. “Well…I…this is awkward, but the three links were for you, me, and…Kim…and that time in my life.” Her face pressed into his neck, her fingers gripped his back. “I wanted to have something to remember it by.”

  That she would do something so sentimental—and admit to having done it—moved something powerful in his chest. “Thanks for telling me. I…miss you already.” He’d always told her that before leaving for a road trip, and the words felt right on his tongue.

  “Miss you too,” she whispered back.

  She stepped away and gave Touchdown a nice rubdown before walking off the field, taking a piece of his heart like she always did. He sat in the center of the field for some time, the sun hot on his ball cap, staring at the picture in his hands.

  Jordan was the first to arrive, in a blue convertible Porsche Boxster, no less. His reflective sunglasses and his swagger made him seem more than unusually badass as he approached Blake on the field.

  “You’re early,” he said, rising and giving his buddy a hug.

  “Yeah.” His shoulder lifted. “Caught an earlier flight.”

  There was something in his tone. “What’s up?”

  “Shit.” He kicked at the turf, making Touchdown bark. “Sorry. Grace and I had another fight about me getting swept up in all the hype. People called. They want to do a feature on me as one of the hottest guys in the NFL. They asked to interview her as part of the piece. She refused.”

  “Her privacy has always been important to her,” Blake said neutrally. Natalie had felt the same way, and he’d respected that.

  “I get it, but instead of saying she wouldn’t do it, it turned into me becoming someone she sometimes doesn’t recognize. She told me I was morphing from the small town boy she knew from Deadwood, South Dakota into someone she didn’t even recognize, and it pissed me off.”

  Blake had been a small town boy from Ohio, so he understood where Jordan was coming from. “Well, you’re not a small town boy anymore, are you? The question you have to ask yourself is this: what is more important to you, the hype or football?”

  Jordan nudged him like a determined linebacker would. “You know I love football more.”

  “Then…”

  “But I like some of the hype,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Why does that make me a bad person?”

  “It doesn’t. It’s just not…what Grace is used to.” Or perhaps it wasn’t what she wanted. He’d watched a lot of guys split with their girlfriends from high school or college as their careers skyrocketed. Things did change. Not everyone was made to be the girlfriend or wife of an NFL quarterback, and Grace was more level-headed than most.

  “She says she hates it when people refer to her as ‘my piece’ or imply she’s mooching off me. Hell, sometimes she still fights me over who pays for dinner.”

  So they were arguing about money too. Not good. “Well, she values her independence.” Like someone else he knew whose name started with N.

  Jordan leaned down and stroked the field. Touchdown sniffed the grass by his fingers. Blake wasn’t the only player who liked to get a sense of the turf.

  “Would it upset you if I asked if you and Natalie ever had these kinds of arguments?”

  If he and Natalie hadn’t been back together, it might have been difficult to discuss it, but now, he could answer his friend without any pain. “We fought about the money more than the hype. She didn’t want me to pay for everything either. I hated that at first, but that’s what she wanted, so I conceded.” He would have conceded pretty much everything to be with her. “She wouldn’t accept any money from me when we…divorced.”

  Okay, it did hurt to say that, more than he’d thought it would. Memories poured back
in, ones they hadn’t talked about. She hadn’t even shown up to sign the divorce papers. He’d scrolled out his name on the legal document ending their marriage with a Mont Blanc pen as a punishing rain streaked the windows of his lawyer’s office building.

  “Are you two…” Jordan trailed off.

  “We’re…working through things.” He dug out his sunglasses, no longer liking the glare stinging his eyes.

  “I’m glad. I hope it sticks.” Jordan slapped him on the back. “So, let’s do this.”

  While they waited for the others to arrive, they threw some passes, and then he called in some takeout from Brasserie Dare. Thankfully, no one mobbed him when he went to pick it up. Brian even came out of the kitchen to say hello. Apparently the Hale clan was inclined to keep the peace as he and Natalie worked things out.

  They ate lunch in the center of the field, and it felt good to be back on the green grass dotted with white lines every ten yards. Natalie was his home, but this was too. He’d given his whole life to the pursuit of a mere ten yards over and over again.

  When the rest of the guys arrived, they hugged and talked trash. Brody challenged Logan to a forty yard dash, causing Zack and Jordan to groan in tandem. They complained they were going to upchuck their lunches, even though that was total bullshit. They just hated to run that fast if there was no need. After all, they were quarterbacks, not wide receivers.

  “Are you and Natalie still doing great since our last call?” Sam asked, coming up beside him to clap him on the back.

  He and Sam talked every week, and he’d told him where things stood. “Yes.” So far. He couldn’t forget about the things they hadn’t discussed—the details of the future and the past—so he still wasn’t convinced they were totally out of danger. The pressure grew in his chest.

  As Brody and Logan crouched down into their sprint stance, he called out “Wait. I’m joining you guys.”

  “Your old sack of bones?” Logan taunted. “We are so going to smoke you, Ace.”

  Yes, they were, no doubt. But at least it would take his mind off the half a dozen doomsday scenarios it was spinning about him and Natalie. His focus needed to be on the camp right now.

  “On your mark,” Jordan called out, staring down at the stopwatch he’d snagged from the camp’s supply table. “Get set. Go.”

  Blake darted off with the wide receivers, and sure enough, he felt like a sack of old bones as their athletic shorts rippled in the wind a few yards ahead of him. Blake had been considered a passable runner in the NFL. He could run for the first down when necessary. But they smoked him, just as Logan had predicted. If the burn of his muscles and the clearing of his mind hadn’t felt so good, he might have been embarrassed.

  “All right,” he said, sucking in deep breaths and heading over to the coach’s table where his clipboard was resting. “Let’s run through some last minute details and questions before our coaching partners arrive.”

  He’d paired all of them up with a coach who had experience running a flag football camp for kids with intellectual disabilities. That way, everyone would be bringing their A game for the kids.

  “The other coaches will arrive at three with the rest of the volunteers. Including our camp mom.”

  “You didn’t talk Mrs. Garretty into coming, did you now?” Brody asked, giving Sam a pointed glance.

  “Mrs. Garretty has retired.” Divorcing Coach had pretty much ended that. “But Natalie’s mom volunteered to help, and I can’t think of anyone more fun, maternal, or tough. She had five kids, after all.”

  “Awesome,” Hunter said, twirling the whistle hanging from his neck. “She and I did the Electric Slide at your wedding.”

  The guys laughed, but Blake found it hard to join in. He thought back to opening Natalie’s hope chest all those weeks earlier and finding her dress and their favorite wedding picture inside. Those memories were sweet, but now they felt tainted by everything that had followed. Their wedding had become something for them to get beyond. His hands clenched the clipboard.

  “Maybe if you get your guys to run the drills right,” he said, “you can teach them the Electric Slide after practice.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, but Hunter grinned. “Cool.”

  Great. He couldn’t wait for that scene to make it onto YouTube.

  They ran though the rest of his agenda and took a water break. The other coaches arrived, and he introduced everyone to their partners. Once that was finished, he left them alone to get acquainted. When he saw April cutting across the football field, dressed in his old Raiders jersey, the one he’d signed and given to her at her request, his chest tightened.

  She pointed to her shirt. “I hope you don’t mind me wearing this. It’s one of my favorites, and I so rarely get to wear it.”

  He kissed her cheek, and she hugged him tight. “It looks good with capri pants. Maybe I should have worn those instead of football pants.”

  She punched him in the gut, something Natalie would do. “How are you and my daughter doing?” she asked with a knowing gleam in her eye.

  Okay, so apparently her earlier silence on that subject was over. “We’re talking. Things are…good.”

  “I’m so happy to hear it. Does this mean you’ll be coaching our high school team this fall?”

  Lead filled his stomach at the talk of the future. “No. The position didn’t feel right for me.”

  “I see,” she said, studying him intently. “Well. Thanks for catching me up. Why don’t you show me who I’m supposed to be mothering now?”

  He led her around to everyone, grateful for the reprieve from her questions. Some of the guys hammed it up and lifted her off the ground, making her laugh. He let them get all the playful antics out of their systems. When things had finally settled, a hush fell over the field. He headed to the center and turned to face everyone on the sidelines.

  “As you all know, this camp means the world to me, so I’ll keep this brief. I hereby officially open The Adam Cunningham Flag Football Camp.”

  Everyone clapped. Tears popped into his eyes.

  He wished Natalie had been there to hold his hand.

  Chapter 27

  Blake’s opener to the kids and their parents after registration wasn’t much more long-winded than the one he’d given to the coaches and volunteers the day before. He introduced Touchdown first, making everyone laugh, then April, and finally all the volunteers and coaches. He told everyone to have fun. And encouraged them to ask questions—nothing was too silly or stupid. After that, he told them the story about how he and his buddies had attended football camp together for years when they were younger, and they were still best friends all these years later. He encouraged the boys to make connections with each other. He didn’t talk much about football. They were here to play. Though he mentioned Adam only in passing—to do more would cost him too much—he told them his brother had possessed the heart of a champion.

  After the kids had been split up into age groups, he joined his team. He had asked Sam to pair up with him and Frank, a volunteer from Denver, to guide the youngest age group. He’d chosen to work with them because they still crackled with the sheer joy of playing football. Whenever he’d hit a pocket of pressure in his career, Adam had always been there to remind him of why he played. Sure, he didn’t need the reminder anymore now that he’d retired, but he rather liked hearing the boys giggle on the field.

  They ran the Run and Catch drill first to assess both running and hand-eye-coordination skills. He and Sam took turns in the quarterback box with Frank working the sidelines. The kid they were assessing would line up even with them, and when Blake blew the whistle, the boy would run out to one of the five catching spots marked on the field. If he caught the ball, he would sprint to the finish line. Each kid received a score, and the top three scorers would become the quarterbacks for the next drills on passing accuracy. While Sam passed the football, Blake worked with Frank to help the kids who were receiving the ball refine their catching technique.r />
  There were high-fives, whistles, giggles, cries of frustration, and fists pumps as the morning progressed. At lunch, he, Sam, and Frank huddled to compare notes. They ranked the kids by skill level, something they would continue to do at the various breaks. Blake left Sam and Frank to continue their chat and grabbed a smoked turkey on wheat sandwich from the lunch station. The other guys were huddling as well, so he took a few minutes to check in with them.

  He noticed April making her way through the folding tables they’d set up for the kids so they could sit and eat comfortably. She was laughing as she watched one kid throw his arm back like he was about to launch a pass. Blake found himself grinning even though he didn’t know the story. After lunch, when they called the kids back to their drill groups, Blake made his way over to April.

  “So, what’s your take so far?” he asked, pushing up his sunglasses so she could see his eyes. Natalie had always preferred for him to do that when he was talking to her.

  “Well, they’re still pretty much in the awe mode. All they could talk about was how cool you guys are. You have some big fans here.”

  Coach Garretty always nipped those sentiments in the bud with his Once Upon A Dare speech. Blake had elected to run on fun and inspiration in this camp, not hard work and fear.

  “I’m glad you’re here.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I need to get back to my team.” Man, how he loved that word.

  “I’ll be here,” she said with a wave.

  The afternoon continued with more drills, ones they repeated over and over again. He saved the Agility and Speed Handoff drill for last since it required more concentration and teamwork. The kids in his group now knew one another’s names, and they easily called them out during the drills when needed. After being in the sun all day, he wished he’d dabbed on more sunscreen, feeling the burn on his nose and cheeks left exposed under the brim of his Raiders ball cap.

  When he called it quits, he, Sam, and Frank huddled with the boys to talk about the day and give high-fives. One bold kid asked if he could have his autograph. Blake ruffled the boy’s brown hair and said they’d all be giving autographs at the end of camp. Coach Garretty hadn’t allowed it. Blake had decided to provide the opportunity, remembering what it had felt like to come to a camp where he was coached by some of the NFL’s greatest players.