by Serena Bell
For the first time in this whole long process, I feel like crying.
Ty puts both hands on the steering wheel, like he’s steadying himself. “Look,” he says. “You got blindsided in an interview. And I stood up for you. That doesn’t make you weak. It has nothing to do with male or female. I didn’t stand up for you because you were a woman. I stood up for you because you’re my coach.”
My coach.
Of course I’m his coach. It’s just fact. But the way he says it—
Like he means it. Like it means something.
Like he’s accepted me.
I suddenly realize that I’m being a great big douchebag.
He stood up for me. Publicly. He didn’t have to do that. He could have kept his mouth shut and waited for someone to address him. He’s been in this business long enough to know that you don’t speak unless spoken to—
Unless you feel really strongly about something.
Me. He feels really strongly about me.
As a coach, I remind myself.
Except then something happens. He turns toward me and just stares—in a way that people almost never do, because eye contact is awkward and complicated. I can’t believe what his face is telling me. The hunger in his eyes and the softness of his lower lip—they’re about nine thousand times more intense than if we were actually kissing, and my face heats, and then my whole body, and I can’t stand it. I bet sometimes people kiss so they don’t have to keep staring into each other’s eyes and seeing all kinds of truths they’re desperately trying to avoid.
Then he turns away, and once again I don’t trust that it happened at all.
I take a deep breath, try to slow my frantic pulse down. You saw what you wanted to see, but you’re not allowed to want to see that.
I corral my thoughts back to a safe place, try to focus on what we were talking about before he opened that window into his soul.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right. You’re totally, completely right. I should be thanking you. And I definitely shouldn’t have been taking my anger at Gil out on you.”
Once again he puts both hands on the wheel, but this time he turns the key in the ignition and that brute of an engine roars to life under us.
I want him to look at me again.
And I don’t.
“Thanks,” he says, barely audible. “No hard feelings.”
That’s it.
Then he drives us back to the training facility.
Chapter 17
Ty
Coach Cross told me I could crash on the nasty old sprung couch in his office. Most of the time, that wouldn’t be an offer I’d jump to take. But I spent last night on Calder’s pullout, with his cat standing on my face. This morning I started calling hotels, but they’re all booked solid with some mega-conference. And even though I’m sure everyone imagines that we can pull the VIP card any old time we want, being football players, it doesn’t always work like that in real life. Full’s full, and at some point it didn’t seem worth the effort for one night.
So, what the fuck; I’ll crash at McElroy. At least it’s feline-free.
Still, I’m blaming lack of sleep for why I almost kissed Coach Thomas.
I could have been the first guy fired for sexually harassing one of the first full-time female coaches in the PFL. That would make a really good radio show. And Gil would have been right, after all, about women coaches being a distraction.
Luckily I came to my senses, no harm done.
Well, none except that it’s like I set up a permanent loop in my brain where I lean in for real and set my mouth against hers. And hers is so full and so hot and, when she opens for me, so wet—
I lift like a mofo all afternoon trying to shut off the loop, but only succeed in making myself ache everywhere else, too.
There’s a crazy windstorm whipping up outside and Coach Thrayne has sent everyone home so no one has to drive later when it gets more dangerous.
I head out and grab a pizza, figuring I can heat it up later in the kitchen.
I’m just getting close to McElroy when a shadow flies from nowhere and flings itself across my windshield. I slam on the brakes and pray there’s no one behind me to rear-end me. My heart thrashes madly in my chest. I can’t see fuck-all except whatever the thing is—plastic bag or tarp. And then as quick as it came, it blows away again.
Jesus.
I turn on the radio as I crawl the rest of the way back to McElroy. They’re all gloom and doom on the radio. I’m not the only one having a tough time. They apparently closed a portion of I-5 because they’re worried about land instability, and some guy was killed when a downed power line tangled with his car.
I’m glad Coach sent everyone home. I hope they’re all smart enough to stay put. The ones who know windstorms mean business are probably fine, but what about people like Iona who are new to the area? Will she know not to try driving in this?
Then I think, if there’s anyone who can take care of herself—and would be pissed to know I worried that she couldn’t—it would be Coach Thomas.
Back at McElroy, I settle in to Cross’s office to watch film from yesterday’s game.
I’m watching myself miss the same tackle for probably the twenty-seventh time when the power goes out.
The generators kick on a moment later, and most of the lights come back, along with the electronics. It busts my gut that we have multimillion-dollar backup systems in place to make sure the coaches don’t miss an hour of film watching. I wonder what else in the facility is generator powered, or not? I decide to go on a walk to find out.
I turn the corner into the assistant coaches’ pit and nearly crash into Coach Thomas.
Double take.
“What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I asked first,” I say. She brings out the stubborn in me. I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, whether it’s the kid throwing a temper tantrum or what.
“I meant to leave earlier,” she says. “But I was watching game film—”
It’s not like it’s a special coincidence that the two of us were watching game film. On any given night for the last ten years, both of us have been watching game film. It’s just what we do. But there’s something strangely intimate about knowing we were watching the same game film down the hall from each other. Maybe because I’ve never known another woman who loved football the way I do. I’ve known a million casual fans who liked what they saw when they watched me on television or even in the stadium. But Coach Thomas sees something different when she watches that film. She sees me, the football player, with all my flaws and fuck-ups. And the good things, too, when I’m focused and dialed in, when I do something that surprises even me. She knows.
“What about you?” she asks.
“I’m sleeping here tonight. I bought a new place and I can’t get in till tomorrow, and I couldn’t face another night with Calder’s cat sleeping on my head.”
She laughs, and I feel the triumph that comes from bringing down a runner who’s just gotten up a head of steam. Better.
“I was about to head out,” she says.
“You can’t go out there right now.”
This pops out of my mouth even though I was just thinking a few minutes earlier about how pissed Coach Thomas would be if I didn’t think she could handle herself.
“I gotta get home.”
“It’s dangerous. The driving sucks out there.” I tell her what happened to me with the tarp or whatever it was. “Give it a little time to die down. On the radio they were saying winds should start to die down around midnight.”
“I’m not staying here till midnight,” she says scornfully.
“We could watch film together.”
I should have stopped that sentence after “film,” because somehow it comes out sounding a lot more like a dirty proposition than I meant it to.
Only she doesn’t smack it down the way I think she’s going to.
She tilts her head to one side and thinks about it.
I guess the lack of smackdown makes me bold, because I say, “Stay.” And I don’t even worry if it’s going to sound like I mean it like that. “I’ve got pizza and we can watch film.”
She says slowly, “I guess that can’t hurt anything, right?”
Except I’m pretty sure it can.
Chapter 18
Iona
“Meat lovers, huh? You know that’s a football player pizza cliché, right?”
“Tell me you don’t love it.”
We’re sitting at one of the big conference tables, and he pushes the pizza box across to me.
“I love it,” I admit, tearing a slice off and chowing down. “It’s my favorite pizza topping. If you can count that as one topping.”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “You have to pick one. What’s your actual favorite?”
“Pepperoni.”
“Sausage,” he says, like he’s just won a bet.
He queues up game film and we watch for a while, pointing out stuff we see to each other. He’s good. He backs up a few plays to show me the moment where he can see the play start to develop, and a couple times, I can’t see what he’s looking at until he uses the smart board to throw up circles and lines and map it out for me.
“Take the last piece,” he says, when the pizza’s almost gone.
“You sure you got enough? That whole pizza was gonna be for you, right? And you shared it?”
“I’m fine,” he says.
“Take the last slice.”
“I’m not taking the fucking last slice.”
We glare at each other, and in the end, I take the last slice. Partly because I can’t keep up my end of the staring contest. It’s doing funny things to my insides. I think maybe it’s the fact that his mouth keeps tipping up like he wants to laugh.
“How’s Julia?”
“Last I checked, feeling a little better, thinking she might take a day off to spare us her germs and be back Wednesday.”
“Poor kid.”
He messes with the remote, and I stop paying attention to savor the last few bites of the pizza. When I tune in again, he’s watching himself miss Sunday’s tackle, over and over again.
“I’m thinking it’s a footwork problem,” he says.
I watch it a few times with him, but when he goes to play it for the eighth time, I say, “Stop.”
“But I haven’t figured out what I did wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe if I’d cut sharper—?”
“Ty, forget it. Sometimes you do everything right and you just don’t get there in time.”
He lowers his eyebrows in an almost glare.
“That’s my job, too,” I say. “Telling you when it’s time to put the film away. It’s time. You’re not going to learn anything from it.”
He looks like he’s about to fight me, but instead he says, “Hey. I’m still hungry.”
“I told you you wanted the last slice,” I say, aggravated.
“And I told you I wasn’t eating it.”
“Stubborn bastard.”
“They make the best linebackers,” he says, shrugging.
It’s this feeling, of wanting to laugh and kill him at the same time, that is so good and ticklish I can barely stand it. And so, so, so inappropriate.
I wonder what the weather is doing outside, and how long till I will have no rational choice but to leave here and drive home. And why I am hoping this storm will rage all night.
“I have an idea,” he says, luckily ending that train of thought. “Follow me. And shhhh.”
He leads me into the hallway, and we pretend like we’re on a secret mission, creeping along the side of the hallways, doing that thing where you point at your eyes and then at the enemy, covering each other for forays past various offices and rooms. It makes me giggle. Until I bump into him by accident and it’s like walking into a wall, and my whole body goes hot and cold.
Some parts definitely more hot than cold.
Finally we creep into the kitchen, which is one of those big industrial ones like in a school or hospital. He whips open a freezer and says, “Dunh dunh DUNH!”
It’s basically one huge wall of ice cream.
It’s not like I’ve never seen a football team’s ice cream stash before, but it’s still kind of an impressive sight.
“Favorite flavor?”
“Mint chocolate chip.”
He dishes up an absurd amount of mint chocolate chip into a bowl for me, does the same for himself with the chocolate, and then we head back to the conference room.
“I can’t eat all this.”
“ ’Course you can. You play football with the men, you eat with the men.”
“Fuck no,” I say. “If I try to keep up with you guys, I’ll weigh three hundred pounds in a few weeks. You guys are all muscle and you’re working out like sixty hours a week.”
“I’ll finish what you can’t,” he says.
“Because you’re a stubborn bastard and didn’t eat the last slice even though you were still hungry.”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“You could start with not fighting with me about everything.”
He shrugs. “Unlikely. Besides, you’d miss it.”
And he levels a challenge at me. Deny it.
I can’t.
I also, for a moment that stretches way too long, can’t make myself look away. His eyes hold mine.
I burst out with the first thing I can think of. “So, tell me about learning to play football in Newark.”
His gaze falls away and something in his jaw tightens. “Lots of games in empty lots.”
“I can imagine.” I shove ice cream in my mouth and try to decide whether I’m grateful that I’ve totally killed the mood or not.
“I used to hang around outside this football camp.” His voice loosens a bit. “And one of the coaches let me come and play, even though I was a few years younger. And then, miraculously, the next summer there was a scholarship for me to go to camp.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
He smiles, and it slides inside my chest. “His name was James MacKenzie.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize you guys went back that far.”
“Yep. He was also the coach at UCLA who recruited me to play there, the coach who gave me my shot in the PFL when no one else wanted to take a chance on me, and the guy who pushed me to do my best every day for almost twelve years.”
“So everywhere he went, he took you with him.”
“More or less.”
He turns away, and I don’t say anything because it feels like it would be pressing on a bruise. Pain for no good reason.
“Were your parents supportive? Of you playing football?”
“Were yours?” He sounds almost angry, the way he flips it back at me.
I shake my head. “Hell no.”
“Tell me.”
We’re supposed to be watching film or a movie, which feels like it would be safer, or at least simpler. But he’s leaning back in his chair and he looks so goddamned comfortable in his body, I don’t want to change anything about the moment.
“At first they didn’t mind so much,” I tell him. “I played flag football with the boys, and they thought it was just a phase. And then I started getting better than a lot of the boys I played with. I was faster, and I had better quickness, and I had a better head for the game and the plays. At quarterback, my arm strength wasn’t necessarily as good, but my ability to scramble was. The high school coaches got interested. And my parents freaked out. They refused to pay for anything—not fees, or equipment—nothing. For a while they succeeded in keeping me away from the game, but I was stubborn—”
“No!” says Ty, smirking at me.
Oh, God, the little quirk at the corner of his mouth. I want to lunge across the table.
“I got a job and earned money and paid for everything myself. A
nd they eventually gave up on trying to stop me, but the rest of my high school life was kind of a war zone. We fought nonstop. My mom mostly focused on how dangerous it was, but my dad said—some really hurtful things.”
I think about Tish’s dad because it’s easier than thinking about my dad.
“Like what?” Ty asks.
“He said it would ruin my love life. He said—not exactly in these words, but more or less—that no guy would ever be interested in me. He said no man wanted a girlfriend who had bigger shoulders than he did, or ran faster or hit harder.”
“That’s bullshit.”
His voice is thick with disbelief, which sends a hard, fast thrill through me.
Does he mean—?
Shut up, Iona. He’s just being nice.
I shrug, mostly to shake off my own cray-cray. “It’s truer than you’d think. And regardless, it changed everything between him and me. I was so angry at him for not being able to see how important it was to me and how much I loved it, and he was so angry at me for—I don’t know, really. For not being his little girl and wearing little pink frilly dresses and black patent leather shoes, or something. We’ve never really forgiven each other.”
“It’s such stupid sexist crap. It’s insulting to men, that we can’t deal with a strong woman. And just plain bullshit. I mean, look at you. Short hair, football T-shirt, and you still can’t manage to look anything but—”
It’s like he slams into a wall right then. Stops cold.
Gives me this look. Uh-oh.
“Anything but what?” I ask.
I shouldn’t have, but sometimes your mouth spits stuff out before your brain can fully catch up.
He looks like a caged animal, his eyes darting around like he’s hunting for a way out of this corner he’s gotten himself into. And of course he feels trapped. I’ve just fished for a compliment and put him on the spot.