I suppose my head is in the clouds, and when her thumb brushes mine, it makes all kinds of crazy things happen to all the organs in my body.
That’s the only excuse I have because right as she brushes her thumb back over my knuckles, Midget sees a squirrel or something, and she takes off toward Claire’s side of the road.
I jerk toward Claire, and maybe I would have been able to stop Midget, but I’m more concerned about keeping Claire from falling, and my focus is there rather than the leash that is slipping off my wrist.
When I’m conscious that it’s almost slipped off, it’s too late.
“I’m sorry. Are you okay?” I ask, a little breathless, because I’m surprised and flustered, and despite the fact that I know I need to go after her dog, I’ve got my arm around her waist, and I really don’t want to let go.
Maybe there’s not that much difference between high school me and the middle-aged adult me.
“I’m fine.” She leans away from me, and I think she wants to put distance between us, but then she was just moving away so she doesn’t shout in my ears as she calls, “Midget! Midget! Get back here.”
I drop my hand anyway, because having it around her wasn’t part of our deal, even though I don’t want to.
It’s funny, because I’m not a walk through the woods kind of person, but I don’t hesitate. “I’ll find her.” I step into the woods, brushing by leaves and branches and pushing others out of the way.
I can hear Midget crashing around not that far away, and I think I’ll be able to get her.
“Midget. Come here, girl.” Maybe we bonded enough that she’ll actually come.
It’s a lot darker here in the woods than it was out on the road, with the trees and leaves blocking the moonlight.
I’m holding my hands out in front of me so I don’t walk into anything jagged, and vines scratch my arms, but I feel like Midget is not that far away.
I kind of wish I’d worn pants, rather than the shorts I threw on, as something scratches my shin, but I push the thought away, because I see a shadow moving and I’m pretty sure that’s Midget right ahead.
Belatedly, I remember my phone in my pocket. I can use a flashlight app.
I grab my phone, pulling up the app and flicking the light on.
I don’t know if that’s what drew Midget, or if it was me calling her, but barely ten seconds after I turn the light on, she comes bounding to my side.
She licks my face as I push a vine out of the way and lean down, grabbing the leash. I put my hand through the loop, determined she will not get away again.
“Trey? Trey, did you get her?” Claire’s voice comes through the woods.
I hear a stick snap, and I speak quickly, not wanting Claire to come through the briars.
“I’ve got her. Just stay there. You don’t need to come in here, there are briars and stuff.”
“Thank you.” There is a ton of relief in her voice, and I grin to myself. I think I just scored some brownie points.
I tug on Midget’s leash. “Thanks, girl.”
As I start to walk, my light falls on leaves, bright red and clustered in groups of five. I’d just been standing in them, brushing them away from my face as I petted Midget and got the leash.
I blink and look a little closer.
Is that poison oak?
Chapter 18
Claire
SATURDAY MORNING, I wake up smiling.
It’s a fantastic day. The sun is shining, and I had a wonderful time with Trey last night.
After Midget ran away, we kinda hurried back home and he left right away, even forgetting his spinach, which I actually ran over to his house.
I know I didn’t have to, but I just wanted to see him again.
I think chasing Midget through the woods kind of ruined his good mood because he was a little withdrawn after that, but he’d told me he liked me, and he knew I liked him, and I might be past forty, but I felt like a teenager again. Honestly.
There are a few differences, of course. One major one being that we both have kids of our own.
But that exciting feeling of not being able to stop thinking about someone, feeling like you can’t wait to see them again, wondering what he is doing and how soon I would talk to him is coursing through my body.
Honestly, I can’t wait to get out of bed and see him at practice.
Melody and I are cooking breakfast, and I’m humming under my breath.
Melody doesn’t notice because she’s thinking about carbon and atoms in the experiment that she’s been working on now for two weeks or more.
I know she’s in her head, so I don’t try to talk to her as we work side by side, me making toast and buttering it and her cooking eggs with me occasionally giving her direction.
Evie has taken the dogs out for a walk, which usually takes at least twenty minutes, so I’m surprised to see her bursting in the door not five minutes after she left.
She’s excited, which of course means Midget’s excited, which of course means there’s a lot of thumping and bumping going on as her tail bangs into the refrigerator and the cupboard doors and slaps my thigh.
“Mom! Mom! You won’t believe what happened to Mr. Haywood.”
I feel like there’s a ton of chaos in my kitchen, even though it’s just a dog and my daughter. She’s holding the puppy whose little face looks adorably curious and sweet.
I want to keep her.
“What?” And then I realize what she said. She’s talking about Trey.
My heart flips, and my knuckles whiten as I clutch the butter knife in the air and take two steps toward my daughter.
“What? What happened?”
“He said he was going to text you. But he’s going to the emergency room. He wants you to cancel practice this morning, because he’s not going to be able to make it—”
“Wait,” I interrupt her. “The emergency room? Is it his father?”
I take another two steps toward the door, but I don’t know what I think I’m going to do. I’m a nurse, yes, but if his dad needs the emergency room, I’d just slow him down.
“No. It’s him.”
I gasp. “What happened?”
Visions of him bleeding to death, with broken limbs, or passing out on the way to the hospital fly though my head. My heart pounds like I’ve run a mile.
I take three more strides toward the door. “He shouldn’t be driving himself to the hospital.”
“Mom. He’s already gone,” Evie says, her brows furrowed.
Her words stop me, for now. But I have a good mind to drive to the hospital just in case I’ll see his disabled car along the road somewhere with him lying dead inside of it.
I’m starting to get worked up again and start looking for my keys.
Evie’s voice stops me again. “He just had a rash. It was all over his face and arms. It was red, and he had little white bubbles in it. He said it was really itchy too.”
I stop short, and just as the words “poison oak” go through my head and I think about his walk through the woods last night in the dark, my phone dings on the counter.
Our kitchen isn’t that big, but I jog back over to the counter and grab my phone.
Would you mind canceling basketball practice this morning? Please. I seem to have developed a severe case of poison oak. I’m going to the ER, and hopefully, they’ll take care of it. Would you keep an eye on my dad too, please?
He’s texting and driving. Unless he stopped at the one stop sign at the intersection south of town.
I type out a quick text. I’ll take care of basketball and your dad. I’m sorry about the poison oak. Thanks for last night. I hit send before I can change my mind about that last sentence.
He already knows I had a really great time, but I can’t help telling him again.
I suppose the man is getting the idea that being with me could be dangerous to his health. I have caused quite a bit of disruption in his life.
I determine that I will try as ha
rd as I can to not cause him any more problems.
THE MONTH HAS FLOWN by, and it’s time for our first game.
Thankfully, Trey recovered from his bout with the poison oak no worse for the wear.
Not much worse for the wear. His trip to the ER didn’t exactly take all the rash and itch away, but they were able to clean his skin and get most of the oil off so that the rash didn’t get worse.
Anyway, it cleared up without any complications, and Trey didn’t miss a night of going with the girls and me on our evening walks with our dogs.
The girls talked me into a front carrier for our little stray, who we have named Jello. No one ever came to claim her, even though we advertised and dad had a sign up in the vet clinic. So, without really making a conscious decision on it, we’ve kept her.
I try not to worry about her since my sister, Leah, is watching her. Normally I take her everywhere. I even carry her during practices. I actually take her to work with me too. Not into clients’ houses—she stays in a small carrier in the car while I’m working with clients—but she goes everywhere with me.
She’s kind of emotionally needy.
I can relate to that. Even though I know she doesn’t have an ex that convinced her she was worthless, I can still relate.
I’m thinking about her now as I walk out of the locker rooms behind the girls, Trey beside me.
It’s kind of funny the coaching routine we’ve fallen into.
I am the encourager and the one who’s always looking for lessons. And of course, I deal with all the emotional issues the girls invariably have.
Trey deals with technique and drills and basically everything that relates to actually playing basketball. Or about building a foundation for playing basketball.
Even though I still retain the title of head coach, and he’s still officially my assistant, we’re definitely more like co-coaches.
I feel like it’s worked out really well. And despite myself, I’m excited about our first game.
It’s unbelievable how much the girls have improved. Even I can see it.
I did watch more than a few games of basketball when I was younger.
Maybe I should say I watched Trey play more than a few games of basketball when I was younger.
Still, a person can’t watch as much basketball as I did while I was watching him without learning a thing or two.
I think our girls are going to win tonight.
I think Trey isn’t quite as optimistic, but I know he’s hopeful.
Maybe, I just want the girls to win for Trey.
And for them.
Because they’ve worked hard.
Trey’s really great at laying out what they need to do, and if I can ring my own bell, I’m pretty good at motivating them.
Pizza helps.
Trey has Evie starting as point guard, and of course, Rachel is our center. We actually had another girl join the team, so we have six players—a little depth to our bench. Maybe not depth, but hey, we have a bench.
I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow of the game.
Just know that there are two seconds left on the clock, and we are only down by one point.
I feel like that in itself is a small miracle.
Kenzie is standing at the foul line, and she has two shots coming.
The gym is absolutely quiet.
Normally, the opposing team’s fans make a lot of noise to distract whoever is shooting, but there aren’t too many people from the opposing team who showed up. I’m pretty sure they figured there wasn’t going to be much of a contest. I think the few who are here are too stunned that we might actually beat them that they’ve forgotten they’re supposed to be good fans and distract our shooter with a bunch of crazy noise.
They’re from an hour and a half away, and though gossip travels like wildfire in a small town, the fact that Trey is helping me coach hasn’t quite jumped over the mountain to that small town yet.
Unfortunately, Kenzie misses both shots.
And we lose by one point.
I don’t think the girls care.
There is a huge celebration on the sidelines after we slap hands with the opposing team.
That’s the closest game we’ve had in three years.
So yeah, now our record is oh and thirty-seven but to lose by only one point?
Everyone goes home happy. Including me. I’m pretty sure we’re going to win at least one game this year.
I’m excited. More excited about that than I ever thought I would be.
And, yeah, maybe I’m excited about Trey, too.
He looked good when he played ball back in high school.
He looks even better as a coach.
Chapter 19
Trey
I HAVE TO ADMIT, I’M excited about the girls' basketball team. Evie, despite her young age, is as good as any of the girls we play against, and she will most definitely be the next Allstate baller to come out of Good Grief.
Not this year. She’s too young. But I’m proud of her, and proud of what the girls have accomplished.
Going into the third game, I don’t really have any expectations that we’ll win, but I do have expectations that we will play a good game.
I do, just to be clear, know that we will win a game this year.
I’m not entirely sure we’re ready to win this one.
The other school is bigger than we are, and, from the little bit that I was able to scout out about them, they don’t have a terrible team.
But, then again, neither do we.
Now, just so you don’t think I’m an awful coach, I do have confidence in my team. I have confidence in the skills we’re building. I am just not entirely sure that we’ve been working on them long enough.
However, I’m looking forward to our first win. And not just because I want it, or because the girls deserve it.
I want to impress Claire.
I want that more than anything.
I suppose it’s man-think to assume that if I win a basketball game with a team that has had no wins in the last thirty-eight games, she’ll be impressed.
Maybe, if she hadn’t been the coach of the team for those thirty-eight games.
Even though I kind of know there’s a flaw in my logic, I still can’t stop myself from wanting to do something that will make her see how wonderful I am.
Maybe, somewhere in the back of my head, I’m thinking she’ll fall in love with me if she admires me enough.
Because I’m pretty sure I’ve already fallen in love with her.
How could I not? The spark was already there, from our childhood.
All I had to do was see her again, see that the woman she’s become is even better than the girl she was, and I’m lost.
We play another tough game, a lot of man-on-man defense, and my team is getting tired.
This is exactly why I had them run all those suicides. Exactly why I push them during practice and try to build up their endurance.
For games like this.
The other team is getting tired as well.
I’m sure that coach has a similar program. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think my girls have more left.
Maybe I’m just sure they have more heart.
Maybe they’ve figured out how badly I want to win, or that it would make Claire happy, and they push for her. I don’t know.
Whatever it is, when the final buzzer sounds, the score is tied.
We go into sudden death overtime.
I love it.
I love the challenge and the excitement and the feeling that we’ve prepared for this, and worked for it, and all our efforts are paying off.
Maybe I convey that to the girls, I don’t know.
I do know I’m pretty fired up, and I think they feel it too.
After we break our huddle and our five best players go out on the floor, I meet Claire’s eyes.
Maybe my excitement is contagious to her as well, or maybe she’s just feeling it anyway. But I c
an tell she wants to win just as much as me.
I grin at her, a confident, cocky grin, and I don’t even try to make it anything else.
“We’ve got this one.”
She smiles little. It looks a bit like a smirk, but even though her eyes crinkle, one brow lifts, as though she’s saying I’ll believe it when I see it. But in a good way, because I feel like she actually thinks she might see it.
Maybe it’s the confidence, maybe it’s our hard work, or maybe it is just our time, but we lose the jump, deliberately, and Evie grabs the ball from the other team’s side of the court, dribbles to the three-point line and swishes it.
Exactly what we planned. The other team probably assumed that if we were going to get the ball, we’d go in for the automatic layup, the guaranteed points and best chance of a foul.
But I knew Evie could do it. I knew she’d make the shot. Especially because the other teams’ defenders would be running to the basket.
She made that shot unopposed.
I am proud of my team.
We slap the other teams’ hands, and I give my girls a pep talk in the huddle before I send them to the locker rooms to get showered and changed.
Some parents come over to congratulate me, and my eyes follow Claire as she follows the girls into the locker room.
I want to talk to her.
There aren’t many people at the game, and the gym empties out quickly. I go to the coach’s room, which is separate from the where the girls are showering and changing and wait for them to join me there. I’m eager to talk about what we did right, and eager to emphasize the reason that we do the basic fundamentals, including conditioning.
It is all for tonight.
Winning feels good.
I want to share the win with Claire.
I’m thinking about that, when Kenzie, her blonde ponytail flying behind her, charges into the coaching room.
“Mr. Haywood. Come quick! It’s our dog!”
“I can’t go through the locker room,” I say, automatically, even as I stand up from my chair and start toward her.
“None of the girls are in there; they’re all outside. We’ve lost Jello!”
Me and the Cute Catastrophe (Sweet, Small Town Romantic Comedy in Good Grief, Idaho Book 1) Page 14