by Luis, Maria
“See you when I see you!” I call out, throwing her own words from the other day back at her. I’ll be seeing her within minutes for the Wildcats’ first practice, but knowing it’ll rile her up? Knowing that she’ll be seething all damn practice and thinking of ways to get rid of me when we both know Brien won’t allow it?
Yeah, there’s something about messing with her that feels real damn good.
And if that makes me the asshole she so wants to believe that I am, so be it.
6
Aspen
Surprise, surprise—the players love him.
And when I say love him, I mean they’ve been catering to his every whim and desire all practice.
“Coach, you look like you need some water!” one kid exclaims when he spots Dominic’s temple beading with sweat, right before he bum-rushes two teammates for a Dixie cup at the watercooler.
“Coach,” another one says during warm-ups, while he’s bent over at the waist with his fingers dangling toward his toes, “I want arm muscles like you. What’d you do to get ’em? Like a hundred push-ups a day or something?”
“Coach!” shouts another as he lines up at the scrimmage line, knuckles already planted in the turf, rearing to go. “Watch me hustle this play like the time you caught that sixty-yarder in the Super Bowl!”
It’s sickening.
Downright vomit-worthy.
Especially when you factor in how old these kids are. Even the seniors were barely preteens at the height of Dominic’s career. They’re babies—half of them can’t even legally drive—and yet they watch Dominic, slack-jawed, as though he’s a . . . a legend. A bonafide idol stepped down from the heavens to share his wealth of knowledge with them.
Even Topher’s doing his fair share of hero-worshipping, and he’s spent his entire life around pro football players. Thanks to Rick’s job, Topher’s no stranger to meeting NFL players and coaches and physical therapists—I mean, the kid celebrated his first five birthdays at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field.
He’s never been star struck . . . until now.
Until Dominic DaSilva stormed into my little hometown like he owns the place, doling out high fives and bicep punches and advice like he’s some sort of sage wise man who knows everything there is to know about everything.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I’m grateful for my job.
I’m grateful Topher didn’t kill us on the way to practice—although the two of us are going to have a nice, long talk about taking responsibility for our mistakes later tonight.
I’m not grateful for the way Dominic’s shirt keeps riding up to expose that tight V above his shorts . . .
Damn it.
My lucky stars trick is not doing it for me.
It’s the first day of summer camp for both JV and varsity, and my blood pressure is already skyrocketing. If I have to hear one more praiseworthy comment tossed Dominic’s way, I’m going to—
“Coach?”
My heart turns over, and sure enough, a fresh-faced kid is standing there, helmet clasped to his practice jersey with dirt caked on his chin. Hope gleams in his dark eyes. “Yes”—I sneak a quick peek at my clipboard, where I’ve printed a photo of every player on the team alongside basic facts about them—“Timmy? What’s going on?”
He’s a few inches shorter than me. A freshman, too. New to London High, new to the team. I watched him play in the scrimmage earlier, while both Dominic and I surveyed the field with a keen eye as we rotated players in and out of positions to determine their natural fit. I’m leaning toward wide receiver for Timmy. He’s lean and fast and shows no sign of being scared to run and keep on running.
Possibly on varsity, if he can hack it with the older kids.
Shifting his helmet from one hand to the other, he rocks his weight onto the backs of his cleats. “Coach Levi, do you think . . . maybe . . . like, I’m just wondering—”
I stare at him, silently urging him on to get on with it.
You can do it, Timmy. I know you can.
I keep the cheerleading to myself and offer him an encouraging smile instead.
In a burst of speed, he spits out, “I know phones aren’t allowed during practice but when we breaked for water, I texted my mom about Coach DaSilva. She loves him. I mean, not that she knows him personally or anything. But yeah. And then she texted some of the other moms, and now they’re on their way here. They want to take pictures. With Coach DaSilva. And us kids.” He barely stops to breathe before tacking on, “I’m sorry, Coach Levi.”
Pictures.
With Dominic.
Is that the sound of my soul crying or just my teeth gnashing together in an effort to keep on smiling?
I’m suddenly confronted with the visual of Finding Nemo’s Dory when she sings, Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. Dory knew what the hell she was talking about.
My smile doesn’t budge.
Clipboard clenched between my hands, tight, like I’m imagining it to be someone’s neck—one guess as to whose—I lift my chin and search for the man in question on the field. There. About ten yards away, doing squat jumps with the kids. He’s easily double their size and when his legs straighten to propel himself upward, it’s almost comical how much more height he gains.
Also, unless I’m mistaken, I think he’s free-balling it . . .
Up, he jumps. Down, he lands.
I should look away, turn my attention back on Timmy. Dominic DaSilva is a high-rolling jerk-bag. His humor is pointed and aggressive, his baritone voice is laden with mischief—like he’s withholding a secret I’ll never know—and that’s not even taking into account the fact that he has no business being on this field. He doesn’t care about these kids, about this town. I know it. He knows it. Adam should know it.
When he swings his arms up and over his head, his T-shirt rides high on his flat stomach, exposing that tight V again.
Heat zings up my spine, quickening my pulse, and I bite down on my bottom lip.
Unfair. It is so ridiculously unfair that a man like him can have such an obnoxious, rub-me-wrong attitude and yet be the hottest guy to grace this field. Hell, to grace all of Maine.
The thought alone ignites my temper all over again.
Though it doesn’t stop my gaze from betraying me. Against my will, I zero in on his shorts as I hear him bellow—“One! Two! Bobby, make sure your feet are comin’ all the way off the grass! Four! Five more, guys! Remember to breathe or you’ll pass the hell out!”—as all his disciples work in overdrive to please him.
Topher’s in with that group too.
I don’t know whether to applaud Dominic for earning the boys’ respect the old school way—getting in the trenches alongside them—or hate him more because now I’ll be expected to do the same.
I’ve always been a hands-on coach.
I run drills. I point out mistakes and start from the ground up to rework a player’s bad habits. I’ve never been the sort of person who holes up in my office and lets my staff run things for me. Not once in the almost ten years that I’ve coached middle and high schoolers.
But watching Dominic during the last two hours of our first summer camp practice has made me feel . . . hot and bothered. No. Not that. Inadequate is a better way to phrase it, and even that doesn’t quite capture the riot of emotions racing through my head.
Uncool.
Yeah, that’s the word I’m looking for. Up against the muscular magnificence of Dominic, I feel like the loser coach.
None of these kids care that I was the first female kicker to join the collegiate level of football. None care that, had I not ended up pregnant with Rick’s baby, I would have been the first woman drafted to the NFL too.
To them, I’m a Levi. They know my name, if not my face. They know that Levi’s have always done well by the team.
In their eyes, there’s nothing particularly exciting about me.
Certainly no mothers have ever rushed to practice to
take pictures with me.
Then again, I don’t have washboard abs, a sexy, I-know-you-want-to-do-me smirk, and an athletic bubble butt that should be illegal everywhere but on a Got Milk? advertisement.
Dominic has all that in spades.
And Timmy’s mom wants a piece of it.
Exactly how many minutes of every practice am I going to spend fending off mothers who are looking for a little Dominic DaSilva side-action?
I face the energetic freshman, noting the way he keeps darting looks behind me toward the parking lot. Keeping my voice light, I ask, “Is your mom married, Timmy?”
“No.” He grips his helmet a little tighter. As brave as he is on the field, he’s still a kid. An innocent kid with big ol’ dreams. “Just me and Mom. Dad left when I was five.”
Oh, no.
Instantly, my heart aches for him.
The mom in me wants to pull him in for a big, comforting hug. But a male coach wouldn’t do that. A male coach would chuck him on the shoulder, praise him for staying true to his momma and having her back when things got tough, before directing the conversation back to the game.
Back to football.
Finding that perfect blend has always been my biggest struggle.
So, I knock my fingers on the top of Timmy’s helmet, once, twice, and then angle him to face Topher, who is currently squirting water from his bottle all over his face.
“See that kid?” I ask.
Timmy nods. “Yeah.”
I drop my hand to my hip. “He knows what it’s like to have a father not be around.” I don’t think there was a day in my fourteen-year marriage that Rick remained faithful to me. He enjoyed the chase, and once he caught me, it was as though he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want me but neither would he free me—and because of that, Topher’s relationship with his father might as well be the retractable string on a yo-yo.
Whenever I tried to leave, Rick made things difficult for Topher. When I retreated into myself and stopped struggling, suddenly Rick was the perfect father figure to our son. By the time we finally divorced, I’d already seen beneath my ex-husband’s polished façade to the cracked and angry interior. He never asked for more than holidays with Topher, and his phone calls to our only son over the last year have been sporadic at best and nonexistent at worst.
I may have suffered years of living under Rick’s thumb, but it was Topher who suffered the minute we signed the divorce papers. The last words out of Rick’s mouth, when he called Topher on our last day in Pittsburgh, were, See you when I see you.
That’s it.
No promises to visit.
No mentions of I love you or be good for your mom now.
Just see you when I see you.
Topher cried the first leg of the journey, though he did his best to keep his sniffles to himself. With each mile marker we passed, my rage burned a little hotter. And each time my baby boy voiced the question, “Why doesn’t Dad care anymore?” I heard what he was really asking: Why doesn’t Dad care about me anymore?
Because snakes don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but themselves. Because you can give them loyalty and love and, soon enough, their skin will always peel and reveal their true colors.
Rick Clarke’s colors are nothing but narcissistic tendencies and abusive behavior.
He left me to pick up the tattered pieces of our family, to glue the fragments back together again, and show Topher that we are a team. Me and him. Always and forever.
Blinking away the memories, I nudge Timmy in the shoulder. “Trust me, I think you two would be good friends.”
In a tone weighted with hesitation, Timmy whispers, “He’s a sophomore,” like it’s the biggest obstacle in the world.
Oh, to be fourteen again.
“Yup.” I nod, not bothering to refute that fact. “But if you keep playing like you did today, varsity might not be out of reach for you come the end of the summer. By then, age won’t matter so long as you bleed red and white.”
The kid’s smile makes me feel like I’ve hung the moon, all the planets, and the damn sun, too, for good measure. “I’m gonna bleed red and white, Coach. Just you wait.”
“See that you do, Timmy.”
He thumps a hand over his helmet in excitement. “Oh! There’s my mom.”
I turn, clipboard tucked under one armpit.
And nearly cramp a muscle from smiling so freaking hard.
Timmy’s mom has brought the brigade.
Women flank her on either side, like geese trailing their leader. Ten in total. I hear their laughter from here, and yeah, maybe it makes me a little bit evil to know Dominic’s afternoon is on the verge of being disrupted by Chanel perfume, kitten heels—bad idea on grass, that’s for sure—and a group of women determined to cozy up to him.
Leaving me to take control over the last thirty minutes of practice.
Bull’s-eye.
Mission in place, I pat Timmy on the shoulder and swoop forward to meet the moms halfway.
“Coach Levi!” greets a woman with pageant-worthy brown hair. Instead of sticking out a hand in introduction, she wraps an arm around me and pulls me in for a tight hug. Surprise ricochets through me, stiffening my frame, just as she lets me go. “You probably don’t remember me.”
Should I?
As subtly as possible, I study her features. Big, blue eyes. Dimples twinkling in her cheeks. An imperfect scar bisecting her right brow, leaving me with the impression that the end of the tail has been penciled in.
That scar.
Why is that scar so familiar?
“Meredith,” she tells me when the silence clings a little too uncomfortably. “My maiden name is Bweller. I was a year behind you in school . . . you played football with my older brother?”
That scar.
“You tried keeping up with one of our pickup games,” I say, my voice low as the memory rises up from the ashes of my youth, “and ran—”
“Directly into a parked car.” Her stained red lips tug up in a wide grin. “Yup, that was me. Not the highlight of my teenage years, of course. Then again, that’s the problem with youthful infatuation, right there. I wanted Steven’s best friend to notice me in a big way.”
Ouch. I wince in sympathy. “Nate, right?” I readjust the clipboard, holding it with both hands in front of my hips. “I never realized you had a crush on Nate.”
“Oh, girl.” Her exaggerated eye roll is one for the books. “Crushing doesn’t even begin to cover it. I was a Grade-A stalker. The only thing stopping me from sneaking into his bedroom window at night was that he slept on the second floor and the universe cursed me with no lattice to climb like in the movies. It was a travesty.”
“Well, it worked out, didn’t it?” interjects one of the other women. “You married him and now we all have to watch the two of you frolic together on the beach every Sunday morning.”
Oh. Oh.
I drop my gaze to her left hand. Sure enough, there’s a dainty little diamond nestled next to a simple gold band on her ring finger.
The diamond, in particular, sparkles under the sun, as she fiddles with the ring, her thumb moving it back and forth. “Seven years later this fall.” Her chin tips in the direction of the field. “You have our son out there. Bobby. Curly hair like his dad. Blue eyes like me. Crazy good manners. He has my husband to thank for that last one.”
Out of all the players this morning, Bobby was the only one to walk up to me and introduce himself after we finished warmups. I didn’t recognize his last name from my notes—Sutter, if I’m remembering Nate’s correctly—but he impressed me with his openness and maturity.
He’s also one of the older kids in the group. Sixteen.
Which means that there’s a story there with Meredith and her teenage crush, and their son who was born years before they tied the knot.
When I return my attention to her, her smile has dimmed. Just enough for me to acknowledge the hard challenge in her eye, daring me to call her out and s
ay something rude about Bobby.
You’re barking up the wrong tree, I almost confess. I’m the last person who will ever judge a relationship. I mean, look at me—my track record is pure shit. Rick “the prick” Clarke didn’t earn his nickname simply because it rhymes. The way I see it, all relationships come with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s not my or anyone else’s business to dig our noses where they don’t belong and demand the full details on a story that doesn’t include us.
Catching Meredith’s eye, I make sure to hold her gaze when I murmur, “Bobby’s lucky to have you both. And I’m incredibly lucky to see what he can bring to the team. Here’s to hoping he has more of Nate’s football skills than yours—no offense, Meredith.”
She cracks a grin at my bad joke.
Turning my head to the other moms, I wonder, briefly, if I’m in the wrong for wanting to sic them on Dominic.
Maybe.
Probably.
I don’t let it faze me. I’m here to do a job that I love, and while Dominic is proving to be a pain in the butt, his oh-so-holy presence may solve another one of my problems . . .
“Ladies, as the Wildcats’ head coach, part of my job is to kickstart fundraising opportunities. I know the season is months away, but when I took this position, I told the athletic director that there was one tradition I wasn’t willing to leave behind at my old school.”
One woman lifts a hand, her coffin-shaped nails practically clawing at the air. Her features are almost an exact replica of Timmy’s—his mom, I assume—a fact she confirms when she barks out, “Tim’s mom!” A tiny pause follows, in which she stares me down like I’m all that’s standing in her way. “We want to meet Coach DaSilva.”
Feeling not the least bit guilty about using my assistant coach as bait, I promise, “And you will.”
Okay, I feel a little guilty.
But Dominic is a big boy, both literally and figuratively. He can handle it. Hell, based on what I’ve read online over the years, he’s more than used to fending off women at every turn. He fended off me just this weekend, even.
Old habits die hard.
