Pass Interference

by Natalie Brock

  Sara glanced sidelong at Philip, holding up an orange like he was getting ready to throw a baseball. She merely shook her head no.

  “Suit yourself,” he groused, placing the orange back in the bowl. “So much for hospitality. Okay. Where do we start?”

  She looked from Philip to the desk and back to Philip again. “I presume you read the email from Dean Landry that told you how to prepare for your tutoring session.”

  “Hmmm.” He wrinkled his nose. “I um didn’t have a chance. Been busy,” Philip said flippantly.

  Sara narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “I can see that. Must be hard to sit on your butt all day and do nothing besides entertain a group of kids who wouldn’t know a participle from a popsicle.”

  Philip chose to let that remark slide. “Landry is a little verbose, don’t you think?”

  “Verbose! Oooh, a five dollar word.”

  Wrinkling his brow, he asked, “What’s with the attitude, Mary?”

  Sara looked away, a little startled by the direct question. She mindlessly rifled through the things on top of his desk. “Um. I told you. It’s Sara. And I prefer to tutor people who actually care about their grades.”

  “What makes you think I don’t care?”

  “Pretty much everything since I arrived.” She shrugged. “Like throwing a party when you’re supposed to be having a tutoring session.”

  “I wasn’t throwing a party,” Philip shot back defensively. “Some of my teammates came over to see how I was doing, and then more people came and—”

  Sara rolled her eyes and decided she knew what he was going to say before he finished. “And a party broke out. Sure, whatever you say.” She didn’t wait for a retort. “Look, I don’t care about your personal life, just your academic life, the one you don’t care about.” Sara scoffed. “Anyway, we’re wasting time. What do you want to cover first?”

  “Cover? What do you mean?”

  “I mean what subject?” She set her phone down on the desk and reached into her bag to take out her tablet. “What subjects do you need the most help with? Math? Science?”

  “Uh.” Scratching his head, he mused, “I’m pretty good with math and science. But I can use some help with English. Literature. Composition. That kind of thing.”

  “Perfect,” Sara said, her face brightening. This was something she could definitely sink her teeth into. “Do you have any samples of anything you’ve written this semester?”

  Philip squinted at her and very slowly shook his head no.

  “Okay, no worries. I want you to write something for me.” She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. “Give me hmmm let’s start with a hundred words about how you feel about being sidelined.” Focusing on Philip, she asked, “Did I use the right term?”

  “Yeah. A hundred words, huh? That’s a lot.”

  Sara raised her brows. “No it’s not. A hundred words is nothing.”

  “Why don’t I just do this for homework and I can hand it in next time we meet.”

  Sara folded her arms and eyed Philip with distrust. Looking at him like this, she could see he’d been through a lot. It showed on his face. His jaw was clenched and tense, giving his angular face even more hard edges. His nose had two little bumps, like it had been broken more than once and never healed quite right. He had a scruff that made his face look thinner around the chin. His brown hair was unruly and could use a trim, or even a comb. His cinnamon brown eyes were close-set. His dark eyebrows were thick and brought all his features together in one striking picture. Taken all together, he was actually quite handsome. She could see what the girls saw in him, even though he wasn’t at all her type. “Nice try, Einstein, but I think you’d probably tell me your dog ate it.”

  Philip shook his head. “Okay, fine, whatever,” he said with a sigh. Then he scratched his chin just before shuffling the materials on his desk in search of his tablet. He picked up Sara’s schoolbag and put it down again. His hair brushed her arm, surprising Sara, and sent an unexpected shiver through her body, so she took a step back to give him more space. He finally found a tablet stuffed under some CDs. He placed it on his lap and wheeled away from her.

  She pulled out the desk chair and sat down, figuring this would be a good time for her to catch up on some of her own homework.

  After about ten minutes, Sara heard Philip scoff. She lifted her head and noticed that it looked like he was reading something on his tablet rather than writing something.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  Philip’s expression was that of a little boy who got caught doing something he knew was wrong. “Um. Nothing.”

  Sara rose from the desk chair and walked toward him. She was on a mission. “Don’t touch that,” she ordered, grabbing his tablet before he had a chance to close the cover. The browser was open to a sports article. She read the headline out loud. “Barracudas on Winning Streak Despite Missing Mason.” She squinted at him in an attempt to appear intimidating. “Really?”

  “I know, right?” He took his tablet out of her hands. “I don’t know why every article about the Barracudas needs to mention me. Why can’t they just give credit to the guys on the field instead of saying they won despite the fact I wasn’t playing. It’s irrelevant. It diminishes the win.”

  “You’re supposed to be writing, not reading,” she reminded him.

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry,” he said a little sheepishly. “I’m sort of a sports news junkie.”

  Sara stifled a laugh. She wanted to appear imposing, but there was something so impish about the way he looked at the moment that made it hard for her to act tough. She shook her head and said, “Get back to work, Mason,” as she walked back toward the desk and sat back down.

  “Yes, Miss Ross,” he replied in a mocking tone.

  A little while later, she heard Philip softly mumbling and she realized he was counting.

  With her temple on her fist and her elbow on the desk, she turned her head to look at Philip. “What are you doing now?”

  Lifting only his eyes, he said, “Doing a word count.” Then he looked back at his tablet on his lap.

  Sara got up from her chair and walked over. “You’re doing a manual word count?”

  “Shhhh,” he grumbled. “I’ll lose my place.”

  Sara chuckled. “You don’t have to count by hand. There’s an automatic word count feature you can use.”

  Philip looked embarrassed. “Oh. Um. I knew that.”

  “You did not,” she said, laughing. “Here, I’ll show you.” Leaning over next to his wheelchair, she tapped the menu on his tablet and enabled the word-count feature. When she looked at him, she was a little unnerved to see he was looking at her instead of at the tablet. “Um. A hundred and seventeen words.”

  A wide smile covered his face. “Super. I guess I’m done.”

  Sara took a couple steps back. Placing her hands on her hips, she asked, “Did you proofread it?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You’ll find in time that I never joke.”

  “Yeah, I’m gettin’ that. Here.” He looked down at his tablet again. “What’s your email?”

  “It’s Sara R 2 7 at E F U dot E D U. Oh, and Sara is spelled S-A-R-A. No H.”

  “Cool.” He tapped out her address on the touchscreen keyboard. “Here it comes.”

  Sara returned to the desk and checked the email on her mobile device to make sure Philip’s message arrived. “Great.” Stuffing her tablet back into her bag, she slung the pack over her shoulder and said, “Then I’ll see you next week.”

  “What?” He looked at her with shock, his eyes following her as she walked toward the door. “Aren’t you gonna take a look now?”

  “No, we can talk about it next time.”

  “Hey, how come you get to take it home and work on it in your spare time and I don’t?”

  Sara laughed lightly. “Because I’m calling the plays in this arena. If you think football has a lot of rules, wait until you see Sara’s
playbook.” She smiled, enjoying her momentary authority. “Bye.”

  Chapter Two

  After returning to her dorm room that evening, Sara grabbed a yogurt and an apple for dinner, finished her homework, and took a quick shower. She had a private bedroom in a third floor apartment she shared with a roommate in the Evanston Towers. Her dorm felt small to her now that she’d seen how EFU’s privileged athletes lived. Philip’s apartment overlooked a lake, but her building merely overlooked other buildings on campus. Even though it was an apartment for two, it was smaller than Philip’s place, but much neater.

  When she finally settled into bed, she found herself thinking a lot about her new student. In some ways he was exactly what she expected—a jock whose shoe size was bigger than his IQ, but in other ways, he wasn’t at all what she’d imagined. After his friends left the room, Philip seemed like an ordinary guy. She had to admit, she’d enjoyed their banter.

  She felt a little guilty for being so sharp with Philip. In truth, he had done nothing to deserve it. Blame it on that old defense mechanism which, by now, was sewn into the fabric of her personality. Her bravado was a habit, and she wasn’t sure how to turn it off.

  Since she wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet, she reached for the tablet on her nightstand and clicked on Philip’s email. She was prepared for the worst, an incoherent essay filled with self-aggrandizement and typos. What she read surprised her. It wasn’t incoherent at all. Instead, it was earnest and emotional. He titled the composition “Being Sidelined Sucks.” Sara chuckled a little. It was a crude title for sure, but it instantly conveyed the point of the story, so she had to give him credit for that.

  As for the rest of the paper, Philip explained clearly and succinctly how hard it was to be sidelined after winning his last fifteen games in a row and thirty out of thirty-eight games since he became the Barracudas’ starting quarterback. The tone of the essay wasn’t boastful, though. He expressed disappointment in being unable to lead his team for much of the season. He felt like he was letting them down. More than anything, he hoped they’d keep up the winning momentum without him. He vowed to work hard to stay strong while he recovered, both physically and psychologically. He’d be back.

  Sara leaned back on her pillow. She wasn’t easily impressed, but this was really good. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a compelling narrative. It also tugged a little at her heartstrings, and she wasn’t expecting her student’s assignment to evoke any emotion at all.

  Shaking off the brief bout of sympathy, she looked back at the essay and made some notes in the comments section. It needed a little help with grammar and sentence structure, but really, it wasn’t nearly as bad as Sara had expected.

  Chapter Three

  A few days later, Philip was in the doctor’s office for a routine post-op visit. It was the second week of November, and the oppressive Florida heat was finally done for the year.

  It had been four weeks since the incident and two and a half weeks since his ACL surgery. He had torn the anterior cruciate ligament on his right knee once before, but this was his first surgery for it and the doctors were being extra cautious. They recommended he stay in his wheelchair a little longer before graduating to crutches. That was surprisingly fine by Philip, since putting any weight or pressure on his knee hurt like hell. He barely slept since the injury occurred because he simply couldn’t find a comfortable position, and because of another reason—something he couldn’t share with anyone. He was scared.

  He was scared of the way this injury would affect his football play. Right or wrong, he’d staked his whole future on being able to play football. He’d been touted throughout the regional college football conference as the next Aaron Rodgers. No one could throw a running pass like Phil Mason, the local scouts said. It was hard not to buy into the hype.

  In the meantime, he read everything he could get his hands on about ACL tears, treatment, and recovery, which is why he chose to stay mum about the pain. If the doctors knew he was in pain, they might want to go in and do some more surgery, further delaying his return to the field. He was already losing so much time and might even be out for the entire season. He couldn’t risk losing the rest of his senior year. If he did, he could kiss his prospects of being drafted by a professional football team goodbye.

  “You’re pretty quiet,” his friend Carter observed as he drove Philip back to campus after leaving the doctor’s office.

  Philip shrugged and continued to stare out the window, listening to the creaks and squeaks in Carter’s old Mustang.

  Carter searched for a conversation starter. “Did you hear Coach Ramsey is retiring? Moving back to St. Louis.”

  That got Philip’s attention. He turned to look at his driver. “No, I didn’t know. I guess I’ve been out of the loop.” He turned toward the window again, feeling disconnected. The team was his universe, a sort of elite membership club for talented athletes. Right now, he didn’t feel like he belonged to it anymore. The season was ten weeks old already, and every Saturday that passed without Philip in the game felt like another nail in his coffin. “So what’s Coach Fairchild gonna do? He’ll need a new assistant athletic director.”

  Carter shrugged. “I guess. Hey,” Carter said. “Speaking of assistants, how’d your tutoring session go?”

  Oh, good. A neutral subject, Philip decided. “Fine I guess.” He rolled down the window a little to let in some fresh air.

  “Mary seems like a real bitch,” Carter said.

  “Yeah, she’s tough,” Philip replied without emotion.

  “Did you get into her pants yet?”

  Philip recoiled. “Hell no! I can’t stand her. She’s bossy and controlling and has a chip on her shoulder.” She also has no sense of humor, no softness, and no warmth, he thought. She was like a professor but worse, because he couldn’t sit at the back of a classroom and pretend to pay attention to her lecture. She was in his face, one-on-one, and way too serious about her stupid tutoring job, one she didn’t even get paid to do. Not only that, but she was pretty obnoxious. Seemed like she didn’t like Philip right off the bat when he’d done nothing to cause her to dislike him.

  “Like I said, dude, you should do her,” Carter decided. “She gets laid by King Mason, she’s a whole different girl. No more Virgin Mary.”

  Philip looked down at his legs and rubbed his thigh. His injury put a crimp in his sex life as well as his sports career. “Well, I don’t know whether she’s a virgin,” Philip said, pretending he was interested in the subject, “but she sure is uptight.”

  “So, just screw her, loosen her up.” He glanced at Philip. “What? Why not?”

  “Not my type,” he covered.

  “She’s a girl, isn’t she? What else do you need?” Carter laughed at his own joke. “Okay, let’s make this interesting.” Keeping his left hand on the steering wheel, Carter reached into his pants pocket for his wallet and held it up with his right hand. “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars you can’t get her laid. How’s that for a challenge?”

  Philip pushed the linebacker’s hand away. “Keep your money, Carter. You’d win anyway.”

  “Aw, you’re no fun anymore.” He stuffed his wallet back in his pocket.

  “First of all, I don’t have a hundred dollars to throw away,” Philip rationalized. “Second, I’m not interested in doing her. Third, she hates me. And fourth, I don’t know why we’re even talking about this, so just drop it, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, dude. Hey!” Carter lightly slapped Philip’s arm with the back of his hand as an idea occurred to him. “Listen, why don’t you come watch practice later. Might make you less crabby.”

  “I’m not crabby!” Philip snapped at Carter. Besides, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to watch his teammates doing something he might never be able to do again. It would be like pouring salt in his ACL wound.

  “Hokay. Whatever you say, dude.”

  “Sorry man,” Philip said sadly. He didn’t mean to take his frustration out on one of the
few guys left who still came around. His other teammates were all over Philip right after the accident. They couldn’t do enough for him. But as the weeks passed, their interest in their fallen comrade had waned, and they only came around if they smelled a party at Philip’s place.

  “Look, it’s okay. I’m sure I’d be a basket case—uh, sorry. Bad choice of words.” Carter backtracked. “I’m sure I’d be a mess if I were in your um.”

  Philip raised his brows. “Wheelchair?”

  “Anyway, don’t sweat it.” Carter patted Philip’s arm. “You’ll be back. We need you. Tony Ramos throws like a girl. Can’t complete a pass to save his life—unless he’s making a pass at some girl.”

  “Tony’s fine,” Philip said of his backup quarterback. “He’s just young and needs to gain confidence, seasoning. But you’re right, Carter. I’ll be back. I will.”

  “Hey, I know you will. You have to. We’re down to our third string quarterback.”

  Philip instantly turned his head to face Carter. “What do you mean? What happened to Tony?”

  “Oh. Um. He’s on temporary suspension,” Carter said hesitantly. “Some girl accused him of date rape.”

  Philip’s eyes went wide. “What the hell? When?”

  “About a week ago,” Carter replied.

  Philip was shocked. He was even more out of the loop than he realized. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we assumed you heard.”

  “Damn it Carter!” Philip punched the inside of the door as he felt his blood pressure rise. “You guys act like I’m not even on the roster anymore. Sheez. Is Tony still on campus?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I want to talk to him. Now!”

  When they got back to campus, Philip didn’t stop at his room. Instead, he headed straight over to Tony’s place. From his wheelchair, he pounded on Tony’s dorm room door.

  “Okay okay,” an impatient voice yelled from within. Tony opened the door, and it took a minute before he looked downward at Philip. Philip pushed his way past Tony and wheeled into the room.