“Cord—”
He cuts me off with the wave of his hand. “So we were at the lake that day, all of us, and you were all going on about your plans and all that, and I just kept thinking how fucked I was. I didn’t know where I was gonna sleep in a few days. You all were having these huge parties thrown for you by your families, and I had a week to get out of my family’s house.”
“Oh, Cord,” I say, reaching for his hand.
He smiles, but doesn’t take it.
“That night,” he says, his voice gruff, “I went out to Dugger Lake. The same place I had sat with my mom when she visited me the only time in my life. I sat on the old railroad tracks that go over the water and thought about what options I had. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt.”
“Rightfully so,” I say, taking his hand in mine, even though he tries to pull it back. “Cord, you couldn’t help what your parents or what your foster family did to you. You had every right to feel bad about that! You were eighteen years old.”
“Did you know Jiggs and Ty found me that night?”
I look deep into his eyes, darker than I’ve ever seen them. A cold chill rips through me.
“No,” I say. “I don’t remember them saying anything.”
He slips his hand out of mine and sets the picture back on the shelf. “Well, they did. To this day, I don’t know if it was happenstance or if they were looking for me, but they caught me about thirty seconds from jumping off those tracks.”
“You would’ve died!”
“That was the point.”
“Cord!” I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth.
“I know,” he says simply. “Crazy, right? But at that moment in my life, everything looked hopeless and I was on the brink of making an insane decision. I just wanted the hurt to stop. I wanted the decisions made. I wanted to stop being different. If they hadn’t come when they did . . .” He turns and touches me on the nose. “I wouldn’t be here.”
Stunned, I walk backwards until the backs of my legs hit the sofa and I fall onto the cushions.
“That man of yours and your brother saved my life, Elin.”
A plethora of memories overtakes me and everything falls into place. “That’s why you stayed with us right after that.”
“Yeah,” he smiles. “And why your dad got me on at the mine, because Jiggs begged him to help me.”
“How did I never know this?”
“It’s not something you want broadcast,” he laughs. “You and Lindsay have always been so sweet to me. Good girls, the both of you. You have no clue how many times in my life you’ve made me smile, and it was the only time I felt happy some days.”
Words fail me. There’s no way to respond to that.
“You guys have been the only consistent thing in my life. Y’all have never turned your backs on me.”
“We’re your friends, Cord,” I choke out.
“Fuck that. You’re my family. The only family I have.”
His words are crisp and clear and they fall hard on my heart.
“That’s why I’m here. Because I can’t sit back and watch you make this mistake. You all have pulled me up many times in my life, and I have to try to pull you up now.”
“Whoa,” I say, still trying to come to terms with Cord’s story. “My marriage and what happened to you are two different things.”
“Not really,” he says easily. “You and I both got sunk by a set of circumstances and made decisions in the throes of the moment. Neither of which were good, clear-headed decisions.”
“What do you want me to do, Cord?” I sigh. “Everything is broken. I can’t trust him. I can’t tell him . . . things,” I gulp, “that a woman should want to tell her husband.”
“You should tell him about . . . that.”
“Why? Help him feel better about his decision? That I have some fatal flaw and can never give him what he wants?”
Both hands on his hips, he shakes his head. “You know there isn’t a lot of difference between what you say Ty did to you and what you did to him.”
Flabbergasted, my jaw drops to the floor. “Ty left me, Cord. He. Left. Me. He took off out of here, on fucking drugs from what I hear, and left everyone that loved him. I can’t just brush that under the rug.”
“He was trying to deal with things. He made a decision in the middle of a bunch of shit, just like I did, and just like you are doing. See how stupid that is?”
I start to talk, but he waves me off.
“And as far as you not doing anything to him . . .”
He looks at my stomach for a long moment. I flinch under his scrutiny, his observation piercing me to the point it almost hurts.
Covering my belly with my hand, to somehow protect my secret and my pride, I can’t respond to his insinuations. I’m terrified to go there.
He nods, tearing his eyes away from mine. “I’m sorry, Elin.”
A single tear drips down my cheek, the simple words the first time anyone has had the chance to comfort me since the loss besides Lindsay. The words are almost a warm blanket over my torn soul, soothing the ragged, lonely edges from losing something so precious.
I watch my friend watch me and we don’t say anything; he doesn’t muddy the moment by expressing his undying sorrow for me or by telling me it will be okay. He does what Cord does and just knows that his presence is enough. He’s there.
Sniffling, I stand again, this time my legs swaying a bit. A weight has been lifted somehow, just by someone else knowing what happened. But at the same time, a jut of fear begins to work its way into my gut.
“Cord,” I say, sniffling again, “please don’t say anything.”
“It’s not my place to tell. But Elin, you should tell your husband.”
The fact he calls Ty “my husband” doesn’t go without notice.
“I called him to tell him, but he wouldn’t answer,” I say sadly.
“He still deserves to know.”
“I’ll decide what he deserves to know,” I counter. “I had to go through losing that baby by myself. That was, by far, the hardest day of my life—harder than watching him leave or hearing the phone not pick up for days and days or asking about a divorce. And I did it alone. So I’m pretty sure I can decide how much of anything I want to do alone from here on out.”
He shakes his head, clearly not entertained by my little speech. “He shouldn’t have left, I agree. Most of the reasons he did it were completely selfish. But he was also trying to protect you.”
“Don’t go there with me, Cord,” I boom.
“Even if he wasn’t a full-blown addict, that shit fucks up your brain. I get that he didn’t want to go off it in front of you. Even if he’d just been taking it a few weeks straight, he’d have some bad days. He knew that and didn’t want you seeing it. That would’ve fucked you up.” He furrows his brows. “You don’t think if he knew about the miscarriage he wouldn’t have come back? Because I guarantee you that boy would’ve been here. Guarantee it.”
I wipe the tears away that are coming fast and hard now. “I didn’t want him back to comfort me if he didn’t want to be here, and he clearly didn’t.”
“You aren’t being fair.”
“Life’s not fair, Cord. Don’t we both know that?”
He swipes his coat off the chair and heads to the door, his temple pulsing. With his hand on the knob, he turns to look at me.
“Don’t make decisions because you just want to end the pain. Don’t lose Ty because you’re mad or hurt or confused. Be the smart girl I know you to be.”
The door twists open and the cool night air hits me in the face. I’m not sure if it’s the chill in the breeze or the stark reality of Cord’s words that has me shivering.
TY
The gym door is propped open with a large trash can. It’s Jason’s doing. The kid practices so hard he pukes almost every night. Within an hour of the start of drills, he runs to the door and loses his dinner in the can.
Every. Night.
He works his tail off, not just because he has colleges looking at him for scholarships, potentially giving him a way out of this town when he couldn’t afford it otherwise. But his jump shot also has given him a sort of fame in the area. Everyone knows his name, knows “Jason from Jackson,” just like once upon a time they knew a Ty from here too. The only difference is I’ll do everything in my power to see him do more than just mine coal ten years from now.
And that starts with walking in here tonight.
The moon hangs bright above, the sound of balls hitting the rubberized gym floor echoing across the parking lot. I tighten my jacket over me, trying to fill the hollowness in my chest as much as I’m trying to keep the cool air out.
I’m empty. I’m a shell, a ghost of a life that I once lived so vibrantly. But the difference tonight as opposed to the many nights before is this: I can feel me somewhere inside my body. The spark I used to feel when I woke up and looked at my day—at spending the morning mining coal next to Jiggs and Cord, dinner with Elin before practice later—is back. It’s flickering, growing, starting to burn as my confidence, the realization that I’m going to have to take my life back by the horns or watch it slip away becomes ever apparent.
And I’m not about to watch Elin or these boys drift away.
As much as I hate that Elin met with Parker, and I hate even more that I had to hear it from Pettis, it was exactly what I needed to get my shit straight.
The halogen bulbs glitter as I enter the gymnasium. Sneakers squeak against the floor as Reynolds’ whistle screams.
“Nice work!” he shouts.
I round the corner and pause by the bleachers. Dustin marches across the floor and stops inches from the coach’s face. They go at it, fingers in chests, veins popping.
“Hit the showers, Dustin!” I boom.
All heads turn to me. Jaws hit the floor. My eyes stay trained on my player.
“You heard him,” Reynolds says, his chest rising and falling from the exchange.
“He’s not the coach,” Dustin growls, turning to Reynolds. “You are.”
Reynolds doesn’t back down. “This is his team. You know that. Now hit the showers like you were told.”
No one utters a word as I traverse the room. When I reach Dustin, his eyes are wide. He’s only seen this look on my face a couple of times and neither has ended well for him.
I love this kid. I’ve even had him over for supper a few times and Elin keeps an eye on him academically. But his attitude can be something fierce, something I try to handle when it erupts at me because I get where it’s coming from. His parents left town while he was at a friend’s house when he was seven years old. He’s been in foster care ever since, moving from house to house, school to school. He’s been in Jackson for five years now, part of the team for two. I’ve heard enough stories, seen enough of his strained life, to have empathy for the boy. Yet, it’s my job to teach him to manage his anger and act like the man he’s going to be, hard life or not.
“Apologize to him,” I say through gritted teeth.
“He had us running suicides for the last twenty minutes!”
“I don’t give a shit if he had you running them all practice. You do not disrespect your coach like that. Apologize or get the hell out of here.”
A flicker of something dashes through his eyes and I make note of it.
“Everyone, come here,” I say.
The boys gather around, balls on their hips, sweat dripping off their chins. They watch me with a mixture of trepidation and respect that makes me pause.
This team, all fifteen athletes standing in front of me, are my responsibility. They’re my boys, my team, my group of kids to inspire and encourage, even if I did officially resign. I can’t let them down any more than I already have.
Taking a deep breath, I face them all.
“How are ya?” I ask.
They nod, mumble their typical “fine,” “okay,” “all right” and wait for me to continue.
“Look, guys, I want to say I’m sorry.”
“No, Coach, it’s fine—” Jason begins, but I wave him off.
“You know what? It’s not fine,” I say, looking him in the eye.
“No, it’s not,” Dustin says, squaring his shoulders.
“Where have you been?” Pauly asks, a tall kid with blonde hair.
“Yeah, Coach . . .” Their questions come at me in a flurry, some asking out of concern, other voices on the cusp of an outburst.
I take a deep breath. “Guys, give me a minute.” I run my hand through my hair. “Look, I get why you’re mad. You have every right to be. If any of you want to talk one-on-one, let me know and we can meet up after practice or do some fishing this weekend and get it all worked out, okay?”
The energy in the room stills, lowering a few notches. I breathe a little easier.
“You all give me one hundred percent every night on this court,” I continue. “Some of you have done that now for four years. And I resigned and didn’t respect you enough to give you a heads-up. I was wrong to do that.”
Holding out my hands, Jason passes me a ball. I flip him a smile and he returns it.
“I love basketball,” I say, passing the ball between my hands. “It’s good competition, a fun way to pass some time. But you know what else it is, what it teaches?”
“Teamwork,” Jason says quietly, unsure if it was a rhetorical question.
“Exactly. It teaches us to rely on the guys around you. So when James has a bad night and can’t hit the broad side of a barn—”
“Hey!” he interjects to the laughs of his friends.
“When that happens,” I smile, “we have Dustin or Pauly or Matt that can pick up the slack. It’s not just you, individually, out there, taking on the opponent. It’s all of you.”
I bounce the ball a few times, trying to get my thoughts together, when the silence is broken by Jason.
“You know, Coach,” he says, clearing his throat, “There aren’t just fifteen of us. There’s seventeen. There’s Reynolds and you too.”
I smile at my starting forward.
“Whatever happened to you, we would’ve been there for you too. Just like on the court. If you were missing your shots, we would’ve had your back,” Jason says.
“But you stopped playing,” Dustin challenges, clearly the most affected by my departure. “You just walked off the team.”
“And I was wrong,” I say, turning to face him. “I got all caught up in myself and forgot about my team. I forgot a lot of things. Sometimes . . .” I pull my gaze to the floor. “Sometimes it’s easier to run off and try to deal with things on your own because you don’t want people to see you struggle. But all that does is—”
“It lets your team down,” Dustin chimes in.
“Yeah,” I shrug, looking at him pointedly. “It lets your team down and I let a lot of people down on the notion that I was doing them a favor. Guys,” I say, looking across the line of them, “I let you down. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
“Of course,” Jason says immediately.
Looking down the row of teenaged faces, they all nod their heads.
“Teams only work when we respect each other, when we are open with each other when we struggle. This team doesn’t stop being a team when the whistle blows. I forgot that. Let’s all learn from my mistake.”
I glance at Dustin out of the corner of my eye. He toes the black line on the floor with his sneaker before looking up at Reynolds. “Hey, man. I’m sorry.”
Reynolds grabs his shoulder and shakes it. “It’s okay. It’s been a rough week around here.”
“Are you back, Coach?” Jason asks.
Looking at Reynolds, he waits for me to respond. I shrug and he laughs.
“Let’s hope he’s back,” Reynolds sighs, sticking his whistle in his mouth. “I’m too old for this shit. You boys are killing me.”
A series of laughs fills the gym and I sigh in relief. This. This is what I do, who
I am and it feels fucking amazing to be back and remembering it.
“Looks like you have been turned over to me. Get a drink and let’s see what kind of shape you’re in,” I tell them.
They all take off to the coolers, except Dustin. His brows pulled together, he takes the ball from my hands.
“You good, Coach?”
“Getting there,” I wink. “Feels better being back here though, I’ll tell ya that.”
He nods and chews his bottom lip. “I saw Mrs. Whitt today.”
“Did you?” I ask, trying not to let the fact that the mention of her threw me a little.
“She said she hoped you’d be here tonight.”
“Yeah, well, here I am.”
The ball goes between his hands, his nervous tell that something’s the matter.
“What’s wrong, Dustin?”
“I . . . um . . .” He takes a deep breath. “I got into some trouble last week, Coach.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, really. I mean, I didn’t do anything. I was accused of sending a few emails to a teacher that I didn’t send. I wouldn’t do that,” he says, shaking his head. “The principal wouldn’t even look into it, even when I told him that teacher has it in for me. Just suspended me for three days.”
“What?” I say, my jaw tensing. “Are you still suspended? When was this?”
I curse myself for not being there for him. Dustin wouldn’t do that; it’s not the kind of kid he is. And if he gets suspended, it will ruin his scholarship chances, which means his entire future will be gone. He’ll end up . . . like me.
“It was last week. But relax,” he says, smiling at the look of panic on my face. “Mrs. Whitt saw me in the parking lot. She was coming to the high school for an IT class or something and asked why I wasn’t in class. I told her I was leaving because of what happened, and she took my elbow and marched me back into the office.”
My chest swells at the thought that my wife did this for Dustin. This is my forever, the woman I love. The little pit bull shoved into this angelic body that fights for what she wants. She’s ready to throw the towel in on us. What’s that say about me?
Written in the Scars Page 12
