Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance)

by Pace, Alicia Hunter

  God, help me. I have written all this down and I still haven’t figured anything out. I’ve got two weeks. Maybe if I read it, something will come to me.

  • • •

  And that was all. Tolly had never written another word in the book and she’d never figured a way out of her mess. It caught up with her less than a week later but, even if she’d had more time, she couldn’t have fixed it without walking away from him. And her heart wouldn’t let her.

  Chapter Six

  The diner was empty except for Lou Anne behind the counter. Not surprising for two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Tolly slid onto a stool at the counter.

  “Hey, baby. Your girls were in earlier. Where were you?” Lou Anne poured her a glass of iced tea.

  “Court. I’m starving.”

  “What can I get you?”

  “Maybe just a little chicken salad and some crackers?”

  “Sure thing.” Lou Anne plopped a scoop of the salad on a lettuce leaf. “But that’s not much for someone who’s starving.”

  “If I eat much more than that I won’t want any dinner and now that I have a teenage boy to feed … ”

  Lou Anne laughed and set the plate in front of her. “I can only imagine what a change — ” The bell on the door rang and Nathan Scott came barreling through like an angry missile — if a missile could be all caramel and butterscotch with a great ass.

  He marched up to Tolly and said, “I was looking for you.”

  “Then you have met with success — ” She took her time lifting her napkin to her lips. “ — for here I am.”

  “Nathan,” Lou Anne interrupted sternly. “You are under my roof.”

  “Oh.” He looked sheepish and removed his Merritt High Bobcats baseball cap. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry.” Then he turned full throttle back to Tolly. “Harris said you were here.”

  “Oh? Then Harris also gets a person locater prize.” She took a sip of her iced tea. “What brings you into my presence, Nathan?” Out of the corner of her eye, Tolly saw Lou Anne slip into the kitchen.

  “We just had weigh-in. Seven has lost two pounds since he moved in with you. Two pounds!” He slapped his baseball cap against his knee. “That’s five pounds in all since his grandmother died. I can’t have it.”

  “Then I suggest that you stop working him so hard,” Tolly said coolly. “For starters you can stop having him come clean up that stadium on Saturday mornings. Those boys should get to sleep late after playing the night before.”

  “What? Did he complain about that?”

  “Complain? Kirby complain about you? Oh, no I can assure you he did not. You are a god among men — maybe the God. If you say it’s an honor and a privilege to play football and a football player should keep his house clean, let it be written because it is the gospel. No. I decided the stupidity of that arrangement all on my own.”

  “Stupid? I’ll tell you what’s stupid. You aren’t feeding that boy right.”

  “He’s getting a balanced diet.” And that was true — most of the time.

  “Really? What did he have for dinner last night?”

  Oh, she had him now. Last night had been a good night. She had, with the help of the Crockpot, made one of the few things she could cook. “We had pot roast, potatoes, carrots, and salad.” Kirby had also had a Snickers bar and a bowl of ice cream but she didn’t mention that.

  “Oh, you did, did you? Do you know how much fat pot roast has in it??

  “So? Weren’t you just complaining that he had lost weight?”

  “What did he eat for breakfast?”

  She was on thinner ice now.

  “Juice. Milk. Cereal.”

  “What kind of cereal?” Nathan asked sanctimoniously, as if he already knew the answer.

  “Sugar Smacks.” She had nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Sugar Smacks!” Nathan threw his cap on the counter. “That boy cannot have Sugar Smacks. Don’t you know he is an athlete?”

  She had him now. “You ate sugar cereal when you played football.”

  The fight in his face gave way to astonishment. “How — ?”

  “I remember. Cocoa Puffs. Don’t deny it.” She would have remembered even if she had not read that journal entry fifteen times in the last three days.

  “Maybe I want him to be healthier than I was. Maybe I don’t want him to get hurt.” Like I did, hung in the air. The fight came back in Nathan’s eyes and radiated out until his beautiful face was a study in fury. He looked like a warrior angel marching into battle and she was the enemy. “Maybe we know a little more about nutrition these days. You’d know that, if you’d read the nutrition guide I sent you. Did you even look at it? For breakfast he needs an egg white omelet, four ounces of lean meat, two pieces of fruit, and a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter or cottage cheese. Plus yogurt or milk. Both, if he wants it while he’s underweight.”

  Did Kirby really need all that? Could he eat it? She didn’t eat that much all day. Of course, she didn’t play football, nor was she a seventeen-year-old boy. She intended to look at the nutrition guide. She just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  But she didn’t say any of that. She would have died first. “Kirby likes Sugar Smacks. He’s been through a lot.”

  “Well, I imagine he would like to have sex with three French Quarter pole dancers. Are you going to set that up for him too?”

  “Now, you see here, Nathan, if you don’t like how I’m doing things, maybe you should have taken him.”

  “Maybe I should have. Load him up and send him over. I can’t do any worse. At least I’d keep some weight on him.”

  “Yeah, you’d probably tell him that it’s an honor and a privilege to live with you and he has to keep your house clean.”

  Nathan closed his eyes. “I’m going to explain this to you since you couldn’t be bothered to read what I sent you. He needs to eat a certain way to build muscle. I see that he gets the correct strength training, but it will not work if he doesn’t get the proper nutrition. Do you know why he needs to be strong?”

  “So he can throw that ball and make you a success,” she said evenly.

  “No, Townshend. It’s so he won’t get hurt. It’s so he can withstand a contact sport. He’s a kid who is so grateful to you for taking him in that he won’t say a word if you give him lima beans and tofu three meals a day. He needs help with this but I guess that’s too much trouble for you. I guess you don’t care if he gets hurt.”

  Tolly felt the blood drain from her face and her mouth go dry. She closed her eyes against the memory that she had tried and failed to banish. Nathan at the bottom of a pile; body after body emerging and standing, but Nathan remaining down, writhing in pain; the trainers running to surround him; the stretcher; Nathan raising a hand and being wheeled away, with the crowd going wild. And later, the phone calls that he refused to answer and the visit to the hospital. She bit her cheek against the pain of that memory.

  “Don’t ever imply,” she said quietly, every word shrouded in ice, “that I don’t care if Kirby gets hurt.” She folded her napkin and laid it on the counter.

  “Since you haven’t read the parent packet, there’s something you need to know before Friday night. If he gets sacked, and he probably will at least once, you keep your seat. If you are needed I will send for you. I can’t have hysterical females trying to get on my field every time one of my players takes a spill.”

  “No problem,” she said. “I will not be there. I don’t go to football games.”

  His nostrils flared, his face reddened, and the Angel was now a fallen angel because, surely, angels couldn’t get that angry. “Did you say what I think you said?”

  “I don’t go to football games. I have not been to a game since — well, not for a very long time.”

  “You damn well
will. If you didn’t want to go to football games you should have considered that before you took that boy in. Mothers go to games. They watch their boys play ball — at least decent ones do.”

  “I’m not his — ”

  “No, you’re not, but you’re all he’s got. You didn’t think any of it through, but you took it up. Now you’ve got to see it through.”

  “Look, Nathan, I’ll own up to the part about the food. I haven’t read the information and I didn’t understand. I haven’t had a lot of time to figure this out yet. And I will see to it that he eats what he is supposed to. But I am not going to that stadium to watch those boys bulldoze each other.”

  “Townshend — ” he began.

  “That’s all. Tell Lou Anne I had to go.” And she placed ten dollars on the counter and left.

  • • •

  Nathan sat down on Townshend’s abandoned stool and pushed her untouched food away. The stool was still warm. An unsmiling Lou Anne came out of the kitchen. Without speaking, she mixed a vanilla milkshake and set it, along with four ibuprofen, in front of him.

  “Your knee hurts.” It was a statement.

  “My knee always hurts just a little more when Townshend is in the room.”

  “Who?” Lou Anne wrinkled her brow.

  “Townshend. Tolly.”

  “Why did you call her Townshend?”

  “That’s her name. Anyway, thanks.” He took a drink of the milkshake and swallowed the pills.

  “I can see why that little scene would make your knee hurt. I wonder where Tolly hurts.” Lou Anne cleared away the uneaten chicken salad and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “That wasn’t a scene,” he said. “I hate a scene. A scene only happens if there are other people to witness it.”

  “I am other people.”

  “You heard?”

  “Most of it. All of what you said.”

  “I guess I was a little loud.”

  “Why are the two of you fighting?”

  “You heard. Kirby Lawson has lost weight he can’t afford to lose and she isn’t feeding him right.”

  “No. That’s what you were fighting about. Not why.”

  “She’s not going to watch him play ball.”

  “Does every parent of every boy on your team come to the games?” It was a rhetorical question. Lou Anne knew better than he did that there was more than one Merritt Bobcat who’d never had a parent root for him and never would. “Are you going to visit around now and straighten them all out?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Tolly’s a good woman. She’s done a great thing for Kirby. She’s got to find her way. My guess is you are trying to make her pay for what Arianna did to you.”

  Arianna. “I can assure you that what I think of my mother has nothing to do with my opinion of Townshend. In fact, I don’t even think about her.”

  “Arianna was addicted to the limelight. That’s what drew her to your daddy in the first place.”

  “Yeah, I know all about it.”

  Lou Anne’s eyes widened. “Richard told you?”

  “No. She did. Arianna.” Normally, he would have refused to respond to any reference to his mother, but it got Lou Anne off the subject of everyone’s favorite debutante lawyer and saver of orphans, so it was a small price to pay. And he wouldn’t have to pay it long. He was in control of his coming and goings.

  “You are in contact with her?” Lou Anne looked horrified.

  “No. I was for a short time during my senior year.” Nathan had spent a lot of time on the phone that fall — with Arianna, with Townshend, with sports agents begging to represent him. And it had all stopped at once.

  Lou Anne’s face blanched and Nathan knew she was wondering how much he knew. The answer to that was too much and not enough.

  Not that he cared. Arianna was not a factor in his life, never had been.

  “Gotta go. Practice.” He picked up the milkshake that he knew better than to offer to pay for and controlled his going.

  But not before Lou Anne got the last word. “Nathan, lighten up on Tolly.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” But Lou Anne didn’t know that Townshend had been just as addicted to the limelight as Arianna had been.

  Chapter Seven

  Tolly settled down with a cup of coffee and the bright blue shopping bag. She tossed the rah-rah kit to the other end of the sofa. She had already put out the yard sign and stuck the magnet on her car, but she wouldn’t need the shirt, button, stadium seat, and pompoms. The fat manila envelope labeled “parent packet” was at the bottom of the bag. Summer schedule. That was past. Calendar of events. Practice schedule. Rules and academic requirements. List of booster club officers. Ah, there — the holy nutrition plan, according to the Pope of football, Nathan Scott.

  It was written in paragraph form. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, pre workout snack, post workout snack, post game meal — it went on and on and on. Four ounces of this, six ounces of that, plenty of water, no energy drinks, only this sports drink, make sure it’s whey protein powder — her head began to pound. Clearly, Nathan had typed this himself, as it came into his head. No one with any organizational skills would have produced a document so hard to follow. What the hell was whey protein powder anyway? Tomorrow, she’d retype this information in chart form but for now she needed a grocery list. She picked up a legal pad and began to write. What kind of milk? Did it say skim? That didn’t make sense since Nathan wanted Kirby to gain some weight.

  She had filled one column with things to buy and started on a second when the door opened.

  “Hi, Miss Tolly.” Kirby sat down across from her and tossed his backpack and the blue drawstring mesh bag that held his practice clothes on the floor beside him.

  “Hi, Kirby.” Tolly flipped a few pages back to the choices for post workout snack. “Let’s see. You’re supposed to have a protein smoothie and a banana,” she read, “or some peanut butter on a whole wheat bagel and a glass of skim milk.”

  “It’s okay. I already had it. They give it to us after we shower.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “because we don’t have any of that stuff except maybe the peanut butter. But we will.” She held up the legal pad.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “No, it really isn’t, Kirby. I ran into Nathan today. He mentioned that you aren’t eating correctly.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for? You can’t eat what’s not available to you. I am sorry that you have not been getting enough to eat.”

  “It’s not like I’ve been hungry.”

  “But you knew you weren’t eating right, didn’t you?”

  “I guess.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  She sighed. “Okay, Kirby, here’s the thing. I promised to take care of you but you’ve got to help me. If this is going to work, you have to tell me when you need something. I don’t know how to do this. We don’t know how to do it. We’ve got to figure it out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, there are lots of choices for what you are supposed to eat. Look at this and tell me what you like and what you don’t.”

  He took the papers from her and flipped through. “I like most things but not salmon and not tuna. And I’d rather not have any beets.”

  “Okay. That’s simple enough. What do you especially like?”

  “I like chili made with turkey. You can’t even tell. And green beans. Chicken pot pie. And I know how to make those smoothies for myself. I like them with peaches and bananas. Not blueberries. I don’t mind eating blueberries, but when you put them in a smoothie it turns all gray looking.”

  “Good.” She added to her list. Missy could teach her to make chili and pot pie.

  “Okay. Only — ”
He looked at the floor.

  “What?”

  “To make smoothies you have to have a blender. I’m pretty sure my aunt took mine and I haven’t seen one here.”

  “Okay!” Tolly added it to her list. “One blender coming up. See how easy that was?”

  Kirby blushed. It had not been easy at all.

  “What else do you need? For football, or not. Anything?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Kirby. Don’t tell me that. There is bound to be something you need.”

  “Well … ” He blushed. “We’re supposed to reading The Great Gatsby in English and I was going to wait until I get paid next week to get it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We can get the book tonight, sweetie. Creekview Books is open until nine. I don’t want you spending your money on necessities. You hardly make enough to take a girl to a movie and buy a hamburger. Though, I’m not sure if you’re supposed to have a hamburger.” She took the papers from Kirby and flipped through them.

  He smiled. “I can have fast food twice a week as long as it doesn’t replace a real meal. And I’m between girls.” The mood was lighter but he was still embarrassed.

  “I thought you were dating Lauren Kilpatrick.”

  He shrugged. “I was. Then we just kind of stopped. She came to the funeral and all. Her parents sent some nice flowers. I think she might want to go out again but it’s like I don’t have room for it right now. You know?”

  Tolly nodded, though she really didn’t know. “You’re almost a man, aren’t you? It’s going to be hard for you to ask me for things, isn’t it?”

  He looked at the floor again. “I guess. You’ve done a lot for me.”

  “Like what? Starve you? You’ll get past the not asking. But, until then, how about this? I’ll put a pad on the refrigerator. When you need something, write it there and I’ll get it. How’s that?”

  “That might work.” He hesitated.

  “What? Kirby, I’m a lawyer. I can read minds. I know you want to ask me something.”