The Comeback Route

by Jamie Bennett

  “It’s in your hair,” my husband told me. He brushed his hands through it, then down my back to pull my body to his. “I haven’t seen you in three days.”

  Besides my grand opening, he was busy, too. This year he had retired from pro-football after eight amazing seasons with the Cottonmouths, but he hadn’t quit working. He had immediately been hired as a broadcaster, because he was just so at home in front of the camera, and of course, the whole country wanted to look at him. All he had to do was smile and I was sure that millions more viewers tuned in. I sure did.

  “What are you smiling at?” he asked, grinning back. He kissed me gently. “Jesus, I miss you when I’m gone.”

  “Ugh!” our son muttered, and Marguerite, who was four, piped up.

  “What about me? Didn’t you miss me, Daddy?” She looked at him out of big, dark eyes, just like mine. She was a tiny version of me, but her older brother Bastian was his father: tall, athletic, and so handsome already that I feared for the female population in the future. Marguerite—well, we were going to have to keep an eye on her. She was what Lucy liked to call a spitfire. Lucy also liked to say that I had it coming.

  “I miss all of you,” Nico corrected himself. “I miss you so much that next time I go away to a game, I’m taking everyone with me. If your mommy can leave work behind.” And speaking of behind, his hand slid down under the mixing table to squeeze mine, out of sight of the kids. Squeeze and massage. Oh, everyone was getting an early bedtime tonight. “What do you think, Tates?”

  I could, if it meant being with my three favorite people in the whole world. “I think I can take a little vacation,” I told them. The bakeries did keep me very busy. We had El Asturiano Dos open during the summers, when we lived in Michigan; the original, Tres and now Cuatro were in south Florida where we bunked the rest of the year.

  Surprisingly, my life coaching sideline had never really taken off. Just because you had one client who decided to steal the Liberty Bell…I hardly saw that as my fault, but afterwards, Nico had suggested that I stick with the cookies. I still had a fairly large number of subscribers to my own line of inspirational email messages, Tatum’s Testimonials™.

  Nico had left the Junior Woodsmen after the one season, left them better than when he’d come, and signed again with the Cottonmouths. The United Football Confederation had increased their unannounced drug testing and that had thinned their roster quite a bit—Galen and the two idiots who had set up Nico left the team (with one of the guys heading straight to rehab). Gradually, Nico and Coach Cattaneo had built a strong relationship, and when Nico retired, they retired his number, too.

  “Marguerite, what’s in your hand?” Nico asked her, peering down at our sweet daughter.

  “It’s my bug friend,” she said.

  “Let Daddy look.” She opened her tiny palm to show him. “My God, that’s the biggest palmetto bug I’ve ever seen!” He picked up our daughter and ran from the room with her in his arms to put her bug friend outside. “It’s happier in nature,” I heard Nico say, and I appreciatively watched his ass disappear through the front door of the bakery.

  Marguerite’s little chancletas had flown off in their rush and her brother picked them up from the floor, sighing. “Another palmetto bug. Are you ready to go, Mommy?” he asked me. I held out my arms, and Bastian wasn’t too big to give me a hug, even if he was going to actually surpass me in height fairly soon.

  “I’m ready,” I said, and kissed his dark hair. “Let’s go find your dad and your sister.”

  “Did I tell you that she was introducing herself to all the new people working here as Clarabelle, a kidnapped fairy princess who rides a giraffe?” he asked me, shaking his head in amazement.

  Maybe I did have that coming.

  You can make your dreams happen, because you have it in you. Don’t let naysayers, psychic readers, or police dogs stop you.

  And never give up on love. Never! Because the best is yet to come.

  Yours in happiness, Tatum

  About the Author

  Jamie Bennett (that's me!) is the author of a bunch of super great books that you should probably go get right now…including a few about football! Keep reading here to see more about Tatum's friend Daisy, and even more about the Woodsmen team.

  You can find all these books on Amazon, and you can reach me via Instagram and Facebook @jamiebennettbooks (and join the Rocinante group for extra updates).

  Thanks for reading! And if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review!

  Read Daisy and Knox's Story:

  The Big Hit

  “Let’s welcome to the show the biggest guest I think we’ve ever had—in terms of size.” The audience laughed. “Here he is, the United Football Confederation’s Woodsmen star defensive end, Knox Lynch!”

  The giant of a man walked onto the stage from behind the red curtain as the audience clapped and cheered. For someone so tall, so broad, he walked very carefully. Controlled, like a cat. His dark hair hung thick and straight over his shoulders, partially obscuring his high cheekbones and the corners of his eyes, those crazily-colored eyes. Knox settled himself in the chair, and you could hear it creak under his weight. He dwarfed it. He also dwarfed the desk of the late-night host seated next to him, and the late-night host himself. Marcus Tagarela seemed almost child-sized next to his guest.

  “Hello, Knox!” the host greeted him. “I feel like I should call you Mr. Lynch,” he added with a smile, and the audience laughed.

  Knox Lynch didn’t answer, or even acknowledge that he had heard the words. Instead, he looked at a point off into the distance.

  “We’re glad to have you here!” continued Marcus Tagarela, flashing another bright-white smile at his guest. “You don’t do a lot of interviews!” Pause, no response. “Do you?”

  “No.” Knox said the one word, and then just sat still. Like, incredibly still. He didn’t move a muscle in his body or his face.

  Tagarela laughed. It sounded a little forced. “Well, let’s talk football. It looks like your team is involved in some interesting trades now, in the off-season. The Woodsmen have a great chance of making the playoffs next year, right?”

  There was a long pause, a very long pause. “Maybe,” Knox said. He barely even moved his lips.

  “That would be great!” The host looked down at the cards in his hand. You could see his Adam’s apple jump around. “How is it to play with Davis Blake?”

  “He’s a good quarterback.” His voice was deep and gravelly.

  “Lucky thing for the Woodsmen!” the TV host agreed.

  The giant now turned his head and stared at Marcus Tagarela. It didn’t seem like he blinked.

  “So the playoffs…” Marcus’ voice was higher than before. He leaned back in his chair, away from his guest. He nodded several times, and bent his notecards back and forth. Back and forth.

  Knox kept staring at him. The host kept meeting his eyes, then jerking his own gaze away. He seemed to shrivel, shrink down in his chair. Neither of them spoke. A clock appeared at the bottom of the screen, counting off the seconds of silence. Seven, eight, nine…

  “Let’s go to commercial,” Marcus said, and as the camera panned out, he was wiping his forehead. There had been 11 seconds of silence. Knox Lynch still hadn’t moved, and the video ended.

  “That’s fucking hilarious!” one of the girls watching it howled. She slapped the library table with her hand, making the laptop screen rattle. They were supposed to be quiet in here. “Play it again.”

  “Oh my God, I love the clock. Who added that? It’s too funny,” the other woman agreed. She tapped the glass to restart the video.

  I walked quickly away from their table and over to my book cart before they saw me hovering behind them, also watching the screen. I had already seen it—everyone in northern Michigan had already seen it, I was sure, and probably most of the football fans in the United States. It was funny to most people, how freaked out the host had gotten, how his hands had shaken holding
his notecards as the big, scary guy stared him down. How Knox Lynch had sat there in silence, how the audience had fallen silent, and the band, until you probably could have heard a pin drop in the TV studio.

  But it wasn’t funny to me. It made me feel sorry for the comedian who hosted the show, because he had been made to look like an idiot who couldn’t do his job of asking stupid questions and making people laugh.

  It made me feel sorrier for Knox Lynch, who was now making the internet rounds as an even bigger idiot. A dumb football player who could barely string together a sentence and who had scared the crud out of the funny TV host just by staring at him. I heard the video play again behind me, “Let’s welcome to the show the biggest guest I think we’ve ever had—in terms of size…”

  I walked through the study tables, slowly pushing my cart and picking up abandoned books as I went along, making things neat and tidy. Maybe it was odd that I liked to work here so much, with how I felt about silence. But the library at Emelia Schaub College wasn’t scarily silent like some places could be, or oppressively humiliating, like the Knox Lynch interview. The library was just quiet and calm, and I loved everything about it. I loved the books and their musty aroma as the pages rustled, I loved the colored shafts of light from the stained-glass windows high on the wall above the West Stacks. In the winter, the library was a cozy cave, and in the summer, a cool refuge. I pushed the cart and it gently squeaked, squeaked, squeaked along in front of me. I even loved the squeaky cart.

  “Hi. Excuse me, hello.” One of the women who had been watching the video on the laptop of the terrible interview held out a thick volume to me. “I don’t need this one anymore.” She still spoke too loudly for the library.

  I looked briefly at the title of her book before I put it on my cart: Marsupial Mating in the Cenozoic Era. I glanced up at the woman.

  “I wasn’t really reading it,” she explained. “I don’t care about kangaroos humping. There was a cute guy who was shelving where I got it.”

  I knew who she meant, because only one cute guy worked in the library. “That’s Solomon.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Cool name! What else do you know about him?”

  “He’s married. To another man.”

  “Ah, fuck. Married, maybe, but not gay also. Even I can’t deal with that double whammy. Oh well.” She looked around the library, dark eyes flicking from spot to spot. She reminded me of a beautiful little squirrel, with those bright eyes, her tawny hair, her quick movements and speech. I meant, if squirrels talked. “Where would you go? To meet someone here?” she asked. “Like, on campus.”

  “Me?” Oh, she was hiding acorns under the wrong tree with that question. “I don’t…”

  “You have a boyfriend, right? I did too, until last month. He wasn’t into the distance dating thing.” She sighed. “It’s hard when your girlfriend is two hundred miles away and can’t blow you on an as-needed basis.”

  I nodded. “I guess it would be.”

  The squirrel girl laughed. “I didn’t like him too much, anyway.” She held up her pinky finger and made a face at it. “He was, you know? I need big.”

  I could feel my mouth hanging open.

  “I’m Tatum,” she told me, and stuck out her little hand.

  “Um, nice to meet you. I’m Daisy. Daisy McKenzie.”

  Tatum looked at me, eyes narrowed. “Did you ever think of modeling? You’re beautiful and you’re so damn tall.”

  I wasn’t following this conversation very well. “I’m not beautiful or that tall.”

  “You are beautiful and compared to me, you’re a giant. Compared to me, a dog is tall. What’s your name again?”

  “Daisy.”

  Tatum nodded as if she had already known and switched topics again. “This library is a cute boy dead-zone, except for the married guy. Where’d you meet your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have one,” I told her.

  “No?” Her eyebrows raised. “I thought you said you did.”

  I just shook my head.

  “Here,” she announced. She plucked her phone out of her back pocket. “I have a group text with the girls from my yoga class. I get credit for it.”

  The class, or the texts? I wasn’t following her.

  She seemed to be waiting. “Daisy, what’s your number?” she prompted.

  “Oh!” I gave it to her. “Why are you putting me on this text?”

  “These girls always know the places to go,” she explained. “I’m over the tiny pecker, right? When are you done here?”

  “Um, six?” I was so lost, still.

  “Perfect! I have my Digital Media class, gotta run. See you then.” She scurried off, her little legs moving fast.

  “What?” I said, in a pretty loud whisper that made Solomon, the other library assistant, stick up his head from behind the circulation desk. It certainly seemed like I had agreed to something, maybe to meet up with her, or to go out? I wasn’t exactly sure.

  I mouthed “sorry” to Solomon and went back to pushing my cart. I passed the Bound Periodicals Room, some study cubicles, and went deep into Reference in the West Stacks. Squeak, squeak. My feet in my tennis shoes barely made any sound on the old wood floor. I shelved at DC-DO, then F, and then made my way further into the stacks where the bright lights of the main study area dimmed. I rolled past the aisle between H-HN and HN-HS and stopped. Huh? I pulled the cart backwards, and now instead of its pleasant squeak, it made an angry squeal at me, unused to traveling in that direction. I peered between the shelves, thinking I must have imagined what I’d thought I had seen.

  There was someone standing completely still there, at the back near the wall. He looked at me from weird, light eyes.

  Shifter! my mind shrieked, and simultaneously, my mouth made a terrible yelping sound. I took two quick steps back, and as I did, he came forward some, so that he was directly beneath the ceiling fixture. Just a man, after all. His dark hair swung around his face: not fur, just hair.

  And that was what I got for reading all those dumb books all the time. “Sorry,” I gasped at him, because we weren’t supposed to scream at and run from library patrons. “You startled me. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded at me and stepped back, out of the light. He faded into the darkness between the books, but I could still see his eyes watching me.

  What in the ever-living hell? I pushed the cart forward quickly now, so that the squeaks shot out rapid fire, and I shelved as fast as I could, my mind racing. It couldn’t have been…no. I was just off-kilter from my strange conversation with that girl, Tatum. It couldn’t have been…no way. I almost managed to talk myself out of believing in what I had thought I’d seen, but I still looked down the aisle when I went back past HN-HS. Just in case.

  No, he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere in Reference, as far as I could tell, and I peered around the oversized books, into the Special Collections room, and in Government Documents, too, as I pushed the cart back to the circulation desk. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t anywhere, and by now I was almost completely sure that I had imagined him. Probably because I had watched that darn video of the interview so many times.

  Because it was extremely hard to believe that Knox Lynch, the starting defensive end for our Woodsmen, had been standing, hiding, in the reference stacks. I just couldn’t have been right about that.

  Available NOW on Amazon

  More about the Woodsmen:

  The Checkdown

  I stopped dead. A humongous monster truck was parked on top of my car. Not next to, not near, not bumper to bumper with. It was on top of my car. My car was now the cracker underneath a giant wedge of cheese, if I wanted to use a snack food metaphor.

  I blinked my eyes rapidly as if that would make the horrific image go away. No, my car was still there. The back end was under the oversized tires of the shiny black truck. Flattened. The front end was tilted up from the weight in the back. It was like something out of a horror movie where cars attacked other cars. Other smaller, def
enseless cars. What had my grandpa’s tiny hatchback ever done to deserve this?

  While I stood there with my mouth gaping, the door to the stadium opened and closed behind me. A huge man on crutches, mirrored aviator sunglasses over his eyes in the waning August sunlight, slowly limped up to me.

  “Is that yours?” He pointed at the car pile with one of his crutches.

  “Yes! Someone killed my car!”

  “That’s my truck. I tapped yours when I came in,” he mentioned.

  “You tapped it?” I turned to stare at him, and suddenly it dawned on me that this was Davis Blake. The one, the only Davis Blake. The starting quarterback. The guy who broke the United Football Confederation's passing yards record the year before. Davis Blake. Sweet Jesus.

  Davis Blake had murdered my car.

  “You tapped it?” I repeated.

  He was already slowly moving over towards his truck and beeping it to unlock the door. I immediately saw the issue.

  “Hang on,” I called, jogging up to him. “How are you driving with your right leg injured?”

  He turned to stare at me. At least, I thought he was staring at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses.

  “I’m using my left leg,” he said finally.

  “I don’t think that’s working for you,” I said helplessly. Closer up, I could see the extent of the damage. No way was my car drivable. I didn’t know if it was even fixable. “Did you hit the gas instead of the brake?”

  He just looked at me. Or maybe he had fallen asleep behind the sunglasses, I couldn’t tell.

  “How am I supposed to get home?” He didn’t answer. “My car is like a fly that got swatted! Like an old tube of toothpaste! I have the panini of hatchbacks!” I realized that I was waving my arms around over my head and my voice had increased dramatically in volume.

  “You shouldn’t have parked in this lot, anyway. It’s only for players.”