Five-Star

by J Santiago

  Tank couldn’t help it. Franco was starting to piss him off. “I didn’t pursue those girls. Those propositions and test messages were sent to me. Those girls followed me around, telling me all the things they wanted me to do with them.. I didn’t just go out and look for them. You of all people should know what it’s like. And maybe their parents should have raised them not to be whores.”

  Tank knew he’d gone too far with his last line, but he was angry. He waited for Franco to fire back at him, but Franco’s face went chalk white. Tank could see he was shaking with rage, but he also saw Franco get control. He turned away from Tank and stood, looking out the window of his office.

  “I can’t talk to you right now.” His voice was deadly calm. “I need for you to leave.”

  “Coach,” Tank began, his explanation and apology begging for an audience.

  “Tank, I’m serious. Get the fuck out of my office.”

  Tank looked over at Cy and Miss Magee, all sorts of questions heavy in the air between them. Then, he turned and left the office. As he walked away, he felt a prickle of consciousness. Those girls hadn’t meant anything to him. But Amber did.

  Fourteen

  Even after Tank’s exit, the tension in the office radiated from Franco. Molly felt the same anger and confusion in him that she had the night before. He didn’t seem like himself, but he wouldn’t let her in. Neither she nor Cy had moved, and judging from the deep breath Cy drew, she thought that he might not have breathed during the confrontation between Tank and Franco. She wanted to leave, but professionalism demanded she stay.

  She hadn’t thought she would see Franco today. It was easy to avoid him during the season when the recruiting questions were at a minimum and everyone was involved with the business of winning football games. Last night had baffled her. He’d shown up on her doorstep for something—comfort, sex, conversation. She still wasn’t sure what. She hadn’t questioned her decision or actions from the night before. But, seeing him now, obviously not himself, she wondered what he’d been escaping from. She had to admit to herself that this frustrated, angry man staring out the window was more imposing than she’d known.

  “What options do we have?” Franco’s sudden question startled Molly and Cy out of their paralysis.

  Both of them moved at the same time, Cy toward the computer and Molly out from around the desk to the chair. But neither of them answered his question.

  He turned then and repeated himself. “Cy, Molly? What can we do?”

  “There’s not much we can do. It’s the Internet,” Cy responded with a scoff before walking around to join Molly in the seats across from Franco’s desk.

  Despite the intensity of the last moments, Cy’s response elicited a wry smile from Franco. Suddenly, the tension seemed to dissipate from the room.

  “Cy,” Franco responded as he walked away from the window and took up his usual spot behind the desk, “the Internet was not invented to spite you personally.”

  He’d said it in a way that made Molly think that they’d had this conversation before.

  “Might as well have been,” Cy muttered under his breath, making Franco chuckle.

  “So, there’s nothing we can do about a website dedicated to the”—he paused and looked at the computer screen to his right—“Many Women of Tank Howard?” Rubbing the back of his neck, he mumbled, “Don’t people have anything better to do with their time?”

  “The good news is, the site is not Tank’s, so we might be able to seek some type of cease and desist. It doesn’t hold much weight. There’s no legal recourse, but sometimes, proprietors don’t want to mess with the NCAA. It’s worth a shot.”

  “How can you do that to a website?” Franco asked.

  “We can use the contact information on the site, if there is any.” Cy returned to the computer and Franco rolled his chair back, out of the way. Messing with the mouse and clicking through the site, Cy said, “There’s a place to upload photos of Tank.”

  “That’ll work. I’ll send it tonight,” Molly said.

  Franco leaned back in his chair, looking weary. Cy came around from behind Franco’s desk again and returned to the chair.

  “You went a little hard on him,” Cy observed.

  “Yeah,” was his only response.

  No one said anything for a bit.

  “I thought I had my anger under control, but when I saw him, it took everything in me not to take it out on him. And I can’t even really blame him, which makes it even worse. It’s not like he knew and did it deliberately.”

  Molly had no idea what they were talking about, but she felt like an interloper. She needed to know what was happening. She’d already started to connect some pieces. Fairly certain that this was what had driven Franco to her house the night before, she really desired an explanation. But, for all her job responsibilities to ask questions and look under rocks, she was curiously struck silent. Why was she losing her objectivity with this man? She couldn’t do her job if she couldn’t challenge him.

  “Franco,” she said quietly, as if Cy were not in the room, “what am I missing?”

  The moment the question left her mouth, she wanted to request a redo. She wasn’t sure if Cy caught her use of his name, but she knew Franco did, as his eyes widened. She watched as Cy and Franco exchanged a look. Then, Franco turned back toward Molly and paused, as if weighing what to say. They stared at each other for what felt like a long time.

  She felt this pull, this yearning to back down while the other part of her craved his trust in her. She knew he did. He would never have shown up on her doorstep if he didn’t trust her. But this seemed to be bigger than Tank.

  The silence stretched between them.

  He turned away from her and toward Cy. “Pull it up.”

  Cy got up, went back around Franco’s desk, clicked a couple of times, and turned the screen toward Molly.

  Molly immediately noticed the picture. As she looked at it, she briefly imagined herself and Franco in that exact pose. She felt her face get hot and quickly looked away. Her gaze collided with his, and she thought he knew what she’d been thinking. She watched his jaw clench. Then, he pulled his eyes from hers again.

  “The girl in the picture is my daughter.”

  Molly quickly processed the statement, knowing this was the issue that had brought Franco to her, and she was relieved that Franco could now share what he had been unable to last night. She then realized, despite three years of working together, that neither knew the tapestry that made the whole of their lives. While this was a harsh reality, it was one she was glad to be reminded of.

  Franco watched Molly sort out the truth. Watched her try to calculate how he could have a daughter that old. Watched her understand why he’d shown up at her house last night. Watched her glance again at the picture on the screen and saw the heat creep up her neck as she took it in. He didn’t know whether she was upset that he’d shut her down last night when she sought to unfold the circumstances of his arrival or if she was feeling guilty now that she was in her role of the compliance director. He watched all of that and now recognized the error he had made in not sharing this information with her the night before. And he suddenly thought he couldn’t handle Molly Magee in the right way.

  The three of them sat in some kind of conversation deadlock. No one really knew how to extricate themselves from his office, so they remained where they were without saying anything.

  Finally, Cy moved, breaking the uneasy silence. “So, Molly, you’ll send your letter?” he asked.

  “Yes, I will get it done before I leave tonight.”

  “Thanks, Molly,” Franco said dismissively, ready for some downtime.

  As they left his office, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  For the thousandth time, he replayed the scene with Amber in his head. For the thousandth time, he tried to figure out how this could all play out. But he came up empty. He questioned every decision he’d made about his daughter over the last two year
s.

  He didn’t know how long he sat there. But, at some point, he got up and made his way back to being a coach. As he walked out of his office toward the team planning room, he saw Tank coming back down the hall toward him. Heaving a sigh of resignation, he turned back into his office and sat down. Tank followed him in and took the seat opposite him.

  Franco eyed him warily, trying to let the anger over his daughter dissipate so that he could be a coach. He should exonerate Tank. He had no idea the shit he’d just stepped into, and Franco’s anger was unjustified. Tightly holding on to his temper, he waited for Tank to say what he needed to say.

  “Coach, I don’t want anything to mess up this season. I was a dickhead on Saturday night when I met with you and my mom.” Tank stopped, waiting for an acknowledgment perhaps.

  But Franco remained silent. He didn’t trust himself yet.

  In the absence of conversation, Tank got still. Quiet in the midst of the underlying chaos, Tank looked Franco directly in the eyes. “I’m not going to screw this up. I promise. It’s over. I’m done fucking around with girls. You have my undivided attention.”

  Franco knew what it’d cost Tank to come apologize. After his tirade earlier, he was surprised that Tank felt the need to set the record straight. Franco had been a total ass to him, and Tank didn’t even have the benefit of knowing why. If Franco had been looking for confirmation that Tank was in the right place mentally, it’d been handed to him on a silver platter.

  As Franco stared up at him, he admitted to himself that if Amber hadn’t been in one of those pictures, his response would have been far different. “That’s good to hear, Tank.”

  Tank nodded his head. “Damn straight.” Clapping his hands together, he said, “Let’s get to work.”

  He started to saunter to the door but stopped right before crossing the threshold. He turned back to Franco. “Coach, just so you know, the really bad picture…it wasn’t what it looked like. I mean, I’m not saying it was innocent or didn’t become something, but we were doing anything but dancing when that picture was taken. I’d never do that to a girl. Ya know that, right?”

  Franco nodded, because, yes, deep down, he knew that.

  “But, Coach, there is absolutely something about that girl,” he said as a big grin flashed across his face. Then, he was gone.

  Franco leaned back in his chair and sighed. Fuck! Of course there is. She’s my daughter, he thought. And, once again, he found himself wishing for that bottle of Jack.

  Fifteen

  Amber stashed her phone for every shift. There was a time when she’d been tied to her phone, texting with her friends and posting things on Twitter and Instagram. But, since the accident, she’d been living in a social media-free zone. At first, she could feel the addiction running through her veins, the constant need to check to see if she’d missed anything in the five minutes since she’d checked last. But, slowly, she’d weaned herself from it, and she had been very happy without knowing her friends’ every thought as they broadcast it to the world. Of course, at the time, she hadn’t wanted to know about anything in the world, so that had helped, too.

  The Bear’s Den closed late on Monday nights because of Monday Night Football. But, tonight, one of the other bartenders was the late person, so she finished at eleven. She grabbed her stuff from under the bar and headed out to her car when she felt her phone vibrate. She didn’t want to talk to or hear from her dad. If he texted her, which would be odd, she’d feel obligated to respond.

  So, she’d almost pulled up to Keira’s apartment when she had to stop at a red light, and her curiosity won out. She picked up her phone. Plain numbers, unattached to any of her contacts, creeped her out. Sliding her finger across the screen, she gingerly read the text.

  It’s Tank. Don’t freak out. Keira gave me your number after I threatened her life. ☺ Meet me at the football field after your shift.

  Smiling, despite the fact that she wanted to kill both Keira and Tank, Amber couldn’t resist the invitation. She sat at the light through two cycles, thankful that no one seemed to be on the road tonight. She wished he’d asked her so that she could just say no, but somehow, it felt deliberate that he hadn’t. She could just not show, but the temptation was too great. She wanted to go. Whether it was to see him or to go to the field, she wasn’t sure.

  Still sitting at the light, she glanced back at the text message. She loved that everything was all proper, like his English teacher was proofing his text. She had this thing about using punctuation and not abbreviating; it had driven her friends crazy and opened her up to all kinds of teasing.

  She picked up her phone.

  Coming.

  It didn’t take her long to get there. The field seemed to be at the center of town with all roads leading to it. To some, she supposed, it looked like a slightly overblown high school field. Definitely in the South, people just expected a stadium.

  When it had been built, no one had envisioned three amazing seasons and national attention. Bleachers rose from the ground up about fifty rows on both the east and west sides of the stadium. The north and south end zones had originally been left open, but a few years before the Franco-Howard era, some wealthy alumni had built a field house in the north end zone. It housed two sets of locker rooms and office space which was used for the press on game days. Because it was far enough away from everything else that it made some people nervous, the football staff did not get the choice to reside there. They were forced to stay where they were with the rest of the department. They also threw in some cash for more seating in the south end zone.

  Amber knew the stadium like the back of her hand. As a child, she’d spent the majority of her life in the stands, watching her father. Her grandmother used to load her up every afternoon and bring her here to watch practice. Even after her father had left for the pros, her grandparents had retained their season tickets. She’d grown up in this stadium, just as she’d grown up in this town. It was here she’d learned to love the game.

  Mostly, she admitted sadly, because she loved her father. The thought struck her out of nowhere, and she felt a little off-balance by it.

  Amber pulled in on the west side of the stadium. In high school, they used to sneak in on this side where the fence had been weak before the renovations had improved everything. It was different than she remembered it. As she made her way toward the gates, she was surprised to see most of them standing open. Walking by the player gates, she meandered out through the modified tunnel that had been constructed so that the players would have a place to run through. She noticed the big bear over the tunnel, another embellishment. It seemed like home, but it didn’t—just like everything else in her life.

  She quickly found herself on the field and took a minute to watch Tank.

  Dressed in practice gear of green gym shorts and a gray Under Armour shirt, his concentration on the task, he looked amazing. The already tight shirt clung to his sculpted chest. He took the snap from one of the minions, rolled out of the pocket, and launched the ball through the air. She didn’t feel the need to disturb him as watching him work through the drills made her appreciate what a gifted athlete he was. And maybe she had a couple of flashes of being in his arms, with him naked and her wrapped around him. So, when he turned and flashed his panty-dropping smile, she couldn’t help but return it.

  “When you smile like that, I think I might have gotten your nickname right after all,” he yelled from the field.

  Suddenly, laughter spilled from her mouth, and she almost started at the unfamiliar sound. He noticed it too because his smile got wider, exposing the dimple on one side of his mouth. Just like that, she felt her armor fall back into place. How could this guy elicit this response from her?

  She saw Tank turn to the guy who’d been helping him out, and he quickly disappeared. Tank made his way toward her, all athletic grace and smiles, the intensity he’d displayed while he practiced gone in a blink. He startled her as he placed his hands on her hips and pulled h
er toward him. Their bodies came into contact with each other, and he planted a quick hard kiss on her lips. He released her as quickly as he’d grabbed her and plopped down on the ground, leaning back on his elbows near her feet.

  “How was your day?”

  Eyeing him while he lounged on the damp grass, she answered tentatively, “Fine. Yours?”

  “Interesting.”

  “Oh-kay,” she said.

  He wrapped a hand around each of her ankles and tried to tug her down on the ground with him.

  “Oh no,” she said, trying to extricate herself. “I really have no desire to roll around on the field.”

  “This isn’t just the field. This is sacred ground.” He let her go and resumed his pose.

  “This is Daily Holt Field at Tarmet Stadium. Most of the world doesn’t know it exists,” she pointed out quite matter-of-factly.

  “I know that it exists. And, right now, the Heisman knows we exist. What more do you need?”

  “Come on! You can’t tell me that playing here felt anything like playing between the hedges.”

  He looked at her sardonically, and she wished she could take back her question.

  “You’re right. Playing in Athens was amazing. The roar of ninety thousand fans—but probably not ninety because, after all, we are only Kensington State. But, honestly, once I step on the field, it all fades away anyway.”

  She looked at him, as if he had been smoking something. “Really?”

  “Really.” He sat up and crossed his legs.

  Briefly, she thought that he seemed awfully flexible for a guy, but then he started talking again, and she found herself only able to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “I’ll give you the pregame. Pregame is pretty cool and all the tradition. I always thought it would be cool to be a part of Osceola running onto the field or the eagle flying at Auburn. But it’s not where I’m at, and there’s no sense in crying about the difference.”

  His surprisingly thoughtful tone caught her in a way that made her catch her breath. Before she knew it, she was sitting on the ground next to him with her legs stretched out, leaning back on her hands.