Coach Maddie and the Marine

by Edens, Blaire

  “How did you do that?” she asked when all the cars were gone. “I went to school for all those years to understand human behavior and I have no idea what just happened.”

  “How did I do what?” he asked. He twirled a whistle on the tip of his finger.

  “Grab control of that meeting, make all those parents and kids happy, and get rid of them in less than five minutes?”

  “Just told them how it was going to be. Cut straight to the point. No reason to waste more time than necessary on a meeting. I hate meetings.” He grinned. “Now it’s time for your first official football lesson. Meet you back at your house in a little while? I’ll stop by Jerry’s Bakery and get some snacks in case it ends up being a late night.”

  “Give me time to take a quick shower,” she said. She ignored the shivery tingle that started in the depth of her gut and worked its way all the way to the top of her head.

  It felt too much like hope.

  ...

  Andrew and a group of neighborhood boys were playing football in Maddie’s front yard when David pulled into the driveway.

  “Getting an early start on practice, boys?” he asked, shutting his car door.

  “Yes, sir, we can’t wait for practice. My dad says you’re the best player to come out of Mississippi since Eli Manning. I can’t believe you’re my coach,” one kid said, his excitement bubbling out.

  He held up a hand. “Technically, I’m only an assistant. But tell your dad I said thanks for putting me in the same category as Mr. Manning. That’s quite an honor.”

  He jogged up the front steps and rang the doorbell.

  Maddie took his breath away. Fresh from the shower, her coppery curls hung wet around her face. There was nothing like the smell of a woman just out of the shower. She wore a brilliantly colored, loose cotton skirt that flirted with her ankles, and her thin green T-shirt left little to his already active imagination.

  How could his attraction grow when just a few hours ago he’d decided there was no way an affair with her could figure into his plans?

  Screw football. He wanted to play an altogether different game with her.

  But he wasn’t going to wade into those dangerous waters. There were plenty of other women in the world. He vowed to keep reminding himself of that.

  Getting involved with Frank’s widow was the worst thing he could do.

  “Come on in. Yum,” she said. He wished she was talking about him, but he was quite certain she was referring to the box of doughnuts he held in one hand.

  “My thoughts, exactly,” he replied, looking her up and down. He didn’t mean to say it. It came out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. He also didn’t mean to ogle her like a high school sophomore but he couldn’t help it.

  “Uhh,” she stammered. “Here, just put those on the coffee table. I’ve got some iced tea in the fridge or I can make some coffee, if you prefer.”

  “No, tea’s fine. It’s good to be back in the South where the girls know how to sweeten it just right.” He winked at her.

  While Maddie was in the kitchen, David looked at the collection of photographs scattered among the built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. Most were candid shots of Andrew, Maddie, and a woman who looked so much like her she had to be her sister, Callie. He could tell by their expressions how close they were. He could see now—using the photos as a frame of reference—just how stressed Maddie was. There was no trace of the easygoing smile that had shone in earlier photos. That smile had been replaced with dark circles and slumped shoulders.

  When he heard her coming toward the living room, he slid back into his seat on the sofa.

  “We’re all set,” Maddie said, placing the tray on the coffee table beside the treats. “Do you need any paper or pens or anything to begin the lesson?”

  “Nope. Do you still have those games recorded?”

  “Want me to play one?”

  He nodded. “Any game is fine.”

  She turned on the television and cued up a college game. She handed the remote to him, picked up her binder and sat down on the couch beside him.

  “All right, let’s start at the beginning. If you have any questions, just speak up and we’ll stop the game and discuss it. We’ll do the defense tonight.”

  As the announcers named each player, he paused the recording and explained the position. She wrote the name of each position and beside it she noted the primary responsibilities of the player.

  “Any questions before I start the game?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I think I understand the positions on the defensive side of the ball. You’re a pretty good teacher.”

  “Thanks. Football was my life all through high school and college, so it’s second nature to me.”

  “Did you really have a chance to play professional football?”

  He nodded. “I was drafted in the second round. I would’ve played for the St. Louis Rams.” Bile rose in his throat, and his heart beat faster, the blood rushing through his veins. It was a familiar feeling: part red-hot anger, part bitter regret, part paralyzing sadness at the twists and turns his life had taken since the day of the draft. The rush of his boyhood dream realized. The terrifying free fall two days later.

  The bone-crushing grief that followed him like it was his own shadow.

  Just as he’d been packing his things to move to St. Louis, the phone rang and for the second time in less than a week, the voice on the other end had changed the whole trajectory of his life.

  The sounds of the boys’ laughter outside in the front yard floated into the room, filling the awkward silence.

  “But then my brother, Robert, who was a chaplain in the Corps, an unarmed chaplain, for God’s sake, was kidnapped by some militants in northwestern Afghanistan, up near the Pakistan border. At first we thought they’d try to get guns and money in exchange for his release but they didn’t. They killed him less than forty-eight hours after they took him. They tied his body to a jeep and drove him through the village. They captured it all on video, sent it to news organizations all over the world. Made my parents witness it.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She reached across the couch and put her hand on his arm. “You must have been devastated.”

  “One minute I was a twenty-two-year-old athlete on track to make hundreds of thousands of dollars fulfilling my boyhood dream, and the next minute I was standing in a recruiter’s office swearing loyalty to the United States and the Marine Corps.”

  “Why did you decide to join if your brother had already been killed? It seems like that would’ve been the last thing you wanted to do.”

  He glanced up at her soft words, noted the compassion in her eyes.

  “My brother and I were very close. Even though he was two years older than me, we did everything together. He had my back; I had his. The day we buried him I promised myself I would make sure the men responsible for his death would pay. I gave my word that I would put my life on hold until I made things right.”

  “Do you have other siblings?”

  “No, it was just the two of us. Robert’s death devastated my parents. They’ve never been the same.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t imagine their pain. Did you seek counseling as a family?”

  “My parents saw someone in Jackson for a while. But I didn’t. I knew exactly what I needed to do to move past his death. Only, revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  She squeezed his hand. “No, we can’t get past the pain by inflicting the same punishment on the person responsible.”

  “It was damn sure worth a try, though.”

  He wanted…no, needed…to see the son of a bitch who’d killed Robert begging for his life, pleading for mercy. He wanted to watch the life leave his eyes slowly, wanted him to suffer. Instead, he’d never even gotten close to the bastard and he’d gotten a good soldier killed in his blind attempt to exact vengeance.

  “If there’s ever anything I can do, if you ever need
to talk to someone, I’d love to listen. Or if you’re not comfortable talking to me, I can certainly refer you to someone else.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate the offer.” He glanced at the framed flag on the mantle. His heart clenched. “You understand what it’s like to lose someone you love.”

  She hesitated and he sensed her resistance to talk about it. “Frank and I got married right after I finished high school. He enlisted the day we got home from our honeymoon. With only a high school education, it was a way for us to get a good start.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “A little less than a year—six months of which he was halfway around the world. He was only twenty. I’d just turned nineteen.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He clenched his teeth and moved to stand at the window. He was torn between patriotism and pissed off. It was an old battle. As familiar as an old pair of worn boots. “These damn wars. I look at those boys playing out there in the yard—so young, so innocent—and I can’t believe in only a few years they might be called upon to go to some godforsaken part of the world and fight to the death for a piece of land or a particular way of thinking.”

  “War has always been part of the human experience.”

  Counselor Maddie had replaced the young widow. He wasn’t sure if it was for his benefit or for her own.

  “Maybe,” he said, hating her attempt to intellectualize something so dark and empty. He turned to face her. “But as human beings, we’re supposed to evolve, learn what works and what doesn’t. One war never stops the next. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”

  He sounded like a damn pacifist. He wasn’t. He believed in America, and freedom, and the flag. He believed that the American way of life was worth sacrifice. But war, especially when that meant never seeing your brother, or your husband, again, was a hard pill to swallow.

  “I miss Frank.” She looked out the window and a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “I often wonder how our lives would’ve turned out if he’d come home alive.” She looked back at him. “One of the worst parts is that I don’t even remember what his voice sounded like. I was lost after Frank’s death. I’d been going to college part-time but I didn’t have any real plans other than being a wife and mother. Soon after I buried him, I started seeing a counselor and after a few visits, I decided that’s what I wanted to do—help people deal with losses that seem insurmountable. I thought learning more about psychology would help ease my pain.”

  “Did it?”

  Turning her head away from him again, she said, “Not really. The only thing that helped was acceptance and that took everything I had.”

  “Could you love again?”

  “I think so. I mean, I’d certainly like to, but I’m still a little gun-shy especially when it comes to men in uniform.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Why?”

  He walked to the sofa and sat beside her. “There are a lot of good men who wear the uniform.”

  “I know. It’s just so difficult to think about a loss like that. If it happened again, I don’t think I could bear it.”

  “Do you get lonely?”

  Maddie nodded. “I do get lonely. Even though Andrew’s here, I miss having another adult in the house. I miss just knowing there’s someone else there.”

  He knew the feeling all too well. Sex was easy. There were always plenty of single women on military bases who were lonely and looking for nothing more than a meaningless connection. A few drinks at the club, a short ride to his apartment.

  For a few hours, it pushed the loneliness back a little. But the next day, when the alcohol buzz wore off and the woman left to go back to her own life, he was lonelier than ever before.

  Those nights left him empty. Totally empty.

  It was worse than no touch at all.

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “It’s been so long since I’ve just watched television with a woman, or gone to the grocery store and argued over what we should eat for dinner.”

  “No serious relationships recently?”

  He shook his head. “Not since Officer Candidates School.”

  “It’s been a long time for both of us.”

  Something about the air in the room changed. It became tense, charged, like there were invisible sparks flickering between them. Maddie felt it. He saw it in her eyes.

  She was fighting the attraction as hard as he was.

  “With my job and Andrew, I just haven’t found the time to date.” It didn’t take a psychologist to hear the fear, the dread in her voice.

  “There are lots of online dating sites. Several of the guys in my unit met their wives that way.”

  Maddie shrugged. “Someday. Maybe.”

  Her green eyes met his. The electrical current between them intensified.

  He moved closer to her, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her so that she faced him. Her eyes held his without wavering. His muscles tightened, unsure of the moment. She looked so small, so vulnerable. He didn’t want a relationship based on mutual loss, but when Maddie leaned toward him he was unable to fight the magnetism. Her lips brushed his lightly. He was entranced by the taste of her—soft, flavored with sweet tea and powdered sugar. With every breath he drew in the smell of her, light and floral, like the smell of sunshine. As he moved to deepen the kiss, Maddie tensed and pulled back.

  “We can’t do this,” she said.

  She was right. It was a bad idea. All the way around.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s not you. It’s Andrew. He could walk in any second. I’m sharing the house with an impressionable fourth-grader.”

  He’d been so intent on her, the kid hadn’t even crossed his mind. “I didn’t think about him either.”

  “I think we’re safe. It might scar him forever to see his two football coaches kissing.”

  “I guess I should be going anyway,” he said, yawning and rising from the sofa. “I know it’s only eight o’clock, but I didn’t get much sleep last night and five o’clock comes early. Friday night, same time, same place?”

  She nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  He stepped toward her and took both her hands in his. “I’m sorry about Frank,” he said.

  “And I’m sorry you lost Robert,” she responded.

  When she gazed into his eyes, he felt it. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, but it was something huge. Something that drew him toward her, nearly into her. It was deeper than the attraction he’d felt since the moment he saw her. Attraction had morphed into affinity. He dropped her hands as if they threatened to burn him.

  Don’t complicate things. Maddie is a wonderful woman. She deserves more than you can give her. She’s already lost one marine.

  “Callie will be home soon. Safe and sound.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  ...

  Maddie watched his car disappear down the street and breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t meant to discuss Frank. She hadn’t meant to ask him about his brother. What was meant to be a light evening had quickly turned into something more intense.

  It had taken all her strength not to cry when she remembered those dark days after Frank’s death. So many emotions were associated with him and that time in her life. Grief, heartbreak, injustice. Depression. And after eight years, they still had the power to paralyze her.

  Regardless of what she told herself about acceptance.

  She’d worked with enough clients to know that he was still in the first phase of grief. Even though it had been eight years since Robert’s death, he still hadn’t moved past it. Anger was usually one of the first emotions a patient had to work through. It was very common for a patient to look for something or someone to blame. His whole reason for becoming a marine was centered on one thing: vengeance. It was a common theme. Many of her patients sought it. Few made it their life’s work. It was part of Kubler-Ross’s second stage of grief. Even
tually, the anger and need to place blame was replaced by bargaining and depression. Trading one negative emotion for another.

  She’d wanted to ask more questions. But thankfully, she’d caught herself before she slipped too far into professional mode. It had been so long since she’d connected to anyone on a purely personal level, she’d nearly forgotten how to simply listen without trying to draw clinical conclusions.

  He’s not a patient. He didn’t come here for your input. He came to help you coach a football team. For goodness sake, take off your counselor’s hat for a while.

  He didn’t feel like a client. At all.

  Maddie didn’t have time to think about why he didn’t feel like a patient. The last rays of the sun were sinking past the horizon, day quickly fading into evening. Time to get Andrew ready for bed.

  “Andrew,” she called out the front door, “let’s go. Come on in and hit the shower.”

  He shouted good-bye to his friends and scuffled up the front steps.

  “Do I have to? I hate showers.”

  “Yes. You smell like a locker room.”

  He headed toward the bathroom and she walked down the hall to lay his pajamas out and turn down his bed.

  She loved his room. When Callie had gotten her orders for deployment, the girls spent a weekend decorating a room for Andrew so that he would feel at home. They’d painted the room a soft blue and painted a gridiron in green and white on the floor. Callie had found a cache of football posters at a local thrift store. They’d framed them in cheap frames and now decades of the greats—like Dan Marino and Johnny Unitas—covered the walls.

  She would miss him terribly when he moved back to Callie’s.

  Andrew walked into the room in just his underwear. Spongebob briefs. She smiled. How could she not smile at such ridiculous marketing?

  “Here are your pajamas.” She handed them to him. “Did you finish your homework?”

  “Most of it, except my reading.”

  “You can finish it up in bed,” she said, and pulled back the comforter. “Need a snack?”

  “An apple?”

  “I’ll slice one while you get comfortable.”