by Serena Bell
I get stuck just like that. Because I don’t know how to explain it to them. How I was standing there a foot from beauty and opportunity, and I was as ice cold as if she were a painting in a museum.
That, and:
Being wrapped around Iona Thomas for three seconds on the grass felt better than the best pickup sex I’ve ever had.
Chapter 15
Iona
I’m the coach, I’m the leader, which means it’s my job to make sure everything’s aboveboard, kosher, whatever. That everyone’s head is entirely in the game.
So on Saturday night, after the last meeting and just before curfew, I ask Ty if we can go over a certain scheme. It’s not an excuse; it’s the one we’re the shakiest on, and we do really need to go over it as many times as possible. He and I head into one of the hotel conference rooms. I don’t let him sit down, because it seems like this is going to be awkward enough and he might need to just get away fast after I say my piece.
“Friday, at practice,” I say. Not a question, just, like, the title of the speech I’m about to give him, which I rehearsed at length last night while I lay in bed and chastised myself for being sexually attracted to a player.
“I want to clear the air.”
His gaze darts around nervously, and he runs a thumb up and down his athletic pants over his thigh, something I’ve seen him do before when he’s uncomfortable.
I’m pissed at myself that I’ve made him uncomfortable, but I tell myself that that’s exactly why I’m here, to clear the air and make sure no one’s uncomfortable about anything, and there are no misunderstandings.
“Football is messy. Very physical, lots of emotions. So I just want you to know, I don’t put any meaning on anything that happens in the course of any practice. People lose their cool, stuff happens in the heat of the moment—”
Essentially, I’m apologizing for all that involuntary thigh clenching, and he’s supposed to let me off the hook by saying something like, “Yeah, yeah, no biggie,” and then skulk out of the room.
Instead, he gives me a long, level look. A look that says, Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.
And then he says, “Are we having a conversation about my dick?”
“No!”
“Because I kinda feel like we’re having a conversation about my dick.”
I very much wish he would stop saying that word, because even though I’ve never particularly thought of it as sexy, it’s still a word that only gets used in a few contexts, and my body knows it.
“I’m your coach,” I say sternly, trying to get this conversation back on track.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry about my dick disrespecting you, Coach.”
“No!”
Jesus, Ty Williams is a pain in my ass. And I’m actually having a lot of trouble not bursting out laughing, too, even though he’s obviously pissed and deliberately misunderstanding what I’m trying to say.
“No,” I say. “I’m the one who’s apologizing.”
“For what? Wasn’t your dick.”
“Stop saying dick.”
At that, he actually looks chastened. “Sorry, yeah, not appropriate, right? You aren’t going to get me in trouble for sexual harassment, are you?”
I shake my head, still feeling the urge to laugh bubbling up in me. “I’m not upset about your dick. I just wanted to basically say that there might be some unusual moments with me being a female coach, you know? Naked locker room moments, or whatever, and you should just know that none of it’s a big deal. I’ve been doing this a long time, I’ve seen a hundred naked football players, I’ve been tackled by a hundred different guys, and it’s no big deal.”
It comes out sounding very levelheaded and frank, and on that front, I’m pleased with myself.
What I just said was God’s truth until two weeks ago. I’d been on the ground underneath tens, maybe hundreds, of male bodies, and I’d never once thought anything other than, “Well, damn, that sucks.”
Unfortunately, it’s not really the truth now, and what’s worse, I can’t decode the expression on Ty Williams’s face.
“Yeah,” he says. “No big deal.”
That was the response I’d been looking for.
“So we’re good, then.”
“We’re fine.”
“And you’re set for tomorrow.”
“I’m ready to pound San Francisco into ground beef,” he says.
“That’s what I like to hear,” I say, although I prefer less colorful metaphors.
Then he’s gone, and I sink into one of the soft-seat conference room chairs and knock my head against the table in case that will help shake loose some sense.
Because, oh my God, I was totally talking about his dick, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Ty
We get locked in our rooms on game nights. There are bed checks and security guards and getting in or out of our rooms is supposed to be impossible. Obviously, nothing is impossible, and where there’s a will there’s a way. I hear stories all the time of guys who pay off guards and sneak women into their rooms, but I’ve never felt like the risk was worth it. I don’t really get off on that kind of tightrope behavior.
Once you’re locked in, there isn’t too much to do in a hotel room, if you’re wide awake and wired to the gills like I am.
Two traditional pastimes are watching porn and jerking off, but I give a passing shot to trying to do something a little more lofty with my time.
I turn on the TV and order up a movie. But I’m only twenty minutes into Mission Impossible 4 when I realize I’m not really watching.
I’m thinking about my conversation with Iona. Specifically, about when she turned the tables on me and started saying the word dick out loud.
That hard “k” sound is very explicit, you know? You can’t say the word dick halfway.
Iona Thomas doesn’t say it halfway. And there was something about that hard sound coming out of her mouth that was like a direct line to the body part in question.
Fucking hard again.
Even though what she was basically telling me was, Your dick is just one of many dicks I have encountered in this job, and I’m pretty much unconcerned by it.
I decide the conversation should have gone a whole different way. I should have said, Maybe we need to have a conversation about my dick. Because it doesn’t do that all the time. I mean, yeah, it works pretty well, as a rule, but that was, like, a millionth of my usual response time, and about ten million times the usual amount of blood flow. That was, like, painful. You’re the coach, you’re the boss, so tell me. What the fuck is that about?
Ideally, in this scenario, she doesn’t drop me from the roster and arrange for me to be sent to Jacksonville, although that’s probably what would happen in real life.
She says, Yeah, I noticed that. That was pretty intense. But I didn’t mind. I liked it.
It’s my fantasy, so if I want to make the strongest woman I’ve ever met look up at me through her eyelashes and wet her lips, I can.
Yeah?
Couldn’t you tell?
Whoa. Suddenly, in the porn movie in my head, Iona Thomas is on her knees. Hands at my waistband, tugging down. She’s having trouble getting my football pants and compression briefs over the mechanism, and she’s keeping up a running commentary, as in, Jesus, you’re big. I thought you were the other day but I couldn’t tell for sure. I haven’t been able to think about anything else since.
Meanwhile, in real life my athletic pants have hit the floor, my briefs have cleared the goods, and my fist is engaged.
Iona tongues over the head of my dick and my knees buckle.
I lick my palm to keep the realism going on.
Iona’s taking me deep and my fist has gotten sloppy and ragged when a knock comes at the hotel room door. Damn it. Bed check.
I make myself as decent as possible, show my face, reveal the contents of my room, and fall back onto the bed.
I pretend that knock a
t the door was her. I pretend she slides into the darkened room and, without a word, climbs into bed with me. Grips my thighs with hers and squeezes, like she did the other day on the practice fie—
Wait a fucking minute.
My self-abuse stops cold.
I was so busy feeling guilty about my hard-on dissing the coach that I skipped a whole bunch of important stuff.
The way she clenched her thighs around mine. Not just once but a couple times.
The way she rubbed herself against my hard-on.
The way she was breathing, her breaths coming hard right with mine.
Well now, I think, as my whole body tightens fierce, and I spill.
We might have been having a conversation about my dick earlier today, but my dick was not the only party having the conversation yesterday on the field.
I fall asleep, surprisingly contented, to that thought.
Chapter 16
Iona
We beat San Francisco, then take home our third consecutive win the following week. The day after that third win, on Monday afternoon, I’m supposed to be interviewed, along with Mike Ohalu, on KARO, Seattle’s sports talk radio station, about being the first female coach on the Grizzlies, and one of the first in the PFL. It’s scheduled to air as part of the post-game show next Sunday.
Only O is being given IV fluids because he’s been throwing up his guts for most of the morning. Probably just dehydrated from yesterday, but no one’s taking any chances.
“You’re up,” Coach Cross tells Ty. A look of undisguised horror crosses Ty’s face, and he shakes his head—none of the guys wants to get within a thousand yards of anything media—but Coach Cross says, “Not up for debate, man.”
“I can do it by myself,” I say. I won’t even have Julia with me, because she’s home with the stomach flu.
Cross gives me a look. “I’m sure you can. But if they want to talk to one of your players, we’ll give them someone to talk to.”
“Whatever.” Ty shrugs. “I’ve been here since six anyway.”
“Six? On a Monday?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, with another shrug.
Ty’s car is a bright red, mean-looking low-slung sports beast that he informs me is a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. I slide into the passenger seat beside him. It’s pretty snug and comfy—or maybe that’s the effect of Ty’s looming physical size beside me. The car’s engine—“Seven-oh-seven horsepower V-eight,” says Ty, as if that would mean anything to me—makes a purring sound that I can feel as well as hear, and I try not to think too much about where, exactly, I can feel it. Same place I feel Ty’s voice when he urges the car up to ninety miles per hour on I-5 north by murmuring, That’s it, baby.
“Whoa,” I say. “Slow down.” And quit talking dirty; you’re messing with my head.
He laughs at me but complies.
By the time we get out of the car at the studio, it’s started raining and the wind is picking up. The weather’s been getting steadily rainier as November marches on. There’s supposedly a big windstorm on the way tonight. I wish I’d thrown a fleece over my T-shirt.
Ty, of course, bulls through the rain like he does everything else, like he can’t even feel it. Doesn’t even lower his head. I peek. There are raindrops stuck in his eyelashes and he doesn’t give a shit.
In the studio, we meet Gil Hudson, the post-game show host for the Grizzlies Radio Network. He’s not known for being the most forward-thinking guy on earth, and I’m nervous. But not worried, if you know what I mean. I’ve done interviews with plenty of jerks in my times, and there’s pretty much nothing he can say that will bother me.
Gil’s white, balding, sixtyish, and wearing a T-shirt that probably fit him better thirty pounds ago. He tells us everything we need to know about how the show and the studio work, and then he starts recording and jumps right in. After a quickie intro and bio, he says, “I’m gonna tell you right off the bat, I think it’s a bad idea, female coaches in the PFL.”
Well, there you go. At least we’re gonna be honest with each other.
Next to me, I feel Ty tense up. Okay, so that’s something I didn’t anticipate. I’ve heard all this stuff a million times, but he hasn’t. I’m not sure how he’ll react, and I need him not to be a hothead.
“Have to disagree with you there, Gil,” I say, calm as I can. There’s no version of the universe where it helps to get riled up when dealing with bigots.
“Terrible idea,” Gil says. “It’s not the right place for a woman. It’s an ugly world, pro football, not a place for a woman to have to deal with. Lotta abuse, lotta language, lotta butt-ugly men sitting around naked in locker rooms. And there’s gonna be the potential for sexual harassment in both directions—that’s my concern. We’ve got a game here that requires an incredible amount of concentration, and you put a woman smack in the middle of that, what happens to those players’ concentration? Someone’s going to get hurt.”
I take a deep breath. Nothing I haven’t heard before. “A million things can break a player’s concentration. You get bad news from home, it can break your concentration—if you don’t have good focus. You have good focus, and nothing’s going to screw with that.”
“That’s not what your former players say,” Gil says. “I’ve got Gaines Rainier on the line here. He played for San Francisco when you were there, and he said your presence was a distraction for the team.”
Beside me, Ty gets bigger, puffing up like a rooster. Stay calm, I urge him silently. Please.
“Gaines, thank you much for taking the time to talk with us today. So it was difficult playing with a female coaching intern on staff then.”
“I won’t lie to you,” Rainier says. “I didn’t think she had much to offer. And I thought her presence was a distraction, period. Lots of press focus on her, and yeah, the locker room stuff could get uncomfortable at times. In my opinion, she’s not a pro-level coach. And I think most women at this stage just aren’t. You can’t coach a sport you don’t play.”
“She plays,” says Ty.
I shoot him a look. Shut up.
He shoots me one back. Fuck you.
“Gaines,” I say. “Tell Gil how our time together in San Francisco ended.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Rainier says, but the edge in his voice tells me he does.
“He was fired,” I say.
“Because I questioned whether she belonged in San Francisco.”
“No. Because you weren’t getting it done.”
“So that was the team’s strategy? Fire the guys who don’t support female coaches?” Gil demands.
“That’s bullshit!” says Ty suddenly. “You’re twisting things around.”
Ah, this is what I was afraid of. Getting pissed at this kind of stuff only makes things worse. He’s only shoring up Gil’s argument, showing the world that I’m a distraction from what matters. If it’s making any point at all, it’s that he doesn’t believe I can hold my own in a pressure situation and need a guy to stand up for me. And that I can’t control my players. I glare, hard, at him, but he’s too riled up to see sense, and he glares right back. And opens his mouth again.
No! I mouth at him, but he’s past listening.
“We had ten sacks in the first seven games. Since Coach Thomas came onboard, we’ve had ten sacks and plenty of hurries in three games. That’s the facts. There’s no twisting those facts. And what Coach Thomas said is true. If you let someone’s gender be a distraction at the pro level, you’re not a pro. If you’re a pro, ain’t nothing gonna distract you from what matters, which is that we won those three games and we’re gonna keep on winning. And you know what? We’re done with this conversation. You want to know what Coach Thomas is like as a coach? You ask Coach Thrayne or Coach Cross or any of the linebackers, all of whom will tell you she kicks ass. Don’t ask some asshole who doesn’t even have a job in the PFL anymore. He’s the distraction.”
Oh, God.
I kick him, hard, and
he narrows his eyes like arrows into mine.
“Gaines Rainier was fired because he wasn’t getting it done,” I repeat, trying as hard as I can to keep my voice steady. “There are plenty of male San Francisco coaches who’ll tell you the same story. But Ty’s absolutely right. We shouldn’t be talking about San Francisco anyway. We should be talking about the great play we’re seeing from the linebacker corps, Gil. Beautiful linebacker play. Right? I’m a lucky coach to have this kind of talent to work with. And what we need to do now is look forward to next week and get our heads in the game for that. That’s what we need to be thinking about and talking about.”
The tactic works. Gil asks me a few more insulting questions, stuff about where I change my clothes and if there are any women’s bathrooms in the training facility and what it’s like to hang out around naked men, but on balance, he mostly sticks to substantive stuff. We talk a little bit about the packages we faced the last two weeks and how the linebacker play has been different since then, and then Gil brings the interview to a conclusion.
I try to make a graceful exit, but thanks to Ty’s body language, which hasn’t calmed down any, we leave more or less in a huff.
In the car, Ty turns to me and says, “You okay?”
I’m not. Not really at all. I’m furious, and my anger needs a target, any target, and before I can think better of it, I’m telling him, “No, I’m not okay! What the fuck was that in there? I can stand up for myself!”
“Jesus,” he says, just as angry. “How about, ‘Thank you, Ty, that was really sweet of you,’ or, ‘Hey, I appreciate how you jumped in and defended me—’ ”
“I didn’t need defending. I didn’t need your help.”
“What the—?”
But then he suddenly gets kind of quiet. And still. Like the anger is burning cold now, not hot. He says, “This happens to you all the time.” Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“People say this shit to you all the time. And you’re always fighting.”
“Yeah.”
Suddenly I’m tired. Because, yeah, it’s one thing to have gotten good at standing up for yourself, but it’s still exhausting, sometimes, to have to do it full-time. And being the only woman surrounded by men who aren’t always sympathetic to my existence, let alone my problems—let’s just say it’s been a long time since someone looked at me like Ty’s looking at me now. Like he really sees me. Sees what it’s like for me.
