by Serena Bell
So I nod. “You’re the best coach I’ve ever had.”
Her face softens, and she says, “Do this, Ty.”
And then I go out there and pick the fucking ball out of the sky and run it into the end zone.
Chapter 36
Iona
It’s been a weird few days at my parents’ house.
I left Seattle in a hurry after the last game. It almost might have been easier if we’d lost, if Ty had kept on playing like shit and we’d let the playoffs slip away that way. But the way it happened was so bittersweet. Ty listened to me, really listened, and he played the last quarter of that game like his life depended on it. His interception felt so good, as good as if it were mine, that deep, whole-body thrill and satisfaction. I wanted to reward him afterward, throw my arms around him, kiss him till we were both breathless, lick him up and down, worship him with my body.
Instead, that win turned out to be meaningless when Atlanta won its game, and Ty and I shook hands, not even really meeting each other’s eyes, and went our separate ways.
Half a season, a long, hard-fought comeback, and it all came down to something we didn’t even control.
I flew cross-country. Baltimore was my primary goal, but I figured I’d stop in and see my parents, since I’d missed them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I told myself, the way we always do in these situations, that it would be better this time, that I wouldn’t let my dad draw me into a fight. And I’ve done pretty well, so far.
I haven’t told my parents much of anything about—well, anything. I didn’t tell them about what happened between me and Ty. For one thing, I wouldn’t know what to tell them, because half the time, I don’t know what happened.
I didn’t tell them about getting caught, getting bluffed or threatened or whatever it was that happened in that Grizzlies conference room, but tonight, the last night I’m there, at the dinner table, I tell them about all the job offers that flooded in. Not just the D.C. one, but Houston and Green Bay, too.
“Oh, honey!” my mom says, sounding genuinely pleased and impressed. I think she’s just so grateful that I’m done getting hit on the field that she’s willing to be happy for me these days.
My father pushes his spinach around like a kid who’s trying to make his vegetables look eaten and says, “Aren’t you done with football yet?”
My first impulse is to ignore him. I’ve vowed not to let him drag me down, and this is exactly the kind of thing that always goes nowhere. He says something mean or unsupportive, I snap back, and we end up saying things we’ll both regret. Or—not talking at all. I don’t want that to happen on my last night here.
Until my dad and I fought over football, we were like a lot of fathers and daughters. I was his little girl, and he was my hero.
It’s easy to forget that, because it’s been at best so uncomfortable, and at worst, so ugly, since. Like when he met me at the airport at the beginning of this trip. I was exhausted from the cross-country flight, demoralized because despite our win against Arizona we’d lost our playoff bid, and I missed Ty already.
As my dad strode toward the security exit, I saw him as I might have long ago: a tall dark-brown-skinned man with a stubborn set to his jaw that I probably inherited and a distinguished salt-and-pepper mustache. There are a few lines across his forehead, but otherwise, he doesn’t show his age much.
I’d missed him, I realized. Not the dad I fought with for so many years, but the dad who could carry me on his shoulders without showing any fatigue, the dad who called me his little girl, who—until we made each other so angry—always supported me and stood up for me. The dad who taught me how to support myself and stand up for myself, so well that when push came to shove, I was able to use what he’d taught me against him.
I had to stop myself from running at him and throwing my arms around him, and I was glad as fuck I didn’t when he got close enough to greet me, and his first words were, “You didn’t make it to the playoffs.”
Thanks, Dad, I hadn’t noticed.
Despite everything else that had happened the last few days, how low I already felt, he’d managed to bring me lower. To remind me of all the times he’d hurt me.
I didn’t say anything in the airport, though, because I’d promised myself.
But when he says that thing at dinner, Aren’t you done with football yet? I feel weirdly calm. Not angry. It doesn’t matter what he thinks, because the people that matter to me—the women I’ve played with and coached, the girls whose lives I’ve changed, Julia, Coach T, Coach Cross, O…
Ty.
Those people understand.
So I don’t answer his question to prove anything or change his mind or make a point.
I answer it because the truth matters to me.
I think of telling Ty he had to win for himself. And I say, “No.”
I say it pretty much the way I said it in the conference room the other day, quiet and strong and certain.
“I will never be done with football. I love football. And I love being strong and tough and athletic. That’s who I am. I will never wear pink frilly dresses or black patent leather shoes or whatever it is you wanted for me. This is who I am. You don’t have to like it. But if you want me to visit, you do have to accept it.”
My mother looks a bit desperate. She hates the fighting.
My father opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
“I never wanted you to wear pink frilly dresses or black patent leather shoes,” he says.
Now my mouth is open. I was expecting just about anything except that. His anger, his frustration, a litany of reasons no man would ever want to be with a woman like me.
“I just wanted you to be happy. And you never seemed to be happy. You always seemed—angry.”
He looks up from his plate and I think it might be the first time I’ve seen my dad’s face, his eyes, looking straight into my eyes, in ten years—since we first fought over football.
“I didn’t want you to have to fight for everything. For people’s respect or even just to have them let you participate. It hurt, to watch you. Getting left out and pushed around and hit and beaten down—”
“And taking shots at me was going to help with that?”
I hadn’t meant to get angry, but Jesus.
“I wanted to toughen you up. I knew what people were going to say.”
“No,” I say. “No, you didn’t. You knew what you thought about girls and women who played football. But it’s not what everyone thinks. And you had no right to treat me that way. No right at all.”
In all the time we’ve fought, I’ve never said that to him. I’ve fought for football, for my right to play football. I’ve never fought for myself, for my right not to take his shit.
“What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?”
I turn away, because I know my father is never, ever going to apologize for some of the things he said to me. He might still believe them, for all I know.
But the thing is, I don’t.
“I like fighting,” I say. “I like a good battle. I like—standing up for myself. I like finding my own way. I’m not angry. I’m—”
I had been about to say, I’m happy, but I can’t quite force the words out. Because I’m not, not right now. I’m not happy, and I wonder, suddenly, if I will ever be, completely, again.
But those doubts have nothing to do with what my father is asking.
“I love what I do. This is the right life for me. I hope—I hope you can be happy for me. If not now, then someday.”
Across the table, we hold each other’s gazes. And I recognize the stubbornness in his because it’s my own damn stubbornness.
“Also.” I cross my arms. “The hottest guy I know thinks I’m beautiful.”
And then I feel ridiculously sad, because I’ll never hear Ty tell me that again.
I hear the echo of my own words then. You have to win it for you.
I take a
deep breath. “And he’s right.”
I look him square in the eye, challenging him to disagree.
My father’s gaze drops, and he nods.
My heart takes an extra moment to beat.
It’s not much. It’s not an apology. But it’s something.
And it doesn’t matter whether he means it as agreement or just acknowledgment of what I’ve said. For the first time I can remember, I’m trying to tell my father something, and he’s listening. He might not get it, he might not like it, but he’s not talking over me or through me. He’s not tearing me down.
It’s a start.
Chapter 37
Ty
Iona’s been gone a week and a half. In that time, I’ve taken three showers, slept fourteen total hours, and changed my clothes five times. I’m not proud.
I don’t know whether my behavior would have changed on its own eventually, whether I would have woken up one morning and decided I couldn’t live with my sad sack self, but what happens instead is that Zach shows up at my apartment.
He pounds for quite awhile before the sound penetrates through the chatter of the television, which I’ve turned on even though I’m not watching it. The noise makes it hard to hear my own thoughts, and I like it that way.
I answer the door wearing nothing but a pair of ratty athletic shorts.
He doesn’t try to hide his disgust. “Get dressed.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you gotten any of my texts?”
I turned the phone off a few days ago. I shake my head no.
“Ty, you asshole. O’s dad died. The funeral is in thirty-five minutes.”
“Oh, shit,” I say. “I’m—”
“Save it.”
I shower and get dressed in my darkest suit and follow Zach down to the car. Calder’s waiting there, too. Zach drives us to the church. O is sitting down front with his mom, who’s flanked by O and a man I recognize as O’s brother. O and his brother are close, even though Jerrard lives in Chicago, and Jerrard has come out to quite a few games. Even though he hasn’t done much to help O with their parents, I know O’s feelings toward him are nothing but positive.
Some of the songs I remember from my parents’ funerals. “Going Up Yonder.” “I’m Going Away.” “Soon As I Get Home.” All these last ten days I’ve been numb, but all of a sudden, an ache starts up just at the base of my breastbone. I push it down. I’m not going to do O any good if I’m bawling like a baby.
Jerrard does the eulogy. He’s got a preacher’s voice, and the congregation starts up keening and wailing in places, and I fist my hands and clamp my mouth shut and keep my eyes on the back of O’s neck, like somehow my gaze is going to hold him together. Or maybe staring at him is the thing holding me together.
We’re quiet in the car, driving to the cemetery—even Zach, who would usually have something uplifting or inspirational to say right about now. We’re quiet as Mr. Ohalu is lowered into the ground, as his wife and sons shovel dirt over his casket, as people turn and walk back to their cars. There’s no repast planned for after. Zach says O and Jerrard didn’t feel like their mom could handle it. They figured if she was feeling better, stronger, in a couple weeks, they could have a party in his dad’s honor.
“We should take him for a milkshake,” Calder says.
The three of us turn to look at where O is standing, at the edge of his father’s grave. The three of them are together there, as they have been almost throughout—O and Jerrard on either side, their mom, tiny and frail, between them. A son’s arm through each of hers, buoying her up.
O throws his head back, and even from where we’re standing, a hundred feet away, I can hear his bellow of grief. It burrows into that strange new ache in my own chest.
Sometimes a milkshake can’t make you feel better.
As we watch, O and Jerrard turn inward, sandwiching their mother between them, wrapping their arms around each other. Jerrard’s hand comes up, clutching his brother’s head, and O leans his forehead against his brother’s. It’s starting to rain, just a fine mist, the water catching on my eyelids and wetting my cheeks, and they blur a little in my vision in their dark clothes, until they’re just a silhouette of family.
I watch them, and I sense the strength of them even in all this grief.
“I think O’s got what he needs right now,” I say, and I turn and walk back to Zach’s car, my teammates following a moment later, right behind me.
Iona
Tish and I collapse on the bench outside the indoor athletic arena. Well, I collapse; she’s fine. I’m winded after forty-five minutes of flag football—shameful. They’re not kidding about how unhealthy the coach lifestyle is. I make a vow to start running a few miles every other day, even if it means getting up even earlier than I already do. If I can’t breathe after playing flag football with eighth graders, I’m in trouble.
“Aw, Coach Thomas is out of breath!” Tish teases.
Tish and I are waiting for her dad to pick her up. When Tish heard I was coming into town, she texted everyone she knew—boys and girls—and put together a flag football reunion for me.
It was tough to get the game started because everyone wanted to hear what it was like to be a PFL coach. Everyone wanted to know whether it was true that Calder Blake rarely strung two words together (yes, at least in my presence) and Zach Jones was universally liked (yes, as far as I could tell), and Ty Williams had a girlfriend for every day of the week (I crossed my fingers and said I really couldn’t say; he hadn’t dated anyone when I was in Seattle), and so on and so on and so on.
When I’d satisfied their curiosity about everything from the eating habits of the linemen to my own daily schedule, we got down to business and played some football.
Now everyone’s gone home, leaving just Tish and me. “You can go,” she says. She knows exactly how my phone call with her dad went.
“Nah,” I say. If I could face down my own dad, Tish’s isn’t going to give me any trouble. Chances are, he won’t even talk to me.
Just then, Mr. Keyes pulls up, parks his Civic by the curb, and strides over. I brace myself for unpleasantness, but he greets me with a handshake, and there’s only a slight wariness in his gaze to indicate he remembers our phone call.
“Good to see you, sir,” I say.
“You, too, Coach.”
Tish has wandered off to talk to a boy she knows from school, and Mr. Keyes eyes her, brows lowered. He’s going to be a beast when Tish’s suitors come to call.
“Can’t keep ’em from growing up,” he says.
He doesn’t sound angry at all. It’s almost like he doesn’t remember our last conversation.
“I’ve always thought it would be a little scary, being the parent of a teenager,” I venture.
He sighs. “Yeah.”
“She’s a good kid. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“She is,” he says thoughtfully. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her this whole time, although I think it’s actually the boy—white, pimply, scrawny—who’s the subject of the real scrutiny. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and I don’t mean me. Her mother’s the best woman I know. Tish’s just like her. And beautiful like her.”
Oh. I don’t cry easily, but I get a little watery at that.
“I wanted to tell you.” He hesitates, glances ruefully in my direction. “I’m letting her try out. For the high school team.”
“You—”
“I know I said otherwise, on the phone. And I’m sorry if I said anything—harsh.”
I laugh again. “No offense, sir, but you really can’t compete with my dad in that department.”
He gives me a searching look.
I shrug. “He didn’t approve of me playing football. Still doesn’t, not really.”
“Maybe just wanted to keep you safe,” he grunts.
“Maybe. I think it was a little more complicated than that.”
He nods a little, as if to say, it alw
ays is. “Tish wasn’t going to be talked out of it. And I had it on good authority that the only person I’d be punishing if I forbade her was myself.”
I press my lips flat, but I can’t keep from smiling.
“And I have to say, I was impressed by how you stood up for her.”
Wow—wasn’t expecting that. “Um, thank you, sir.”
“So I thought to myself, if that’s what football does for a woman, I’m all for it. Because that’s the kind of girl I want to raise,” he says.
Tish comes over and leans her head on her dad’s shoulder. There’s that envy again. Which is funny, because six months ago, I was so ready to believe Tish’s dad was just like my dad. I was so ready to believe all men were just like my dad.
“What kind of girl do you want to raise?” Tish asks, smiling at me.
Tish’s dad kisses her on the top of her head and pats her cheek. He smiles at me, too, his smile nearly identical to his daughter’s.
And suddenly I don’t want him to say it. I don’t want him to congratulate me aloud, in front of Tish, for fighting for what matters and being tough. Because I didn’t.
Out of habit, I’d fought for my place in the sport I loved and all women’s rights to be real citizens of football. I’d fought for my job and my dad’s respect. But when the real fight had shown itself to me—
I’d been afraid of it. Afraid to acknowledge how much I wanted, afraid to acknowledge how tentative it had all felt. I’d convinced myself that if the first few men I’d loved couldn’t love me for who I was, no one could. And I’d been sure I’d been deluded to think that Ty wanted me as fiercely as I wanted him. So I’d walked away instead of fighting for what mattered. Put three thousand cowardly miles between myself and what I wanted most.
Tish’s dad has no idea about my regrets, and Tish is waiting for his answer. He plows on, unknowing: “The kind of girl who, when she knows what she wants, won’t stop fighting for it.”
“Does that mean—?” Tish asks, wide-eyed.
