by B. B. Hamel
“What do you want, David? You already hit the damn kid. Probably not a great call, considering you’re his coach.”
I curl my toes but keep my temper. “Let him know you talked to me,” I say. “Let him know you’re on my side on this. Give him some punishment, make sure he knows he fucked up.”
“All right,” Nathan says, sounding tired. “I can do that. But this shit doesn’t go beyond this room, you hear me?”
I stare at him, my anger flaring, but I shove it down.
He’s an institutionalist. He doesn’t give a fuck about some girl. He doesn’t even give a fuck about Erik.
Only the school.
“Yeah,” I say. “All right.”
“Fine. Send him in. I’ll have him do sprints until he pukes. You want to be the one holding the whistle?”
“No,” I say, standing. “Get Jeffries to do it.”
“Fine,” he says, waving me off. “Go fetch the boy.”
I leave his office. I don’t feel good about what just happened, but it’s better than what I expected. There’s a big part of me that thought Nathan would make me forget all about it and refuse to say a thing to Erik, all out of fear that we’d push the boy off to some other school. I know other, bigger schools have been scouting him and talking to him, and I know that’s always a possibility. Good players transfer to new schools all the time. It’s not incredibly common, but it happens.
I move through the locker room, nodding to a few guys. I stop and chat with a defensive end that’s been struggling lately, before I find Erik surrounded by his little retinue of running backs and wide receivers. The guys eat out of the palm of his hand, all because he’s the one that gives them the ball. They think they need to suck up to Erik in order to get some touches.
“Erik,” I say.
The cocky shithead doesn’t look up. He laughs like he didn’t hear me, as the other guys all look over.
“Erik,” I repeat. “Don’t make me ask for you again or this is going to be worse.”
He slowly looks over and frowns at me. “What’s up, Assistant Coach?”
I glare at him. He grins right back.
“Coach wants you in his office. Get your ass up and get back there. Now.”
Erik hesitates, but he listens. He’s not dumb enough to keep Coach waiting. He walks past me with an angry glance then struts with a shit-eating grin over to Coach’s office.
“What’d he do?” Ricky asks. He’s our number one receiver. He’s tall, lanky, with huge hands, and dark skin.
“Nothing,” I say. “And don’t bother him about it, all right? He’s not going to be happy after this shit. Better if you all pretend like it’s not happening.”
Ricky shrugs. “Yeah, sure. Sounds intense.”
“Just forget it.” I walk over toward Coach’s office and linger outside. I can see them through the glass. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but Erik looks upset, and Coach just looks exhausted. Erik finally gets up and storms out of the office. Our quarterback coach, Michael Jeffries, is already there with a whistle around his neck. He’s a short, bald man with sunglasses and a thick black beard.
“You ready to run?” he growls at Erik.
“Fuck this,” Erik says, but he follows Jeffries toward the field. The boy throws a look back at me and stops walking long enough to flip me off. He turns and hurries back after Jeffries.
I linger there for a second before letting out a breath. I poke my head into Coach’s office. “Done?” I ask.
“Done,” he confirms. “Boy’s pissed.”
“Let him be.”
Nathan just shakes his head and I leave him to his game tape.
Erik’s not going to take this lightly. I can see it in his eyes, he’s already livid, already embarrassed. He’s going to do something stupid, and I know it’s not going to be directed toward me.
That’s why I warned Chloe. But I’m worried that’s not enough.
I’ll keep an eye on her. When she’s scheduled to tutor next, I’ll hang around. And if Erik tries something, I’ll make sure he doesn’t get away with it.
4
Chloe
I don’t have class until later in the afternoon, so I stay in bed most of the morning and only get up when I somehow make it to the bottom of my endless Reddit scrolling feed.
I shower then stand in the mirror for a long moment, replaying the conversation I had with David the day before. He was definitely flirting with me, which I liked, but I hate that he’s going to the head coach with this.
Maybe if he keeps my name out of it, nothing will happen. I mean, Erik might not be dumb enough to retaliate, and the head coach won’t know who to try and silence.
Not that he needs to silence me, since I just want to move on with my life. But still, I can’t help the worry that rolls all through me.
I get dressed and head into our living room. As I start making some coffee, the front door flies open, and Sara comes storming inside. She throws her bag on the floor and looks around with a wild look in her eyes before spotting me. “Look at this,” she says.
“Look at wh—”
She slams a piece of paper down on the light blue kitchen counter, making the white cabinets rattle in their loose hinges. The refrigerator is old and plain white, and the white painted walls are cracked in a few places, but the apartment is clean and in a good spot, so we don’t mind how it’s aging.
I walk over and stare down at a picture of myself taken at some random party a couple years ago with the word “BITCH” in big block letters underneath it. I’m holding a Solo cup and smiling, my head tilted. I’m wearing a low-cut top and the rest of the room is a blur behind me. Devil horns are hand drawn onto my head, and my eyes are Xed out with black marker. The whole thing looks like it was photocopied a few times, but it’s still recognizably me.
“Where did you get this?” I ask and my voice sounds like it comes from a mile away.
“They’re scattered all over the place,” she says. “Seriously like blowing in the fucking wind like tumbleweeds. Who the hell would do this to you, Chloe? What the fucking fuck? I’m so mad I want to kill someone.”
I take a step away from the paper but I can’t pull my eyes from it. I know who did this, I know exactly who did it. But I can’t seem to move a muscle.
“Chloe!”
I turn to look at Sara. I blink a couple times then shake my head. “I have to call someone.”
“What the hell, Chloe? What is that?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s nothing. I’ll— I don’t know. I have to call someone, okay?”
She looks baffled as I move past her and head into my room. I slam my door shut, grab my phone, and call David’s number.
He answers on the second ring. “Chloe,” he says. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I clear my throat, heart racing. I feel like I might be sick. “Are you on campus?”
“Not yet,” he says. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know. Can you come to campus? Can you meet me?”
“Of course.” He sounds worried. “Where?”
“Uh, my place. Outside my place. I’ll be downstairs.”
“I can get there in fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, yeah. See you soon then.”
“See you.” He hangs up the phone.
I grab my sweater, pull it over my head, and find a hat in the back of my closet. I pile my hair on my head and cover as much as I can with the hat. Between that and the baggy sweater, I can almost pass as someone else. I stand there looking at myself in the mirror, feeling fear and anger wash over me, until fifteen minutes pass. I leave my room and head past Sara.
“Hey, wait,” she says.
“I’m meeting with someone,” I say. “Listen, it’s okay.”
“It’s definitely not okay. Who the hell would do that? It’s, like, harassment or something.”
“It’s okay,” I say again. “I’ll handle it, okay?” I give her a smile, eve
n though I don’t feel like it.
“I’ll kick a bitch’s ass for you, you know that, right?”
“I know.”
She sighs and shakes her head as I leave the apartment and head down the rickety wooden steps. I push out through the door and find a black truck idling at the curb. The window rolls down and David leans over toward me. “Chloe?” he calls out.
“Hey,” I say, walking over to him.
He frowns and gestures. “Get in.”
I open the door and climb into his truck. When I close the door again, he pulls out into traffic. “You okay?” he asks. “What happened?”
“Let’s get to campus and I’ll show you.”
He looks at me for a second then nods. “I’m guessing it’s Erik.”
“Probably.”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I was afraid he’d do something, but I thought getting Hardy involved would scare him off.”
“I don’t think it did. Actually, I think it made it worse.”
David pulls onto a side street that skirts around campus. He parks near the athletics building in a designated spot and we get out. I lead him up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. He hurries to catch up as I walk fast, my strides matching the pace of my hammering, anxious heart.
I’m afraid of what I’m about to find. I keep picturing the pages flowing around like an ocean, and everyone just laughing at them like they’re the funniest thing in the world. It’s a windy afternoon, so the papers have probably been blowing all over the place by now. If I’m lucky, they’ve been scattered all across LA.
We come around a pair of large shade trees and head onto the wide central walkway. David catches up and walks silently beside me. I spot the first cluster of pages, just plain white with the black photocopied picture right in the middle. I hurry over to them and manage to snag one before it blows away. More of the papers are spread out all over the place, and I spot a couple other students picking them up, frowning at them, then throwing them back on the ground.
I wish they’d throw them in the trash.
“What the fuck?” he says, staring at the thing.
“My roommate told me about it,” I say. “She brought it over right before I called you. I was off this morning, so I didn’t see it until now.”
“Motherfucker.” He crumples the paper and is about to throw it but restrains himself. He shoves it into his pocket instead. “Come on.”
“Wait,” I say, but he’s already moving. He starts collecting the pages as fast as he can. When they begin to blow, he chases them down, stomps on them, and grabs them.
I join in. At first, it’s horrible. But soon it’s almost fun. We chase papers across the sidewalk, across the walkway, into bushes and into clusters of students. I grab one from a young kid’s hand and he almost says something to me, but a look from David silences him.
“Right there!” David says, pointing as one of the papers floats in the air. I jump up and snag it with a laugh. He grins and rips it into pieces before shoving it into his pocket.
We find more papers rolling around in strange corners of the campus. I laugh as David bowls into a group of girls talking on their phones and tears the papers from their hands, telling them it’s university business. He makes a face at a professor who frowns at him, and keeps going, grabbing more papers from the ground.
By the time we have a pretty thick stack of papers, I’m laughing. I know it’s stupid, I should be upset, but I’m laughing. The way he goes after the paper like it’s the only thing in the world seems so funny to me. He shoves a bundle of them into a nearby trashcan then grabs a bunch more that got stuck in a bush.
“What about those?” I ask him, pointing. Three of them are stuck up in the branches of a tree.
“I’ll get them,” he says.
“Wait, I was kidding.”
But he climbs the tree without hesitating. I laugh as he shakes a branch to get them loose, and jumps to snatch them as they fall like leaves.
Soon, there are no more left, or at least not any we can find on campus. There might be some cluster of them inside a building, or maybe hidden under a bush, but they’re no longer blowing around like tumbleweeds at least.
“Well,” David says as we stroll along together, the crowds of student thinned out as a new class block starts. “That was fun.”
“Fun for you,” I say, grinning at him. “You’re not the one on the paper.”
“I know.” He sighs, shaking his head. “What a fucking little prick. Who would do something like this?”
“A little prick,” I say.
“Erik.” He clenches his jaw.
“What happened yesterday?”
“I went to Hardy, and Hardy talked to Erik. Made the kid run until he collapsed. I thought that would be the end of it, that he’d learned his lesson, but…”
“But then he did this.”
“Yeah. He did this.” David tenses and I can see the anger written all over him. He looks over at me and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think this would happen.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You meant well.”
“Meaning well and doing the right thing aren’t always the same.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
He shakes his head and walks over to a bench. We sit down together under the shade of a tree and he puts his hand behind his head. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do now,” he says.
“We can just let it go.”
He glances at me. “Do you really want that?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Are you angry?”
“I’m fucking pissed.”
“Good.” He nods once. “You should be. That little twerp deserves another beating.”
“You can’t do that,” I say quickly, not sure if he’s joking around or not.
He frowns and shrugs. “Maybe.”
We lapse into silence and I let out a breath. I feel like there’s no winning here. If we fight back, it’ll just make Erik lash out even more. But if we do nothing, I’m going to feel like I let that asshole get one over on me, and he’ll win. I can tell David feels the same way.
“Where are you from?” he asks out of the blue.
“Uh, Philadelphia,” I say. “You?”
“Chicago. Grew up near Notre Dame, actually.”
“Is that why you’re into football?”
“Yeah, it is,” he says and laughs. “I remember going to games with my old man back in the day. Back before drinking took him.”
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah, it’s fine. But those were good memories. I guess I still associate football with those good days.”
“I never got into football,” I say and feel lame.
He grins at me. “What are you into? What’s your major?”
“English,” I say.
“Ah. So you’re an art girl.”
“No, not really. I just want to teach high school.”
“Good for you,” he says, nodding. “That’s a good profession. Hard, though, and people never appreciate you, but really important.”
“You’re really selling it to me.”
He laughs. “Sorry. I’m just trying to change the subject so we’re not talking about that little fuck constantly.”
I shift a little closer to him and tilt my head in his direction. “I don’t get why you care so much,” I say. “I mean, he’s a dick. We can leave it at that, right?”
He frowns at me and looks into my eyes for a long moment. “Maybe there’s something about you,” he says. “Maybe I’m not the kind of man that can see a woman getting pushed around and walk away.”
“Which one is it? Something about me, or you’re just so chivalrous you can’t help yourself?”
“Little bit of both.” He moves closer to me. “More about you, though. When that little fuck pushed you, I wanted to break his arms. You looked like you did, too.”
I laugh and
shrug. “I won’t pretend like the thought didn’t occur to me.”
“And now this.” He clenches his fists then stops himself and shakes his head. “Sorry. I need to stop talking about it or I’ll get all fired up again.”
“Okay. How about you tell me something about yourself. If you’re going to keep saving me from Erik, I might as well know a little bit about you.”
“I’m thirty-four,” he says. “Been a football coach my whole life. Started at the high school level, moved out here a few years back.” He shrugs a little.
“Not your life story,” I say. “Something about you. What do you like, aside from football.”
“I cook,” he says. “I’m a good cook, actually.”
“I believe it.” I smile. “You should make me dinner sometime.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You asking me out? I thought that was my job.”
I feel myself blush a deep crimson. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh?” He leans toward me and touches my face. My heart starts to hammer faster, fluttering like a lost bird. “I think you did. And I’d love to cook for you.”
“I’d like that,” I whisper.
He leans closer and his lips brush against mine. Softly at first, but the kiss turns deeper, more passionate as his tongue slips against mine. He tastes like honey and grass, like a turf field and sweet tea. I press myself against him, and I know this is stupid, this is a huge mistake, but I can’t help it.
We break apart and he stares into my eyes. Neither of us speak for a long moment.
“Was that bad?” I whisper.
“No,” he says. “Not even a little bit.”
“But… I’m a student.”
“Not my student. And I’m not a professor.”
“Still.” I bite my lip. “We shouldn’t, right?”
“We shouldn’t,” he agrees and cocks his head. “But I want to anyway. Let me cook you dinner tomorrow night.”
“Okay,” I say without thinking.
He nods once and stands. He helps me up then we start back toward his truck. We get halfway there before I remember that I need to go to class. I check my phone and realize I’m only a couple minutes late, and I can still make it if I hurry. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I need to run. I have class. I totally forgot.”
