by B. B. Hamel
“I could eat.” She comes into the kitchen and looks around. “Mugs?”
“Cabinet right there,” I say, pointing to the cabinet next to the refrigerator.
She finds a mug, fills it up and sits down at the table as I portion out the eggs and carry it all over. I put her plate down in front of her, put mine down in front of my spot, and take a seat.
She looks at me and laughs. “This is a little…” She trails off.
I tilt my head. “A little, what?”
“Awkward, I guess.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t have to be.”
“True. I just… I’ve never slept over at a guy’s house like this before.”
“Have you ever gotten a freaky call in the middle of the night before?” I ask.
She hesitates and I can tell that was the wrong thing to say. But she shakes her head and smiles. “No, no, I definitely haven’t.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I just mean, we’re all a little out of our depth here.”
“Yeah. That’s true.” She takes a bite of the eggs and laughs. “At least you’re a good cook.”
“Good at a lot of things,” I say with a little smirk.
She blushes and digs into her food without answering. I smile and eat. I grab a piece of toast, butter it up, and lean back in my rickety kitchen chair. Most of my stuff is secondhand, and the table is no exception, but it’s served me well. The wood’s a little chipped, the feet a little uneven, and the covers on the chairs have some stains on the back, but overall it’s not too bad. I’m just happy Chloe hasn’t noticed or doesn’t mind.
“What are your plans for today?” I ask her as we finish up.
“Class,” she says. “Tutoring first.”
“Yeah? What time?”
She frowns and cranes her neck to check the time on the stove. “An hour,” she says.
“Perfect. I need to be in my office in an hour.” I look over my shoulder then stand and carry the dishes over to the sink.
“Let me help,” she says.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll do this while you shower or get changed or whatever.”
She brings her plate over but lets me take care of cleaning. I wash and dry while she disappears back into my bedroom. I hear the shower turn on as I clean the frying pan I used to cook the eggs. When everything’s back to the way it was, I stand against the countertop for a long moment and listen to the water run.
I’ve been the assistant coach at California University for about three years now. I’ve made some friends and I love my job, but I’ve been missing something for a long time now. It’s been hard to meet someone, since most of the girls I’m surrounded by are all undergrads. Chloe’s no exception, but there’s something different about her.
It’s a maturity thing. Most of the girls I meet around here are still children. They care more about partying and drinking than anything else. Chloe doesn’t seem like that though. She talks about her studies, about tutoring, about what she wants to do when she graduates. I don’t think she’s mentioned partying one single time since I’ve met her, which might be some kind of record for a college girl.
Maybe that’s drawing me in. I’m not sure. Either that, or the way she bounces when she walks, or tugs at her hair when she laughs, or her lopsided smile, or her full lips, or her perky breasts. I like that she’s not just another cliché surfer girl, and she doesn’t seem self-conscious about that at all.
I know getting involved with a student here is a huge mistake. I should let this go, make this our last night together. I can give Erik a pass on all this and move on with my life, let Chloe move on, too.
But I know I can’t do that.
I got a taste of her last night. Her pussy is still on my tongue, and the memory of her body tensing and shaking as she came still haunts me every time I stop whistling and close my eyes. It’s a delicious memory and my cock stirs just imagining what it will feel like to have her come with my shaft deep between her legs.
Definitely a mistake. But a very, very good one.
And there’s still the problem of Erik. He’s harassing her, straight up, and doesn’t seem to plan on stopping. Confronting him with that paper only seems to have made him bolder, and that’s a little worrying. I’m afraid he’s just going to keep going until he does something so stupid, the administration can’t ignore it.
Or until I do something so stupid, they can’t keep me around anymore.
The shower water turns off and Chloe emerges a few minutes later as I straighten the place up. She smiles at me and sits down on the couch, kicking her legs up on the coffee table. “Room’s all yours.”
“Sure you don’t want to join me?” I ask. “I could really use an extra pair of hands in the shower.”
She snorts. “I bet you’d like that.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I absolutely would.”
She bites her lip and looks away. “Better hurry up.”
I laugh and head back to my room. I linger there with the door open, wondering if she’ll follow me… but when she doesn’t, I head into my bathroom and take a shower.
She leans against the passenger side door and rolls the window down halfway. The breeze is light and comfortable, and her dark hair flies around her round, pale face in fits and starts. She pulls her hair back in a messy bun and turns her eyes over to me. “Do you always wear that?” she asks.
“Yep,” I say. “Some variation, anyway.” I look down at myself. I’m in my usual khaki slacks, running shoes, and polo shirt.
“Must be nice,” she says.
“Gets boring sometimes.” I glance at her. She changed into a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a light cream-colored top that buttons up the front. She left the top two buttons undone, showing off a hint of her skin, just enough to make me not want to look away.
“Still though, you don’t have to worry about, you know.”
“What other people think?”
She nods. “Sure.”
I smile a little. “That sort of thing matters less as you get older.”
“Does it though?” She sighs and leans her head back. “I don’t know. I feel like it only gets harder.”
“Depends. You happen to live in a place where the superficial stuff matters a lot right now.”
“Yeah? I guess so. LA isn’t exactly my scene, though.”
“How’d you end up here?”
She shrugs. “I like California. I wanted to move here. CU is the only school that gave me a scholarship though, so here I am.”
“Ah,” I say with a grin. “You’re more of a Stanford girl or what?”
She snorts. I love that little noise. She does it when she thinks something’s funny, but it’s also absurd. “Hardly. I mean, I applied and got in, but no financial help.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, damn. You got into an amazing school but they didn’t throw any money at you.”
“I know. Rude, right?”
“Idiots. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
She laughs as I pull onto campus. A horde of kids wearing shorts and carrying backpacks, some of them pushing skateboards, a couple on roller blades, come storming over the road. We wait at a stop sign until it clears and I roll forward. I turn toward the far side of campus and park in the same lot as last time in my usual spot. I kill the engine and hop on out.
She gets out next. It occurs to me that it might be a bad thing if someone saw us coming to campus together, but I push the thought from my mind. Nothing we can do about it now.
“What about you?” she asks me as we meet up on the sidewalk and head toward the athletics building. We pass under big green leafy shade trees, the sunlight making patterns on the red and light brown brick walkway. More students pass us, some in groups of threes and fours, some wearing headphones and staring at the ground. One guy wearing a bright orange wig rolls past on a scooter and honks a horn with a grin on his face. “How’d you end up here?” she asks.
“Boring story,” I say. “I got a job at my ol
d high school, and my first year there, the head coach got cancer. He’s okay now, but I took over his role for three seasons. I took a losing team in the first year, turned it into a winning team the next year, and turned them into the state runners-up in my third year. That’s when a few colleges scouted me and offered me a position. CU was the only place to offer me an assistant coach job, so I took it.”
“Wow,” she says, frowning at me. “You must be good at coaching.”
I shrug a little bit. “I’m good,” I say. “But I think it’s because I get what I’m supposed to do.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
We come around a bend in the sidewalk and stop outside the brick athletics building. Kids stream in and out, and we linger over near a small grass lawn where two girls lie on a white blanket, staring at a phone and laughing together.
“Coaching isn’t about coming up with amazing plays,” I say. “It’s about fostering talent. It’s about finding out what guys are good at it and making them even better at it. I was very good at figuring out where people should play and shifting them around when things weren’t working. Our playbook was pretty simple, but I had guys in the right positions, and we just had a really good team cohesion.”
“Is that what you’re doing here?” she asks.
“More or less.” I shrug a little and scan my eyes along the crowd of kids. I know I probably shouldn’t be seen chatting with Chloe. I have no good reason to do it. If someone does end up asking, I can tell people that I’m looking into how my guys are doing with her tutoring, but that’ll only fly once or twice. “As much as I can, anyway. I need to be a good judge of character.”
“So what do you judge about my character then?” she asks, head tilted.
I look back at her with a little smile on my lips. I’m tempted to drag her back into the shadows of the building, back behind a little copse of bushes that are growing around a big square, green power generator, but I resist the urge.
“I think you don’t fit in here,” I say. “But that doesn’t stop you from making the best of it, which means you’re resilient. You’re also smart, and you’re quick to make fun of me for liking Star Wars, which means you’re brave. How am I doing so far?”
“You might as well just say I’m hot and you want to fuck me, because I’m already there,” she says with a grin.
I laugh and lean toward her, heart beating hard. “I don’t need to say it, little Chloe. I told you last night, you’re already mine.” I lean back as a red blush spreads across her cheeks. “Come on, let’s head inside.”
“Right. Uh, should we walk in together?”
“Sure, I think it’s fine. We’re just talking about some of the players you’re tutoring.” I hesitate. “Who else on the team do you tutor, by the way?”
“Marshal Jones. Landry… something.”
“Douglas,” I supply. “Okay, that’s good. I know those guys.”
“Don’t you know the whole team?”
I laugh. “I should, but there are a lot of walk-ons that just don’t get much attention.” We walk together into the flow of people. There are fewer of them now as the next class block gets closer. The lobby of the athletics building is cool, the polished tile floor reflecting the sun from the skylights above. We move back toward the elevators and I hesitate. The team locker rooms are on this floor at the back of the building. “I’ll leave you here,” I say.
“Well, it was nice chatting with you, Coach David,” she says, giving me her best perky smile.
“Sure. Tell Marshal I said he’d better study hard.” I smile at her, hesitate, then turn away. She heads over to the elevators and hits the call button, stepping back to wait in a little cluster of students.
I walk past the elevator back into a carpeted hallway. Heavy brown doors with fogged glass windows are spaced out at even intervals, and I assume they’re classrooms, though I’ve never looked inside before. Motivational posters with stupid slogans and smiling college kids are hung in a few spots. My favorite is the framed poster of a bored-looking blonde girl that says, ‘The World Is Magic!’ It make no sense, but I sure do love it.
I make it a few feet into the hall, just across from the magic poster, before I slow down and stop. Standing up ahead, leaning against the wall next to a water fountain and staring right at me, is Erik himself. He detaches from the wall and gives me a grin. I clench my jaw and keep moving toward him.
“Hey, Coach David,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“Heading to my office to watch tape. Don’t you have class?”
“Nah,” he says.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I was getting some water,” he says, smirking at me. That square jaw and hooked nose make me want to kick him in the throat. Except the shiner I gave him almost calms me down. “Was that Chloe you were just with?”
“Yes,” I say, deciding it would be stupid to lie, he clearly saw us. “Ran into her outside.”
“I bet you did.” He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “Hey, Coach, she’s pretty hot, right?”
“That’s inappropriate,” I say. “Why don’t you go somewhere else, Erik?”
“Nah,” he says. “I hear there’s someone making these creepy calls at night. You hear anything about that?”
I go still. My heart starts beating fast and he keeps smirking at me. The motherfucker is trying to provoke me, trying to get me to admit that I talked to Chloe about his little prank call. I want to smash his skull against a locker and leave him for dead but I have to keep myself under control. He’s still just some college asshole, and I’m the adult in the room. I need to start acting like it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “But I got work to do.”
I move past him and he turns to watch me leave. “All right, Coach, I got you. Just be careful. Those calls can be pretty intense.”
He laughs as I walk away, my jaw clenched.
I know that motherfucker did it, and he’s not even trying to hide it. In fact, he wants to flaunt it, he wants me to lose my cool and hit him again.
That’s his plan. It hits me hard as I turn the corner and start heading back toward the football wing of the building. He wants to push me into making a mistake and going too far. He can tell I’m invested in Chloe, and he’s going to use her just to get back at me for going to Hardy about him.
I can’t let it work. I have to keep my cool, keep my hands away from him, and remember that he’s just some punk kid with an ego problem. He doesn’t matter, not in the long run, not at all. He’s going to graduate one day, but I’ll still be coaching. I just need to deal with him until that blessed day comes.
Or until he breaks his leg and can’t play anymore.
The only problem is, I don’t want to sacrifice Chloe’s life in the process. If Erik leaves her alone, I can walk away from this. But if he keeps pushing her, keeps calling her, keeps harassing her… I’m going to have to find a way to ruin him.
One way or the other, I won’t let him hurt what’s mine.
8
Chloe
David’s tongue, David’s lips. I keep thinking about him all day long. I float from tutoring, to class, to dinner at Chipotle with Sara, and back to our apartment. I throw my bag on the floor as soon as our door shuts and flop down onto our old fluffy black couch. It still has white dog hairs collected in the corners from the original owners, this nice old couple that lived in an apartment at the end of our block. I always wondered why anyone would have a white dog and a black couch, but it didn’t matter since they sold it so cheap.
“What’s with you?” Sara asks, sitting down in her chair. It’s big, brown, and suede, with some stains on the arms and the back. We found that one out on the curb on trash day one afternoon. We brought it home, cleaned the hell out of it, and it’s been Sara’s little spot ever since. “You’ve been distracted again.”
“I slept at David’s place.” The words come tumbling out.
&
nbsp; She gapes at me. “Wait. Hold on. You did what?”
“Didn’t you notice I wasn’t around this morning?”
She shakes her head. “I usually leave before you get up.”
“Oh, right. Surfing.”
“You slept at David’s? That assistant coach of the football team, David? David Fyall? Hunk extraordinaire?”
“Yes,” I say. “I mean, I got this call last night, a really creepy prank call that I’m pretty sure was Erik, and—”
“The star quarterback of the football team is calling you in the middle of the night?” She just stares at me. “What kind of life are you living all of a sudden? I thought you were, like, boring.”
“I’m not boring.”
“I mean…” She trails off, grinning at me. “You study a lot.”
“Studying doesn’t make me boring.”
“I mean…”
“If you say ‘I mean’ one more time, I’m going to throw my physics textbook at your face.”
She laughs and sits up, leaning toward me. “So what was his place like?”
“Nice,” I say, not mentioning that I’ve been there before. “Clean. Adult.”
“Huh. Sounds exciting.” She rolls her eyes.
“Believe it or not, we didn’t, you know.”
“Fuck? Get dirty?”
“No,” I say. “Well. A little. We fooled around.”
“Fooled around?” she screams. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, I mean, whatever! It means nothing, okay?”
“You sucked his dick, didn’t you?”
“No!” I grab a gray silky throw blanket and bundle it up before pelting her with it. The blanket does not make an effective weapon because she just wraps her arms around it and hugs it tight. “He went down on me.”
“You lucky bitch,” she says, her face straight, her eyes wide. “You found a hot older man that wants to go down on you. I think you just won the lottery.”
I flop back on the couch and sigh, stretching my legs out. “Give me back my blanket.”
“Hell, no. Was it good?”
