“Tigers, this is my last year as head coach at Northland High.”
No one breathes. No one moves. Even the sun seems to pause in its ascent, everything frozen except for the words rushing from Coach Lee’s lips. Next to me, Grey has turned granite-stiff.
“I didn’t expect to tell you kids this until the end of the season. But that seemed like a coward’s move, and I’m no coward. And you kids aren’t kittens.”
He cracks a smile, and a few people exhale. I don’t, though, completely stunned by the fact that I’m not just a novice on this team, I’m a player whose coach wants to ride off into the sunset a champion.
“Sharpen those claws, Tigers. We’ve got winning to do.”
8
GREY’S TRUE BACKUP IS A SO-BLOND-IT-HURTS FRESHMAN named Brady Mason. He’s number seventeen, and a legacy in Northland football because his older brother, Cooper, was starting quarterback before Grey arrived.
Like my brother, he’s spindly—puberty slow to smack him across his hairless cheeks. Like Grey, he’s far too smiley. His parents must’ve paid a small fortune in middle school orthodontia because his teeth are almost beauty-queen pretty.
I’m not sure if he’s smiling so much because he doesn’t know what else to do with his facial muscles or if he’s just awkward around girls, but he looks like a toothpaste commercial as we warm up, passing balls in tandem, him to Grey and me to Coach Shanks.
He’s also totally checking me out. Not in a romantic way. The kid’s watching my arm, catching my form for a split second before passing his own ball. He’s left-handed, so we’re turned toward each other as we draw back and aim.
I can’t tell if I should be embarrassed or flattered. Because either he thinks I’m a hot mess or competition for the number two spot.
Which is kind of hilarious either way.
“Nice warm-up, folks.” Coach Shanks blows his whistle. “Routes.”
Shanks pulls over a pair of wide receivers, Chow and Gonzalez, and lines them up. As Grey fires off five different numbered routes, I study a multipage play chart binder with Brady. It’s got more Xs and Os than a Valentine’s card, but I think I get it.
As I line up, I get a clear view of the fence separating the practice fields from the stadium. And there, not even remotely pretending to be exercising, is Addie, long limbs pressed against the crosshatch of chain link.
She is truly the best friend.
Feeling Addie’s eyes at my back, I line up the balls and dig into the turf, my softball cleats doing a fine job despite being designed for a completely different sport, just like the rest of me.
Chow and Gonzalez—who turn out to be Timmy and Jaden, both seniors—are swallowing huge gulps of air while waiting for Coach to call the same five plays.
Orange Five. White Two. White Ten. Orange Nine. Orange Three.
I only miss once, overthrowing Gonzalez. But to be fair, he was gassed and it was the last play.
They walk off, replaced by two tight ends—Smith and Tate, aka Trevor and Zach—who take turns running short routes.
By the time we’ve run through that, my arm is starting to gripe at the restriction of the shoulder pads. Not that I’m about to complain. Because that is something Olive Rodinsky never does.
“Nice work, folks.” Shanks smiles, but there’s something evil in it that I recognize from when Danielle has cooked up something especially… epic. “Now go rest up, because this afternoon is going to be fun.”
After postpractice laps, I change back into my outfit from this morning, running shorts and a tank top, in a quiet locker room free of Kelly and any cheerleaders or volleyball players who’ve been banging in and out of the door since seven, heading to and from various practices. Besides the pad marks across my shoulders, I’m pretty sure I don’t look like I just came from football practice. Hopefully Mom will agree when she sees me after I get home from taking the boys for burgers.
I push into the parking lot, expecting to spot Ryan and Jesse right away, burger lust glowing stronger than the noontime sun. Instead, there’s just a single figure. The unrelenting brightness blinds me, and at first I think it might be Addie or Grey waiting for me, but the proportions are all off.
Jake.
He’s in a T-shirt and cutoff sweats, pads and jersey probably airing out in the locker room like mine.
“I want to apologize.” He looks me in the eye as he says this. No one is forcing him to do this—he actually seems to want to say the words. “I was a complete asshole earlier, and that was stupid and immature.”
“Yeah, it was, and you were.”
He rubs a hand over his short-as-stubble hair. “I reacted without thinking, and I reacted poorly. I shouldn’t have called you a stalker or said you were a joke. That was shitty.”
I pitch a brow. “Thank you.”
He coughs out a laugh, his eyes shining bright in the blinding sun. “I thought I could scare you away. Should’ve known better.”
“Damn straight.”
“Yeah.” Now he glances at the ground for a second. “Anyway, can we start over?”
“Sure.” The corners of my lips perk up, and I know there’s no way I’m scowling anymore.
He smiles for real, and for the first time since May, I don’t immediately hate the thought of looking at him.
“Liv.”
“Jake.”
“How’ve you been? How’s your mom—the surgery go okay?”
Oh, my heart. He didn’t forget that Mom’s mastectomy was scheduled for the week after the state championships, even after we broke up. “It went well. She’s getting better every day.” Which is what she tells me, even if it’s not totally true.
“Good. Your mom’s a tough one.” There’s genuine relief in his eyes.
“How’s Max?” I ask—Jake’s little brother has always been a favorite of mine. There’s a ten-year age gap between the boys, yet they’re as close as Ryan and me. Like Jake, the kid’s hella smart, and probably going to rule the world someday. “Ready to crush second grade?”
“Don’t you know it. Already reading at a fifth-grade level like the badass he is.”
“Little genius. Teacher won’t know what hit her.”
“That’s a family specialty,” Jake says, laughing. He slings his hands in the pockets of his cutoffs. “So, uh, what brings you to the team?”
“Grey scouted me.”
Something passes across Jake’s face. “I don’t really like him using you like that.”
I scoff. “That’s a little possessive for a guy who called me a stalker four hours ago,” I say. It comes out a little harsher than I meant, so I rush out the next bit. “He’s not using me. I want to be here. I was scouted and I said yes.”
Jake crosses his arms over his chest. “But why are you actually doing it?”
At this, I’m the one going sheepish. Might as well be honest. “Because I want to make the softball team,” I say simply. “Coach Kitt wants me to prove I can be a team player, and Grey gave me the opportunity. I couldn’t say no.”
“Even though you knew I was on the team?”
I smile. “Especially because you were on the team.”
I expect him to say “Because you knew I’d hate it,” but he doesn’t. Instead, he’s slightly more flattering to the both of us. “Because if you can be teammates with me, you can be teammates with anybody.”
At this, there’s a half smile—different from Grey’s, but nice all the same. We dated long enough that I know there’s something hidden in it, but I’d rather keep this newfound civility than call him out. Instead, I ask, “So, we’re cool?”
Jake nods with a real smile. “We’re cool. See you at four.”
“See ya.”
He walks off and I head to my car. The boys are sitting on Helena’s sunbaked blue hood, and Addie’s off to the side, staring down Jake as he jogs toward his truck.
“What the hell did he want?”
“To apologize.”
She raises a per
fectly threaded brow. “For not having the below-deck bits to break up with you in person?”
“For flipping out on me this morning.”
“What’d he do?” Ryan asks, brotherly discord clouding the dark angles of his suddenly mannish face.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “Just wasn’t happy to see me. But he’s over it now.”
Addie isn’t buying it. “Uh-huh.”
Honestly, I don’t really buy it either. But I’m willing to make an effort because he did.
The boys get in the car but Addie stops me at the driver’s side door. “You’re seriously okay with Jake?”
“You know I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”
Addie silently reads my face, like she reads the field before trying to blast through the gap. Then she cocks a brow. “Grey’s number sixteen, isn’t he?”
My face grows hot. “How’d you know?”
Under that raised brow, her eyes go mischievous. “He couldn’t stop looking at you.”
9
THE AFTERNOON SCENE AS I EXIT THE LOCKER ROOM alone is much different from earlier today. Most of the boys are already out on the field, running laps. No one’s interested in trying me after what happened to Jake this morning.
The sun is heavy, the heat wet and strong and hovering around a hundred yet again. Already sore from the morning, I start toward the field, sweat immediately beading on my forehead.
The locker room door slams behind me a second time. More out of curiosity than anything else, because I thought I’d been alone, I turn and see a flash of red ponytail.
“Cleary.”
“Rodinsky.”
I actually smile at her, because I truly don’t want to start off on the wrong foot with anyone else. Even the girl who left a massive, softball-size bruise on my back. “How’s it going?”
Kelly balks, surprised at such a soft opening pitch. Not that I blame her. Still, she goes on the offensive, like I slapped her instead of smiled. “Save your breath, Liv. I have zero interest in being your friend.”
I blink. “Um—”
“And before you ask—if you’re dumb enough to think I’d give up my nights and weekends to spy for Coach Kitt, I’m not. I’ve been a manager here for two years.”
“I didn’t think that you were spying on me,” I tell her. “Why would I think that?” I take in her stance—the crossed arms, squared shoulders, jaw set—and realize that whatever’s there has been building all day. And suddenly, everything clicks. “You’re wondering why they didn’t scout you.”
“Of course I am. I’m a pitcher, not a third baseman.” She says it like my position is inferior, even though we save the heroes on the mound from themselves all the time. “I should be a more natural choice than you. Heck, half of our shitty baseball team would be a more natural choice than you.”
Which is true—but I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth.
“Cleary, look—” She resumes stomping toward the practice field. “Kelly.” Her chin dips in my direction. “I don’t know why I got scouted over you. But if you want to go out for quarterback, no one is stopping you.”
“Someone is most definitely stopping me.” She halts and I pull up short to avoid smacking my chest pad straight into her shoulder. “Coach Kitt would never let someone as valuable as her star pitcher play football. I get hurt, there go the team’s chances.” She raises a finger and stabs me in the chest, right astride the padding. “If you get hurt, it doesn’t affect the team one bit. You’re not a part of our team, and you never will be.”
Coach Kitt said it might change, and I’ve got hope in that might. “I’ve already talked with Coach Kitt, and she understands my potential value.”
She laughs. “We all understand your value, believe me.” Cat eyes narrowed, Kelly swipes her claws. “Paid to play in high school? Yeah, everyone understands your value.”
My hands curl into fists. “That’s not how it worked.”
“Right. You can spin it however you want, but here, you haven’t earned a thing. We don’t owe you squat—not the softball team, not the football team, not Northland.” Again, she starts to stalk away but whirls back around at the last moment. Like I’m the one who dinged her, not the other way around. And maybe I did—maybe she’s as close to Stacey as I am to Addie. “And I’m going to love watching you get hit.”
I start my warm-up thirty seconds late, so Coach Lee is making his opening remarks to the team by the time I finish my laps, sweat pouring down my face and pooling between my skin and the shirt I’m wearing beneath my jersey and pads. I squeeze in next to Grey, trying to wipe the sour look from my face, and whisper, “What’s up?”
“Scrimmage.”
Oh. Shit. My heart bottoms out when I realize that those routes I worked on this morning are plays I might actually have to pull off in a game simulation.
On my first day. After everyone else has been practicing for two weeks, plus, you know, most of their lives.
Meanwhile, I’m a quarterback who knows ten of the plays and has never taken a snap.
I suddenly realize Grey’s not dressed out in his full uniform. Gone are this morning’s pads, tights, and helmet. Replaced with an undershirt, red jersey, and the same basketball shorts from yesterday. Plus, the sunglasses are back.
“You’re not going to practice?”
Grey shakes his head, watching Coach Lee, who is rattling off numbers. “Nope. Can’t get hit.”
“But you’re wearing red—doesn’t that keep you from getting tackled?”
The Clark Gable angles to his face go all nightly newsman serious. “I want to be out there more than anything, Liv, but this is football. You get hit. The red’s not a force field, it’s a suggestion.”
A suggestion.
As I’m processing that, Coach Lee calls my number. Thirteen. And I realize he’s been separating us all into teams the whole time. One of which I’m the quarterback for—A team for Brady, B team for me. Nothing but sidelines for Grey.
Great.
My parents are going to kill me. Kill me dead. If not for playing football, then for the position I’m in right now with a guy nicknamed “Topps.”
I don’t know Topps’s actual first name. I don’t know his last name. But for the eighth time in so many minutes, my hands are hovering near the rear-end seam of his pants.
Like, right underneath his junk.
Big, bulgy, manly junk.
I have a feeling this is making him uncomfortable, too, because every time he’s been upright in between plays, his cheeks have turned rosy red above his meandering dark beard.
But embarrassment won’t save him, just like it won’t save me when my parents see where my hands have been.
But first: Orange Nine.
I scream the play twice and huddle in as close to Topps as possible, waiting for the ball to hit my fingertips. The second it makes contact, I’ve got my eyes up and my feet are going back. The feeling isn’t a whole lot different from making a catch and slinging it back to first for the out. Except that now I’ve got a wall of boys in front of me, and the “base” is a moving target. In this case, number eighty, streaking in a right-to-left pattern about five yards from the line.
It doesn’t take much to spot him—thank God I’m not two inches shorter—and as my arm goes back, I see a huge body rumbling in from the left. I release the ball right before he gets to me, slowing just enough not to totally tackle me. But it’s still hard to stop two hundred pounds on a dime, and this guy, number forty-eight, is easily that. My magical red jersey makes him veer away, yet he can’t do that fast enough either, and his chest smacks into my nonthrowing shoulder, setting me on spin cycle on my way to the turf.
Again.
Clearly our offensive line needs to do a better job, because they’re getting beat. Every. Single. Time. If not by number forty-eight, then by the dude on the other side, number fifty. If my reflexes were any worse, I’d be in traction already—much to Kelly’s amusement.
I r
oll onto my back and pop up to my feet, realizing only too late that there’s a hand extended my way, ready to help. It’s attached to number forty-eight, whose name I don’t know. High school jerseys don’t have names like they do in the pros.
“Sorry,” he says. Beyond his face mask, there isn’t a smile, just a wary look of trepidation.
I dust my hands off. “No problem.” As he starts to stalk off, I shout, “Hey, wait! What’s your name?”
He turns around and extends his hand again. It’s calloused and heavy. “Nick Cleary.”
I can’t help it—I start reading his face. Baby-blue eyes. Rusty stubble. Very much a steak-and-potatoes Prince Harry.
Crap.
His identity registers in my eyes before I can stop it, and he smiles at what he sees there. “Don’t worry, Rodinsky, I’m not going to drill you into the dirt. I have much more restraint than my sister.”
“Lucky me.”
He doesn’t answer, just jogs back into formation.
Which means I need to do that, too.
Next: White Ten.
It’s a ten-yard shot straight downfield to either tight end.
I yell the play twice, pause for a second next to Topps’s back end, and then shoot back into the pocket. My target tight ends are tangled up by defenders and are slow to extract themselves and make it to their spots. Out of the corner of my eye, Nick is rounding in an arc toward me. On the other side, my throwing side, number fifty is already free of his defender and hotfooting it my way.
I have to get rid of the ball. I know it. But I don’t want to throw it away. I want to prove I can stay calm and make the play.
My feet start moving toward the right-hand line, eyes high over the complete chaos in the middle. I plant my back foot and bring my arm back to throw, but something both hard and soft hooks me across the bare patch of neck below where my helmet ends and my jersey begins.
Down I go, face-first into the turf. If the landing knocks the wind straight out of my lungs, what comes next ensures I won’t be getting any of that wind sucked back in for at least thirty straight seconds. Number fifty falls flat on top of me.
Throw Like a Girl Page 5
