When Jordan finally made his way into the locker room to stand in the center, I found my usual corner, trying to all but disappear and just observe.
He wore a permanent frown that day, his eyebrows folding so low I wasn’t sure he could see at all. The quietness somehow silenced altogether when he stood in the center of the room, as if everyone were afraid that even a sneaker squeak would set him off like a ton of missiles.
I expected him to roar and growl and put the fear of God into those boys. At the very least, I expected an epic pep talk like the one he’d given the first day we’d all walked into this place. Instead, he looked at his clipboard, flipping through pages with all eyes on him for what felt like an eternity before he lifted his gaze and said three simple words.
“On the field.”
Immediately, there was a shuffle of cleats and pads and heads hung as the boys made their way outside. And I learned that afternoon what all of them already knew.
If coach was quiet, there would be pain.
Suicides. Burpees. Bear crawls. Gut busters. Snakes.
Every football player’s most-hated drill was called on that day, and I watched from the sidelines with a grimace as those boys sweated and screamed and cried and fell and threw up and still, every time, they got up and got back to work.
Not a single one complained.
Not a single one asked to stop.
Jordan didn’t say another word after those first three in the locker room. The other coaches led the torture, with Jordan on the sideline watching like a king over his subjects. When more than two hours had passed, he found my gaze on the sideline, and he must have seen the worry etched in my features because he finally blew the whistle that signaled the persecution to stop.
I breathed out a silent sigh of relief along with the boys, who all hit the ground in sync, panting and groaning and catching their breaths. Jordan didn’t say another word before he was heading back toward the locker room, and slowly, the rest of the coaches and players did the same, shuffling in with their helmets in hand and their heads held a little higher than they had been on the way out.
When we were all settled in the locker room, I checked in with each group of boys, making sure no one needed me before I found my corner again. Jordan seemed a little less tense, but not enough to make anyone in that room feel safe yet.
“We don’t get time to rest in football,” he said after a while, looking around at each player. “We don’t get time to recover from a loss or come down from the high of a win. Because in four short days, we’ll play our next opponent, and we have to be ready.”
He paused, rolling his lips together.
“I’m not angry with your performance on Friday,” he started. “I’m disappointed with the attitude you all had when you walked onto that field. You thought it would be easy. You thought that win was yours, like you’d already earned it before you’d even laced up your cleats. The Raptors?” He tongued his cheek. “They went out there ready to fight for that win, and they did, and they got it. And you know what else? They deserved it.”
A few boys shook their head, and I wasn’t sure if they were disagreeing with Coach, or if they were feeling the same disappointment he was.
“Regardless of how sore you are tomorrow, we have a lot of work to do, anyway,” Jordan said quietly. “Regardless of how poorly or how well you feel like you played Friday night, we have to start all over tomorrow, anyway. And regardless of how entitled you may think you are to another championship, we have to fight like we’ve never had one, anyway. Because that’s how this game goes. No one is promised a damn thing, and whoever is the hungriest takes the W. Understand?”
Nods across the room.
Jordan sniffed, looking around at his team. “We may be disappointed, but what are we going to do on Friday?”
At first, there was no answer, but then the kicker gently said, “We’re going to win, anyway.”
Jordan nodded, and then he said, “We may be embarrassed, but what are we going to do on Friday?”
“We’re going to win, anyway,” a few more players chimed in.
The energy started as a buzz, a soft flap of bee wings, and with every new question Jordan threw at them, it grew into a thunderous roar.
“We may be beat down!”
“We’re going to win, anyway!”
Jordan stood, circling the room as his voice rose. “We may have a thousand eyes on us, waiting for us to fail!”
“We’re going to win, anyway!”
“We may have an opponent ready to gobble us up and spit us out and show us we ain’t shit!”
“We’re going to win, anyway!”
Jordan started beating a rhythm on his chest, and the boys joined in, until it was a room of bodily percussion and a hum of energy so strong I felt it in my core.
“Tomorrow, we turn it around. Tomorrow, we get back to work.” Jordan pointed his quarterback and team captain directly in the chest. “Tomorrow, we fight.”
A roar of cheers, every player on their feet, and then in a circle where they chanted something I couldn’t quite make out. When they threw their hands up in the air, Coach called practice, and every single player walked out of that locker room a completely different kid than when they had walked in.
I couldn’t hide my appreciation.
“Sydney,” Jordan said as he walked past me with his eyes on his clipboard. “A word in my office?”
He’d posed it as a question, but I knew it wasn’t a request at all. There was something deep and demanding in that voice, in the way he said my name. I followed him without a verbal response.
My heart raced more with every step, neck heating as I prepared all my defenses for the lashing I was sure I was about to receive. If he tried to blame that loss on me again, I had a full list of errors to throw back at him.
Mostly thanks to my daughter.
When I stepped into his office, Jordan closed the door behind us, leaving his eyes on his clipboard as he motioned for me to take a seat in the chair in front of his desk.
I swallowed, doing as he asked, and once he was seated on the other side, he abandoned his clipboard on the desk and folded his hands together, his raging eyes somehow peaceful when they found me.
“I owe you an apology.”
The breath I’d been holding blew out in a sharp exhale, my defenses easing, heart calming. Jordan watched me with a wrinkle between his brows, his jaw set.
I didn’t say a word.
“I don’t get riled up over much,” he started. “If you ask anyone in my family, anyone on this team, they’d tell you that. I am generally calm, but when it comes to football, I’ll admit that I tend to lose my good senses.”
Still, I stayed quiet.
“You did nothing wrong on Friday night.”
I couldn’t help but scoff at that, because obviously.
Jordan smirked. “I know you already know that, but I couldn’t see clearly until later that night. All I could see in that moment was our loss, and I felt the pressure of the entire town’s weight on my shoulders, and I am ashamed to say I crumbled beneath it.”
My own shoulders softened at that, and I opened my mouth to speak but he beat me to it.
“I’m sorry for blowing up on you, for questioning your decision and trying to assert authority in a space where I hold none. This is your area of specialty, and that’s why we hired you. If I ever question your decisions again, feel free to kick my ass, and I know you probably could.”
I laughed out loud at that, relaxing.
Jordan smiled, too. “Seriously, Sydney. I’m sorry. Not just for that night, but for my general attitude since you walked through those doors. You’ve done nothing but prove yourself, and still I have this urge to… protect you, or stick up for you.”
A completely new heat crept up my neck at that, and I felt it tinge my cheeks, rendering me speechless once again.
“Which is stupid, I realize,” he continued, holding up his hands. “But, I think it�
�s part of how I was raised, and just part of who I am, in general. Regardless, I’ve made an ass of myself, and I was hoping we could start over. Call a truce.”
I smirked. “I didn’t realize we were at war.”
“Well, this is me throwing the white flag, anyway.”
A silence fell between us, and I sat forward, finding his gaze. “Thank you for apologizing. I think it takes a great man to do so in situations like this. And, if I’m being honest and fair, you were right.”
His left eyebrow shot up at that. “I was?”
“Not about everything,” I clarified. “I did my job, and there was no way for me or you or anyone to know that Parker was faking it, but… he was. And I couldn’t see past his façade. I still think I would have done everything the same, but now that I know what these boys are capable of?” I smiled sheepishly. “Let’s just say I won’t be so easily fooled next time.”
Jordan chuckled. “They are nothing if not a handful. Still,” he continued. “I wasn’t right. You were right. Yes, I know these boys, but regardless, you did exactly what you were supposed to do. We can’t take injuries lightly, and I needed you to remind me of that. Parker took responsibility for his part, and he paid for it today on the field, but in the end, you did the right thing. So, don’t consider yourself as easily fooled. Consider yourself as a professional trainer who I’m glad to have on my team, and thankful you put me in my place.”
We shared a smile, and with that white flag waving between us, the truce was signed.
I stood, taking that smile as my cue that our conversation was over and I needed to wrap up work, but before I could take a step, he spoke again.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, standing with me. “About Paige. And… if you’d be open to it… maybe I could work with her. Teach her a few things, so that when she walks into summer camp next year, she’ll be prepared.”
My heart swelled and then fell into the pit of my stomach so fast that I was confused as to whether I thought that was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard, or the most terrifying.
“I’m trying to turn her off from football,” I reminded him with a smile I hoped seemed casual and non-affected, crossing my arms. “Not provide her with a personal coach and source of encouragement.”
“It’s your call,” he said with a shrug, sliding his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “But, one thing I’ve figured out with kids like her? Once they decide something and set their mind to it, there’s no stopping them.”
My smile slipped, lips pressing together as worry flittered through me like the wings of a thousand birds.
“You can either fight her on it, or you can embrace her dream and support it. Whether it hurts her or not, I can tell you just from hearing her talk on Saturday that she’s not giving up on football — no matter how much you may wish she would.”
I bit my lip, and Jordan rounded the desk as soon as he saw the anxiety I could no longer hide. His strong hand reached out, touching my elbow and holding it as he offered me a smile.
“No pressure, okay? Just think about it.”
His thumb rubbed my forearm where he held me, and I looked down, marveling at the tenderness concealed in those calloused hands before he pulled away.
He swallowed when I looked up at him, and the energy shifted in the same way it had Friday night. But before I could latch onto it to dissect it, he stepped back, picking up his clipboard and effectively dismissing me.
“See you tomorrow,” he said.
And I walked in a daze back to my office with every warning bell in my system ringing in sync.
Sydney
The week flew by in a cyclone of work and practice and evenings spent with Paige. I didn’t even mind meeting up with Randy on Wednesday to swap, because all my energy and emotions were tied up in the team and the upcoming away game against the North Valley Hornets.
Monday’s practice and talk from coach had changed everything, throwing the team into a new orbit that I couldn’t help but marvel at. Every single player was fired up and ready to work when we met back in that locker room on Tuesday, and all week long, I watched with timid fascination as they somehow worked twice as hard as they had the first week and a half that I’d watched them before our first game.
Something had clicked, and no one was messing around anymore.
Of course, with harder work came more injuries.
I found myself busier and busier with each passing practice, and I had my eyes on almost every player for something or another. There were ice baths and compression boot treatments and soft tissue sessions and all the while, I was urging the players to rest as much as they could, knowing they wouldn’t for a single second. I’d given out so many ice packs that our ice machine couldn’t even keep up, and I had to run to the store to grab as many twenty-pound bags as our local grocery store had on hand.
So, when we loaded up on the bus to head to the game Friday night, I felt just as fired up and determined as the players and coaches did.
I sat in the front seat behind the driver, smiling to myself as I listened to the players talk about girls and cars and sports and video games and all the things that made high school boys tick. I smiled because I could easily remember a time when my worries had been as simple, too, and part of me yearned for that innocence.
Once everyone was accounted for and coach gave his speech, reminding the boys that we still had a game to play and they needed to be focused for our short, thirty-minute bus ride, we were off.
TK and Coach Pascucci sat together in the front seat opposite mine, already huddling over their clipboards and murmuring softly about plays, so Jordan took the open seat next to me. He let out a breath as we pulled out of the school’s parking lot, dropping his clipboard between us and rubbing his eyes.
“Nervous?” I asked with a smile.
“More like exhausted,” he said. “Is this what parenting feels like? Because if it is, I’m thankful I never went down that road.”
I full-on laughed at that. “Oh, this is nothing compared to being a parent. Trust me.”
“How do you handle it?”
I shrugged. “Yoga, gardening, running — anything where I can be alone with my thoughts and relieve stress. And I try to keep as much of myself present so that I don’t lose who I was before I became a mother, if that makes sense. It’s a big reason why I was excited to get back to work.”
Jordan nodded. “Why didn’t you work before?” Immediately, he paled. “I’m sorry if that was rude to ask. I just mean… did you want to wait until Paige was a certain age before you worked, or…?”
I attempted a smile, though my insides were on fire now with flashes of Randy striking like lightning in my veins.
“It wasn’t exactly my choice not to work,” I said, carefully.
Jordan’s expression hardened, the gold around his irises catching the rays of sun as they filtered in the bus windows through the trees we passed.
Everything inside me begged him not to press, and without a word exchanged, he seemed to understand.
“Yoga, huh?” he asked instead, crossing his ankle over the opposite knee. He was dressed in black athletic slacks and a red polo with STRATFORD FOOTBALL embroidered on the pocket. The sleeves of it hugged his biceps, the hem of it tucked into the band of his pants where a belt was fastened.
He looked professional and somehow dangerous, too.
“Yep,” I answered, nudging him. “Not as fun as running in the mud, I’d wager, but it’s my own brand of release.”
“I’ve never tried it,” he confessed, popping a piece of gum into his mouth. I’d learned it was his game ritual, to chew gum, and I wondered if it helped him keep from blowing his top. He offered me a piece, too, but I declined. “Maybe we could do it with the guys during a Thursday practice sometime, if you’d be willing to lead us,” he suggested. “Lord knows we could all learn to relax a little more.”
“Maybe,” I agreed with a smile, and then I turned to look out the window, because e
motions I worked hard to keep down were bubbling up like a spring.
Jordan left me to gaze and think, pulling his iPad out and leaning over the aisle to talk to the coaches while I watched our little town disappear and fields of nothing take its place.
I loved the country.
Occasionally, we’d pass a house or a barn or a little fruit stand, but for the most part, there wasn’t much between us and North Valley, and I surrendered to the solemn depths of my mind as we drove. Because it hit me in that very moment with Jordan’s question that I was finally here, I was finally on the other side of the hell I’d endured, standing on my own two feet.
I was working.
I was taking care of my daughter.
I was remembering who I was.
I was living.
And, for the life of me, I couldn’t decide why that made me want to scream in joy as much as it made me want to cry.
Thankfully, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. As soon as we pulled up at North Valley’s field, that same energy I’d felt in practice all week swept over us like a strong summer wind, and we got down to business.
There was something about Friday night football in Tennessee, an energy unlike any other in the entire world.
It was almost impossible to explain it to anyone who hadn’t experienced it themselves, that cocktail of anticipation and excitement with a twist of anxiety. The passion for these teams ran deep in the blood of not just the students, but the entire town. There were painted faces and giant handmade signs and whistles and cowbells and synchronized cheers.
When it was game time, nothing else mattered.
Not for any of us.
I scanned the stands for my daughter, and when I found her sitting next to Randy with her wide eyes scanning our players as they warmed up, I smiled. She was pointing to each one of them and rambling on and on to her father — likely about who she thought should play, what their stats were, what part they played in last week’s loss, and what they would need to do to turn it around.
Randy nodded and listened, but I didn’t miss how much his eyes watched me instead of the players.
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