Chapter 8
Eight
L eslie
Joe hadn’t answered his past few texts, and even though he knew the likelihood was low, he couldn’t help being afraid that Joe would have hired a car to take him back to the airport and back to LA. Leslie almost wouldn’t blame him.
What a clusterfuck! The athletic center had sustained significant damage and the football field was toast. The gym with its indoor track only needed repairs to the roof, but the fitness center and offices were destroyed.
There was insurance, of course, but their first game was next week. Now they’d have to find a new space .
The strategic plan for this year had been that Joe and Leslie would rally their troops, bring in spectators and interest so they could build their programs with ample resources.
Now, Leslie was going to have to tell Joe that the lucrative budget they’d been promised was mostly going to go to cover whatever insurance wouldn’t.
They’d be starting from scratch. Hell, the football field turf needed to be replaced, the bleachers had been wrecked, the scoreboard shot.
Les had a meeting with the admin at Ayre Valley High School in the morning to see if they could use their field for some games and the rest they’d have to travel to or reschedule.
No one had been hurt. He had to keep reminding himself: It could have been worse.
Barry had told him more than once how sorry he was, how much he appreciated him being there, and how hard he would work to get repairs done as quickly as possible.
But Barry wasn’t a miracle worker, and even with Leslie’s connections, they’d be lucky to have a field before the season was over.
And Barry refused to take Leslie’s money to get the ball rolling.
“You have already done so much for the school. You donated the funds for the athletic center! The field is named after you! You need to hang onto your money.”
Barry worried that Leslie was going to need all of his resources as he got older, and while Les appreciated his concern, his accountant assured him that he and his family would be taken care of…for generations.
Before the medicine pulled him under, he tried texting Joe once more. Then the phone rang, the ring tone sending sparks of pain through his head.
“I can’t text, I’m up to my elbows in Lysol.”
“Jesus, Joe.”
“And Mary,” Joe said and laughed at himself. Music blared in the background.
“Right. I wanted to make sure you ate.”
“Mmm-hmm, sure did. Matty brought me vegetarian lasagna from the Buzz. We ate and then he watched me clean while he talked about the pranks his dorm mates pulled on each other. It was a riot. ”
Leslie ran a hand down his face, but the contact stung and it hurt to even smile.
“Look at Twinkle Toes making friends. Bless your heart.”
Joe cursed under his breath and Les couldn’t hold in a laugh, which he regretted a moment later.
“Hey, you okay? You sound tired.”
“I am. It’s been a long couple of days. I’m just…dammit I wish…” He sucked in a breath at the stabbing sensation at the top of his head.
“Les? Are you okay?”
“Just a migraine. Took meds. Going to sleep but wanted to apologize.”
Joe shut off the music.
“You have nothing to apologize for. This sounds like a bad one. I wish I could do something for you.”
“It’ll pass. Just wanted to say I’m glad you’re here.”
Joe’s soft laugh reached through Les’s fog and did a lot to ease his pain.
“I’m glad too. I'm mad that I don’t have a car or I’d come take care of you.”
“Stop it,” Leslie whispered and Joe laughed softly.
“Go to sleep. I want to see for myself that you’re okay in the morning.”
“Yeah. Nite, Joe.”
“Good night, Leslie.”
Joe’s voice echoed in his thoughts until the darkness took over and he fell dead asleep.
He nearly missed his alarm the next morning. Sandy’s shower sing-along got him moving.
Sandy's room was at the other end of the upstairs and his voice carried that far.
The new medicine Leslie’s doctor prescribed for the migraines definitely helped and he didn’t feel as hung over that morning as he usually did. He even found himself humming along to the song Sandy was belting out: “Tube Snake Boogie” by ZZ Top.
Wow. Yeah, the Payton brothers were all stuck in the past when it came to music and they had their father to blame.
Rick Payton had been a football legend and his legacy was a mixed bag.
Yes, he’d blessed his four sons with athletic prowess and skill.
He’d also left them a slate of painful memories featuring addiction, violence, and loss.
Research on concussions in football came too little too late for the Paytons.
Too late for their father to get the help he needed before he passed at a young age of fifty-two, too late for their mother who had to watch her broken beloved turn into a monster, and too late to avoid a lot of the physical damage done to Leslie.
Thankfully, Sandy and Randy benefited from the findings and then made the decision to finish playing after college.
They had their sights set on making money and making a difference all while having a blast along the way.
Leslie made it downstairs by seven and found his mother cooking up a massive breakfast spread that had his mouth watering.
“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you that you don’t have to do all this? We can hire a chef.”
Agnes Payton stuck her cheek up as Leslie leaned down to kiss her.
“The same amount of times I have to tell you that I love cooking and I particularly love seeing people enjoy my food. As long as that’s happening, I will keep doing what I love.
” She patted his cheek and got back to stirring the pancake batter.
“I baked cinnamon rolls for you to take with you to the meeting. They’re already packed up in those tins,” she said, pointing with her chin.
Leslie chuckled as he wiped flour off of her forehead.
“I’m sure everyone will appreciate it.”
“Yes, and more importantly, did Joe make it in alright and when are you bringing him home for dinner?”
Randy sauntered in right then, plopped down at the counter and rested his chin on his fists.
“Yeah, Leslieeee. When are you bringing your boy-friend home?”
Les picked up an egg and went to throw it at his brother but Agnes reached over and covered his hand with hers, not even skipping a swirl in her pancake batter.
“Enough, Randy. Leslie will bring his friend and colleague over when he is ready, isn’t that right, son?”
Leslie palmed the egg and knew the satisfaction he’d have at hearing the crack against his brother’s fat head and watching the yolk ooze down his forehead would be short-lived when Agnes took that wooden spoon out of the batter and smacked him with it.
He might have been forty-five years old, but he wasn’t too old to get smacked. And most of the time he deserved it.
“How did Mr. Dancing Machine take it, moving into Higdon?” Randy’s snark had disappeared a bit. They’d all been worried Joe would walk away from the whole thing, and while the college would have survived, none of them were sure Leslie would, considering the amount of pining he’d done over the guy.
“Really good, actually. He got to cleaning immediately and kicked me out.”
Agnes smiled. “Good for him. Maybe you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Leslie’s phone rang and he groaned when he realized that Sandy had messed with his ring tone again. The dulcet tones of “All The Single Ladies” piped out of his phone and he dropped it twice as he tried to answer it and hush the song.
“Les Payton.”
And a familiar face popped up on the screen.
“Good morning, Mr. Payton, it’s Malcolm Darling from Time magazine. We had a video interview scheduled for this morning?”
Leslie pressed a fist to his forehead. “Right. Sure. Sorry, I’m a little distracted this morning.”
“That’s right, I saw that Greenvale had some damage from that big storm on Saturday. Do you need to reschedule?”
Leslie accepted a plate from his mom and went to sit on the back patio to avoid any interference from his brothers. Days after migraines, it was hard enough to focus as it was.
“I have some time this morning, and maybe we can finish up another time if you need more.”
Malcolm was a soft-spoken, serious-looking biracial guy who Leslie often had a hard time reading.
Thankfully, one-on-one, he sensed that Malcolm genuinely wanted to work closely with him.
“I appreciate that,” Malcolm said with a smile.
“This is a cover article, the main spread for the magazine, so yeah, we might need more than a few minutes.”
“Right,” Leslie said. The only reason he’d agreed to do this was the possibility that the article could help his brother Barry and Greenvale, and he’d worked with Malcolm in the past so he trusted him as much as one could trust the press. “Yeah, well, I’m happy to do what needs doing.”
“Excellent. I’m going to record this, if that’s okay?”
“Sure,” Leslie said. “And I’m going to scarf down my breakfast before I head off to a meeting, if that’s okay.”
Malcolm chuckled. “Absolutely. Can you talk a bit about your decision to leave the network for a college coaching position? And rather than a top-ranked NCAA Division One school like you’ve done previously, you left for your alma mater, Greenvale College, which is in the NAIA?”
Leslie sighed. That had been a shock to everyone but his family.
“Look, I love football, and I loved my time at UKC, but everyone who knows me knows that family is everything to me, and the opportunity to work with my brothers and be close to my mom felt like the right thing to do at this point in my life. I love the network and I loved coaching at the university, but Greenvale is a program with great growth potential where I felt I could really make a difference. With my brothers coaching with me, it’s going to be great.
We’ll bring our philosophy of the Three I’s to Yellowjackets football. ”