Chapter Two Cash
Chapter Two
Cash
“Where the fuck did you learn to run a post like that?” I asked Danny Chambers, the Wildcats’ starting receiver, as we headed back to the locker room after an hour of throw-and-catch after weight training.
“Lots of years moving from town to town learning new systems and trying to fit in.” His quiet response spoke volumes. He grabbed a towel from the stack at the end of the bench and headed over to his locker to strip out of his workout gear.
“You a transfer too?” I asked as I dropped my shorts and slung a towel around my shoulders on my way to the showers.
“Walk-on.”
At that revelation I stopped dead in my tracks. Though I tried, I couldn’t keep the incredulity from my voice. “You run routes like you could be playing on Sundays and you’re a walk-on?”
Danny chuckled as he flipped on the water and stepped under the spray. “I grew up a military brat. We didn’t stay in one place long enough for me to amass scholarship-caliber stats. So I gave Uncle Sam four years of my life in return for college money and walked on to the ’Cats this past fall.”
“Holy shit! You took four years off from the game and still play like that? Damn, son. What are you doing at an FCS school? With what you showed me out on the practice field just now, you could have walked on anywhere.” I lathered up my sweaty head and stuck it under the spray to rinse off.
“Didn’t want to play anywhere else.”
I blinked at him, and he grinned.
“My girl goes to school here. Stood to reason I would too.” He faced the spray and glanced over his shoulder. “And that route-running combined with my mad skills at blocking earned me a scholarship starting this semester.”
I shut off the shower and grabbed my towel. After a minute, I cleared my throat to ask what I truly wanted to know. “Why did you follow me out onto the practice field after weight training?”
Wrapping his towel around his waist, he headed back into the locker room.
“I know how it feels to be the new guy who’s got some game.
You intimidate the hell out of the other players because you have the potential to upset the status quo.
” He dragged a T-shirt over his torso. “Actually, after catching passes with you for the past hour, it’s pretty obvious to me you’re going to upset the status quo.
” He stepped into his jeans. “While the competition you bring is good for the overall goals of the team, it’s pretty threatening to certain players. ”
Sitting on the bench, I pulled on my socks and asked, “Since I’m an obvious threat, aren’t you worried you might piss Patterson off by tossing balls with me?
Or were you scouting for him?” I wasn’t upset by the idea, only curious.
If I were the starting QB, I might ask my best receiver to check out the competition’s skill set too.
“Neither. I just know how it feels to be the new guy—and I play the long game.” He tossed his workout clothes into his duffel.
“Patty’s eligibility is done after this season.
You’re eligible this season and next. After watching you with Patty and Call in the weight room, I think you’ll be the guy to replace Patty after he graduates and LeSean bails.
So I want reps with you. Simple as that. ”
“You don’t think Patterson will take issue with that?” I asked as I zipped up my duffel and pulled a hoodie over my head.
“Patty likes to win. Withholding passes to prove some point about who’s the man won’t help us win. Plus, I don’t get the idea Patty sees you as a threat—not yet anyway. Watching you toss balls on film is one thing. In person is something else entirely.” He shouldered his duffel. “You hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“I’ll drive.”
I left my duffel in the back seat of my old Jeep and hopped into the passenger side of Danny’s vintage Mustang.
“Damn, son. This is one sweet ride,” I said as I glanced around at the immaculate leather interior.
He grinned. “It’s the one thing I owned before I started classes at Mountain State.”
After a short drive through the main campus and halfway down a side street behind the dorms, he parked in the back of a whitewashed brick building. When I raised my brows in question, he said, “My girl should be getting off her shift any minute. I promised her lunch.”
“Hey, I don’t want to intrude—”
“I invited you, remember? Besides, you need to know where to get good coffee, and the Coffee Kiosk is the best place near campus.”
“That wouldn’t be a biased opinion, now, would it?” I laughed as I followed him around to the front of the building.
“Nope.” His eyes danced with mischief. “Not even a little bit biased.”
The heavenly aroma of strong coffee sent my stomach into rolling knots.
Until that scent smacked my nostrils, I hadn’t paid much attention to how hungry I was.
After living with roommates for three years at my old school, eating alone for days at Mountain State had taken some of the fun out of food.
But the smell of good coffee along with the promise of company during a meal reminded me I played football and needed all the calories I could stuff in.
“Hey, T!” Danny called to a gorgeous brunette standing behind the coffee machine.
At his greeting, the woman lit up like a Roman candle, telling me she was definitely not on my radar despite the fact I’d clocked her the second we’d stepped inside the shop.
“One grasshopper steamer coming right up,” she said.
“Hey, Danny. Who’s your friend?” asked the girl behind the register.
She dragged her long, brown braid over her shoulder and started petting it, so of course I noticed her rack.
She couldn’t know I was a boob man, and her ploy was unnecessary—I’d have checked out her girls without the invitation.
Something about the way she eyed Danny, with his girlfriend standing right there, grated on me.
“This is Cash.” He stepped over to where his lady passed his drink across the counter. “Cash, Hailey,” he said with a nod at cash-register girl. “This is my girlfriend, Taryn.”
For a long minute the two of them stared at each other with heart eyes, and an unwelcome pang of longing zapped my chest. When I hurt my knee and lost my starting position on the Huskies, my girlfriend of nearly two years dumped me.
Said I was mopey and no fun anymore, which was total bullshit.
I’d treated her like the princess I thought her to be, and she’d started dating my replacement on the team two weeks after she jettisoned me.
She’d done me a favor by showing me her true colors before I did something stupid like put a ring on her finger, but sometimes the might-have-beens got to me.
Mercifully, Hailey interrupted my short trip down maudlin lane. “Do you play for the Wildcats too?” The avid gleam in her eye told me everything I needed to know about her.
“Yeah.”
“What can we get started for you, Cash?” Taryn asked.
“I’ll have an Americano. Leave some room in the top, please.”
“Coming right up!” Her genuine smile was a glaring contrast to the speculation in her coworker’s expression.
I pulled out my wallet, but Danny stopped me. “I got this,” he said as he tapped his card on the reader.
Even as Taryn slid my drink across the counter, her eyes were on Danny. “I’ll clock out and be back in a sec.”
He saluted her with his cup and a grin. From the looks of it, my teammate had it bad for this girl—something she obviously reciprocated.
“What position do you play?” Hailey asked. She sidled up beside me as I topped up my coffee with a splash of half-and-half.
“Backup QB.” Eyeing her over the rim of my cup, I couldn’t miss the way some of her interest leached out as she paused in petting the end of her braid.
“Oh.”
A blur in a red puffy coat and matching hat blew out of the back room. Taryn barely gave Danny a second to react before she was in his arms, her mouth fused to his. After about twenty minutes, she let him up for air with a breathy, “Hi.”
My first instinct was to call him out for his mush when he returned her greeting, except: one, he was the first teammate to reach out to welcome me to Mountain State, and two, that instinct was way too much about being jealous of his obviously great relationship.
Instead I sipped my coffee and waited while Hailey danced awkwardly from foot to foot beside me as she watched them.
While she was cute in a country-girl kind of way, she couldn’t have telegraphed her interest in bagging a Wildcats player more clearly if she were wearing nothing but a sandwich board reading, “Wants to bang a Wildcat, especially a starter.” Yeah, been there, done that. Didn’t keep the T-shirt.
At last Danny remembered he’d invited me to tag along. Slinging his arm over Taryn’s shoulders, he said, “Let’s grab some lunch.”
He led the way from the coffee shop, but instead of heading back to his car, we hung a left and started walking down the sidewalk.
Before I could ask, he said, “You don’t have to go far for the best coffee and the best sandwiches in town.
” He smiled at his girlfriend. “T showed me that. The Coffee Kiosk has excellent brew.”
I lifted my cup to salute Taryn. “I thought he only recommended it because his girlfriend works there, but this is good coffee.”
She grinned. “Thanks.”
“Right here you’ll find the best subs you’ve ever tasted.” He led us to the door of a tiny hole-in-the-wall that looked more like a pantry than a café. “The Pickle Barrel makes to-die-for subs—and they deliver.”
“Judging by the size of this place, they’d have to.
” I chuckled. But I wasn’t laughing a few minutes later when the three of us overwhelmed a small table in the corner beside a massive wooden barrel filled with dill pickles, and I bit into my first Pickle Barrel.
“Damn. You weren’t kidding about the food.
I think I might have died and landed in sandwich heaven. ”
“I know, right?” Danny said.
“Danny says you’re a transfer,” Taryn said. “Why Mountain State?”