Chapter 2
2
Francesca Lim was good at wiggling her way into things. Remaining somewhat of an unexpected choice, using shy smiles and her quiet nature to remain unassuming until she was able to snap something up. This had been the case her entire life. With romantic relationships, with convincing grumpy ladies at the DMV to bend the rules for her, and with work too.
She hadn’t even known about the weekly poker game at Coach Landry’s house until two days ago. Her only real friend at work—as in someone she willingly hung out with outside the walls of Greenbelt Senior High—was Jeremy Bell. He was a tall, lanky white man who coached soccer—probably the least well-regarded sport in the entire school. As head coach, he apparently had a set place at the table, but he’d kept it a secret from her—that is, until they’d gotten drunk at the bar the other night and he’d started lamenting about how he wasn’t going to attend anymore because he was tired of the other guys making fun of him.
Francesca felt for him—kind of. But he was one of the mayor’s nephews and his wife was sexy as hell, so she felt confident that he’d fare just fine. Much less drunk than he was and sensing an in, she’d managed to worm her way into an invitation on the grounds that she was, one, really fucking great at poker, and two, trying to “make more connections in Greenbelt.”
She’d been teaching art at Greenbelt Senior High for two years, and for roughly twenty-two months of that time, Franny’d had her eye on her own personal pie in the sky. Assistant coach—offensive line first, then head coach second, when the time came. There were only so many positions to fill, and since she’d been there, no one had left.
A couple of weeks ago, she’d been in Minnie’s Diner standing in the line behind the hostess stand, waiting to order a burger and fries to go. In front of her were two assistant football coaches, ones who coached but didn’t work at the school full-time. She didn’t know their names, but there was a bald one and a redheaded one. She was there, minding her business, when she saw Baldy look around conspiratorially, trying to make sure no one was listening. Immediately, she knew whatever he had to say would be juicy. So the second he shot her a look and saw that she had little earbuds in, she tapped them twice to pause her music.
“I think Landry’s got his eye on Dunn for his spot when the season’s over,” Baldy said about the team’s head coach and her favorite math teacher to fluster.
“How do you figure?” Red questioned.
“Just a feeling. Pretty sure he’s been eyeing her for a while, probably since she started.”
“Hmmm.” Red seemed to be the contemplative sort. “I figure she’s the only one worth mentoring. I’m not saying the rest of us aren’t good in our own right, but we’re all too old for that shit.”
“You’re not thinking of throwing your hat in the ring?” Baldy asked.
“And drive my ass into an early grave worrying about Greenbelt’s legacy?” Red shook his head. “I want us to win as much as anybody else on that team, but I’ve got five years until I retire and me and Suzie can roast our pale asses on a beach down in Florida. I love this sport, but being head coach is just asking for a heart attack.”
Whatever response Baldy had was interrupted when the hostess came to take them to a table. Suddenly, Franny found herself out of earshot, still reeling from the information she’d been inadvertently given.
Coach Landry was stepping down as head coach at the end of the season, and Jade Dunn seemed to be his number one replacement prospect. Seemed being the operative word. There was still time for Franny to do what she did best and wiggle her way in there. Into an assistant coaching job if she could get it, but head coach if she somehow found herself overrun with luck. Either way, the door was open, even if it hadn’t been opened for her specifically.
She sure as hell wasn’t about to let it close on her.
So here she was having to scheme. She might have been ashamed if she didn’t believe she had plenty to benefit the team. It wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve the job. To be fair, going about it the old-fashioned way wouldn’t have worked for her anyway. She wasn’t an old-fashioned girl. Not in the way she coached, and not according to who she was.
When she’d found out Jade Dunn was an assistant football coach, Franny had nearly coughed up a lung. She was from Houston, and in Texas, where football was only one step under God—officially—the same misogyny that ran rampant in the church was just as prevalent on the football field. She’d met two other women high school football coaches in the entire state, of which there were still only a handful. And of those, none of them were Asian women. To be fair, though, a few of them were lesbians, so there was that.
Before she’d left home, she’d coached an Amateur Athletic Union football team, and she’d clawed her way into that position too. Aside from her parents, that job had been the hardest thing for her to say goodbye to. But she’d done it willingly because she was nothing if not a fool for love. Even the scant, flighty promise of love apparently. She’d left her dream job and all its promise of advancement behind for a woman and had come up short, with very little to show for it. Now that she knew there was opportunity, Franny wasn’t afraid to sharpen her nails and get those claws back out to make something for herself on this team.
She wasn’t afraid of the guys. That required its own strategy. One that was definitely a delicate balance, but one she knew well enough how to handle. It was Ms. Dunn who had the ability to throw a rusty wrench in her plans.
Franny hoped like hell that there could be room for them both on the team. She wasn’t interested in taking someone else’s job, especially when she knew they’d fought for it. She only wanted a spot of her own. And Dunn already hated her. Every time they passed each other in the hall or so much as caught eyes, Dunn would give Franny a look so withering she felt it zing her nipples.
From what she’d seen, Ms. Dunn wasn’t the warmest in general, but damn did she hate Franny. Which made very little sense, because Franny had never so much as sniffed wrong in her direction.
Whatever.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Dunn could hate her all she wanted, so long as she didn’t try to sabotage her. Anyway, as far as she knew, Dunn didn’t have the same invitation Franny now held. If she played her cards right, she could get her in before Dunn ever even discovered she was looking for one.
Now it was Thursday night, and Franny was standing behind Jeremy on the porch of Coach Landry’s Craftsman-style home.
“What am I even supposed to tell them?” Jeremy whined. He’d been trying to convince her not to come all day. “You’re not supposed to be here, Fran, because my silly ass wasn’t supposed to get drunk and tell you about it.”
“I’ll do the talking.” Franny patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Trust me.”
The surprise on Coach Landry’s face when he came to the door was almost comical.
“Hi there,” Franny greeted him with a grin before he could speak.
His gaze immediately turned to Jeremy, expression accusatory.
“It’s not his fault,” she asserted. “I got him drunk and squeezed it out of him. He’s just a sweet boy. He had no chance of keeping me away.”
Jeremy, to his credit, made himself look significantly more pathetic. “Sorry, Coach, she reminds me of my big sister. I had flashbacks of being hit over the head with a Tonka truck if I disagreed.”
Franny tapped her toe against his heel. She wasn’t that much of a bully. She’d planned to return him safely and unharmed to his wife whether he’d coughed up the info or not.
Coach Landry sighed from the very depths of his soul before he pursed his lips and stepped aside. Then, after shutting the door behind them and with one last put-out look at Jeremy, Landry led them down to the basement.
It looked every bit like what Franny had pictured. Gray speckled carpet and off-beige walls. A pool table to one side, a giant sectional in the middle facing a huge, mounted television. And to the other side, a round table with four men seated at it, along with… Jade Dunn.
Her surprise at seeing the woman made her stop dead in her tracks, causing Jeremy to stumble into her from behind.
“Sorry,” he muttered, moving around her to take his seat at the table.
When she, Coach Landry, and Jeremy were finally seated, the number of players rounded out to eight. She hadn’t counted on the other woman being there. Franny sat across from Ms. Dunn, her brain whirling as she was immediately forced to reevaluate and change her plans for the evening.
“Looks like we’ve got a lot of new blood in here tonight,” said Cody Ross, the head baseball coach with a baby face. He was a little younger than she was, but not by much.
To his left, the track-and-field head, an older Black man named Charles Byrd, laughed. “Don’t matter how much new blood is in here, Ross, I’m still coming for that scratch, just like always.”
Ross blushed, and even Jeremy laughed.
“I’m thinking not a single one of you is going to be left with so much as a penny by the time I walk out of here tonight,” Franny said matter-of-factly. She figured her best way in was to be bold. She wasn’t going to impress anybody by pretending she was timid. She was going to make them laugh their way into accepting her.
The men howled. Coach Landry even slapped his knee under the table. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
Across the table, she watched Ms. Dunn quietly seethe, not a single peep escaping from those full, glossy lips of hers.
There’d been a fifty-dollar buy-in for the game, and after Landry dispersed their individual chips, the rest were separated and placed on the right side of the table in neat little stacks.
“The game is Texas Hold’em. I’ll start with the first deal.” He laid a white chip on the table in front of him. “We’ll be doing a twenty-five-cent and fifty-cent no-limit game. Jeremy, you’ve got the small blind to start. Ross, you’ve got the big bet.”
After both men threw their respective chips in, Landry dealt cards for the entire table. Franny bent her cards up to take a peek. Eight of hearts and three of diamonds. An off suit. There was nothing she could do with this. But she looked over and watched Ms. Dunn scrutinize her own cards, trying to decipher the look on her face.
“I’ll call.” Byrd threw a fifty-cent chip onto the table, matching the big bet Ross had made.
Franny was next, which meant she needed to make a decision quickly. Her hand was pure trash, but that didn’t mean everyone else’s was good. Her options were limited. She could either follow Byrd’s lead and match the current bet, or she could put on a big show and raise the bet in an attempt to cover her bluff. Or she could fold. Throw her shitty cards into the pile and give in before the game even really started.
But she wasn’t going to start off by bowing out. If she was going to lose, she was going to do it in style.
“I’ll call too,” she said, making extra effort not to meet eyes with any of the other players.
Dunn was the second to last to go, right before it circled back around to Landry. The woman had a sweet voice that Franny had always felt was incongruous to her outward demeanor. It was soft and airy. Honestly, it sounded like something out of a Barbie cartoon. It didn’t seem to matter how much the woman tried to clear her throat to deepen it, it was never anything less than cute as hell.
“I’ll raise fifty cents.” She tossed a one-dollar chip into the pile, then sat back in her chair with her shoulders squared and an unreadable look on her face. To Franny, it didn’t immediately read as smug, but she didn’t know Ms. Dunn well enough to decipher what it actually was.
Maybe she needed to do some studying.
Ugh. No.
Franny rolled her shoulders, the nervousness in her stomach mixing with something else that made her feel hot around the collar of her T-shirt. She tugged at it briefly, steeling herself for the flop round after Landry also threw a one-dollar chip into the pot.
Landry dealt the three community cards, and everyone was given the chance to bet or fold. Again, no one folded. The game continued in kind. Round after round, cards were dealt, bets were made. Little by little, everyone started to sweat.
Franny made work not only of studying her own hand and strategy but of the other players as well, trying to spot their weaknesses and tells.
Jeremy was easy. She knew him well enough to know that while the sweat beaded at his temples wasn’t necessarily out of the norm, the way he rubbed his index and middle fingers together like cricket legs was.
Lionel Price, the head basketball coach, had a knack for cracking his neck right before he folded.
None of them were professionals, not at playing poker and certainly not at hiding their tells. And Franny was too observant to miss them. The only one she couldn’t nail down was Dunn. The woman was stone-faced the entire time. She never looked smug, she never looked disappointed, she never even looked thoughtful. The woman could have had the worst hand at the table or the best, and none of them would have had a clue.
It made Franny steam in her seat. Each round, the fire in her belly was stoked as Dunn sat there, calm as you please.
Finally, after an hour of play, they took a short break. Landry went upstairs to check on the next round of appetizers, Ross and Price went outside to smoke a cigarette, and the other guys dispersed to chat about who knew what.
Franny spotted Dunn by herself at the snack table, putting a couple of mini sausages on a paper plate. Her guard was down, and Franny took the chance to strike. If she couldn’t get a read on the woman from the outside, maybe she could wiggle her way into her head.
Dunn took a sip from her red party cup, baring her neck so much that Franny couldn’t help but eye it. Slender and long, with smooth skin and a subtle scent that was entirely too heady for a basement poker game, she had to blink a few times to clear her mind.
“Good game,” Franny said, biting into a strawberry from the fresh fruit tray on the table.
The second Ms. Dunn’s eyes met hers, they narrowed. Oval-shaped, with dark eyelashes, her irises a light brown color. Not as light as butterscotch, but light enough that parts of them almost looked golden in certain lights.
“You too.” Dunn sniffed shortly. “Even if you do have an awful hand.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Ms. Dunn shrugged. “I can tell.”
Franny scoffed.
“I’m serious.” The other woman laughed. “You make it very obvious, you know.”
No, Franny certainly did not know. She’d put a metric ton of her energy into trying to remain as impassive as possible. She kept her leg from bouncing, her eye from twitching. Hell, she even made sure she didn’t mess with her hair or face too much.
“What’s so obvious about it?” she asked.
“Now why would I tell you that? It’ll take all the fun out of demolishing your ass.”
Franny leaned in, trying to put something of a sneer on her face. “You wish you could demolish my ass, Dunn.”
The look on the other woman’s face nearly made Franny trip over her own feet while standing still. Her eyes went comically wide, and her mouth dropped open. She looked like one of those singing fish nailed to wooden planks.
Dunn’s eyes narrowed even more until they were basically slits on her face. Her lips curled back, revealing teeth. Franny supposed she was trying to make herself look intimidating. But the woman was shorter than she was and so soft-looking that Franny had to hold herself back from reaching out to stroke her cheek.
Which… no… absolutely not.
“Stop fucking with me, Lim,” she said, pointing a finger at Franny. “I mean it. I don’t know why you’re here or what you’re doing, but watch it.”
“I’m coming for your job.” It was a bold-faced lie, but damn did she love getting a reaction out of Ms. Dunn.
It was so damn easy too. Her soft-looking brown cheeks went a purply-red color, and Franny could practically see the steam pushing its way out her ears.
“I will eat you alive,” Dunn said.
Landry appeared at the bottom of the stairs, clapping once to get the attention of everyone in the room, letting them know that the intermission was over.
It was time to get back to work.
Franny leaned in close to Dunn, their faces side by side. This close, she could see the dark little moles Dunn had around her sideburns. She could smell her better too. That dark, intense scent that Franny didn’t think could be attributed only to perfume. So much better than the smell of cigars and corn chips in the basement that she took a split second to breathe it in.
“There’s no way you actually believe I’d take that as a threat.”
She was back in her seat before Dunn could even register what she’d said, but that didn’t mean Franny missed the way Dunn seemed to choke on her own tongue at the words. A little thrill went through Franny at the thought that she could get under her skin like that. This was going to be fun.
Landry flagged Franny down during the postgame. He beckoned her over to a corner of the basement, and she worked hard not to view the gesture as displeased.
“Why are you really at my poker night, Ms. Lim?” The man had no time for pleasantries, it seemed.
She stammered a bit, floundering hopelessly on what to tell him. The truth didn’t seem like a sufficient option—until she happened to glance over her shoulder. Dunn was right there behind her, not five feet away, resting her butt against the arm of the couch. Her head was down as she typed away on her phone, but Franny was close enough to see that she seemed to be randomly typing numbers into her calculator app. It was such a blatant attempt at eavesdropping that Franny—despite having begrudging respect for the action—simply could not abide it.
Dunn was afraid that Franny was after her job. That much had been made clear during their moment at the snack table. In an instant, telling Landry the truth felt like the perfect option.
“Honestly, Coach Landry, I’m here looking for a job. Some little birdies told me that poker night is where shit actually happens, so I figured I should be here.”
“A job?” His blond brows furrowed. “You want a job on my team? Doing what?”
“Coaching.”
There was a shuffling noise, followed by a thud. Jade Dunn had dropped her phone on the ground.
Landry let out a loud bark. “Jesus Christ. How in the hell did you hear about that?”
She didn’t want to out herself as a nosy busybody in what was essentially a job interview, so she ignored the question. “I’m serious.”
“Oh, I know you are.”
“So, I can keep coming to poker night, then?”
He shook his head, mirth written all over his reddened face. “Good luck is all I can say to you, Ms. Lim. Good luck.”
She took that as a yes.