Chapter 5
5
So, Coach Dunn, I heard you was about to be head coach next year,” Vonte Wiley said, raising his eyebrows at her. He was a sophomore linebacker with a fluffy Mohawk and an ever-present wide grin.
Jade adjusted the baseball cap on her head so it blocked more of the sun from her eyes. “Who told you that?”
Vonte shrugged. “I don’t know…”
The coach in her wanted to snuff out unnecessary gossip, but it also wanted to commend him for not turning in his teammates. It was better for them to be united, even in something as silly as this.
“Well…” she said with a sigh, trying to formulate the most appropriate answer possible. “You can tell whoever you heard it from that when there are announcements to make about coaching changes, we’ll make them to the entire team. There’s no need to speculate.”
Vonte squinted up at her. “You only talk like that when you’re mad or when you’re trying to tell us to stay out of grown folks’ business without actually saying that.”
“Which one do you think I’m doing right now?” she asked.
“I don’t know…”
Jade nodded, putting a hand on one of his shoulders. “Look, you don’t need to worry about anything but doing your best this season and what your folks are making you for dinner tonight. Anything else is on us, okay? So let us handle it.”
Vonte nodded. “Yes, ma’am… but… if we do have to get a new coach, I hope it’s you.”
Jade clenched her jaw tight to keep from grinning, before cuffing the boy on the back of the neck. “Get on back to those drills, boy. I want to see them knees up high too.”
They had a friendly scrimmage coming up against some boys from across the river in Port Royal. The teams didn’t get to play each other during the year, so the coaches got together in the offseason to try each other on for size. The game didn’t mean anything, technically. But the Port Royal boys were good, and ever since her first season with Greenbelt, Jade had been able to gauge how their season would go by how they performed in this scrimmage.
Every single one of them needed this season to go well. She, to prove that her guidance was essential to the success of the team. Coach Landry, so that he could begin his retirement with a bang. And for the kids out on the field, this could be their return to glory. So much was on the line for so many people. It only felt right that she should take this as seriously as she would a championship opener.
“If you keep making that face, it’ll get stuck like that.”
The hairs on the back of Jade’s neck stood up at the sound of Ms. Lim’s voice coming up behind her.
“I thought I sensed a demonic presence in the air.” Jade sniffed.
“Well, I do raise hell wherever I go.”
Lim’s smirk made Jade want to snap. “Which means… what?” Jade growled. “That literally no one wants to be anywhere near you? I guess that does sound about right.”
Like some kind of aggressively annoying big cat, Lim moved around her, snatching the hat off Jade’s head and raising it above her own. Lim was a few inches taller than she was, with longer arms too. Jade refused to degrade herself by reaching for it like a child; instead, she just crossed her arms over her chest and tried to throw the other woman the most scathing look she could muster.
“You act like a child, Lim, and that’s why you’ll never succeed in life.”
Lim’s answering snort was loud. “You’re the one standing there pouting with your arms crossed like one of my kids when I tell them they’re not allowed to run the kiln.”
Jade’s first instinct was to uncross her arms, but she didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. So she balled her hands into fists and tucked them farther into her armpits. “I don’t pout,” she said. “My mouth just naturally looks like this.”
Lim’s eyes immediately jumped to her mouth. “… And so it does,” she said, then hummed, not looking away.
With sudden awareness, Jade realized just how close they were. She could smell the laundry detergent on the other woman’s T-shirt, the light floral scent of perfume clinging to her neck. It was slender and smooth and had the slightest bit of sweat slicking the skin. Her lips were right there too, plump and red. She had this ridiculous Cupid’s bow that made her look like some kind of Disney princess.
It made Jade so sick that her mouth watered, forcing her to swallow hard. Those lips curved into an even deeper smirk, and Jade drew her own back behind her teeth.
“I can’t stand you,” Jade hissed. “Every time I see you, I get hot.”
When the air between them grew thick with tension, Jade knew immediately that that wasn’t the right choice of words. Lim’s eyes trailed up her body, starting from her exposed legs and thighs and working their way up until they landed on her face again. Lim was unabashed about it, her smirk slowly becoming a grin. Jade didn’t mean to show any sign of being affected, but her body reacted on its own, completely betraying her as a shiver made her shoulders shimmy and her jaw tremble.
“I definitely agree with that,” Lim said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Mmm, you might not have meant to say it out loud, but you definitely meant it.”
“So now you’re a mind reader?”
Lim shrugged. “I think I can read you pretty well, at least.”
Jade kept silent, her arms still crossed tightly over her breasts, now heaving as her heart rate increased. She didn’t like that. Not one bit. Had she ever met anyone as presumptuous as this woman? They barely knew each other, and yet she thought she somehow knew everything there was to know about Jade?
“You’re so full of shit,” Jade said, lip curling.
“It’s not that serious.” There was that fucking shrug again, like everything was cool and nothing mattered. “You wear every emotion on your face, Dunn. Reading you is like reading a picture book.”
Lim grinned then, and Jade’s heart stuttered. That was offensive, wasn’t it? And wrong. Jade prided herself on being unreadable. Most people, especially those who weren’t close to her, never seemed to know what she was thinking. Honestly, they just assumed she was mad all the time. That was one of the not-so-hidden truths of being a Black woman, though. Any emotion that wasn’t explicitly happy read as mad to people who couldn’t be bothered to examine their own bullshit.
Right now, though, she was angry. Or at least she thought she was. She didn’t know what other emotion could cause such heat to sear through her entire abdomen or make her knees feel so close to buckling.
“What do you see now, then?” she asked, her throat dry, finally uncrossing her arms so she could shove her sweaty hands in the pockets of her shorts.
“You want me,” Lim said simply.
“Bullshit.”
Lim’s eyes ventured to her chest, and Jade knew immediately that she could see her hard nipples through the thin material of her shirt.
“That always happens when I’m mad,” Jade lied. “It definitely doesn’t mean I want you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Jade took a deep breath. “How about I tell you what I do want, then? I want you off my field. I want you to take those stilts you call legs over to Coach Landry and tell him that you’re not coming to poker on Thursday because you’ve finally come to your senses and realized that you’re simply not qualified to coach at this level.”
“Hmmm.” Lim tapped a finger on her chin like she was thinking about it. “No, I don’t think that’s what you actually want. I think you kind of like having me here. I think you like my company. I also think you want to kiss me.”
It was Jade’s turn to snort, but it was half-hearted. “I think you are loathsome and full of shit.”
“And I think your lackluster offensive line is the reason this team hasn’t won a championship title in five years.”
Every ember that smoldered in Jade was stoked by those words. Her upper lip curled, mouth preparing to release something viciously nasty, but before she could get the last word in, they were interrupted.
“Ms. Lim,” Coach Landry said, and from the way his eyes had widened, he seemed to sense that something was happening between them. “The offensive line boys are about to run some dip-and-rip drills. You want to help us over there? Give me a chance to see how you handle running ’em.”
Lim gave Jade one last long look, and this time she wasn’t smirking. Jade couldn’t quite read it, but she could tell the other woman wanted to say something else. She didn’t, though. She gave Landry one curt nod before jogging off to where the other O-line coaches were rounding the kids up.
“You good, Dunn?” Landry coughed.
“Yes, Coach.”
When she finally calmed herself enough to look him in the eye, his were concerned.
“What just happened there?”
Had she been willing to play dirty or be a snitch, she might have told him what Lim had said. But she wasn’t. She was going to beat the other woman’s ass at this, and she was going to do it clean too. Jade didn’t need to tattle to their boss to get what she wanted. She needed to figure out how to get in Lim’s head.
“Just a little friendly competition,” she told him with a sickly sweet smile. “Ms. Lim’s trying to throw her weight around a bit.”
Their eyes turned to across the field where Lim stood, now in front of the other coaches, with a whistle around her neck as she talked to the boys.
“I’m giving her a fair shake,” he said. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re shooting for.”
His words made something twinge in her belly. It was the kind of feeling you got when you knew you were wrong about something and felt guilty, even though you were going to stand in your wrongness. All that talk of solidarity and sisterhood seemed to have flown out the window for her. Somewhere deep, deep down in her chest, she got the feeling that Landry was right. That Lim’s presence on the team didn’t hurt her own. But out here in the real world, she just couldn’t make that truth curl all the way over for herself.
“Sure it does, Coach.”
He furrowed his brows at her, confused.
“It’s going to be hard enough convincing the other guys to even consider standing behind me as their leader. Let alone the parents and the school board and the damn mayor. Like you told me before, I’m a woman, a Black woman, a gay Black woman—”
“Bisexual,” Landry interrupted, causing her to laugh despite the gravity of their conversation.
“Regardless,” she continued, “you think they’re going to allow us both to hold positions of power on this team? Next thing we know, there’ll be write-ups in the paper about how the liberal agenda has come for America’s favorite pastime.”
“That’d be baseball,” Landry corrected her yet again. “And frankly, the longer I think about it all, the less of a fuck I give about what they have to say. They can do all the write-ups they want, so long as they include the wins by whoever ends up coaching this team.”
Jade swallowed. She wanted to believe that. She did. But this was Greenbelt, South Carolina. And it was far from the scene of some inspirational sports movie. She knew what people would think, what they’d say, what they’d do once they got their hearts set on bigotry.
Still, in all that muck, there had been something just as important for her to take note of. Coach Landry was an incredibly encouraging figure for the kids, but for the coaches… not so much. Generally, that was fine. Jade didn’t need her boss to spend all his time praising her. She had herself for that. And her parents and Miri and the deep delusion that lived in her head telling her she was the best to ever do it. This was different, though. She was coming after his spot, and to hear him even insinuate that he thought she deserved it meant more than she’d realized it would.
She nodded, trying to convey her thanks with her eyes. She knew he wouldn’t know what to do with any of her words.
“I’m still going to beat her,” Jade said. “I don’t know why she’s decided to do this all of a sudden, but she doesn’t deserve this. She’s way too green; I think she hardly knows what she’s doing. Maybe we should make some calls to verify her claims about coaching in Texas. That could be complete bull-hockey for all we know.”
“Hmm… maybe.” Landry sighed and shook his head at her stubbornness. “Looks like she’s not doing too bad now, though.”
Fifty yards away, Francesca Lim was demonstrating the correct stance for the O-line boys. Both of her feet were planted in the turf, one of her arms tucked against her side and the other in the grass. Her shoulders were perfectly aligned, and her ass was high and tight. Jade tried not to stare too hard at it—and failed. Watching unblinking as Lim blew her own whistle in quick succession twice before immediately charging forward and grabbing the white towel situated on the ground a few feet from where she’d started.
The towel drill was a short one, no impact, and quick to accomplish. But it taught the players how to position and move their bodies to secure the gaps between them on the field.
Lim lined two players up, facing each other but a few feet apart so they didn’t run into the other when the drill began. Jade heard the whistle go off again and saw the first two boys perform the drill, only to be stopped by Lim on their second go-round. She helped one of the boys position his shoulders and get lower to the ground, and the other was told something that Jade couldn’t hear. When she blew the whistle again, both players grabbed their towels up with no problem, earning pats on the back from the woman guiding them.
It was only a small showing, the type of drill the boys could coach themselves on, Jade told herself. But she saw how the boys responded to her, how they didn’t give her a hard time. They respected her.
Truth was, that was more than half of it—the respect. In her mind, the logistics of the game came second to being a good leader. It was troubling to see Lim display these qualities. It was even more troubling to feel the aching, begrudging amount of respect Jade felt for them. It was fine, though; that respect didn’t make Jade afraid. She might have to sharpen her claws a bit more, but she wasn’t afraid. Lim could take her childish jabs, her easygoing bull, and her YouTube University coaching and shove them up her ass.
“I guess it’s a good thing that ‘not too bad’ isn’t nearly good enough,” she told Landry, eyes still narrowed on her target, laser focused.