15. They Bring the Heat
FIFTEEN
Cory
Paging @group-active. Seminar tonight at 9 p.m. CST. If this ain’t your first rodeo, you’re excused.
Cam loggedin at 8:55 p.m. and opened a jar of peanut butter and a bag of jerky. Still dragging after the loss, his body screamed for protein and hydration. He hoped the podcast Shelby scheduled for the next morning didn’t involve video, because if it involved video, it involved makeup, and if it involved makeup, it involved Pippa complaining that he was difficult to blend when he didn’t shave five minutes before he arrived.
He dug in for a scoop of peanut butter. To amp up his team, he had to start with himself. He had to be good enough to fake it, at least. But when half of his economics class decided to make suggestions about his game management and how he should be able to hit a receiver in double coverage when he was falling backward mid-sack, he couldn’t even muster the energy to tell them to fuck off with his best Southern manners.
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Cameron
How are you feeling, Thatch? Ethan told us about the broken ribs.
Cory
When you’ve got skin in the game, you don’t feel no pain.
Dale
My dude, those are narcotics singing.
Hayden
I’d offer you some of the hard drugs, but those are for Saturday.
Cameron
Excuse me?
Hayden
It was a joke.
JK I’ll save you some.
Cory
I feel okay, Cam, thanks.
Hayden, despite popular opinion, I do not have to be doped-up to sing.
Cameron
What’s the official seminar about here?
Cory
We are gathered here today to learn how to be better losers.
Hayden
I didn’t lose this week.
Cory
You have lost, and you will again.
link>
This is my playlist of hype speeches for losing. Quarterbacks, coaches, everybody.
It starts with sideline stuff to get a rally going and goes into locker room post game for when the rally doesn’t work. The rest are press conferences and on-field interviews.
Ethan
Hey, guys. Cory’s in Dad mode, but don’t write this off.
We have eighteen people on the chat right now, and I know twelve of you have had a loss already this year. The rest of you almost certainly will, and if you don’t, advance congrats on the national championship.
Cory
Your friendly admins go back and read a lot of what they missed, and this has been a hot topic. What do I say to my guys when we lost? What do I say when I think it was my fault?
Ethan
And what do I say when I’m pretty damn sure it was some other guy’s fault?
Hayden
We never call that guy out. I’ve never won a sportsmanship award, but even I know that.
Dale
Good boy. Sit.
Ethan
You don’t call the guy out in front of everyone, but what do you say when he apologizes and says yeah, it’s on me?
Hayden
You say it’s okay and move on?
Cameron
You say it’s on all of us. Then everyone around you says yeah, man, it’s on all of us. Then you hug.
Hayden
Show-off.
Cameron
Want to know how I know? Because that’s what my friend Zack did for me on Saturday. My center. I apologized to him, and he said that game was on all of us.
Cory
Then you hugged.
Cameron
And then we hugged.
Cory
And then you thought about how every play makes that game, and any play executed better or worse could change the outcome. Check out number four on the list for a good example.
Cameron
Yeah, I didn’t think about that for about forty-eight hours.
Cory
In the locker room, whether people come at you apologizing, blaming you, or they’re just sad, it’s okay to accept a share of accountability for an individual thing. That was my bad throw. My fumble, my pick.
Ethan
But no single play is the reason for the score.
Cory
You rise and fall as a team. Individuals called out for doing well will lift others. Individuals who hear you say they had a bad day will not forget it.
Number seven on the list is a good example of this balance, and he doesn’t say “adversity” once.
Cameron
I have an irrational hatred of the word “adversity” since I got this job. Second place is “battle.”
Hayden
Is there a bingo card? There should be a bingo card.
Cameron
Jordan said for a loss it was only “I” and “We,” not “He,” “You,” or “They.”
Cory
Jordan was a good leader, and so are you. And you, Dale, and Hayden, and whoever else is still on while Ethan and I rant. Leading through and after a loss can be brutal.
Hayden
You’ve only done it once, Thatch. Literally once, last year. You were undefeated even in high school.
Cory
Well, I might have to do it this weekend. I plan to take a twenty-one point lead by the half so I can let Rutledge take over for a bit, but if he throws a pick while I’m sitting there with ice on my ribs, they’ll have to tie me to the bench.
Ethan
You watch film, Hamilton? Please say yes.
Hayden
Uh, yes.
Ethan
You watch how other teams beat the guy you’ve got to beat. Watch Cory’s playlist. The guy you’ve got to beat is the guy who takes that locker room from you.
You’ve got a four-star commit for next year, right? Jacob Torrence? Little J.T.? Got to watch it.
Hayden
Damn, I’ll send you the drugs if they chill you out a bit.
Cameron
On Marsh’s behalf, ahem. clears throat>
WHAT.
Hayden
It was a joke.
September twenty-ninth fell on the Thursday after the loss. Cam didn’t know if Cory meant he went inactive on the twenty-ninth or the day after. The night before, he checked the date one last time.
Cameron Porter has created a private chat.
Cameron
Paging @JordanAckerman
Were you spinning your words all the time? Is that all motivation is, just a bunch of spin lifted from other guys’ speeches?
Did you really believe in us?
Jordy, FFS. I don’t know if I can do it.
Cam looped his hands inside the neck of his jersey, shifting the weight of his pads while he stared at the clock. Twenty-one to ten in the opponent’s favor was not an ideal halftime score, but it was better than they had in Iowa.
He spotted Isaac Fields pacing in front of the bench, agitation evident in his scuffing cleats tearing the grass.
“Fields. Are you all right?”
Isaac nodded at the line of scrimmage. “I guess not. Griff said I looked tired. Morgan’s out there with Justin.”
“Are you tired?”
“No.”
Cam shot him a sideways glance. Tate Griffin, the linebackers’ coach, wasn’t wrong. The dark circles under Isaac’s eyes contrasted sharply with his pale face, and every trace of the team’s golden retriever puppy vanished behind his glare.
“You don’t look like you’re feeling okay, though.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Isaac demanded. “Your defense is Swiss cheese tonight. Look at this. Look right there. He’s going to drop back and sling it, and twenty-one is going to smoke Madison and haul in a touchdown.”
Cam stared, slack-jawed, while the clock ran out. “My God, you can read this game,” he murmured.
Isaac acted as though he hadn’t heard. “And with the kick, we’re down by eighteen at the half. Are you feeling okay, Cam?”
He scooped up his helmet and slammed it against Isaac’s shoulder pads. “You know what? I am. I’m feeling okay, and you’d better be too, because this is going to take all of us.”
Eighteen points. Three touchdowns, minimum, and his defense would have to shut down one of the best pocket passers they would play all year.
Hisdefense, though he never played a snap with them.
His team.
“Let’s go,” he mumbled as he jogged to catch up with his coach in the tunnel. “Motivation. Momentum. Whatever the hell Jordan did, let’s go.”
“You know what I heard out there at the start of the second quarter?” Cam demanded. “I was in the grass, and some smug fuck DB says they’re bringing the heat tonight. You guys feeling a little hot? I am.”
Murmurs of approval circled him as he dragged some teammates closer.
“I wasn’t getting up off my ass alone. My boys were there with a hand.” He pointed at Zack and Kenyon. “Because when we fall together, we rise together. If they think they’re bringing the heat, we rise!” He thumped his chest. “When we feel the heat, what do we do?”
“We rise!”
He shoved Kenyon into Zack. “And we do it together! What do we do when they bring that heat?”
“We rise!”
Cam found his cadence and kept going with the beat of a play call and a snap count. “They got me heated. They pissed me off like they pissed off the rest of you, and we’re ready to do something about it. All phases, thirty more minutes. They’re gonna bring the heat just like they did the first half, but they only think we’re down, guys. We know they’re celebrating right now, and they’re coming back out there lazy. They think they got us right where they want us. This is where we want us! We’re right where we belong. This is our house, and nobody’s gonna cook us here.”
“Hell of a half, Cam. Hell of a game.”
“It was. Everybody came to play. That was the best comeback I’ve ever been part of. God, what a rush.” Cam stretched his arms, knocking his fist on the wall of the locker room. “Put me back in. I could do this all night.”
Isaac stared at his bag, zipping it slowly. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier.”
“About what?”
“Just before the half.”
“You didn’t say anything we weren’t all thinking, Fields.”
“That’s not like me, though.”
“We all have off days. The important thing is that we turned it around.”
“Yeah, except I didn’t.” Isaac dropped to the bench in front of Cam’s locker and caught himself before driving a fist into it.
Cam drew in a sharp breath. He wasn’t sure he knew Isaac well enough to ask what was really on his mind—something was, and it wasn’t football, which was completely out of character. A tiny devil on his shoulder whispered it might have to do with Avery and her stilted “we’ll see” when he asked about their relationship. That “we’ll see” sent hope surging in his heart, and if that was the problem, then the friend he saw before him was the other side of that hope.
“You did,” Cam insisted. He thought it was safer to stick with football, and if Isaac corrected him, he’d follow the course. “Twenty-one was running scared by the fourth, and you still brought him down a dozen times. You were absolutely crucial.”
“It’s not that.” He looked up. “I mean, it feels good. The hype, and the way everyone came together, that was incredible. But man, it’s—maybe it’s stupid. I hate when I bring off-field stuff to the game, but the lines are blurry sometimes.”
Sharing a locker room with your girlfriend’s brother might blur things a little, Cam realized.
“We have lives outside of football,” he said. “It happens to everyone.”
Isaac raked his hands through his damp hair. “I thought I knew what was going on, but obviously not. I thought we wanted the same things.”
Cam gulped.
“It’s the end of a dream,” Isaac continued. “And I just haven’t come to terms with the fact that it’ll never happen.”
After a month?
“They said I should have known and they thought they made it clear, but I guess I just held onto some hope, and now I feel like a moron for doing it.”
They?
“Fields, I’m sorry. I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”
“My brothers committed to play for Michigan. Formally, yesterday.”
Cam had been wrestling out of his pads and nearly dropped them. “You are shitting me.”
Isaac snapped his fingers. “Poof. One more Fields linebacker and a cornerback, gone.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“They wanted to go together.” Isaac shifted his glare to the ceiling. “Those two are stupidly enmeshed. I mean, there are twins, and there are these idiots. But the deal was better up there for both of them. We could have gotten ourselves some help at corner”—he looked around quickly—“which we really need. But we’re stacked for linebackers and he might warm the bench for two years. Michigan needed him, and we didn’t.”
Cam’s heart sank. Isaac’s twin brothers came to clinics in the spring and camps in the summer and were the slightly-crazier version of their brother, times two. The three of them were monsters on the field together, and Isaac always sounded certain they’d come.
Now, instead of joining their older brother, they were going to Cory, the lucky bastard. A thought struck him.
“Don’t transfer,” he demanded. “Please.”
Isaac finally met his eyes. “I’ve considered it a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Well, thank fuck you can’t do anything yet.” Cam shoved his helmet in his locker as Isaac burst out laughing.
“What?”
“Do you know how strong your accent gets when you’re fired up?”
Cam winced. “I’ve heard reports.”
“It’s phenomenal. You were stomping down the sideline calling us ‘y’all fellas’ by the fourth quarter.”
“I was not.”
“And the way you just completely drawled ‘thank fuck’ was the best thing I’ve heard all day.” Isaac jumped from the bench and smacked Cam’s shoulder. “I mean it. That was so honest. It meant more than any other hype you yelled today. Thanks, buddy.”
“Whatever it takes, man. Glad to help.” Cam shuffled in his bag to busy his hands. “You and Avery going out to the thing tonight?”
“I don’t think so. She said she was behind on a bunch of assignments and wanted to get caught up today.”
“She wasn’t here?”
“Nope.” He stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “Man. Staying in sounds pretty good right about now.”