Noah
“Oh, come on. Stay for a drink.” Billy huffs as I sign the receipt after paying the bill for dinner at the local tavern.
I just grin at him and hand off the receipt to the waitress. She gives me a bright smile and moves away from the table, walking backward and giving me a quick wave before heading to the cash register.
Billy—who I guess is the closest thing I have to a friend—just shakes his head, laughing. “Nothing has changed in twenty damn years.”
“What are you talking about?” We went to high school together.
Played football together. Only when high school ended, he went and got his real estate license and became an agent pretty quickly.
I got married and had a kid. I managed to go to a local community college and then started coaching soon after that. Neither of us ever left Kensley.
He just chuckles, rolling his eyes at me and playing with the wedding band on his left hand. “Oh, Coach Asher,” he lifts his voice to a much higher pitch. “You’re so hot. You make me want to toss my panties at you while serving you dinner!”
I look around the crowded tavern, panicked and wide-eyed but also annoyed. “Will you keep it down?” I scold. “And are you talking about our waitress tonight? Because she’s younger than my damn daughter.”
He snorts. “Still legal. She’s at least eighteen if she’s working here.”
“She’s a damn kid.” I swear, he’s married and has three daughters of his own. How he can talk the way he does, I’ll never understand.
“Speaking of kids . . .” he starts, and I already don’t like where his tone is going. “How is working with that mouthy little shit. Made him cry yet?”
I take a drink of my iced tea, honestly surprised he didn’t bring this up during dinner. “It’s fine,” I grit out. “And no. I haven’t made him cry.”
He knows how annoyed I am by not only working with a Big Bend Bear but a toddler at that. Chance Leighton has given me hell ever since we were introduced. Always questioning me. Acting like I don’t have the kids’ best interest in mind. Of course I do, damn it.
I care about these kids more than some of their damn parents.
He smiles, probably seeing how irritable this kid makes me. “Let’s go to the bar and have a drink. It’s not going to kill you.”
I grumble all the way to the bar, plopping my ass down on the stool as he orders two beers. “One beer.”
He already knew I was going to say that, so he just nods and sighs. “You ready for the first game?”
“We are.” It’s always about football around here, and don’t get me wrong, that actually makes me happy. I can talk football all day long. It’s predictable that we’ll talk about it the most.
“You sure?”
The waitress brings over our beers, and he pays her, but I watch him quietly, sensing something’s up. “What the hell is going on?”
He looks concerned, and I’m becoming more and more annoyed by this little game. “I’m just saying . . . winning is kind of important in Kensley.”
I turn to look at him. I’m sure the irritation is crystal clear on my face. “I know that. What the hell are you getting at?”
He turns away from me, focusing on his beer as he lifts it to his lips and takes a big drink, swallowing and then shrugging. “I just mean you’ve had a lot of things go down over the past couple of years is all.”
“A lot of things?”
I swear the tips of his ears are red as he finally meets my glare. “Divorce,” he whispers. He actually whispers the word divorce. This man who was just drooling over a girl barely older than his own kids.
“People get divorced,” I grumble into my beer as I take a small gulp.
“Not in Kensley,” he says so matter-of-factly I want to scream. That’s the thing about Kensley and towns like it. They pick and choose their sins.
Womanizing and drooling over waitresses when you’re a married man—totally fine. Legally divorcing when things aren’t working out—nope. Can’t have that.
It’s ridiculous. But I’m not naive enough to believe it wasn’t a huge scandal around here when my wife packed up and left me to go to her parents’ house. That she didn’t come back and soon after, filed for a divorce.
“What does that have to do with me winning games?” I ask, my shoulders slumped as I play with the condensation on my glass.
He shrugs, looking almost guilty. “I just, you know . . .” No—I don’t know, and I’m growing tired of him not telling me. “Don’t give them a reason to fire you.”
I turn to face him, the rickety barstool squeaking with the motion. “They’ll fire me if I lose a game?”
“Not a game.” He tries to pass it off like it’s no big deal, but I’ve known him long enough to know this is weighing on his mind. He’s friends with a lot of school board members.
He hangs out with Anthony for fun. They play the powerful-men thing up way too much, but I suppose in Kensley they sort of are. “What did they say?”
He huffs and uses the tone he always does when he’s trying to calm me down, even though I’m not one to fly off the handle. “Nothing. I just think you should watch your back, you know? I mean the divorce wasn’t the only thing that happened . . .”
“LeAnn?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes.” He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Your daughter screwing her teacher wasn’t exactly screaming good values.”
My hands flex with my need to throttle him. But I take in a deep breath and barely manage to let it out, my anger threatening to choke me. “My daughter fell in love with her teacher, who didn’t and wouldn’t get involved with her until she was well out of high school.”
“Yeah, well that’s not how everyone saw it,” Billy says nonchalantly, and again, I want to scream or punch him in the face.
But I always expect my players to remain cool. I don’t allow fights. I don’t allow trash talk. They’ll be doing laps until graduation if they do either and will piss me off in the process, so I try my best to stay calm.
“I don’t care how everyone else saw it. She’s an adult, and she’s happy. She’s in love.”
“I know, man.” He places a hand on my shoulder. I gotta say, touching me right now is a bold choice on his part, but I grit my teeth and try my breathing techniques. “But that paired with the divorce has some of the guys worried. They’re talking about wanting a more family-friendly coach.”
“Family-friendly?” My brows shoot up, and he removes his hand from my shoulder, lifting both of his hands up in the air.
“Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just trying to give you a heads-up.”
“So if I lose a game, I’m fired?”
He drops his hands and takes another drink of his beer. “No. But if you start losing instead of winning, I’d say you have a good chance of that. Just don’t give them a good reason to.”
“Because I got divorced.”
“You divorced Nancy Hopkins.” I cringe. It was like everyone in town had our entire lives planned out for us before we even met. The star football player and the cute, blonde cheerleader. The good church-going girl from the good family. The same for the boy.
“She left.”
“I know.” He finishes his beer with a loud belch. “But it doesn’t matter. You know all the pearl-clutching and social politics that goes on in this town.”
“I’m not interested in politics,” I grit out.
“Yeah, well.” He stands from his bar stool. “You’re the head coach at Kensley. You better get interested in the politics.”
I grimace again but give him a nod on his way out.
Just another fucking day in Kensley.