Teagan
The early morning run had been a good call. Empty streets, a bright blue sky, and a crisp pace had helped burn some of the nerves about today’s indoor competition.
“Coach Hayden?!” she gasped.
Coach Hayden froze, checked for other escape routes, couldn’t find one.
“What are you doing here? With your—” She threw her arm over her eyes. “With your shirt open?”
“I can explain—”
This was fifty shades of Not In My Backyard. She peeked to see if it was safe to look. Waited until he did up the top button. Which looked weird. But not as weird as finding him sneaking out of her house on a Saturday morning. She was going to be emotionally scarred for life.
He threw a panicked look up the stairs. The shower was running. He was going to have to man up and deal with this himself. “I think this is a conversation best had with your mom.”
She clocked the duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. “Did you stay over? With me in the house? Has this happened before?” The questions were flying out of her—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers.
“I should go,” he said in lieu of answering, wisely taking the long route around the kitchen island to get to the door.
“This is so not okay!” wailed Teagan.
“Yeah.” Hayden stepped out the door, his face a mess of worry. “Therapy bill’s on me.” And off he went, leaving her with pictures she absolutely did not want to see in her brain. Especially today.
“MOOOOOOOOOOM?!?!”
Juliet hadn’t appreciated the early morning SOS call for a ride to Norfolk, but when Teagan had outlined the State of Emergency that meant there was no way she or her mother would survive a half-hour car ride together, she’d accepted the mission.
She dropped Teagan off at the rec center, then roared off in her orange Batmobile to thwart crimes against fashion with Perry.
Too bad she couldn’t make a citizen’s arrest for a crime of passion. Anyone else she wouldn’t care. But her mom? And Coach?
Teagan headed into the hall, hoping to avoid Coach before her race.
Hope, as her dad liked to say, was not a strategy.
He’d been right about that one.
Coach was at the registration desk. His daughter, Madison, was there, too.
She could bolt. Sneak in the back.
You can do this, Teagan, she told herself. You can act perfectly normal in front of Coach Casanova.
Ugh. She’d need to flush that unbidden moniker down the toilet, too.
“Nice to see you again, Coach Hayden. I love your shirt—and how it’s completely on.”
He grimaced at her. “Madison?” He gave his daughter’s back a pat. “I’ll let you handle this one. See you inside, Teagan.”
Teagan put out her hand. “Hi, I’m Teagan. I don’t think we’ve formally met. Our parents are dating.”
“Madison.” They shook hands. Madison started rifling through her pile of papers to find Teagan’s race number, casually adding, “I already knew that.”
“What? For how long?”
“Mmm.” She handed Teagan her registration tag. “A few weeks?”
“Weeks?”
Madison, who apparently did not get fazed by these kinds of things, ran her finger down a list, then smiled up at her. “So, you’re in the second race on erg fourteen.”
“Hang on.” She took a beat, trying to process what she’d just heard. “WEEKS? What the hell? Why didn’t they tell me?”
“Well…” Madison gave her a look. “Maybe they were worried about your reaction.”
“It’s a perfectly appropriate reaction. I saw your dad’s abs!”
Madison shuddered. “Too far.”
“Exactly,” Teagan said.
“Listen.” Madison was clearly drawing a line in the sand. “I’m not your enemy.” She fixed Teagan with a no-nonsense look, then she held up her fingers, silently counted something off. The number of times Teagan had died inside, maybe?
“Some advice? There are five stages to parents dating again: Anger. Denial, then anger again. Then, you’re not my mom. And finally, begrudging acceptance.”
Teagan could live with that.
Madison leaned over, eyes brightening. Cam had arrived. “Hey, you,” she said teasingly. “Feeling locked in? Ran up the stairs? Ate some raw eggs? Punched meat in the freezer?”
Cam laughed. “I’m cutting you off from the Rocky marathons.”
They shared a laugh, like old friends.
Teagan tried to hide the sting of pain she felt, not knowing if she and Cam would ever share witty banter again.
“Excellent,” Madison said, plucking his number out of her pile. “First race at erg ten. You’ve got this, Dillinger.”
“Good luck out there, Cam,” Teagan said.
“Thank you.” He gave her a nod, shared a fist bump with Madison, then headed off without a second look.
“How long have you guys been friends?” asked Teagan.
“I was there for his bowl-cut phase.”
She would’ve liked to see that. Not as much as she wanted to earn back his trust. “We used to be friends, but now he barely talks to me. You have any advice on how I could fix it?”
Madison looked sympathetic. “Look, he’s going through his own thing. It’s him. Going lone wolf instead of asking for help. He just needs time.”
It made sense. She could be like that, too. But if there was any way to speed up the clock, she wished she knew it.