Chapter 4 #2
“Mom.” Eli, from the back seat, through a mouthful of granola bar. “He’s a really good coach, you know. We won against the other team.”
“Well, buddy.” I pull out of the lot and aim us home, keeping my voice at its most diplomatic. “He does know more about football than Coach Johnson.” A beat. “Do not tell Coach Johnson I said that. It would hurt his feelings.”
From the back seat, two solemn promises. From the rearview mirror, my own eyes, looking guilty as charged.
#
Nate
As usual, I’m the first one in the locker room, dressed for practice and tying my cleats, which is the closest thing I have to a religious observance.
Grant walks in wearing a smile so wide I stop mid-knot and narrow my eyes at him.
Grant Hale smiling is normal. Grant smiling like this means the news has traveled.
“Funny story I heard.” He drops onto the bench beside me.
His locker is not next to mine. It has never been next to mine.
“You’re on babysitting duty.” The grin somehow gets wider; I’m genuinely concerned for the structural integrity of his face.
“Morrison told me yesterday. Still can’t decide if he told me so we’d make fun of you, or as a threat.
Like, behave, or you’re next. Either way, we’re obsessed. ”
“We?” I ask, already sure I don’t want the answer.
“What’s up, y’all!” Darius Webb comes through the door, phone out in front of him, and he is not talking to us.
He’s talking to the several million people on the other side of that lens.
“You know your boy always delivers the freshest locker-room intel, and today? Today is premium content. Mister Incredible. The King Outlaw himself. Is coaching. Little League.”
“Please stop.” I groan, and Darius props himself onto the bench on my other side, camera up. I glance at the screen. He’s live. Of course he’s live. “Dude. It’s a locker room.”
“You’re dressed, I’m dressed, Grant’s ugly but dressed, we’re compliant.” He swings the phone toward me like a boom mic. “So talk to us, Nate. What woke up this passion for the youth? Molding the next generation? Giving back?”
Darius’s podcast is ridiculously popular, and its entire format is Darius saying things out loud that should never leave this room, locker-room gossip, trash talk, scouting reports on opposing corners’ girlfriends.
The whole operation is a PR nightmare, which, given my current relationship with David Morrison, I’ve decided I no longer feel bad about.
It is, however, a weekly source of on-field friction, because the guys he roasts on Tuesday tend to remember it on Sunday.
“I will shove that phone so far up your ass,” I tell the camera pleasantly, “that your next episode records itself.”
“Apologies to our younger viewers.” Darius swings the phone back to his own face without missing a beat. “We’re still teaching him how to talk around children.” And he wanders off toward his locker, narrating his own outfit change to the masses.
“Serious talk, though.” Grant leans in once the broadcast has moved on.
“I think it’s great. The rookies thing.” That’s what he’s decided to call them, the rookies, like the eight-year-olds are on a development contract.
“When I was a kid, I’d have committed crimes for a pro to show up at my practice for ten minutes.
You’re going to matter to those kids all year, man. ”
“We can trade, then. I’ll take your Thursday film session.”
“Seriously, though.” Grant drops the trade offer and leans back against the locker, and I can see the question assembling before it arrives, because Grant’s face has never once run a play-fake in its life.
“Why you? Morrison’s got a whole roster of guys who’d volunteer for this.
Blake would coach that team for free and cry about it.
Why’s he spending his franchise quarterback on an east-side junior league? ”
And here’s the moment, arriving earlier than I’d thought: lie to Grant, or hand him the photos.
“Image maintenance,” I say, and it comes out smooth, which I will think about later.
“You know how David gets. Three years since the scandal, the franchise brand is finally clean, and his quarterback’s known contributions to society are throwing a ball and closing down clubs.
He wants wholesome content with my face on it before somebody prints the other kind.
” I shrug, casual as a man with nothing in his pockets.
“Youth league polls well. I’m a public-relations initiative with a whistle. ”
Not a lie, technically. A truth with the engine removed. Grant studies me for a second, and then he buys it, because it sounds exactly like Morrison and because Grant extends people credit they haven’t earned, and something about how easy that was sits wrong in my stomach for the rest of the day.
“Anyway.” Grant, constitutionally incapable of staying serious for longer than one possession, kicks my cleat with his. “So how was it, Coach? First practice with the rookies. Give me the injury report.”
“Two evenings a week, Grant. Until December. Twenty eight-year-olds, one whistle, and a sideline full of dads who all coach better than me from folding chairs.”
It comes out as a groan because the alternative is admitting the truth, which is that I had fun last night, actual, unbilled, off-calendar fun, and that is not a confession I’m making to anyone, including one of my best friends, including possibly myself.
So instead I hand him the other headline. “Callie Carter was there.”
“The journalist?” Grant’s eyebrows go up. “What, she’s covering Little League now?”
“Nah. Her kid’s on the team.” I shrug like it’s nothing, like the kid isn’t the fastest eight-year-old I’ve ever seen, like I didn’t spend the drive home replaying the whole parking-lot ambush in petty detail.
And like I don’t remember, in more detail than I have any use for, exactly how she looked crossing that parking lot: the green shirt, the worn jeans, all of it.
“Huh. Weird.” Grant is quiet for a second, and there’s clearly more underneath it, so I wait. “Does Morrison know?”
I open my mouth. And close it.
Son of a bitch.
Of course Morrison knows. Morrison checked my practice schedule down to the minute; the man has never once encountered a detail too small to weaponize.
Callie Carter is the journalist who nearly leveled this organization three years ago, and if those photos ever surface, they surface through someone exactly like her.
And David’s grand plan for me is a wholesome redemption tour, staged twice a week, on the one field in San Antonio where the most dangerous reporter in Texas does her school pickups.
He doesn’t just want me looking like a compassionate guy.
He wants me looking like one directly in front of her.
I’m still sitting with that when Cash Turner strolls past on the way to his locker.
“Wait, you saw Callie Carter?” He stops. “That is one fine piece of ass.”
Grant and I both turn and stare at him with identical expressions.
To Cash’s credit, he joined the team two years after everything went down; to him she’s not the byline that gutted the building, she’s just a woman he saw once.
And fine, I have eyes. She’s an attractive woman.
King cobras are also magnificent animals. I do not want one at my practices.
“Okay, I’ll ask.” Grant swivels. “How do you even know what she looks like? All I’ve ever seen is a headshot the size of a stamp.”
“Independent media gala last year. Black tie.” Cash pulls off his shirt and talks through it. “Darius got invited because Darius is, and I quote, media —”
“Of course he is,” Grant and I say, in unison.
“— so I went as his plus-one, and I’m telling you, that woman wears a cocktail dress and heels like it’s a paid position.
I was fully going to shoot my shot. Darius pulled me aside and said if I tried it, my soul would get mailed to hell with no return address.
” Cash shrugs, philosophical. “So I had the shrimp instead.”
“So let me get this straight.” Grant is starting to laugh. “Morrison’s master plan is for you to be adorable in front of the one woman in Texas who is professionally immune to it.”
“Worse news for Morrison.” I go back to my laces, and I’ll admit the next part comes out with some satisfaction.
“From what I saw, she’s never actually at practice.
Drops the kid, runs late, gone before warmups.
I could be the nicest guy in a twenty-mile radius, twice a week, all season, and his evil genius plan plays to an empty press box. ”
I finish the knot, stand, and grab my helmet, feeling better than I have since Morrison’s office.
It’s a solid read of the field, based on all one day I’ve known her.
Pity about my completion percentage on those.