Chapter 5 #2
The lie is out before I’ve even considered the truth as an option, smooth, frictionless, a decade of media training doing its job.
And it lands in my own stomach like a bad snap.
I lie to the media for a living. I lie to teammates about how the shoulder feels.
On the advice of counsel, I occasionally lie to Coach.
That’s all professional-grade dishonesty with a paper trail.
Lying to an eight-year-old who asked an honest question earns a man a specific, reserved seating section in hell.
“I thought it was your hobby.”
And just like that, Callie Carter is at the fence.
No warning, no footsteps, just the voice.
That clear, pleasant, professional tone that makes you want to re-listen to your own last sentence and check it for traps.
She’s ten minutes early. Per all available data, this woman has never been ten minutes early for anything in her life.
Sunglasses pushed up in her hair, tote bag, and, I register this with genuine alarm, a folding chair. Infrastructure. She’s planning to stay.
“It is.” I straighten up. Best behavior. “There comes a time in a man’s life when he starts thinking about what he leaves behind.”
As previously established, I am full of it.
I have never spent one minute of my life thinking about youth sports; two weeks ago I couldn’t have told you this league existed.
And the strange part, the part I’ll be ignoring at my earliest convenience, is that saying the marketing line out loud to her feels exactly like Coach’s office did.
Empty. Like reaching for something in the tank and touching the bottom.
“And you’re satisfying that here.” She doesn’t even phrase it as a question, which is somehow worse. “A volunteer league on the east side. Legacy work.”
“Is this on the record, Ms. Carter?” I keep it friendly, for the eight-year-old present. “Because you’re holding that sentence like a microphone.”
“Just a mom making conversation.” A small, professional smile that goes exactly nowhere near her eyes. “I hear you love youth sports.”
“Passionately. Since Tuesday.” I give her my brightest media smile, the one that tests well with every demographic except, apparently, this one.
“Got to start somewhere. Some of these kids could play college ball one day. A few might go further. Eli here is the fastest eight-year-old I’ve ever seen, he keeps working his technique like he does, somebody’s going to hand him a full ride. ”
The kid’s ears go red with pure joy under the helmet, which I’ll admit was seventy percent of my motive. The other thirty percent had the twin advantages of being true, and of doing something complicated to his mother’s face that she smothers almost fast enough.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, sugar.” One spin of the whistle lanyard, cavalry-casual. “I have eight-year-olds to coach.”
I walk off pretty pleased with myself, all things considered, carrying exactly two unresolved problems. One: I now know, or suspect at a professional confidence level, why David put me on this particular field, which means every practice is now a chess match I never agreed to play.
Two: thanks to Cash Turner, my brain has an unauthorized file open labeled cocktail dress and heels, and IT cannot seem to close it.
Man coverage, I remind myself. Eyes on the route. Not the receiver.
#
Today is game drills, the kids play Saturday, which I mercifully won’t be attending, on account of my big-boy quarterback responsibilities against Dallas on Sunday.
Practice is chaos again, but I’m starting to see the logic inside the madness, so I let it run.
And here’s the thing that gets me, again: these kids give a hundred percent.
Every drill, every rep. You don’t get that from professionals, I’ve had sluggish days; everyone has.
I’ve now watched this team practice exactly twice, and twice, every one of them has emptied the tank like it’s the Super Bowl.
No exceptions. There’s something in that I’m choosing not to examine.
From the bleachers, Callie Carter observes. I do not look over more than a strictly tactical number of times.
When we wrap, I realize I’m sweating. Genuinely, thoroughly sweating, through the dry-fit shirt I wore for purely thermodynamic reasons, and it horrifies me, because sweat is evidence.
Sweat means I put real physical effort into this.
Effort. The scary word. At this rate of decline, I’ll be volunteering for the snack schedule by October.
“Ready for Sunday?” The bench-coach dad materializes at my elbow, arms crossed in the internationally recognized stance of a man about to share his football opinions.
“Ready as we can be.” Civilized. Pleasant.
A model citizen, particularly with Callie Carter in earshot, because if I lose it on this man, next week’s Ledger runs a sensitive profile on a local father emotionally devastated by Nate Rivers, three named sources, photo of him gazing wistfully at a fence.
“Dallas has a real roster this year,” he says gravely, like a man who has seen the intelligence briefings.
“So do we.”
What does he want from me? You’re right, sir, their front seven haunts my sleep, no earthly idea how we survive?
I’ve beaten better rosters and lost to worse ones.
The roster isn’t the game. He hovers, waiting for trade secrets.
I decline to spill. Honestly, he should just listen to Darius’s podcast like the rest of America, all the classified material is on there weekly, with ad breaks.
He gives up eventually, and the field dissolves into the pickup shuffle, parents wrangling pads, kids comparing bruises like currency.
“You helped Eli with his pads.”
Finn appears at my elbow, exactly belt-high, and delivers this with the gravity of a man presenting findings to Congress. “That’s cool. Usually Mom does it.” He raises something with both hands, ceremonial. “This is for you.”
A juice box. Apple.
“Finn, honey, I’m sure Coach Rivers is on a very strict diet, and sugar water is not on it.” Callie has arrived to herd her people, folding chair under one arm, keys in the other, the whole operation.
“Funny story.” I take the juice box, stab the straw in, and drink. “This is exactly what a man needs after all that running.”
It is aggressively sweet. It is the best thing I’ve had all week.
And as I think that, I feel myself smile, and it’s the wrong smile.
Not the media smile. The other one. The one with a documented conversion rate of women saying yes.
The one that has no business being deployed anywhere on a youth football field, and I feel it freeze on my face as I register the audience: her.
Fantastic. Quarterback Winks at Single Mother Over Juice Box, an exposé, by Callie Carter. Page one.
“It’s delicious, Finn. Thank you,” I recover, smooth as a man who has definitely not just filed an internal incident report on his own face.
“YOU LIKE MY JUICE?”
The child detonates with joy at a volume that flushes birds from trees two fields over, and it is physically impossible not to laugh. “Mom! Do we have more in the car? Can we give Coach Rivers more? He LIKES it!”
“I’m good, kid. One at a time.” I’m still laughing. “Training rule.”
“Come on, boys. We’re going.”
And she’s smiling. Not at me, let the record reflect: not at me, at her ridiculous, wonderful kid, but it’s there.
The first smile I have ever seen on Callie Carter’s face, and it rearranges her completely.
The always-late tension goes. The journalist goes.
For about two seconds there’s just a woman laughing at an apple-juice evangelist in a parking lot, and I catch myself cataloguing it like game film.
“Bye, Coach.” Eli, with a wave and the ghost of a grin.
Finn trails after them, presenting to his mother, with citations, exactly how much I liked the juice and the logistical requirements of acquiring more. I watch them the whole way to her SUV.
And an uncomfortable thought settles in as the taillights pull out, one I turn over twice and put down unsolved, because there is no version of it that fits anywhere inside my life:
I’m sad I’ll miss the game on Saturday.