Chapter 21
PACE – MID-OCTOBER
Yes, Coach
“Come on in, Pace. Take a seat,” Coach says.
He’s called me in to his office after our Thursday training session and I’m still in my gear, hair slick with sweat.
I sink into the chair opposite Coach Roy’s desk. We’re in the basement, along the corridor from the locker room. The office was Coach’s choice. He prefers to be near the squad rather than up in the gods with a window to the outdoors, where Monte, our GM, sits.
The room might be dingy but it’s a collage of trophies, accolades, signed merch and framed prints of Coach and some of the greatest players of all time.
It’s an awe-inspiring place. And Coach Roy personifies that.
He’s good people. A solid family man at heart but an absolute machine when it comes to football.
If there’s a man who can draw the best out of someone and make you want to be better, it’s Coach.
I don’t believe any other coach in the league would have put my name in the hat for offensive captain alongside Tommy’s three years ago.
Understandably. I was arrogant on and off the pitch, I gave him a headache with the League – absorbing fines like carbs on a loading day – and a migraine with Monte, the GM, who was brought in partly to clean up the team’s act.
I was a prankster, a drinker, a poor timekeeper and always splashed in the media with another woman.
Glen making me captain forced me to take team life more seriously.
Not least because it reminded me that I was a vet with a hell of a lot of playing years and I needed to set an example to my teammates.
He also told me in no uncertain terms – justified – that if I didn’t start treating my body better, I wouldn’t make it another year.
He was right. Since I hired Aaron, stopped eating and drinking the wrong shit, and vowed not to date during season, I haven’t had any big injuries.
I’ve played hurt and sore, but I’m in good shape on game day.
Glen has bought me the thing that takes us all down eventually… time.
“What’s up, Coach?”
“I want you to hear it first because I know you’re big buddies but he’s not ready to talk to the team yet.”
I swallow hard, a sinking feeling in my gut of the most ominous sort.
“Tommy’s out, Pace. He’s not coming back.”
I stare at him, trying and failing to comprehend the message.
“His back is getting stronger all the time but it’s going to be too dangerous for him to play again. The medical team have called it.”
I rub a hand over my beard. “Fuck. I thought he was getting better.”
When we get into this career it’s not like we don’t know that we’re one bad injury from retirement but it stings when it happens to your friends.
“He’s gonna need all y’all, when he’s ready. Right now, he’s taking some time.”
Time. The ultimate gift. Until it’s taken away.
Coach rests his hands on his stomach. “What I’d like from you is your on the field assessment of how you think Lamar is coping and whether I need to look for a quarterback before the trade deadline at the end of next month.”
I sink into the chair, hanging an arm over the back as I puff out my next breath.
“He isn’t winning us games, yet. The defense is working hard and we’re scraping points. The league table doesn’t reflect the reality of our offense.”
He nods thoughtfully.
“I see something in him, Coach, but I wish he’d had a few years under Tommy first to harness his skill set. He’s not ready for the pros. Not yet. And he’s quiet. We could work on his confidence and help him find his voice but he needs to get more vocal if he wants to lead.”
Coach nods again and I shrug, adding, “I believe he’s got some fire in him, too, but we haven’t seen it yet.”
“How’d you mean?”
“I watch him in practice and think he could be a gunslinger. We’re playing him as a pocket passer because that’s what Tommy was but if we give him freedom, his natural talent might be making plays in and out of the pocket.”
“It would be a big call at five and oh in a season to change our offensive tactics.”
I rub my beard. “I hate to admit it because I like the kid but it’s a risk and I don’t think we’ve seen enough of him yet to ask the boys to change tactic.”
Coach stares at me for a while and I can almost hear the cogs whirring in his gridiron-sized football brain. “Thanks, Pace. Show yourself out.”
I do let myself out but in the cold grey corridor, I press my back to the wall and dig my finger and thumb into my eyes.
Was I a dick to Lamar? I’ve got to be honest. I know enough about football to have a useful opinion; that’s why Coach asked me. I can’t deny that looking for an experienced quarterback trade before the deadline would be a wise idea.
Fuck. I’m strung out for Tommy, and the team for losing him.
And it’s another reminder that I could be done any day now.
I’m close to retirement even without an injury, and I don’t know what’s waiting for me.
Since the day I first put on a boot, I’ve thought about being a footballer, making the high school team, then the college team, and the pros.
I wanted it for myself, for my mom and my sister.
I put everything else on hold.
Tommy will be comforted by his family – his wife and kids. He’ll probably coach, eventually. Me, I have a weekly podcast and not much else to fall back on.
Now, I’m standing in this corridor feeling sorry for myself over things I don’t have when all I should be focused on is Tommy and how in hell he’s handling his heartbreak.
It’s been a crappy day and my head is spinning as I pull through my gate and park at home. I pick up my phone, keys and bag in a trance.
Then I open the door to my lounge and I’m greeted by the sound of warmth. The belly chuckle of an eleven-month-old child. The cheers of his beautiful mama, and the applauding of his nanny.
Nelson drops down to his butt and I have a feeling before Annie spots me that…
“He’s taken his first step! Can you show Tanner? Can you show him what a big boy you are?”
I go to them on the rug in the lounge and sit on the floor, my day set aside. I try to watch Nelson, waiting for him to do it again, but my attention is drawn to the sheer delight on Annie’s face. The widest smile, the faintest flush of her cheeks.
Any other day, I’d be coming home to an empty but very clean and tidy house. My lounge currently looks as if King Kong charged through it.
I don’t care at all. The noise, the distraction, even the mess, it’s all welcome.
Annie looks at me and her smile softens to something gentler. “I wouldn’t have seen his first step if I wasn’t staying here,” she tells me. “I’d have been making my way back to the ranch from school.”
She rises to her knees and leans across to me, pressing her lips to my cheek. “Thank you.”
For entirely different reasons to when I was sitting in Coach’s office earlier, everything in my torso feels like it just got plugged into gravity.
I won’t say it, I shouldn’t even think it, but coming home to Annie and Nelson, even Betty, is…
nice. Real nice. When I hold her against me, my arm around her waist that fits neat as a button, I breathe in her hair and think about what I absolutely can’t want.
A promise is a promise, even if all the other reasons aren’t enough.
Annie’s staying here to get over the latest in her relationship with Auston, her baby’s dad.
Aaron makes us fish and steamed veg for dinner. Remarkably, it gets a tick in the box from Nelson, too, which Aaron looks almost bashful about.
We eat as a five around the dining table, overlooking the pool, and it’s a raucous dinner of shouting, squished veggie sticks, “no, don’t do that, Nelson”s, spilled water, and animated chatter.
My head should be absolutely battered. So often my Thursday evenings during season are Aaron and me, sometimes a team guy or two who don’t have their own chefs and can’t be bothered to cook for themselves.
It’s unexpected that this kind of noise in my house, made louder by the echoes in the vast space, is refreshing. Aaron is a great guy but it’s nice to not be talking sports, nutrition and fitness twenty-four seven. This feels like… family.
I haven’t let my mind go to whether I want kids, how many, who with. Sitting here, though, it’s clear that I do. That I want multiple kids and I want them while I’m still young enough to run around playing with them and clearing up mess from the floor after every meal.
It’s a lot, sure. Annie never stops, never rests.
But she does it all with a smile on her face.
She loves this. She’s all about family and my heart breaks for her that Auston ruined what I imagine her ideal looks like.
Her, Auston and Nelson, maybe a few more kids, out on the ranch with the horses she loves, playing ball in the yard, baking pie, Annie going out to work as a sports psychologist or doing something for herself, too.
How could Auston give all this up? He could have had a great girl, a beautiful family of kids who look exactly like their mama. Colton, Sas and Sonny, too. The extended family of a team and in-laws. He’s a fucking idiot.
I don’t appreciate I’m staring at Annie until she pauses in conversation and looks right back at me. “Are you okay? Is this all too much?”
One side of my mouth curves up in disbelief as I shake my head once. “No, it’s exactly what I needed today.”
The glint in her brown eyes is why I want to keep making her happy. Even if she’s not mine to make happy.
As she gets back to talking to Betty about her trip to the park with Nelson, I feel Aaron scrutinizing me. I choose to ignore it.