11
Spencer
Ten yards of running backward is the only part of my week I don’t have to think through.
Weight on the balls of the feet, hips low, chest over knees, eyes on the quarterback.
Harlow’s throwing from the far side of the field.
When his shoulder turns I plant, open, and drive on the ball, and I get there a half second before the receiver does.
Knox has to pull up and stare at the grass where the football isn’t.
“Come on,” he says. “It’s June!”
“You could’ve stayed home.” I flip the ball to him underhand and go back to my spot.
It’s a mostly empty field in the offseason, four guys who didn’t have to show up, one coach with a whistle around his neck he hasn’t blown once in an hour, and a set of problems that come with answers.
Where to line up, how deep to drop, which shoulder to take away.
Nothing in a footwork drill has ever asked me how I feel about it.
Coach Grant’s standing on the painted numbers with his arms folded, sunglasses on, watching us.
Dalton’s on the other side of the field with his shirt already off and tucked into the back of his shorts, showing off his release package.
Knox is waiting his turn and telling Dalton what he’s doing wrong.
Harlow says nothing and throws the ball into a two-foot window every time.
And Milo is on the sideline.
He didn’t have to come. I told him that last night.
I said there was nothing for him to do and he could take the morning.
He said it was on the calendar, so it was work, and then he loaded a crate of water bottles into my trunk while I stood there with my keys in my hand, having lost an argument I hadn’t realized I’d entered.
Now he’s parked on a folding chair, ankles crossed, the crate at his feet, sun cutting across him at an angle that should be unflattering. He’s wearing the plum shirt, the one we bought together, sleeves shoved up past his elbows, and my eyes keep drifting back to him.
It’s been four days since what we did in my kitchen, and neither of us has said a word about it.
Monday morning he came down at seven and made eggs and briefed me on the co-packer while standing an arm’s length farther from the island than he had the week before.
I took the eggs and matched the arm’s length.
“Rhodes.” Harlow’s got the ball up. “Ready?”
“Go.”
Dalton comes off the line hard, closes half the space between us in three steps, and I ride him with my eyes on his hips because Dalton’s hips lie less than the rest of him. He leans outside at eight yards and I stay square. Good. He throws a head fake at ten and I don’t buy it. Also good.
Then, out at the edge of everything, Milo stands up and stretches, both arms over his head, and the hem of the shirt rides up.
I turn the wrong way on nothing, on a move Dalton has run at me two hundred times in practice and never beaten me with it, and by the time my feet understand what my body just did, Dalton is behind me with two steps of separation and the ball is already in the air, and it lands in his hands.
He doesn’t even accelerate. He just jogs it in for the last fifteen yards like a man taking a stroll.
“Oh,” he says, coming back. “Oh, no. No, no, no, we’re not going to be able to move past this.”
“Run it again.”
“Do you understand what just happened to you?” He’s got both hands on his head, and his grin is enormous. “You bit on the fake, Rhodes. You turned your hips like a rookie who’s never seen me play! Knox, did you see it?”
“I saw it,” Knox says.
“Run it again,” I say.
“Harlow, did you see it?”
“Yeah, I did,” Harlow says, tucking a ball under his arm. His face gives up nothing, which is standard.
Dalton puts his hands on his knees and pants for effect. Then I watch it happen: he tracks back along the line I’ve been standing on and turns his whole head to look at the sideline.
Milo waves at him cheerfully with his whole hand.
Dalton turns back around. “Huh.”
“Line up.”
“Your head’s not on this field.”
“My head’s fine.”
“You left your head back there with the water bottles.” He’s walking backward toward the line now, pointing at me. “I think you’ve got exactly one thing on your mind, and it isn’t my release package. Which I will say is hurtful, because it’s been a lot of work.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.” He nods for a while. “Sure, sure, sure. Your new assistant’s real dedicated to the job, though, isn’t he?” He says it grinning, delighted with himself. “Nine a.m. optional session. Guy’s out here with a crate of fancy water and a chair. That’s commitment. Rowan won’t come to my games.”
“Rowan plays in your games!”
“He’s never once brought me a crate of anything.” Dalton bends and resets his cleat. “Anyway. My point stands.”
“Run the drill.”
He does.
I win it this time, and clean, because I refuse to lose it twice in one morning.
“There he is,” Dalton says, flat on his back where he landed. “There’s my guy.”
I pull him up by the wrist and he takes it, and on his way past he says something low to Knox that I don’t catch. Knox laughs once and turns his head and looks at the sideline.
“Hey,” Coach’s voice comes across the field. He hasn’t uncrossed his arms. “Are we running a drill or a group chat?”
“Drill,” Dalton says.
“Then run it!”
We run it for another forty minutes. I don’t blow another read. I also don’t let myself look at that sideline once, which is a level of discipline I’d like on the record.
Coach calls it at ten after ten with two fingers in the air and no whistle, tells Dalton he’s lining up too wide, tells me nothing at all, and heads for the tunnel.
Harlow puts the balls in the bag himself, the way he does after every session.
Knox is betting Dalton fifty bucks he can’t hit the goalpost from way back.
I come off the field with my shirt stuck to my back and salt drying on my temples, and Milo’s already out of the chair, the water bottle open and coming toward me before I’ve said a word.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, boss.”
I drink half of it in one go. The rest goes over the back of my neck, and then I get a fistful of my shirt and pull it up to wipe my face.
When I let the shirt drop, Milo’s eyes come off my abs, but not fast enough. There’s color coming up his throat.
“So,” he says, and clears his throat. “You’ve got two things this afternoon at the Cornerstone office. One thirty is Andy and the co-packer guy on video, which is going to be about the clumping again. I’ve already sent you the humidity numbers so nothing in there surprises you.”
“Noted.”
“Three is the brand consultant, in person, and before you make that face, I moved it twice already and I’m not moving it a third time.
If I do, he’s going to start emailing me instead of you and I’ve read his emails, Spencer.
One of them had a mood board attached.” He scrolls on his phone.
“You had a call at four thirty that I turned into an email, so you’re done after the consultant. And there’s chicken thawing…”
He keeps talking, but I stop hearing it because I’m distracted by the freckles across his nose that I haven’t noticed before. There’s a spot on his lower lip that’s darker where he chews it when he’s reading a calendar. I have known that fact for approximately eleven days and I have no use for it.
“Boss?”
“Mm?”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m listening carefully.”
“Uh-huh.” He lowers the phone, smirking. “You’re an awful liar for a man with a face like that. Do you want me to say the chicken part again?”
“I heard the chicken.”
“Did you, though?”
I take another drink of water so I don’t have to answer that.
Out on the field Dalton is yelling something at Knox about the fifty bucks, and the sun’s coming through the top of the stadium and lighting up all the mowing lines, and my legs ache in the good way, and I let myself have about one uncomplicated minute of this.
Then his phone goes off in his hand.
He looks at the screen and his thumb comes down, and the ring cuts out, and he goes right back to the calendar.
“Anyway, I also called about your—”
It rings again.
He turns it face down against his palm and keeps going, and this time his voice goes flat, which is what it does when he’s managing something.
“Take it,” I say.
“It’s fine.”
“Twice in ten seconds isn’t fine.” I nod at his hand. “Take it.”
He looks at the phone, then up at me.
“You sure that’s okay?”
“Milo.”
“Because I told you I’d keep it outside work hours, and it’s—”
“Take the call.”
“Okay.” His shoulders come down half an inch. “Thanks. One second, I swear.”
He turns half away from me and puts it to his ear, and I hear the voice come through before he’s got it all the way there.
A woman’s voice, pitched high and fast, running words together.
I can’t make out one of them, but I don’t need to.
I’ve heard that register in stadium tunnels and hospital hallways, and it doesn’t matter what language it’s speaking.
Milo’s face empties out.
It happens in less than a second, everything I’ve been looking at for the past ten minutes gone off him like a hand wiped a window, and he’s already moving, three steps away from me and then five, one hand coming up to cup around the phone.
“Ma. Ma, hey, slow down.” He’s walking toward the tunnel, fast, shoes slapping the track. “Mom. Take a breath and tell me exactly what happened.”