6. Chapter 6
Bram
That's the throw.
On the screen, Cole plants his back foot, hips already coming through, and the ball is out before Camden's linebacker can reach him.
Twenty-two yards on a rope, third and eleven, into a window I would generously describe as theoretical.
I scrub the film back and watch it again.
Any coordinator with a pulse is going to sit up in his chair before that spiral lands, and my job tonight is to make sure it lands on a lot of screens.
It's Thursday evening, and the athletics wing has emptied down to me.
Past my interior window the corridor is dark except for every third ceiling panel.
I can hear the ventilation and a floor buffer working somewhere off in the main hall.
I've got the reel up on the wall TV, laptop wired in, and eight games of the season to choose from.
The cut list on my legal pad is down to eleven throws, two scrambles, and one block Cole threw on a linebacker.
That one stays. I want them to see more than his arm.
The reel itself is nearly built. Four minutes and change, best throw first, because coordinators watch film the way sophomores read chapters, meaning the beginning and then whatever survives their attention span.
After the Camden throw, I put in the fourth-quarter drive against Ellsworth in the rain, the no-look flip on the busted screen, and the scramble where he kept his eyes downfield the whole way like I have been yelling at him to do since he was fourteen.
I trim each clip to the snap and the result.
No music, no slow motion, no graphics. If a program wants a movie trailer, they can recruit somebody else's kid.
Nobody assigned me this. Nobody assigns me most of what I do after five.
But it's November of the kid's senior year, and I don't want him overlooked because somebody else's coaches made more calls.
Coordinators are building their boards right now, tonight, in offices that look like mine but with better chairs, and I want Cole Braddock's name on those boards.
So I cut film, and I draft the letter that goes out with it.
The letter comes easily. I keep it to four paragraphs, with no adjectives a salesman would use.
I point out what the film shows and where to look for it.
Then I tell them about the work behind those throws.
Cole will repeat a drill until he gets it right, and he knows the game well enough to direct the other players on the field.
I've spent four years helping him improve that throwing arm.
He's done every bit of the work I've asked of him.
There are two signature lines at the bottom.
Mine and Gene's. Gene will be more than happy to sign under anything I put in front of him about this kid.
He's got twenty years of standing behind his name.
A letter with Gene Thackery's name on it gets opened in most offices.
Between the two of us, we ought to be able to get Cole a chance to show what he can do to the people that matter.
I read the fourth paragraph back and it's good. For a minute, I don't think about anything except how far the kid has come. Then I catch myself looking past the TV toward the corridor, and my smile evaporates.
Rory is still here. I can feel her somewhere down the main corridor, the faint hum beneath my own feelings and the heat spreading through my chest. Even the tips of my wings are warm. I don't know what's kept her so late in the school.
I could walk down there and ask. I could have done that an hour ago.
All week I've been listening to her heels go past the window in my office, watching her keep her eyes forward and her chin up.
Every time I get anywhere near her, she's suddenly, urgently needed somewhere else.
She hasn't said a word to me all week. I keep hoping she'll stop at my door, even if it's only to tell me to stop staring at her. At least I'd have something to answer.
I miss her like I miss a part of my own being. Which is a hell of a thing to admit about a woman you spent only a night with. A hell of a night, but still. The mysterious ways of a mate bond and all that.
I flex my left hand inside the glove, feeling the band press against the leather. I want to take the damned glove off. I want to go down to her office and ask what I'm supposed to do with all this. She didn't ask for any of it, either, but right now I'm the only one who even knows it happened.
If I go back to my nest now, I'll only lie awake. A few hard laps over the bay might wear me out enough to sleep. I save the cut, kill the TV, put the drives away, and lock my office. Then I head out through the doors by the field.
The field is black and silver under a low sky, chalk lines gone gray, my breath fogging out ahead of me. I stretch my wings, letting the cold air move over the membranes, and walk out past the equipment shed to open grass. Then I drop low, coil, and go.
The launch cracks the air. Three wingbeats and the school is laying itself out below me, roofline, bleachers, the pines behind the field, and I'm banking toward the water when the side door by the staff lot swings a wedge of light across the asphalt.
I hear her heels even from up here, even over the wind.
Apparently there is no altitude at which I don't hear that click-clickety sound.
I fly back toward the lot and spot Rory crossing the rows under the light poles, four pools of orange-white with dark between them.
Her coat is buttoned all the way to her chin, her keys already out, and she's heading for her car.
November has already turned quarter to six into midnight.
She's the only person down there, and I circle above her instead of flying away.
Turn toward the water. Keep going.
I don't.
She has to know. I can't keep waiting for her to stop avoiding me so I can explain why I'm wearing gloves indoors. Down there, at least, nobody else will overhear. I can tell her, let her ask whatever she needs to ask, and finally stop wondering how she'll take it.
And I'm ready. That's the thing. I have a speech.
I've been drafting it for three days. I start with the lore in general terms, something I can explain without getting tangled up in how I feel about her.
Then I'll show her the mark and tell her what it means.
I've run the speech in the shower. I've run it at the whiteboard between periods with the door shut.
I've spent the most time on the part where I tell her she doesn't owe me anything.
It's true. It will still hurt like hell if she sends me away, and I'd rather she didn't hear that in my voice.
Somewhere after the terrifying part, I'd also like to ask if she wants to see me again. Outside school. Preferably without one of us having to chase the other down a corridor first.
I drop out of the sky, flaring my wings to slow the descent. I land in the lane in front of her car with the one soft thunderclap I can never fully silence, and in the quiet of an empty lot at night it might as well be artillery.
Rory leaves the ground. All of her, straight up. The keys leap out of her hand, she catches them against her chest on the way down, and she spins to face me with her free hand pressed flat over her heart.
"Bram!" Her voice fills the whole lot, shrill and full of panic. "You cannot. Do that. To people."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." I fold my wings and stay where I landed, a few paces from her.
First words either of us has said to the other since that night, and mine are an apology for falling on her out of the dark.
Outstanding.
She's staring up at me. Under the light pole her curls have gone copper at the edges, and her breath is fogging.
Her lipstick is still a vivid red, crisp around the edges of her mouth.
Fuck, she's lovely. I want to touch her, and she's standing there with her keys clamped in one fist, waiting for me to explain why I nearly frightened her out of her shoes.
I had a whole speech a moment ago. Now I can't remember how I meant to start. My left hand hangs at my side. I could take the glove off, show her the mark, but I can't quite make myself do that, either.
"There's something I need to talk to you about."
"Don't." She's already shifting her weight back toward the driver's door, the keys clicking in her fist. "You don't have to say anything, okay? Really. It's fine. You have nothing to worry about."
Worry? Is that what she thinks? That I've been trying to talk to her because I'm worried she'll want more? I want more, damn it. I draw a breath to tell her, but she's still talking.
"The other night was a one-time thing." Her chin is up.
Usually her hands move when she talks. Now they're pressed flat against her coat, the keys trapped under one palm.
The words come quickly, without a pause.
She sounds as if she's rehearsed this, too.
"It was a mistake. People make mistakes. It's fine. It meant nothing."
My hands close into fists. The leather pulls tight across the band.
It meant nothing.
Her feelings surge through the bond, so strong this close that I can hardly bear to stand still.
I can't tell if she's angry or frightened or as hurt as I am.
All I have to go on is what she's saying, and she's saying it in the same bright, capable voice she uses with parents.
I knew she might regret Sunday. I wasn't ready to hear her say it so easily.
"I have a rule." She takes a breath and starts again before I can answer.
"A firm rule, and it's not about you, it's everyone: I don't date coworkers.
Ever. It's the one rule I don't break, so...
" She glances toward the car, then back at me.
"This can never happen again. Okay? We're good.
Monday through Friday, colleagues, like always. It's already forgotten."
I don't need to give her my entire speech. I need to tell her that it meant something to me. That much, surely. I can manage that much.
But nothing comes.
This is the part of me I've never fixed.
Give me a whiteboard and a room of teenagers and I'll talk for fifty minutes on the Missouri Compromise without notes.
Put one small woman in front of me telling me she doesn't want me, and I can't tell her what she means to me.
My throat is tight, my wings pulled hard against my back.
I must look as if I'm waiting for her to finish so I can leave.
I open my mouth. Rory stops moving toward the car and waits, her eyes on my face. She has her hand on the door handle, but she hasn't pulled it yet. I could still say something. Ask her to stay for a minute. Tell her I don't want to forget.
I close my mouth again.
She waits. One second, maybe two, her eyes moving over my face. The hum under my skin spikes, sharp enough to make my fingers twitch toward her. I keep my hand at my side. Then she nods, like we agreed on something.
"Good night, Coach."
She opens the door and gets in. I stand there while she pulls on her seat belt and starts the engine.
The headlights throw my shadow forty feet up the lot, and I step out of the lane to let her pass.
She drives through the gate and down the hill toward town.
I watch until her taillights disappear behind the pines.
With every yard she gains, the warmth fades from my chest and along my wings, until the wind feels cold against the membranes again.
Thirty-two years of being cold. It never felt like this.
I stand alone in the orange-white light. Then I pull off my left glove and look at the band. It's still there.
Good talk.