Chapter Seventeen
Come see me as soon as you get in.
T he text from Stan arrived just as Calla was taking the first sip of her Monday morning Hail Mary Mocha at Huddle Up. She knew it had to be coming, but she’d been hoping to avoid her boss until lunchtime at the very least.
Monday had never been Stan’s favorite day of the week.
Nor was he particularly fond of Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.
Fridays were marginally better, because that was doughnut day in the break room, but she knew there was zero chance she could steer clear of him for an entire week—not after the column she’d turned in late last Friday night.
“Uh-oh,” Bailey said from across the counter as she returned from pouring a half-dozen black coffees for her regulars from the Victory Club. Either those guys hadn’t spotted Calla yet, or—surprise, surprise—they were purposefully ignoring her. “I know that look on your face. What’s wrong?”
Calla slipped her phone back inside her red leather handbag. The interior was printed with a cutesy heart print, invisible to the outside world. Kind of like Calla’s actual heart. Only that wasn’t true anymore, now that she’d spilled her guts all over the sports page of the Lone Star Gazette .
“It’s Stan. He wants to see me as soon as I get in.” Calla’s leg jiggled on her barstool, and she wished she could blame it on her caffeine intake. Alas, her tolerance was typically more than a single sip. Make no mistake, this was clear-cut anxiety.
“You have nothing to worry about. If he was going to fire you, he never would’ve run that column in the first place,” Bailey said.
True, and it wasn’t as if Calla hadn’t given him the opportunity to do so. She hadn’t minced a single word in the reference line of her email.
“Run this, or I quit.”
Stan hadn’t bothered to send a response.
She’d had no idea if she was still employed or not until the freshly printed newspaper landed on the front lawn early Saturday morning and she saw her column for herself.
She’d stared in disbelief when she realized Stan had run the rewritten version in its entirety, word for word, just as she’d typed it.
Up until then, she kind of figured she’d been fired by default.
“That was before the fallout,” Calla countered.
Bailey’s eyes widened. “What fallout? What did I miss?”
“I don’t know.” Calla bit her lip. She’d spent the entire weekend holed up in the house—not on purpose, exactly.
When Jackson announced he had hours upon hours of game tapes to study and watch, her dad had been all too eager to sit and keep him company.
Before Calla knew it, she’d been propped on the sofa with a bucket of popcorn on her lap and a snoring bulldog warming her feet.
Much to her astonishment, it had been the best weekend she could remember having in a long, long time.
“Stan could just as easily want to tell you that your article was a stroke of genius. You already know I think it was. Ethan would’ve thought so, too.
” Bailey’s mouth curved into a tender smile.
“If anyone says otherwise—Stanley Miller included—I just might frame it and hang it next to your brother’s portrait. ”
Calla grinned, despite the apprehension gnawing at her insides. “I appreciate your faithful and only slightly biased support.”
“That’s what best friends are for. Now stop spiraling and let’s talk about something truly important.” Bailey drummed her cotton-candy-hued fingernails on the coffee counter. “Like your new roommate. Where is he this morning, anyway? He and Cade always stop by for coffee before school.”
“They scheduled an early-morning practice for today. Jackson wanted to get a jump on the week since the game Friday night is so important.” If the team lost, the Victory Club could have him fired on the spot. No pressure or anything. “Also, he’s not my roommate. He’s just a…”
Calla hesitated. “…houseguest.”
“That little pause spoke volumes, just so you know,” Bailey teased.
“Even if it did, you and I both know it doesn’t matter. Nothing real could ever happen between Jackson and me.” Calla reached for her mocha, but her mug was already empty. If ever a morning called for two cups of coffee, it was this one.
Bailey flipped a lever on the espresso machine without having to be asked. She eyed Calla as she tamped down the ground beans. “And why is that, exactly?”
“Are you kidding me? There’s an entire laundry list of reasons.” So many that Calla struggled to know where to start. “You realize that he doesn’t actually live here, right? Chicago is awfully far away.”
Over one thousand miles, in fact. Calla knew because in one of her weaker moments, she’d looked it up.
How delusional could she possibly get? What was she planning on doing—giving up her entire life to move to Illinois and be a WAG?
She’d seen the reality shows about WAGs—the acronym for wives and girlfriends of famous athletes.
That ultra glamorous sort of life just wasn’t her, and it never would be.
Never mind the fact that she and Jackson had never even kissed. She didn’t even know for certain that he had feelings for her. With all the intense preparation for the Rustwood game, they hadn’t even had a real chance to talk about her article.
And that was fine. Truly, it was. She’d pretty much stripped herself bare in that story. What else was there to say?
Oh, I don’t know—maybe the fact that you’re in love with him.
“Also, in case you’ve forgotten, he dates supermodels. His real life is completely different than it is here. He’s famous. He’s a professional football player , and I’m…”
Her voice trailed off. She didn’t even know how to complete that sentence. She had, after all, lit a match late Friday night that just might well be the spark that caused her entire career to go up in flames. She might not even be a small-town local reporter anymore.
“You’re amazing. That’s what you are, Calla Dunne.
And whether you realize it or not, Jackson thinks so, too.
” Bailey slid a to-go cup toward her, and the rich scents of chocolate and coffee wrapped Calla in a comforting embrace.
“None of those reasons you just listed make any difference at all when two people really care about each other. Trust me on this—when something is meant to be, nothing else matters. Love finds a way.”
Coming from anyone else, those words would’ve sounded trite. But Calla knew they hadn’t come easily to Bailey. They weren’t just platitudes. Her advice was hard-earned.
“I know you’re scared, hon. Opening your heart to someone is terrifying after it’s been broken—after you’ve loved and lost, no matter who it is that you miss. A mom, a brother, a best friend…” Bailey’s eyes filled as her voice cracked. “A husband.”
Calla’s throat went thick. She and Bailey never talked like this. They tiptoed around the past and pretended they’d moved on when, in reality, they were stuck. Even Bailey, because Calla knew good and well that she hadn’t been on a single date since Ethan passed away.
But that was a problem for another day. Calla could only handle one crisis at a time, and between her job, football season and her complicated feelings for Jackson, she was already too overwhelmed to fix her own life at the moment, much less her best friend’s.
“It might seem easier to keep your feelings to yourself and refuse to risk your heart, but it’s not.
You’ll always wish you had. You’ll always wonder what could’ve been.
I know most people consider my story a tragedy, but I never think of it that way.
Ethan and I were happy, and yes, the end was hard.
You were there. You know it was. But also know this, my sweet sister and friend.
” Bailey pressed her hands to her heart, and a soft, bittersweet smile graced her lips.
“If I could go back and do it over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. ”
Calla inhaled a ragged breath. She’d never felt such a strange mix of sorrow and envy in her whole life.
Bailey had loved Ethan so completely, and to carry no regrets at all, despite the pain she’d endured…
Calla could scarcely fathom it. She wasn’t sure she had that kind of courage.
She wished she did, but for all her bravado, her heart was as fragile and delicate as if it were made of glass.
She’d never meant for any of this to happen.
She’d certainly never meant to fall in love.
With football or Jackson Knight. But hearing Bailey talk about Ethan and seeing the way her eyes shone—not with tears but with the glow of someone who’d truly lived in those moments—she knew in her soul that she had.
And now that she’d written the things she had and basically forced Stan to print them, so did everyone else in Bishop Falls.
* * *
“We thought we were practicing this morning, Coach.” Michael Davila sat on one of the benches situated between the rows of metal lockers in the locker room with his duffel bag at his feet.
Blake Jones, the boy beside him, nodded. “Shouldn’t we at least be lifting? The game is only four days away. People are saying the Holy Triangle is playing for Rustwood now. Is that true?”
Jackson stood with his arms crossed near the front of the room.
Behind him, the giant dry-erase board was covered in X ’s, O ’s, dashed lines and arrows indicating the plays the team planned on executing Friday night.
He hadn’t called the boys here at this early hour to go over strategy, though.
Nor did he want them to lift weights or get in any extra field time.
In the email he’d sent out to both the coaching staff and the players over the weekend, he’d labeled this early-morning huddle a mandatory practice, because he knew that was a surefire way to get everyone here on time.
Being tardy for practice had consequences like bleacher runs or stair sprints.
No one wanted to sign up for that at six in the morning.