1
COACH
Do one thing that scares you each day.
Start a conversation with a stranger.
Wear your team’s uniform and sit with the other team.
Blow Bubble.
The only one stopping you is yourself.
“That’s not right.It should beblow bubbles. Because you know, you don’t just blow one bubble, right? You blow lots of bubbles.”
I swivel my chair to see one of my star players staring at the motivational poster on the wall behind my desk. A poster I didn’t hang, but I one hundred percent know who did.
“Jackson, how can I help?”
The kid seems uncharacteristically lost for words as he takes his eyes off the wall and looks at me, fidgeting with his hands.
“My um…mom said that if you don’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving next week, you could come to our place since you’re kinda new in town and all.”
I rub the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes.
“I appreciate the invite. Thank your mom for me, but I have other plans already.”
“But the guys said—”
I raise my brow, and he gets the message. I don’t care what anyone says. Unless they have access to my personal diary, they don’t know a thing. Such as, I really have no other plans but to put a frozen pizza in the oven and drink a few beers as I watch football on TV.
Jackson looks like he’s about to say something else but thinks better of it and goes back into the locker room. I catch one of the gym teachers staring at me and give him the finger.
He laughs. “Dude, this is the third invite for Thanksgiving that you’ve declined. Are you wearing some special cologne or something?”
“It’s the fourth, and no, no cologne,” I reply, hoping he’ll leave me alone to work on the lineup for the Thanksgiving Day game.
“I’m just sayin’, all these invites. What’s all that about?”
I groan. “How should I know? I’m new around here, remember?”
He gets up to leave our shared office. “Ah, of course, the welcome committee. Man, those were the good times. I remember someone dropping off a casserole or a homemade cake almost daily when I moved here. You should make the most of it before you’re the new old news. Although you’re like a movie star here. The former Marinos coach here in Windsor coaching our kids? You can milk it for all you got.”
“Not really interested.”
He closes the door behind him, leaving me on my own. I share the office with the gym teachers and the other coaches, which makes for much tighter quarters than the office I was used to at the Marinos.
Not that I mind my colleagues. It’s just an adjustment I wasn’t ready for when I upended my whole life and said goodbye to my career in San Diego to start over in Windsor, a small town in middle-of-nowhere Connecticut.
It was your choice, Riley. Live with it.
I stare at my phone and the piling notifications I’m ignoring from my parents. Who’d have thought that at the grand old age of forty-six, I’d still be playing hide and seek with them like a teenager in trouble?
The problem is I know exactly why they’re calling. They want to know if I’m going back to the West Coast for Thanksgiving, and especially if I’m going to try to save my twenty-three-year marriage.
They don’t know why Mel and I divorced, and there’s no reason to destroy yet another relationship just because mine failed.
Mel has always been close to my parents, especially since she lost hers. Despite what happened with us, I can’t bring myself to take that away from her.
