“In rugby, love, they can only pass the ball backwards,” Judith, my boss in this coach in residence adventure, says to me. Aside from thissurprisetonight, she’s been a delightful part of my time here so far. “It’s very different from what Americans callfootball.”
“My brother plays,” I say absently.
Am I staring at the Leopards’ head coach on the sidelines of the pitch? Wondering what onearthhe could’ve been thinking with the way he let Fletcher go?
Yes.
Yes, I am.
Fletcher hasn’t called. He hasn’t texted. He hasn’t slid into my DMs.
He just…let me go.
Maybe I truly was nothing to him, and asking me to stay was the afterglow of sex talking and he didn’t mean to say it at all.
Maybe that’s why he got mad.
“Pity they released Huxley,” Gareth, my office’s administrative assistant says on my other side. He looks at me like he needs to explain, and I smile patiently while my bruised and beaten heart begs him silently to stop talking. “Fixture on the team for years. Good bloke. He was getting on in years, but he still had it. Been hard to watch the team struggle since he left.”
The players on the pitch are gathering for a scrum after a loose ball.
Fletcher was number four. He would’ve been in there.
Are those the friends he had when he lived in London?
How close were they?
He plays things so close to the vest, it’s a wonder that I even knew he missed his old teammates.
The match is absolute torture.
The Leopards lose.
“Happening a lot this year,” Gareth says on a sigh as he straightens his tweed flat cap while we prepare to leave the stadium. “Might be time for a change in leadership.”
“Hush, hush,” Judith tells him. “You know Rafferty has had a rough year. Not that way, Goldie. One more surprise! Gareth, we’ll see you on Monday.”
No.
No more surprises.
Please, no more surprises.
But I smile happily and follow Judith to a stairwell. She flashes something on her phone at the security guard, and several minutes later, we’re being hustled into a cramped office in the stadium’s underbelly.
“Several years back, I was at a mixer with athletic coaches in addition to life coaches,” she tells me on the way. “Similar to what you’ve done in the States, our organization helps retiring athletes, and oftentimes, we become friends with the staff of the local teams. When I told Oliver we had the youngest coach in residence in history arriving, and about your history with your own sport, he gave me tickets and insisted I bring you down for a meet and greet. His daughter has had some…struggles…in the past few months, and I suggested you might be able to help her.”
“Struggles?” I concentrate on what I can help with rather than the knot growing in my stomach.
This is the stadium Fletcher called home for years.Years. He walked these halls. He trained here. He was injured here. Healed here. Had teammates here.
Teammates that I can hear quietly talking in a room further down the tunnel.
My heart aches. It justaches.
“Terrible break-up just weeks before her wedding,” Judith says. “No one saw it coming. He claims she cheated on him, she claims she simply realized she loved someone else but never acted on it, and she’s been isolating ever since.”
That doesn’t help my heartache.
