She gave me a shy smile, and my chest tightened. I scratched at it.
“Plus, though you might’ve hurt my feelings for a bit, you were still a gentleman the whole night. You wouldn’t even rank in the top ten worst dates, Champ.” She patted my forearm and went back to her food. “Enough about me. I want to know about you. Do you date? Are they awful? Why do you think you’re going to get fired?”
“That is a lot of questions.”
“Well, I haven’t been in this position before, and I think it would be good to get to know you. Who knows how long we might be stuck together without power? Maybe we can even be friends after thissnow-pocalypse blizzard-buddy flingwe agreed to.”
Friends?
We’d slept together, and I enjoyed the sounds she made when she orgasmed. That didn’t seem friendly to me, but if that was how she wanted to play it, then I’d keep quiet. I’d already hurt her enough by saying the wrong things once. Plus, what else would we be besides friends?
I had no idea, but I knew I wanted more with her.
“Ah, well.” I frowned, reflecting on my dating life. “I don’t really date. Maybe a couple times a year, if that.”
“Really? How come?” Her eyes grew wide, and her voice was pitched high. “You’re such an eligible bachelor!”
“Thank you?” I laughed at her expression and arched a brow. “You did say I was a grump, though.”
“Yeah, but that won’t keep women away. It’s part of the mystery.” She waved a hand like it was no big deal. “You’re a football coach and wear tight pants on the field.”
“You’ve looked then?”
“Obviously.” She grinned and rested her chin on her hand. “So why don’t you date? Are you a forever-bachelor since getting divorced?”
“I don’t think so.” I scratched my chest again. “It’s more… I don’t have time to put effort into dating someone. An occasional dinner or drinks, sure. But a commitment? All my time is spent coaching. Whether it’s coming up with the best practice plans, watching old tapes to see what went wrong, or recruiting players—from summer until about now, I live and breathe football. The team will always come first. That’s not fair to anyone.”
“If your partner understood your passion for it, I think they’d be flexible. My mom always says that if someone wanted to make time for you, they would, no matter what their excuses were. I believe it.”
“I’m not hopeless then?” I leaned closer, waiting for her answer but not sure why what she thought mattered so much. But it did.
“Of course not.” She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. “You mentioned you might get fired. Why? The girls tell me you’ve had a great record.”
I rubbed my temples—the question stung. I slacked in building a solid team foundation, while my brother had built a winning team. He was in the bowl game, I was not. “We didn’t perform as well as expected this year despite the raw talent.”
“But isn’t the team young?”
“Sure, but it’s not a reason. We were projected to go further in our division, and we didn’t.” I stood, grabbing our empty paper plates and tossing them away.
I want a drink.
Leaning against the kitchen counter, I closed my eyes and found the words kept spilling out. “Last I heard, some of our big players are smoking dope and partying their faces off. That’s not what you do if you’re a serious athlete.”
“It’s what you do when you’re a dumb college kid learning how to balance the fame of being on the team and being on your own for the first time, though. Think about when you were in college. There is no way you were perfect and never broke the rules. What didyoudo?”
“I went to the gym every day to get bigger, faster, and better.” I pushed off the counter and crossed my arms over my chest. Becca remained at the table with her expression cheery, and the bitterness crept up my throat. “I took it seriously because I had goals.”
“Then you’re not the norm. College boys are stupid, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. You’re saying you never let loose on the weekends with a couple of drinks? You didn’t hook up with girls who gave you flirty looks? I bet a dollar you did, Harrison.”
“Sure, I hooked up with chicks and drank a bit, but never enough to affect my game. Our coach would’ve benched us.”
“Then why don’t you bench them?” She crossed one leg over the other, putting her colorful boots on display. “Set your team vision and make expectations clear. Invest in who they are as people, Coach Cooper. That means meeting them where they are. I won’t pretend I know anything about sports; I always tried to get out of PE class. But if the girls in the house ever acted up and went against the contract they’d signed, I’d revoke any and all privileges. No question. Can you do the same on the field?”
I sighed at her sound logic. “These guys get full rides. They expect to play. The talent is there. It’s just…” I stopped, unsure how to describe the missing piece.
“I understand football is the biggest moneymaker for the school and all, but don’t you get to decide who plays and who doesn’t? Who else will help form these athletes into decent human beings?” She scrunched her nose and released a nervous laugh. “But what do I know? I think I’m going to try to read while we have some natural light.”
I didn’t respond before she left me in the kitchen. The conversation was a ping-pong game. She had a solution for my problems, and it irked me that I didn’t think of this before. Was I so caught up in jealousy over Hank that my head was in my ass? She said invest in people, in my players.
