Page 80 of The Problem with Players

I parted my lips more, she put a spoonful of soup into my mouth, and I swallowed it. The warmth felt good as it glided down my throat.

“I owe you an apology, Nathan.”

That was enough to make me open my eyes again. “What do you mean?”

“Ever since you’ve come to coach, I’ve been a bit of a jerk to you. I’m sorry for that. You’ve been an amazing addition to the team, and I’m lucky to have you as a coach.”

“I must look pretty bad, huh?” I let out a slight chuckle. “If I’m on my deathbed, just tell me now, Avery.”

A gentle snicker fell from her lips, and even though I felt like shit, I loved the sound of that. Avery did not laugh a lot, so whenever one fell from her, I always tried to hold on to the sound as long as possible.

“You’re not on your deathbed,” she swore. “I just realized how much of a dick I’ve been toward you, and I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve it.” She fed me more soup.

“I’m sure parts of me deserved it.”

“No,” she disagreed. “None of you did. We aren’t who we were when we were younger, and it was unfair of me to treat you as if you were the same boy who left all those years before.”

“Just so you know, Avery, I hated that I left.”

In her subtle reaction, I felt the weight of her pain. Or maybe it was my pain I was feeling. Maybe our hurts from the past we shared mirrored one another and sat packed with a quiet torment that we both carried. It just seemed that she hid hers better than I had.

She looked away for a moment and said so softly, “I hated it, too.” Her voice was so low that I wasn’t certain she’d actually said the words or if my fever-stricken mind imagined it.

“We don’t have to talk about us,” she said as she turned back to feed me more soup. The heaviness still stayed laced in her words. “You just need to get better.”

I wanted to keep the conversation going, but the exhaustion set in again as I struggled with my heavy breaths. She smiled gently as she placed the bowl of soup down on the nightstand before she made me take a few more sips of water. When she finished, she stood to leave.

“Avery?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

She smiled again, and within seconds, my eyes faded shut, and I went back to sleep.

It tookme a week to recover, but Avery took care of me every step of the way. I did not know if she knew it, but she was making it next to impossible for me not to find myself falling for her with every second that passed by.

After my first day back coaching the third week of April, I approached Avery under the fading sunlight. She was busy organizing the equipment on the field, completely wrapped up in her task.

I leaned against the fence in front of her, taking her in for a moment. “Hey,” I said, breaking the silence.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask… How did you manage not to get sick after taking care of me for a week straight? What kind of superhero immune system do you have?” She went to grab the bag of baseballs, but I hurried over and lifted it for her, tossing it over my shoulder.

A mischievous smirk lit her face up. “Well, I figured one of us needed to suck it up. We couldn’t both be little punks,” she said, her voice dripping with a teasing tone. “Unlike some people, I can’t afford to be a baby about it. I had a team to coach and couldn’t afford to be sick.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “A little punk, huh? Is that how you see me?”

“You cried for five days straight, tossing and turning, telling me to take you out.”

I feigned a wounded expression, rubbing at my chest as if her words physically hit me. “For the record, I don’t think I had a normal flu. I think I had a newfound plague of some sort.”

“Sure, sure,” she cooed, stepping a tad closer. As the distance between us shrank, my heart beat a little faster. “But you’re lucky you had a solid nurse like me to look after you. You might’ve actually died if it wasn’t for me.”

“You don’t have to prove that point to me, Coach. I already know I would’ve been fucked without you.”

“Well, as long as you’re aware of how good you had it.”

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