Page 54 of Ready to Score

It was so bizarre, when your dream wasn’t tied to financial success or ruin. Money had never been the motivating factor for her, not in this. Largely because the head coach’s yearly stipend would be barely enough to put a down payment on a new car. It was all pride and glory. Somehow, that made it even worse.

“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do if he fires me,” she said, voice wobbly.

“Have you considered coaching for another team?” Olivia asked.

Jade shook her head profusely. “I could never. Greenbelt is my home. It’s my team. I could never see myself coaching anywhere else.”

The tears were back again as she thought about the boys and their sweating faces staring up at her, eager and expectant. She knew every single one of them by name. Vonte with his anxious smiles and big laughs, Alonzo with his kind eyes, Jaxon and the way he seemed to move everywhere by running.

She knew their families, what their home lives were like, what their GPAs were. Many of them had been with her for years; they had real relationships. How was she supposed to give that up?

Aja, ever sweet and optimistic, smiled at her gently. “Your boss hasn’t made any decisions yet, remember? You haven’t lost anything as of now.”

That should have been a comfort to her, but it wasn’t. Jade probably would have preferred it if he’d just cut the cord in that moment. Instead, she’d been left to wait with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. Nothing was worse than anticipation. Being as tight as a drum and left to wait and wait and wait. Especially when the thing you were waiting for was earth-shatteringly bad news.

“Yeah.” Jade’s voice was ragged. She didn’t know what else to say.

Miri reached over and wrapped an arm around Jade’s shoulders, pulling her in until Jade put her head in the other woman’s lap.

“Everything is going to be okay, Jadey,” she said, her fingers running gently along Jade’s eyebrows. “No matter what happens, everything is going to be okay.”

Jade closed her eyes slowly, suddenly feeling incredibly tired. It was as if she’d just run a mile in the summer heat with cinder blocks strapped to her ankles. And it felt like she’d been doing it for months. Briefly, an image of Forrest Gump flashed in her mind. With those raggedy tennis shoes and that big beard, he hadn’t seemed nearly as tired as she felt.

Her entire body felt warm and weighed down, and the beginning of a fitful sleep started to descend upon her. She wanted to fight it, to sit up and scream and yell and cry some more. But she didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie there in her best friend’s arms.

“I’m scared,” she mumbled before she dozed off. “I’m just so scared.”

18

The thick cloud of cigar smoke wafting around Landry’s basement was almost too much for Franny to handle. The guys had been puffing away since before she’d shown up. The scent was thick and sweet, and even though she’d declined to participate, she could taste the cigars in the back of her throat every time she so much as breathed in.

The past two weeks, she and Jade had sat across from each other at the round poker table, not speaking, barely acknowledging each other’s presence. This time, though, Jade wasn’t there at all, and Franny found herself incredibly distracted by that fact.

At first, she thought the other woman might just be late. It was extremely unlike her, but shit happened. Then the minutes kept ticking by. And once Landry decided to start the game with nary a mention of her, Franny figured she genuinely wasn’t coming. That was when she started to feel uneasy.

It was weird being the only woman in the room. Especially during such a competitive game. The shit-talking seemed to be even more intense than usual, which wasn’t at all a problem in and of itself, just… weird. She thought back to weeks before, when Byrd had tried to let off some smart-ass sexist remark and Jade had immediately called him out on it. Franny had been right there to backher up, and together they’d shown him that they were absolutely not going to take any shit.

Franny was used to being the only woman in the group. Not in her personal life, God forbid. But professionally. Jade hadn’t been wrong when she’d argued that one of them being accepted on the field was something close to a miracle, but two of them… Honestly, Franny had never experienced it.

She used to be more familiar with the lonely nature of it, but recently, she’d gotten used to having someone else by her side. Even if she and Jade were supposed to be rivals, even if Jade was determined to dislike her, there was still a certain level of respect to be had. Whether it was on the field or at poker, having another woman around meant more to Franny than she’d realized. At least until that other woman wasn’t there.

She found herself quieter than usual during the game, but she noticed that Landry was quiet as well. That was her second clue that something was wrong. She kept one eye on the man the entire time, noticing the delay in his responses when someone addressed him and his lack of enthusiasm, even when it seemed like he had the upper hand.

Winning the game was the furthest thing from her mind, but she’d been cursed with a fantastic hand. Her first win had come as such a relief; she’d felt like she was doing what she’d been there to do—show that she deserved the space she wanted to take up. Now she’d realized that she was just as competent—if not more so—than everyone at the table. After a certain amount of time, she’d only been showing up to Thursday-night poker as an excuse to be in the same room as Jade.

The pot was a little smaller today with everyone pinching extra pennies for back-to-school activities, but she’d taken it all with little fanfare. Even with her lack of excitement, she’d reveled in the disappointed, frustrated faces of the other men at the table. The only ones who seemed unaffected were Jeremy Bell and Landry. Bell probably because the dude didn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body anyway. And Landry because he was obviously too distracted to give a shit.

After the game, a few of the guys headed out immediately, but Franny lagged behind, running through the motions of helping clean up as an excuse to get Landry alone to talk. It took almost an hour of near silence before she and the coach were the only two left in the basement.

She heaved a breath as she tied up the black trash bag that held their used red plastic cups and paper plates.

“Is, uh… is everything all right, Coach?” Her voice was rough from lack of use.

Landry’s brow quirked. “What do you mean?”

Franny shrugged. “You were awfully quiet tonight and, well, Dunn isn’t here, which is definitely out of character for her. So I was just wondering if there were any developments I should know about.”

Landry sighed, a ragged noise that she could tell came from the deep confines of his belly. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her for a few long beats. “Lim, what do you want from this?”

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