Page 51 of Coach Me
“Hey, Dex.” Her voice sounds tense over the phone, and I don’t like it.
“Hey, I was checking in to make sure you guys got somewhere dry.”
Lucie lets out a small grunt and I can hear a door close. “We’re actually headed toward you now. Think you could meet us out in the hall?”
“I’m already out here. Is everything okay?”
But my only answer is the click of the phone. It takes me two seconds to fully register that she just hung up on me, but then I hear her soft voice as she comes around the corner with Miles absolutely clinging to her like a koala bear. “Hey, Dex, sorry. My hands were full. We had a small incident, but we’re okay.”
“What? What happened?” My brain only seems to register the word incident and the fact that I wasn’t there with Miles. I knew today was feeling too good to be true.
When Miles turns his little face to meet mine, he looks so sad. Fuck. Stepping next to Lucie, I pull Miles from her arms. “What happened, bud?”
“I fell down and my knee started bleeding.” Miles’s little lip quivers as he kicks one leg out.
Looking down to assess the damage, I fully expectto find the cut for me to take care of but it’s already wrapped up with a bandage.
“You were so brave, though.” Lucie places her hand on Miles’s back. “I took him to the medical tent where we got it all cleaned up. He was a little too excited about dancing in the rain and got tripped up on his feet.”
“I fell in a puddle. I don’t like the rain anymore. I want to go back to the hotel.” Miles’s lip hangs so low; his shorts are wet, but his shirt isn’t too bad.
Lucie, however, looks soaked. Her light blue Blues T-shirt is a shade darker than it was earlier today, and her straight blonde hair now has a wave to it.
I’m not sure what they were doing or why they stayed out in the rain for so long, but with the sad look on Miles’s face, my heart aches.
“Okay, I’ll get you and Lucie a ride back to the hotel.”
“But why can’t you come with us?” Miles cries.
Fuck. I hate this.
“Your dad’s got to finish the game, bud,” Lucie says with her hand softly rubbing his back. “We can watch him on TV, though.”
Miles lays his head on my shoulder as he mumbles, “Okay.”
“Think you can make it to the locker room to change? You have extra clothes in your backpack.”
Miles lifts his head back up. “Yeah, I think so. I’m just sad now.”
“I’ll be there in just a second.”
When I set him down, he does a pitiful, slow walk to the locker room door. Yep, I’m going to go quit my job now.
“Dex…” Lucie starts off so calm, and I’m sure she’s about to say something to try to make me feel better, but when she crosses her arms over her chest, I see the goosebumps on her arms.
“You’re soaked, Lucie. What were you guys doing?” My tone comes off harsher than expected, but Lucie doesn’t snap back.
Instead, she takes a deep breath. “When the rain started, we were headed to you, thinking we could wait it out in the dugout, but then Miles started dancing while walking. I’m sorry I didn’t text you when it happened. Once Miles saw it was bleeding, he started panicking, so I took him straight to the medical tent.”
“And you’re soaked because…”
Lucie looks down at her shirt as if she didn’t even really notice. “Oh, I’m fine. The tent isn’t exactly large, and some of the older people thought that would be the perfect place to go for cover in the rain. It was crowded, and where they were treating Miles, my only real option was to stand in the rain.”
“You stood in the rain?”
Lucie’s eyebrows pull together. “Yes? I told you I’m fine. Miles is the one who hurt himself on my watch. I’m not going to melt. But I am sorry I didn’t let you know right away, I just wanted to give him all my attention—he was so upset.”
Right, and the thing is, I want to be upset that she didn’t tell me right away about it, but I can’t. This is not the first scraped knee Miles has had, not by a long shot. The difference is, if it happened on his mom’s watch, he was always brought to me at the first sight of blood—it freaked her out, which is probably where Miles’s panic stems from. But when it happened with Lucie, she took care of it. She didn’t text me because I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even a thought to her until Miles was taken care of.
