Page 234 of Coach
He was warm.
Oddly familiar.
And somehow, that small touch felt more dangerous than his forehead kiss had.
Another commercial break shattered our ability to sit staring at the screen. I shifted, tucking one leg under the other as I turned to face Shane.
“Tell me about your family,” I said, realizing his questioning had kept me answering all night without him revealing much of his past. I knew he was a local woodworker, and that was it.
He bristled at the question. Physically flinched, asthough I’d just given him a flu shot.
His jaw twitched.
“If it’s off-limits, that’s okay. I’m not trying to—”
“No,” he said too quickly. Then, quieter: “It’s not off-limits.”
I waited.
One breath. Two.
Let him sort it out.
He shifted, his eyes on the rug.
“I haven’t seen them in years.”
I didn’t say anything, just let the silence stretch like I did when one of my players needed to get something off his chest but couldn’t find the words.
“They weren’t . . . bad, not really,” he said. “Just broken, I guess, in too many places, and no one wanted to fix anything. So I left.”
“Left where?” I asked.
“I went to live in a farm town in Minnesota. I have cousins up there. Jesus, it’s cold enough to freeze your teeth off in January.”
I smiled but didn’t interrupt. He looked like a man lost in time.
“My dad worked with his hands, built barns, fences, houses—anything needing building. He didn’t talk much unless he was mad. My mom . . .” He paused, swallowing. “She was tired—always so damn tired—like life had worn her out by thirty.”
“Tired?”
He sucked in a breath like it pained him. For a moment, I didn’t think he’d say any more, but then words began to tumble out, more words than I thought possible for the stoic man.
“My mom wasn’t weak. People always think tired means weak, but it doesn’t. She was just . . . worn. Life wore her down like water over stone. She raised three kids while working nights at the packing plant and still made breakfast every morning like it mattered. My dad didn’t lift a finger inside the house, and he sure as hell didn’t lift one for her, but she kept going. She never smiled much, not because she wasn’t happy—maybe she was once—but because there wasn’t any room left in her for things like joy or softness.
“Or dreaming.
“I used to watch her nod off at the kitchen table, coffee in one hand, bills in the other. That kind of tired doesn’t come from just work; it comes from being invisible too long.”
It wasn’t until we sat in silence for a long stretch—the kind of silence that no longer felt charged, just comfortable—that I asked, “What made your mom so tired?”
Shane’s mouth tightened. I saw it happen in real time, the muscle in his jaw working like he waschewing through memories.
“She carried everything,” he said. “Bills, groceries, bruised feelings, expectations. My dad wasn’t cruel—not really—but he made sure his silence did the talking. She worked nights at a packing plant for twenty years, came home before the sunrise, made breakfast for three kids, did the laundry, and still packed our lunch every day—even my dad’s—like she owed him something.”
I wanted to reach out, to grip his hand, to offer some kind of support, but his whole demeanor kept me frozen in place.
“I’d find her asleep at the table sometimes, her elbows on the bills, a cup of coffee gone cold in her hand. She’d wake up and pretend it didn’t happen, pretend she wasn’t carrying us kids and the whole damn house on her back.”
