Page 143 of Coach
“Just Shane, okay?” I would never get used to being called that.
The kid’s face brightened. “You make Coach really happy.”
Something caught in my throat.
“He’s been my coach since I was in middle school. I’m a senior, so I guess that means we’ve been together for over six years.”
I grunted, not trusting my words, not knowing what to say.
“He’s a solid guy. Did you know he helped me come out?”
If I’d been walking, I would’ve tripped.
“Uh, no.” Then a memory smacked me in the forehead. “Wait, you’re Gabe, aren’t you?”
The boy nodded, a satisfied look in his eyes, probably at being recognized.
“I wasn’t having the best time at home, either. Coach helped me through all of it, wouldn’t let me do it alone, even when I tried to push him away. I hope I can be like him one day.”
Those words echoed in my mind.
I hope I can be like him one day.
Who said that about another person? I couldn’t remember anyone saying that about me . . . or anyone I knew.
That lump stuck in my throat grew into a grapefruit, and clouds of moisture coated my eyes. I knew Mateo was a world-class guy. It’s why I loved him; but to hear how he’d touched this kid, how he’d made a lasting mark that would help shape him as a person, as an adult?
It was too much. I couldn’t take it.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say hi. He says great things about you, too, by the way.”
As Gabe stood, I reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“Gabe.” My voice broke. “Thanks.”
His smile was electric . . . and then he was gone, mingled back into the mass of players and parents around a table littered with empty pizza trays and a centerpiece composed of one lone, very proud trophy.
It turned out that a school year could teach a great deal more than history, mathematics, social studies, and economics. It taught kids how to interact, how to engage, how not to tear each other apart when hormones and teenage foolishness collided.
It also taught the teachers—and those around them—lessons they couldn’t ignore.
I missed him.
God, I missed Mateo.
Which was stupid, because it wasn’t as though he’d moved across the country, but I missed Mateo like I’d lost a limb—like something that was supposed to be part of me had just . . . vanished.
When school started back after the holidays, the pace picked up fast.
For Mateo, anyway.
Basketball swallowed his time with practices, scouting reports, game film, and a million bus rides to rival schools in the middle of nowhere. Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, there was always a game. The other days were practice, prep, or recovery. I saw him when I could. We ate quick dinners, stole a few hourstogether. Some nights he slept over, but more and more, it was just me, alone, staring at my phone and rereading old texts like some teenager in a melodrama.
Sometimes I’d catch myself staring at Mateo—just watching him laugh or tilt his head when he was trying to figure something out—and I’d feel this pang in my chest. Like . . . how the hell did I get him? How did this bright, funny, relentless man with a crooked smile and a heart the size of Texas end up in my orbit?
He deserved someone light, someone who didn’t carry around the weight of childhood silences or the scars left by people who never saw him for who he really was. Mateo deserved someone who could let go, laugh as easily as he did, someone who wasn’t still trying to unlearn the idea that love had to be earned with sweat and quiet suffering.
And I—hell, I didn’t know if I was that guy.
