Page 107 of Coach
It was around then, too, that he found me on my socials. Then came the messages. Hundreds and hundreds per week. All of them unanswered.
My roommate finally got sick of it, dragging me to the dean and demanding I tell him what was going on.
The investigation went on for weeks, and I’d started to lose hope that anything would change.
Until we showed up to practice to find the assistant coach was now taking over as the head.
I’d been so focused on getting him off the soccer field that I never stopped to consider that without a job, he would have nothing but time to follow me, to send me increasingly scary messages. About how we were meant to be together, how he was going to marry me, and what he was going to do to me on our wedding night.
That was when I finally did it.
I went to the police and begged for some help.
I got a meeting with a judge.
I was granted a restraining order for a year.
And I finally, finally felt like I could breathe.
Not only couldn’t Coach Dover get close to me physically, but he was also banned from contacting me online as well.
I was finally free.
For a few blissful months, it seemed like everything was finally on track.
Then summer break came around.
My roommate went home to her family.
I picked up shifts at the bar when they found themselves short-staffed again.
It was all just very normal.
Happy, even.
Until I came home one night at nearly three in the morning with a migraine hammering behind my eyes, reeking of booze, but almost four hundred dollars richer.
I’d been thankful for the dark apartment as I walked through, stripping out of my beer-stained shirt and shorts, ready to take a quick shower, down some pain meds, and fall into bed.
I was in my bedroom when something made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Something felt wrong.
But I couldn’t place what.
Not until I saw a shadow moving out of the corner of my eye.
Only it wasn’t a shadow.
It was a man whose restraining order had expired.
A man who had a year of pent-up obsession to express.
I tried to rush toward the door.
But he was right there in front of me, blocking my way, telling me to hear him out, demanding I acknowledge how perfect we were together.
The more I insisted he leave, that we talk somewhere else in the daylight, the more agitated he became that I wouldn’t hear him out.
