Page 106 of Coach
But it wasn’t a one-off.
Once he got his hands on me that first time, it kept happening. A shoulder rub here, hands on my hips to fix my stance there.
I tried to keep my distance. I tried to blend in.
But it was no use.
He was always there, breathing down my neck, whispering in my ear.
It was maybe only halfway through the season when his words went from entirely focused on the game, on my performance, to things about me personally—my body, my hair, my smile.
I distracted myself with friends, with school, with guys my own age whose gazes lingered, whose hands grazed. But with permission. With my mutual enjoyment.
It wasn’t until my grandfather died that things with Coach Dover ratcheted up to new heights.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just seeing him at the field or around the fitness center.
He was in the food hall, the library, the student health center where I was getting therapy for my grief. He was outside my dorm building. He was happening to walk by parties where I was with friends.
“He’s such a fucking creep,” my roommate said when we saw him in a third location on the same night. “You should report him to the dean or something.”
I’d considered it. In fact, between sobbing over my grandfather, all I did was think about trying to turn in the coach.
The problem was, I was on scholarship. And without my grandfather, I had no safety net at all. If the dean didn’t believe me, if Coach Dover somehow managed to try to spin this on me, I could lose my scholarship. If I lost that, I was out of school. And without school, I was homeless and directionless.
Besides, I had a lot of other things on my plate to worry about. Like what the hell I was going to do when school was over for the year.
There was a small amount of money left over once my grandfather’s estate was settled. Enough to give me first, last, and security plus a buffer for furniture. But I would need a job to cover the rest. Not to mention to sock away for the next year when I would be too busy with school and soccer to work.
And since the coach wasn’t hurting me in any way, I decided to do something really stupid.
I kept my mouth shut.
Soon enough, the school year was over. And I was glad to get away from the pressure. But also from the coach.
I didn’t go back to my hometown. There was nothing left for me there. Instead, I moved just off campus, snagged myself a cheap apartment, and started to work at a local sports bar, where I learned a pair of tiny shorts and a tight top had men opening up their wallets and paying my bills.
It took all of three weeks for Coach Dover to find me there.
After that first night, he was a regular. He camped on a barstool from opening until closing, his gaze traveling over me, occasionally trying to catch my eye so he could stumble and stammer at some inane attempt at conversation.
I got good at avoiding him, pretending he simply didn’t even exist. I didn’t even take the tips he tried to leave for me.
But it wasn’t long before he was following me home after my shift, before he was standing outside my apartment building with binoculars.
My world, already smaller thanks to no classes or soccer and all my friends going back to their hometowns for summer break, narrowed further.
I didn’t leave my house except to go to work.
I accepted rides home from the bouncer or other servers.
I tried to have Coach Dover blocked from the bar. But my boss claimed he never did anything wrong.
Too quickly, the next school year began.
Then there he was again.
Hands moving over me under the guise of training me, of checking me for injuries.
