Page 4 of Single Dad Dilemma
He blinked.
“I don’t fucking know, Larry,” I replied. “It’s your fault. You always bring in the friendly ones, butI’mthe one who has to deal with the consequences. We’re gonna talk about this later.”
Instead of moving, he just stared up at me, and with a sigh, I reached down and scooped him up in my arms. He made a grumbling sound, like he paid a mortgage and taxes and worked fifty hours a week. I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, your life is very rough, you little freeloader.”
Chapter Two
Barrett
During the regular season, my entire life boiled down to fifteen-minute increments. It didn’t sound like much, but with a hundred and sixty-eight hours in every week, that gave me six hundred and seventy-two chunks of time to manage my life.
Fifteen minutes to debrief with my assistant, Bridget, every weekday morning at six thirty. Bridget knew every minute detail about my life, down to the way I liked my eggs at breakfast, that I was allergic to cashews, and wanted extra starch on the collars of my dress shirts when I had occasion to wear them.
If I thought about it too hard, she also probably knew I hadn’t gotten laid since the last time I’d touched my ex-wife, which was why she gave me sad eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking.
My assistant coach, as well as my offensive and defensive coordinators, received daily meetings as well, something that wasn’t typical for most NFL coaches, but mine carried a slightly heavier load than most after my divorce had put me firmly in the single-dad club.
The team’s general manager got two of those chunks every Monday, once I’d finished breakfast with my team captains.
Pearl, the octogenarian owner of the team, received another two. Sometimes more, if she was feeling particularly chatty. And the last fewweeks, I couldn’t blame her. When the new head coach and the new quarterback were butting heads, I’d have a few extra words in my daily allotment too.
Archer, the quarterback in question, avoided getting on my schedule as much as possible, which was part of the problem.
Sorry, Coach, can’t make it today,he’d said earlier, his phone tucked up to his ear and a smirk on his face as he tapped a fist with the guys who passed us in the hallway.Promised I’d do a polar bear plunge with a local sorority for charity.
When all I did was raise my eyebrow, he laughed under his breath.Don’t worry, I still know how to throw the ball. We’ll be fine this weekend.
Then he walked away, hands tucked into his pockets, whistling as he did, and I tried to decide how long I wanted to let this slide before I benched him.
It was moments like that, I wondered why the hell I wanted to be a coach in the first place. Most of the time, it was amazing. Rewarding and fulfilling, and it kept my feet planted in a world that I loved. But when you’re watching the retreating back of the guy leading your team so he can go swimming with a sorority, knowing he had a guaranteed thirty million from a four-year rookie contract that I still wasn’t sure he deserved, it left me asking myself a lot of questions.
Questions that, unfortunately, didn’t have many answers. Or not yet, at least. Just like anything worthwhile, building up the right foundation for this team would take time, and I hadn’t had much of it yet.
It was one of a million things weighing on my shoulders, and no matter how many deep breaths I took, that weight never dissipated.
A text from Bridget lit up my phone.
Bridget:Do we want to comment on this?
Included was a link to an article with the headline:Buffalo’s Power Struggle: Can Coach King Wrangle the Talent?
And then below:Based on this season, and what we’re hearing from the locker room, we’re not so sure.
Reading anything else would simply ruin my already tenuous mood, so I clicked away, a familiar sensation churning in my gut. Failure didn’t sit well with anyone in this industry. Competition was in the driver’s seat at all times, the thing that drove every single person who walked through the doors: from the owner to the front office staff to the staff who painted the lines on the field every week. We all wanted to win.
But when I felt like I was failing—at anything—it was like a bug was stuck in my ear, buzzing and buzzing and buzzing until I was halfway to crazy before I could tear it out. And lately, those failures just kept piling up, recycled into catchy headlines meant to garner clicks.
Me:I say no, but send it to PR and get their take.
Before she could respond, I set my phone down and tried to refocus.
The clock on the wall of my office ticked more loudly than usual, grating on my already exhausted nerves as I tried to pay attention to the screen in front of me.
Other than the time I took to sleep—and yes, I had to schedule that too—it was reviewing film that took the single biggest amount of time. Outside of that, it was meeting upon meeting upon meeting.
But of all the things I scheduled into my day, there was one fifteen-minute slot that was my favorite. It always went by too fast, and when it was done, I’d give myself another minute to fight the guilt of how much I was forced to leave them alone.
