Page 50 of Only in Your Dreams

A honk breaks the delicate silence. Then another.

And we turn to see Parker’s black SUV tearing down the path toward us, coming to a halt just feet ahead of us.

We’re covered in mud and other questionable fluids. Our clothes are askew. We’re a mess.

Parker hops out of the driver’s seat and slams the car door shut behind him. Looks back and forth between us.

“What the hell happened here?”

Chapter 12

Zac

One week.

Seven days. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve exchanged a single word with her. Since we got rescued from that campsite, since I got dropped off at a house sorely missing her presence. Her snark. The reluctant smiles she’d give me whenever we hit our stride with the back and forth.

Seven days is an improvement on a ten-year gap, but still. I’m feeling a little vulnerable here, on account of the whole discovering my red shoelace thing.

The whole being on the verge of confessing my undying love thing.

I whip my phone out of my back pocket for the hundredth time in the last five minutes, and what’s got to be the millionth time since we parted ways. Only to once again remember we don’t have each other’s numbers. After we cleaned off and packed in silence, the car ride back with Parker had been too awkward to get a chance to ask her for it.

“You need another coffee or something?”

Brooks sidles up to me, his eyes on the group of large men running drills up and down the UOB football field. The place got a major face-lift the summer I graduated and transitioned from quarterback to assistant coach. It’s a lot better than the patchy turf we used to play—and win—on.

I think the school was riding a high off the end of a championship year when it decided to invest in the stadium, only to then embark on a miserable losing streak. Spending that kind of money on a losing team definitely explains the frustration from the higher ups.

You know, other than being perennial losers.

I mold my baseball cap so that it properly shields my eyes from the sun, shoving the binder making up our next game’s playbook under my arm.

“Why would I need another coffee?” I ask, watching yet another fumbled catch on the field.

“Because you’ve been averaging five a day since you got back from the camping trip.”

I throw Brooks a look. “Is that what we’re calling getting stranded in a storm with nothing but cookies and gummy bears for sustenance?”

“There was bread,” Brooks says with a shrug. “And the cookie boxes were empty when you handed back the cooler. Not a single M&M left over. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

My reply drifts to nothing as we catch sight of a lanky player breaking off from the drill and jogging in our direction. Brooks takes a few steps away from me, which isn’t altogether necessary, but he knows how careful I am about being overtly friendly with him in front of the team or management. I encouraged him to go for the job, and put in a good word for him.

But I’m a young coach, who basically fell into this job and hasn’t earned his keep. I don’t need anyone thinking I’m running my coaching team like some kind of fraternity on top of that.

“Hey, Coach,” Noah says after he strips his helmet, gripping it by the cage at his side. He rubs along his hairline, at the red helmet creases over his forehead. The kid towers over me and my six-feet-three-inches, with the kind of build that makes you question how he manages to retain perfect control over his limbs. But I’ve never, not in my two decades of playing and then coaching football, seen a guy so perfectly suited to throwing that ball. He’s light-years better than I ever was as quarterback.

I still cringe every time I see an opposing player twice his width charge toward him. But part of Noah’s magic is that he’d damn near impossible to sack, tackle, or grab.

The kid should have been a dancer or something.

“You’re point-two seconds over your drill time, Irving,” I tell him, motioning with my binder. “Did you have a big breakfast?”

“Bit creepy of you, tracking me that closely, Coach,” he says with an unperturbed laugh.

This is a kid who knows how good he is. He’s barely got a sheen of sweat going while I can see some of his helmet-less teammates wiping their brows on the field. And maybe he’s over his time now, but guaranteed the second he hits the field on game day, he’s breaking his own records.

Not that it does us any good.

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