BENCHED (6 page)

I blink a few times. He’s really good with her. Why am I thinking about that?

“So, you have a game tomorrow,” I say, cutting in.

Carrie turns to me. “Yeah! We’re playing the Hawks.”

There’s two teams in Sylvester. I shudder when I hear she’s playing the other one tomorrow, and not one of the out of town teams. The other team is different. There are no girls. The coach is…

Well, for one thing, he’s my brother-in-law. I suppress a shudder. “I’m sure you’ll win, honey.”

Wright nods sagely.

I can’t believe how much he eats. I barely finish my first helping, and he has more, and piles it up on Carrie’s plate too. I think she eats more than I do.

When we finish, he nods to her and Carrie helps him clear the table. He comes back in as the sink fills.

“Look,” I tell him, quietly “I do appreciate this, but it can’t be an everyday thing.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it can’t. We’re not doing this. I’m not dating you.”

“It’s not a date, it’s dinner. Date is Friday night. Have you gotten a sitter yet?”

I sigh. Hard. Purposely. In an exaggerated and angry fashion. “No, because I’m not going out with you.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Mister Wright,” I start.

“Whoa, let’s not move that fast.”

Exasperated, I throw my hands up.

“Why don’t you call me Alex and I’ll call you Phoebe.”

“Fine, Alex. Go home, Alex.” I feel like I’m scolding a horny teenager.

“Fine, until tomorrow. Carrie can handle the dishes, you go lie down.”

“I’ll walk you to do the door.” I follow him and close it behind him, and my hand lingers on the doorknob.

He’s not a
complete
jerk. He was actually very nice tonight, and Carrie likes him.

Oh, dear God, Phoebe. You are not thinking about going out with this meathead, are you? No, I am not doing this.

I argue with myself for half a minute before I go to help Carrie with the dishes. She keeps smiling at me like she knows something. I tell myself it’s my imagination and she’s not in cahoots with him, trying to get me to go on a date. She wouldn’t betray me that way, my own flesh and blood.

Yeah, she keeps smiling at me. Maybe she’s just excited that her hero cooked her dinner. She’s a kid, after all. I refuse to believe she even knows what dating means.

Once we’re done, I give her a pat on the back and send her upstairs to do her homework and get ready for bed.

I am so tired. I collapse on the bed and lay there for a while, trying to stay awake in case she needs me for something. After she brushes her teeth, she pops her head in my room.

“Goodnight, Mom.”

“Night, honey.” I yawn.

Her light clicks off, and I rise, turn mine off, and flop on the bed in my clothes. Another day, another ten tickets. Sometimes I wonder why I haven’t run out of speeders yet. I swear I’ve tagged several people more than once, yet they go tearing through town as though it’s not here every time.

I’m starting to hate marking my life by the number of tickets I’ve written. Is this all there is?

In the dark, I slip off the bed and stand. I do need to change my--

Holy crap, he’s naked.

I feel dirty just for looking, but I end up peering through my drapes across the gap between our houses to were Alexander has just taken a shower and is walking around his bedroom nude except for a towel.

My God, it’s better than the poster. I think he’s bigger than when they took that photo, and he’s just as rock hard and sculpted, every visible inch of him perfect.

Solid muscles ripple under his bronzed skin as he moves, and he has more abs than a person really should, with a pronounced Adonis belt and wide back that makes him like a Greek statue. His chest is huge, his arms as thick as a normal man’s legs, and somehow he’s all proportional, strikingly handsome. If it weren’t for a bend in his nose where it’s been broken, he’d look like an underwear model, but scaled up to enormous height and mass.

Then he takes off his towel.

Oh my God, his ass, I can’t stop staring. He’s going to turn around any second. He has to. He turns, tossing the towel on the bed.

I snap my head away and close the drapes before I get a look at the full monty. No, Phoebe, you are not going to watch him through his window and drool over his dick. Seeing him naked is not going to make me accept his invitation to a dinner date.

Even if I did, I would not sleep with him. Period. I’m permanently single, all that matters is my daughter.

Why am I so damn horny? I swear I started walking toward my door, like I was going to his house, before I caught myself.

Swallowing hard to wet my dry throat, I step to the window and spread the curtains open just a little. Now he’s lying on the bed in lounge pants, still stripped to the waist.

Reading?

I blink a few times. The book is absurdly tiny in his hands, but the sight of him reading is a shock in and of itself. I never pictured a football player with his nose in a book.

Sort of like how no one pictures a short stack like you being a cop, huh, Phoebe?

He’s very inviting to look at. If he wasn’t such a jerk, it would be nice to lie next to him. Maybe tuck up in the crook of his arm and read a book of my own. I still haven’t finished that Vanessa Waltz novel I was trying to read. That would be nice.

Not with him, just generally.

I’m not thinking about lying next to him. I’m not thinking about sitting up and running my hands over his chest. I’m not thinking about his hand resting on my hip and sliding into my underwear to squeeze my ass, and I’m definitely not thinking about sucking--

Gah!

I swish the curtains shut and finish changing. It’s a good thing he wasn’t looking my way, he’d have seen me in my underwear making googly eyes at him.

He doesn’t seem
that
bad, but he was still speeding in that stupid car and…

I sigh loudly. It’s starting not to bother me as much. He has been very nice. So what’s he up to?

Flopping on the bed, I stare at the ceiling and think about all the times I’ve seen him in passing, on Facebook, or on those stupid TV gossip shows I don’t let Carrie watch. He’s always got some arm candy flouncing around with him to this or that, and he’s always rumored to be paired up with some starlet or supermodel or other.

Guys like that have no use for a plane jane tomboy like me. Still, I could swear he was looking at me tonight like he was seeing more than the psycho cop that pulled him over. The way he touched my arms, the way it made me feel. If the feeling of his fingers on my shoulders set me off like that, imagine what he could do if I let him…

I shake my head. No. Besides, he’s not staying here. Once he coaches a few games, his lawyer and agent will probably get him out of the community service rap. He’ll probably be gone in a few weeks, break poor Carrie’s heart in the process, and forget we exist. I’m not going to be a notch on some uberjock’s bedpost. That’s all I’d be. I’m sure he’d have a good brag in the locker room about that, how he got the cop that pulled him over to suck his dick.

I really need to stop thinking about sucking his dick. My daughter has a football game tomorrow.

A
lex

S
ince I couldn’t get
it myself, I had Lou send somebody to bring up my other car. The Ferrari is still in impound, so I’ll have to make do with my 1989 Cutlass Ciera, she of the dark blue paint and interior with a custom cassette deck and bucket seats. No one pays me much mind in the school parking lot until I shut it off and step out. Then they mob me.

Kids.

Kids have no fear at all. They’re not like adults. I don’t know when they start getting the fear, but until they do, they’re genuine. I’m a person to them, not a figure. Adults stare at me or try to act buddy-buddy with me like they know me because I play for the city’s team, but it’s a put on, an act, they’re not being themselves. They present to me the person they want the person I am to think they are.

Makes my head hurt.

When I got into this, coaching was never on the table for me. When players retire, there’s lots of directions to go. I can open my own gym or get a job on a pre- or post-game show or start a restaurant chain or just about anything. If you’re good enough, you can be tapped to coach a team.

None of those have any appeal to me. When my career is over, I want out.

Now here I am, mobbed by a four-foot-tall football team. And their regular coach, this guy Eddie, he’s hostile, confrontational, and doesn’t want me here. Doesn’t want me interfering with his team.

I like him, though. He feels like a good guy. Salt of the Earth. Besides, I’m not here to converse with him.

“You ready?” he asks me.

“What do I need to be ready for? I’m just standing here.”

He snorts. “This isn’t a joke.”

“They’re just kids.”

“They’re here to learn discipline and respect. It would be nice if they saw some from you.”

I don’t feel particularly humbled, but I give him a placating nod. I don’t have to be here much longer. The season doesn’t run that long.

At the end of the day, it’s a fair trade off considering the alternative is jail.

I don’t really blame Phoebe anymore. If I were her, I’d be pissed at me, too. She was just doing her job, after all.

Carrie follows me like a shadow to the field. She’s already suited up, including her helmet. I was shocked to hear they let girls play on this team, but I guess at their age, it doesn’t matter. I can’t tell them from the boys with all the pads and their helmets on.

They get a charge out of me being here, so I lead the team captain, some little boy, out to do the coin toss with the other team. That is where I meet their coach.

He’s wiry and lean, with a brown porno-stache clinging to his upper lip and a comb-over. I don’t usually judge people when I meet them, but something about him gives me that feeling like the phantom of a bug crawling down my back.

He offers me a hand, and I shake it.

“Hell of a grip, there,” he says.

“I work out.”

“I can tell. Frank LeSalle. You know Phoebe?” There’s a sly, joking tone to his words I don’t like.

“Yeah.”

“I’m her brother-in-law.”

“Small world. You ready?”

“Ready to kick your team’s butt? Yeah.”

I tilt my head to the side and glare at him. They don’t need to hear shit like that, they’re just kids. Not my problem. I turn and walk back to the sidelines after the coin toss and stand next to Eddie.

“Fold your arms and look tough,” he says, looking down at his clipboard.

“What, why?”

“It strikes me as funny.”

I sigh and do as he says.

The peewee teams borrow the high school’s football field. There’s bleachers on either side, nothing huge, but they’re completely jam packed. I spot Phoebe, seated close to the fifty yard line. She gives me a neutral wave.

I suppose that’s something.

McGinty is doing all the work. I just stand around, and the kids look at me like I’m a god.

This whole thing is so strange. They’re out there huddled on the field. We’re playing offense. The other team doesn’t punt the ball. They’re too small. They just start at the fifty yard line.

It’s funny to watch. They look silly in their little uniforms. They can’t really throw a pass either, so the little quarterback tosses the ball, laterally, to Carrie, who runs with it.

She’s fast for her age, a natural runner. She makes it pretty far, weaving between the other kids. Then a kid from the other team grabs the flag from her belt, and it’s over.

There are a lot of people with cameras in the stands. While I was watching the play, more people showed up. The bleachers are full and now the whole field is surrounded, people crowding in to watch.

Are people really this into watching six-year-olds play football?

McGinty gives me a worried look.

Oh, of course, they’re not. They’re here to see me.

I frown and stare out at the field while the teams get set up.

This time a different kid carries the ball. One or two more plays and they’ll be in the end zone. I don’t know what that jackass on the other team is teaching his kids, but they have no cohesion.

They’re six-year-olds, I remind myself.

Still, ours puts them to shame. I find myself yelling encouragement at them. Carrie has the ball again, and this time she makes it into the end zone and spikes it and starts doing a little dance.

I laugh out loud. Those dances have been banned by the pros for years as unsportsmanlike, but watching her cavort around with her oversized helmet bobbing on her shoulders as she tries to do the robot is about the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

I glance back at the bleachers. Phoebe is on her feet, whistling and clapping. She’s so happy, sporting a big grin on her face.

It makes her look completely different. When she’s sullen, she’s pretty, when she’s happy, she’s gorgeous. I mean a knockout. She makes my heart pound in my chest, even in jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt.

“Wright,” McGinty grunts.

I turn back to the field and watch. Carrie is on the bench as the defensive lineup plays. She’s taken her helmet off and she’s all sweaty and red-faced and panting for breath. I walk over to her and she looks up at me with big, wide eyes.

“Good run, kid. You’ve got hustle.”

She smiles so wide it looks like it hurts.

I turn away quickly. When she grins at me like that, it warms something in my stomach. I almost feel proud, but why should I? I didn’t do anything.

When I turn back, Phoebe is waving at Carrie, who waves back. The kid is so excited, she bounces in her seat. Her mom gives me a curious look, then smiles.

I smile back. I can’t help it.

Our side has a strong defense, too. It’s strange watching them avoid hitting each other. They only ever pull on those little flags. After barely budging the ball, the other team has to give it up. The rules are a little weird with no punting or kickoff. They end up back on the fifty yard line with the ball in our team’s hands.

Across the field, their coach Frank stands with his feet spread, gripping a clipboard in his hand, an angry look on his face.

Calm down, man. It’s a bunch of kids. I don’t even know why they bother keeping score.

The plays run like before, except the other side seems even more confused and befuddled. Frank the coach yells at his team while Eddie remains calm and collected, relating the plays to his little quarterback.

Carrie gets the ball in a lateral pass again and runs it in.

One of the kids on the other team runs at her too hard, and too fast. I tense up. It looks like a pro play, like he means to hit her.

Eddie yells, “Hey!” a moment too late, and the other kid bashes into Carrie and shoves her down.

He goes down on top of her, and a high-pitched shriek cuts through the air like a knife.

I’m halfway there by the time I realize I’m running. I lift the other kid off her and she rolls onto her back, clutches her ankle, and starts screaming.

I drop to my knees and gently probe the joint. She cries out even louder. It doesn’t feel broken.

I scoop her up in my arms and rise to my feet, and charge down the field. Behind me, Phoebe runs down to the bottom row of the bleachers, vaunts the rail, and runs after me. I’ve met pro players that don’t run like she does.

“Mommy!” Carrie screams, as she draws near.

“What happened?”

“He tripped me,” she wails. “I twisted my ankle!”

That’s all she can manage before she breaks out into screams and sobs.

“She’s scared,” I say.

Phoebe lifts her daughter out of my arms and holds her close, rocking her back and forth.

“She needs ice and--”

“Shh,” Phoebe says, “Shhh.” Then she looks at me. “I’m taking her to the car.”

“Go.”

I turn, and see that little shit Frank standing on the sidelines.

“We gonna play or what?”

I close the gap so fast he almost falls when he flinches, but I don’t let him. I grab him by the collar of his shirt and pull him up, popping stitches with my grip.

“What the fuck was that,” I snarl in his face. “They’re playing flag football, you fucking asshole.”

He gives me a shove, or tries to, anyway. I don’t let go.

“I ever see shit like that on the field again, I’ll make you scream like that little girl did, do you fucking hear me, you piece of shit?”

I shove him back and let go. He plops on the turf and sits there with an expanding stain on his crotch.

“Wright!” McGinty yells. “What are you--”

I brush past him and run to my car. Phoebe is already leaving, on her way to the hospital. I start it up, throw it in reverse, chirp my tires pulling out, and peel out after her. She puts her lights on and screams through red lights and stop signs, and I keep on her tail.

Damn, she can drive. All this running and driving and shit is starting to impress me. Or it would, if I could get that girl’s screaming out of my head.

I park askew in the first spot I find at the hospital and run over to Phoebe’s car. Carrie is still crying and sobbing, but at least she’s stopped screaming.

I throw open the door and pull the little girl into my arms.

“What are you doing? I can--”

“I’ve got her,” I say sharply. “Come on.”

I carry her through the automatic doors and up to the desk. Phoebe strokes Carrie’s head and tells the receptionist what happened and a nurse takes us back. I lower Carrie onto a gurney and my throat tightens as they snap one of those identifier wristbands on her.

The nurses raise her foot and put ice on it. Every time Carrie moves her leg, she whimpers. Her eyes are red and her cheeks streaked with tears. Phoebe holds her little hand tightly and strokes her hair.

“You’re going to be fine, honey,” she tells her.

I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I
hate
hospitals. Absolutely hate them. I can barely stand being in here, it makes my skin crawl. The bright lights, that chemical smell, the dry air. My hands twitch.

“You don’t have to stay,” Phoebe tells me.

“I want to.”

I follow them into a room. It’s really just an alcove with a curtain. I pace the floor while Phoebe hops onto the bed and sits with her daughter, holding her hand.

“Mom, it hurts,” she whimpers.

The words strike my back like a whip. It feels like my spine is clenching. I hate hospitals.

Can’t they be any fucking faster?

Carrie ends up getting a juice cup and sitting there for two hours before they wheel her away.

“You may as well wait here,” the nurse tells us. “She’ll be fine. We’ll do an MRI, no pain.”

Phoebe nods.

When Carrie is gone she almost collapses. She’s a complete wreck. For an awkward moment I hold back, then I gingerly rest my hand on the small of her back.

“She’ll be okay. She probably just twisted it. Screaming because she was scared.”

Phoebe nods.

I want to get closer, to put my arms around her. Suddenly she looks tiny and vulnerable. Is she always like that on the inside, under the tough front?

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she chokes out, and the vulnerability vanishes beneath her usual posture, the way she carries herself, like she’ll walk through you if you give her any shit.

“You don’t have to be ‘on,’ right now. She’s not here.”

Phoebe gives me an odd look. “What?”

“You don’t have to wear your game face all the time. It’s okay to be upset. Your kid is hurt.”

She shrugs off my hand. “I’m not a damsel in distress.”

“I know, but…” I can’t think of anything else to say. But what?

I pace the hall while Phoebe sits in the side chair, looking broken and exhausted until Carrie rolls back in followed by a doctor.

“She’s going to be fine,” he says to Phoebe. “She needs to ice it for a few days and rest. It’s not a sprain, but it was close.”

Phoebe nods, relief plain on her face.

“Thank you.”

“I’d give her Advil, but not too much. Don’t give her more than four a day, every six hours or four hours while she’s awake.”

Phoebe nods.

“It’ll keep the swelling down and do something for the pain. Otherwise, she can go ahead home now, no need to keep her.”

I brush the nurse out of the way and lift Carrie into a wheelchair. They put a brace on her foot, but I don’t want her making it worse. Phoebe wheels her outside, and I lift her into the front seat of her Tahoe.

While Phoebe drives her home, I peel off to a Walgreens and walk inside.

The clerk at the counter says, “Holy crap, you’re--”

“Not now,” I growl.

From the first aid aisle, I grab a big bottle of the ibuprofen. Bearing one of those little baskets in one hand, I fill it with snacks and candy, then scowl at the clerk at the front while I pay for it in silence and walk out.

“Jerk,” the kid mutters under his breath.

I resist the urge to flip him the bird and head over to Phoebe’s. She answers the door when I knock.

“What?”

I step inside, holding up the bag. Carrie is on the couch with her foot propped up on a stack of pillows on top of an ottoman. She looks better already. The bowl of ice cream propped on her tummy probably helps. Phoebe changed her out of her uniform into a set of pajamas.