when none of you stand any chance with any of them anyway.”
“I don’t know. I think if I met Tessa, she’d go for me,” Darius replied, looking to Patrick and Monty for backup, who were smart enough not to say anything. When they left him in the cold, he turned back to me. “Sorry. I’ll go watch the highlights.”
“Do that.” I looked at Monty. “You join him. I suggest counting the yards since you didn’t seem to know how many to run on Wednesday.”
Monty frowned. “Fine.”
I pointed at Patrick. “You, fire up the treadmill and see if you can remember how to run.” Patrick didn’t respond in favor of just glaring at me, but he moved toward the row of treadmills, regardless. “I’m going to talk to Coach, and when everyone gets here, we’re running drills,” I finished before turning around and walking out.
“Who does this guy think he is? He’s a fucking rookie,” Patrick growled once my back was turned.
I looked over my shoulder. “And you’ve been here five years and play like a little-leaguer. Maybe once you’ve reintroduced yourself with the sport of football, you’ll understand.” I continued on to the coach’s office.
Coach Tyler Ravnick was the Viper’s head coach. He’d been through fifteen assistant coaches in the past seven years because of his weak leadership, and for the fact that he had the title, salary, and office of coach, he sure deferred a lot to me when it came to running the team. It would be another one of the perks of going pro. Along with fellow pro players and a pro paycheck, I’d also get pro coaches who actually knew what they were doing.
Until then, it was up to me to steer the ship. I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t call myself a control freak, but if someone was the best person to operate a machine, why would you give it to anyone else to operate? The Viper’s got saddled with a half-rate coach because they were a half-rate team, and then the half-rate coach went on to recruit more half-rate players, so the Vipers stayed a half-rate team. It was the worst vicious cycle to contend with as a player with professional skills, but if the coach wasn’t into recruiting half-rates, I wouldn’t be there.
I walked into Tyler’s office without knocking. He was never doing anything noteworthy, so neither he nor I ever saw the harm.
“Hey, Coach,” I announced on my arrival. I barely spared him a glance as I set my backpack down in one of the chairs that was sitting against the wall opposite his desk and unzipped it. “I’ve gone over our game a few times, and I have some notes. Well, I have a lot of notes. I feel better about how we’re starting to master our own skills, but if we don’t find some cohesiveness, we’re never gonna make it past teams like Minnesota.”
I went quiet for a moment and waited for Tyler’s response, but none came. I looked back over my shoulder, and Tyler was staring at his computer like there was a hypnotist on the other side.
“Coach?”
I pulled a pen out of my backpack and chucked it across the room. When it clattered against the wall behind him, he jumped and looked up. “Oh. Hey, Matheson.”
“What the hell are you looking at like that?” I asked.
His eyes widened. “Someone else applied for semi-pro status in Montpelier.”
“What?” I dropped everything I was holding and ran around the desk to look over his shoulder. He was reading a very detailed and thorough email about the protocols involved and what it meant for us as Montpelier’s other semi-pro team. “Who the hell applied? Nothing else happens related to football here except us.”
Tyler scrolled a little further down the email and came to a stop at the bottom. Our eyes scanned over the words until we found the answer.
“Who are the Black Widows?” I asked.
“That’s an odd name for a football team,” Tyler commented. I grabbed the edge of his office chair and rolled it over. “Hey!”
I bent over and took control of the keyboard. I opened a new tab and immediately navigated to Google. I typed in Montpelier, Idaho, Black Widows and hit enter. A series of images popped up at the top of the screen, and Tyler gasped.
“No,” I whispered.
All of the pictures were of a team of all women. I scrolled a bit further down the search results until I came across a website. It was for Montpelier’s Recreation Center,