“What were you thinking?” I demanded, beyond annoyed. Hell, I was moving into seriously pissed off. “It’s ninety-four fucking degrees and a thousand percent humidity, and you decide it’s a great day for ball busters?”
“Ovary exploders,” she muttered.
“Ha. Hilarious,” I snapped. The anger made me antsy. I snatched a hand towel from the neatly folded stack on the shelf and stomped out of her office. In the locker room, I took inventory. My cross-country runners were fanning and rehydrating the girls soccer team.
My fastest runner, Ricky, was staring into the wide brown eyes of Ruby as he held a wet towel to the back of her neck. That looked like trouble to me.
“Everyone all right out here?” I asked, holding the towel under the sink faucet.
“Everyone’s back on their feet, Coach,” Ricky reported, jumping back from the girl. He was tall and fast as fuck. Also one of the nicest kids on the planet. And the very pretty Ruby was looking like she might eat him up for dinner.
Good luck, kid.
“Great. Everyone take five and then meet me out front on the steps.”
I grabbed a cup of water from the cooler my guys dragged down.
“Us, too?” Morgan E. clarified.
“Soccer team, too.” I headed back into the office. It had a creepy glass window that looked out on the lockers. There was a big, industrial gray metal desk, a bookshelf with several tomes on physical fitness from the 1980s, and one green-around-the-gills coach. “Here.” I dropped the towel on the back of her neck, moving Marley’s not-so-perky ponytail out of the way.
“Thanks,” she rasped. She took the cup of water I offered and downed it too fast.
“You’re gonna puke again,” I predicted.
“So thirsty. The girls okay?”
“They’re fine. You’re real freaking lucky. What the hell were you thinking? First of all, it’s too fucking hot to run sprints. The body’s main priority is to keep itself cool. Pushing everyone like that in Pennsylvania August doesn’t build endurance or speed. It makes kids sick.”
“I noticed,” she said, rubbing a hand over what was probably a big-ass headache.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered under my breath. I dug through the dinosaur desk drawers until I came up with a bottle of expired aspirin. “Here.”
When she fumbled the bottle, I took it back, shook out a couple of caplets. She took them, downed them dry.
“I repeat. What the hell were you thinking? These girls went through enough last year. Now you’re trying to kill them on the field?”
She didn’t answer.
Grumbling to myself, I refilled her cup and brought it back. “Better?”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“You’re a real hot mess, you know that?”
She looked up at me for the first time, and I remembered those eyes. The kind of light, warm brown that made me think of brownies and bourbon.
I even remembered what they looked like one second after I’d kissed the hell out of her all those years ago.
Yeah, I remember you.
“I am well aware,” she said, snapping me out of my trip down memory lane.
“Good. Now, let’s go.”
“You’re really bossy. You know that?” She made it to her feet, and I had to give her credit for not immediately collapsing back into the chair.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Am I fired?” she croaked.
“How the hell should I know? Come on.”
I led the way out of the locker room and toward the glass doors. This was the main entrance for the gym. The girls’ locker room was on one side of the gym and the guys’ on the opposite. I pushed the door open and surveyed my ragtag bunch of students. “Who wants Italian ice?”
A cheer rose up, and I felt like a damn hometown hero. It was little moments like this that made the hard work and frustrations of teaching and coaching worthwhile.
Marley trudged out of the door behind me sucking on a water bottle.
“Let’s go, troops.” I hooked an arm through hers to keep her on her feet. We made a pitstop at my SUV for my own water bottle, phone, and wallet.
I fired off a text to Mariah.
Me: Got a small army coming. Ready the electrolytes and pickle juice.
She responded immediately.
Mariah: God I love the smell of preseason.
“Where are we going?” Marley asked.
“To rehydrate.”
“Will there be beer?”
The desperation in her voice made me laugh. “Not on the clock, Coach.”
We trooped down the hill that the high school sat on, staying on the treelined sidewalk to soak up the shade. Mariah’s Italian Ice Shack was a glorified shed she plopped in the backyard of her row home across