Third and Long: A Sports Romance (25 page)

“This girl Katerina seems nice,” Coach says.

“I can’t stand her,” I say.

“I thought you might say that. I figured there was a reason you were fighting losers at the bar,” Coach says. “Your dad pick her out?” There’s never been many secrets between me and Coach. Like I said, he’s a second father to me.

I nod my head slowly, finding it hard to look at the man in the face because he can read me like a book.

“That also why you played like shit last week?”

I almost say yes until I remember that Katerina isn’t the reason at all.

“Actually I played like shit because I’m completely in love with this other girl.”

Coach busts up laughing. He’s in tears.

“Something I said?”

“Logan, you’ve always loved to make things so fucking hard on yourself. Your parents set you up with a princess and you fall in love with a local girl?” he asks.

“That about says it all yeah.”

“She a Texas girl?”

“By way of Oklahoma.”

“And you love her?”

“I do.”

Coach gets up and walks around me. His heavy hands come to rest on my shoulders, patting me twice. Then he continues to the door and looks out at the players packing their gear away.

“I’m always going to take a Texan over a Yankee, you know that,” Coach says.

“My dad wants to disown me for going into the draft. If I don’t marry Katerina, he’s going to kill me.”

“Ah, he won’t kill you son. Your dad talks a big game, but part of being a man is standing up to a guy like him even if he is your dad.”

“What do you think I should do Coach? Every time I turn on the news they say I’m falling in the draft anyway.”

He turns and leans against the door. Coach never makes a decision lightly, and he takes a long time considering this one.

“You’re a real talent Logan. You’re going to have a nice long career in the pros. Your dad might pull your trust fund. You might get drafted late. None of that matters because you will get on a team, and with an arm like yours? You will be a champ. What’s more important to you: a comfortable life or a chance at glory?”

I can feel the football in my hand, and it’s not even there. It’s hard to imagine a life without the game I love. Then I realize what he means. Katerina, the comfortable life. Tamber, a chance at glory.

“Who’s the girl by the way?” he asks. “Anyone I know?”

“Tamber Long. I don’t think you know her.”

Coach’s face lights up. “Oh yeah I’ve heard of her. My daughter Bailey’s been working on a project with her all semester. Bailey raves about her! Says she’s saved their ass time and again.”

“Her family life is kind of a mess. Polar opposite of mine,” I say, leaving out all the rough details.

“Compliments don’t come easy from my daughter. If she says Tamber is the real deal then that’s good enough for me,” Coach says.

“That about says it all,” I say.

Coach opens the door to his office signaling that the meeting is over. Before I can walk out, he stops me and rests a hand on my shoulder.

“Son. If it’s me? That isn’t even a choice at all.”

He closes his office door behind me. He’s right. There is no choice. A moment of clarity washes over me.

Before practice, I told the team that I was going to fix my game. That next week would be different. Now I need to do the same for Tamber. I need to be the man that I am on the football field and throw a touchdown in her heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Tamber

When you’re as twisted up on the inside as me, you find yourself doing immensely unlikable things.

“I can’t believe your mom is in jail,” Gwen says as we drive out of Rome onto the highway toward Eden.

Case in point. My heart feels like it is going to tear in two, so I’m doing the one thing I hate: visiting my mom in jail. Gwen’s the only one of us with a car, and she wouldn’t give me the keys unless I told her. Over the years I told her a few things about my upbringing, but never that my mom took the fall for my dad’s bad drug deal. The cops busted her when my dad wasn’t even in the car. Now she’s in jail, and he’s still working away at his soulless factory job.

“I can’t believe I let you drag me out to bumfuck Texas,” Gwen says in the passenger seat of her own car as the streetlights fall back and give way to wide open fields.

“Thanks babe. You know I hate this fucking place as much as you do,” I say.

After Logan and I made love, he took me to breakfast. Then he walked me back to my apartment. We held hands the entire way, and I found myself wishing that this is exactly how I want the rest of my life to be. Then I remembered Katerina and Logan’s familial obligations. We’re starcrossed lovers, but I don’t want to get hurt.

As soon as I walked through the door, I told Gwen to grab her keys, and we took off. I have this overwhelming urge to see my mom. I need to clear the air.

There was always an uneasiness between my mom and me. I have never understood why she does everything for dad. Every stupid choice she’s made in her life has been for a man who isn’t worth the ground she walks on in my opinion.

My mom was arrested during my freshman year. I go back to visit her occasionally, and every time I’m disappointed by the woman that she’s allowed herself to become. She could have been a lawyer, and now she needs one.

“As soon as I graduate and get that dentist money, I’m buying you your own fucking car,” Gwen says.

“I would still drag you along with me,” I say.

“Just hurry up and marry Logan so he can fly you around everywhere in a helicopter.”

If only it were that easy.

We pull off the one-lane highway into a gas station that lies on the outskirts of Eden. The prison is up the road, but we need gas because Gwen never keeps the tank full.

“Not sure he’s going to marry me Gwen.” I hop out the car and start pumping gas.

“You guys fucked. He told you that he loved you. What more do you need?”

Besides the obvious like a ring? Hilariously, I still have the fake engagement ring in my night stand. That will have to go back to him eventually.

“His dad will disown him if he doesn’t marries Katerina. Would you throw away your trust fund for me?”

Gwen throws herself dramatically against her car seat.

“A man giving up everything for me? How fucking romantic! I would come right there if he proposed. He wouldn’t even have to fuck me. I’d just be like ‘give me a minute.’”

I try to get that image out of my head. I’ve seen Gwen post-coitus enough lately.

As soon as the car is full of gas once more, we hit the road. The prison rises up on the right and as usual the place is basically deserted. They don’t get many visitors here.

Gwen waits outside to smoke a cigarette as I head in to chat with the woman that I’ve been trying to avoid for years.

They sit me down behind the bullet proof glass and I wait. I’m the only one in the visiting room. The intense quiet is so strange. Eventually, the guards escort my mom in. She’s dressed in orange, but otherwise not handcuffed.

Her face lights up when she sees me, and she rushes over to the phone so fast that the guard has to tell her to slow down.

“Tamber,” she says. That one word sends me back to my childhood, sitting in the kitchen of our small two-bedroom apartment wondering if everyone else lived like us. I’ve seen enough of Logan’s mansion to know that isn’t even remotely true.

“Mom.” When I say her name, I can hear her voice quiver. Mary and I don’t come to visit her much. We leave those duties to Nell, who always brings along some good vibes and positive energy.

“It’s good to see you,” she says.

Normally, I sit here struggling with what to say to her. Today, I know exactly what I want to ask.

“Mom why did you do all those things for dad? Why him?”

“That’s a big question dear,” she says, some tears welling in her eyes.

“I have to know. You dropped out of school. You got pregnant. You moved to Eden of all places. You took the fall for him. Why?”

My mom takes a deep breath, looking me in the eyes. “Tam-tam, I did those things because I love your father.”

“You have to love yourself too mom,” I say.

“That’s true,” she says. “I’ve never been good at that. I was hoping you’d be better at it.”

“I’m almost graduated mom. I’m getting my MBA. I’ve got an internship lined up for next year.”

“That’s wonderful dear! I’m so happy for you,” she says, genuinely smiling in a way that I haven’t seen her smile in years.

“But why couldn’t you be the same? Why did you give it all up for dad?”

“I’m not as strong as you Tam,” she says. “I’ve loved your father since the day I met him. That first year I spent at college, I spent every night thinking about him. Missing him.”

“Why?”

“Oh Tamber. Love isn’t an answer. Love is the question. It’s how you answer it that matters.”

Mom looks tired, wearied by years behind bars. Yet there’s a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

“There’s a boy. He told me he loves me,” I say, leaving out all the details about who he is. There’s absolutely no way I’m telling my mom the billionaire part while she’s stuck on the other side of a prison wall on a drug charge.

“And do you love him?” she asks.

I bite my lip, searching my feelings. I told him I did. We absolutely made love, and it was amazing. Some tears well in my eyes too, and I nod my head.

“But you’re afraid of ending up like me?” mom asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“You don’t have to. You can love your man and yourself. I know you Tamber. I wouldn’t say this to your sisters. They take after me too much, but you’re different. You can have everything you want. You don’t need to worry about ending up like this.”

“Were you happy?”

“I know you didn’t have the greatest life growing up, but you made me happy every day. You and your sisters. Even though you don’t see eye to eye with your father, I still love him.”

The prison guards signal that our visiting time is almost up.

“Tell me about him,” mom says.

“He’s hot.”

“That’s a start.”

“And kind and strong, but sometimes he’s full of himself.”

“I’d like to meet him someday Tamber,” my mom says.

The wrinkles on her face seem to recede at the idea that she might be a mother-in-law someday. A mother-in-law in striped prison clothes.

“Mom?” I ask.

“Yes dear?”

“Would you do it all over again if you knew how your life was going to turn out?”

She considers it for a moment. “Would I make your dad wear a condom?” she asks laughing hysterically. “Maybe.”

“Don’t worry I’ve got that covered.”

“Oh boy Tamber there are things you don’t need to tell your mother. Would I go with another man other than your father? No I don’t think so.”

“Thanks, mom.”

We both hang up our phones, and she blows me a kiss as the prison guards inform her that her time is up.

When I step back out into the chill Eden afternoon, Gwen is waiting for me, working on her fourth or fifth cigarette. She tosses me the keys, completely unwilling to drive on roads that she’s never been on before.

“This place gives me the creeps,” she says.

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

“Don’t worry babe, I won’t be doing that.”

“How’s your mom?” she asks as we get back in the car.

I kick the car into reverse and pull out of the parking lot. Then I swing it around and pull back onto the highway headed toward Rome.

“She’s happy for me.”

“Did she set you straight?” Gwen asks.

“About what?”

Gwen slaps my arm. “About getting over yourself and getting on Logan.”

“I’ve already been on Logan once today.”

“Yes I envy your position,” she says.

“I love Logan. I do. But it’s really all up to him. He’s the one that stands to lose something if he takes our relationship further.”

“But you’re not going to keep throwing up roadblocks?” Gwen asks with the most hopeful look in her eye.

“No,” I say, a dumb grin spreading from ear to ear.

Gwen rolls down the window of her car and screams, “Oh thank fucking God!”

“I’ve got to go meet The Party Girls. We’re presenting our project to Professor Asshole today,” I explain as we near the exit to Rome.

Gwen sighs loudly. “I don’t not even that position.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Logan

Tamber and I spent all night texting each other. By the time I get to Tuesday morning film study, I’m running on about three hours of sleep. We spent the night scheming ways to keep Katerina in New York. The socialite flew back home Sunday morning under the impression that we’re an item now with a formal engagement coming soon.