Homecoming (A Boys of Fall Novel) (5 page)

She opened the door as he reached the step, and gave him a smile that he managed to return, despite the anxiety humming through him. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“I told you I would.”

Sheila Leavitt was tall, like he was, but very thin. Her dark hair showed a lot of gray, and it was pulled into a low ponytail. Lines framed her dark eyes, and he could see the toll her life had taken on her skin. But her eyes were clear and she stood straight, with her shoulders back.

She pushed the screen door open and then backed up so he could enter. He’d come here earlier in the summer, when Mrs. McDonnell had told him his mother had been sober for a while, but he hadn’t gone inside. She’d stood in the
dooryard and cried and apologized. He’d softened enough to give her his email address. Eventually, once he was back in Texas, they moved to the telephone, though only a few calls he kept short.

When his mom stepped away, he breathed a sigh of relief. All day his mind had bounced between worrying about the football meeting and wondering if he could tolerate his mother hugging him. She hadn’t hugged him as a child, but he knew how much she wanted to repair what little relationship they’d had.

But she was content to gesture to a well-worn couch. “Have a seat. It’s a little messy, but it’s mostly clutter. And a little messy is a good thing, I guess. I clean when I feel shaky, so the place needing to be picked up means I’ve had a string of good days. Sometimes even weeks.”

“What does that mean? A good day. A day you don’t drink?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t had a drink in almost three years. A good day is just a day the cravings don’t drive me crazy and I’m mostly content.”

Mostly content.
It made him sad that a good day for her was a day she was mostly content. Despite the past, he wanted her to be happy.

He
wanted
a relationship with his mother. He wouldn’t have kept in touch if he didn’t and, before he’d driven all the way from Texas for a second time, he’d done some soul-searching on the subject. If he came back here again, he was going to have to make peace with his past, and that meant making peace with her once and for all before he went back west.

But it was hard. This woman’s earnest eyes and shaky smile tugged at him, and he felt a weird urge to wrap his arms around her and soothe some of her anxiety. As much
as he’d worried about her hugging him, he couldn’t help thinking about hugging her now that they were together.

The past was like a bad horror movie playing in the back of his mind, though, and he could feel the buckle of his old man’s belt striking between his shoulder blades. And he could still see his mother turning away, bringing the bottle of cheap booze to her mouth so she could drink herself into oblivion. When the alcohol and muscle fatigue screwed up his father’s aim and the buckle caught Sam in the head, making him cry out, she’d take the bottle in the bedroom and close the door.

“I can’t change it,” she said quietly, and he realized he’d been staring at her. Considering where his thoughts had gone, he shuddered to imagine how hard his expression had been. “I tried to drink away the guilt and shame for years, and I finally had to accept that I can’t change anything that already happened. All I can do is be better and be strong today, and then try to be even better and stronger tomorrow.”

“One day at a time,” he said softly. “I’m trying. I’m here because I’m willing to try. That’s all I can do.”

“One day at a time,” she repeated back to him.

“I know more about alcoholism and abuse and addiction and shit than I did then. I read a lot of books over the years. When I finally went to the community college, they had mental health services and I talked to some people.” He’d missed having Coach and the guys but, no matter how illogical it was, he’d felt like reaching out to Stewart Mills would put his mother back in his life, and he hadn’t been ready. He’d had to turn his back on everybody to feel like he’d turned his back on her.

“I’m glad. That you tried to work through your feelings, I mean.”

“I know I need to forgive you for not protecting me.” He paused, pressing his mouth together because he was afraid his bottom lip would actually quiver. “And I know that you can’t change what happened.”

“You know you need to, but
can
you?” He noticed her hands were shaking and, when she saw him looking, she clasped her fingers together.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I can. Eventually.”

“One day at a time,” she whispered. Then she smiled again. “Do you want something to drink? Or to eat?”

“No, thanks. I just had a burger at O’Rourke’s with Jen Cooper.”

“Really? She works at the school, doesn’t she? Runs around with Coach McDonnell’s daughter and Gretchen Walker?”

“Yeah, she’s the guidance counselor. She wanted to talk to me about a couple of the players and I was so hungry, so we moved the meeting to the restaurant.”

“Oh. So it wasn’t like a date?”

He couldn’t tell if she thought that was good or bad, and he also couldn’t tell if she’d heard about what he and Jen had gotten up to out by the dam. He didn’t think so, though. For his mom to have heard, enough people would know so Coach would be one of them. And he definitely would have said something.

“Nope, not a date,” he said. “Strictly professional.”

“I’ve run into her a few times in town. She seems very nice. And she’s very pretty.”

“She is, to both.”

“It’s funny that you ran around with Chase and Alex when you were in high school, and now they’re engaged to Jen’s friends.”

He didn’t need a map to see where she was heading with that. “That is funny. But we just wanted to discuss work and eat at the same time.”

“Oh.” She actually looked disappointed.

Silence stretched out between them until it was uncomfortable, and Sam shifted on the couch. “Does me coming here make it harder for you not to drink? You said guilt and shame made you drink. Does seeing me bring that back in some way?”

“It does bring it back and it feels horrible, but I won’t drink, because losing you again would be more horrible. I know if you come here and I’m not sober, you’ll never come back.” She paused, but he didn’t say anything. He certainly wouldn’t lie and deny it. “And if I don’t drink, I can see you and be a part of the life you have now.”

“I have one more question. Has he ever come back?”

“No.” She shook her head. “After a few years, the people from the state helped me go through the divorce process so I could get assistance. I haven’t heard from him since . . . that night.”

The night Sam fought back. The night he was finally big enough and strong enough to take the belt away from his old man. It was also the night his mother finally dropped the bottle and tried to intercede. She’d begged Sam not to hurt his father because he’d only make it worse.

The old man had taken off. He got picked up and spent the night in the drunk tank and left town as soon as they let him out. Sam might have taken off, too, but he knew if he took off, his mother would drink herself to death within days. It was the rage at himself for not hating her enough to do it anyway that made him drink for the first time.

Two years later, it was Coach looking him in the eye at the police station and telling him he believed in him that made him drink for the last time.

“I want to know about your life
now
,” he told his mom. “I want to know where you work and what kind of movies you watch and your favorite television shows.”

A genuine, happy smile lit up her face and Sam let himself bask in the warmth of it. Today they were both better and stronger. It was
enough.

J
en heard her phone’s text message tone dinging and knew it was either Kelly or Gretchen. Her alarm clock went off at six in the morning and it was fifteen minutes after, which meant one of her friends had given her enough time to pee and stumble to the coffee brewer before texting.

Her friends had no way of knowing she’d tossed and turned half the damn night, trying not to think about Sam and sex and failing miserably, or that she’d already hit snooze once and had intended to hit it again.

But it was Friday and she liked her job, so she threw back the covers and sat up. After scrubbing her face with her hands and shoving her hair out of her eyes, she picked up her cell phone and unhooked it from the charging cable.

WTH? Spill.

It was a group text started by Kelly, and Jen guessed Gretchen had already seen it and was waiting for a reply. Even though the Walker farm hadn’t had cows to milk in years, they still did the “early to bed and ungodly early to rise” thing.

She typed a response.
Had a biz meeting.

After tossing the phone on the bed, she went into the bathroom for a few minutes and wasn’t surprised to hear it dinging when she came back out. She grabbed it on her way to the kitchen and read their responses while waiting for her coffee to brew.

Biz meeting? Please.
That was Kelly.

Gretchen started her message with a monkey emoji.
Monkey business?
Then there were more monkeys and a banana.

Jen rolled her eyes. Since Alex would be traveling at times, he’d bought his fiancée her first smartphone so texting would be easier for her and they could video chat. Jen wasn’t sure if Gretchen had mastered video chatting yet, but she was sure as hell enjoying the emojis.

No bananas involved.
Then she sent the cheeseburger emoji.

I’m disappointed
, Kelly texted.

Gretchen sent a sad face. Jen responded with the coffee cup and alarm clock emojis.

Then she set the phone down so she could add sugar and milk to her coffee. It was too early in the morning for group texts and pictograms. Her friends seemed to have taken the hint, so she watched the news while she drank the first cup. Then she showered and made another.

She’d just finished drying her hair when she heard the phone go off again. Assuming it was Gretchen or Kelly, she
took the extra couple of minutes to put on the tinted sunscreen she wore every day and a little lip gloss.

It wasn’t Kelly or Gretchen. It was Sam’s name that popped up. They’d all exchanged info during Eagles Fest, since the three women were essentially in charge and the three guys were among the guests of honor. She didn’t want to think too hard about why she hadn’t deleted his info when he went back to Texas.

Mrs. McD wants to know if there’s a bake sale for homecoming.

Under that text bubble was another, sent a few seconds after the first.
Sorry. Good morning.

Crap. Homecoming was right around the corner and her to-do list for it was epic.
She has enough going on with Coach.

Nonsense.
There was a pause and then another bubble popped up.
That was her comment, not mine.

Jen laughed and took the last sip of her rapidly cooling coffee. She really should be leaving for school.
I think the kids would riot if there was no bake sale.

After a few seconds, her screen indicated he was typing and she washed out her cup while she waited.
She’ll make mini chocolate chip muffins.

Sounds good.

Will there be pistachio bars?
Then a second bubble.
That was me, not Mrs. McD. She said she keeps forgetting to ask you about the bake sale and you get up early so she’d call
you except she’s cooking so I said I’d text. In case you were wondering.

You can text me anytime.
As soon as she hit send, she decided that sounded too flirty. She needed a distraction.
There are always pistachio bars. And brownies. The good chewy, fudgy kind.

I’ll bring a gallon of milk with me.

She really had to go or she was going to be late for her first appointment.
You know you have to attend all the homecoming stuff, right? Coach.

Lucky me. Is there a schedule somewhere?

I’m on my way in so I’ll make a note to check if there’s a final version and drop it by practice.

Thanks. See you then.

She sent him a smiley face emoji and then felt stupid, so she grabbed her bag and went to work. During the short drive, she tried not to think about the fact she’d found an excuse to see him. She could have given him the link to the school’s website and told him where to find it. Or she could have taped it to his office door.

Instead she’d offered to bring it to him personally, which meant she’d get to talk to him for a few minutes, and she felt a flutter of anticipation. At the rate she was going, if she didn’t get a handle on this crush, it was only a matter of time before she was sending Gretchen and Kelly little monkey emojis.

—

S
am stood in front of the mirror, staring at his reflection and wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

He liked his life simple, if a little rough around the edges. A hard day’s work followed by an ice-cold soda or two in his camp chair before falling asleep in front of the television. An occasional night on the town. Calluses and worn denim and sweat.

The man in the mirror looked like the kind of guy people expected big things from. Freshly showered and clean-shaven, Sam was wearing the blue polo shirt with the Stewart Mills Eagles logo that had been Coach’s uniform for decades. And khakis. He’d bought and was wearing his first pair of khakis. No matter how ill prepared he felt on the inside, he couldn’t deny that on the outside, he looked like a high school football coach.

It was weird.

He went downstairs to say good-bye to Coach and Mrs. McDonnell. There was still time to kill before practice, but he wanted to swing by and look at the apartment Kelly had lined up for him. And he didn’t think there were enough hours in the day, even when he got up at the crack of dawn with his hosts, to memorize Coach’s playbook binder.

“You heading out?” he heard Coach call from the recliner, no doubt alerted by the sound of his feet on the stairs.

“I am. Do you need anything while I’m running around town?” Sam frowned, not liking Coach’s color today. Sometimes if he didn’t sleep well, it would give his skin a grayish pallor, so maybe that’s all it was.

“Nope. Helen just left to go to the pharmacy. They’re
going to change one of my medications because it’s making me sick during the night.”

“Hopefully that’ll work. I can hang around until she gets back.”

“I don’t need a damn babysitter,” Coach snapped.

“Good, because running herd on teenagers is hard enough without adding babysitting to the mix. I just meant I’d keep you company.”

Coach sighed. “I appreciate that, son, but to be honest I’d really like to have
no
company for the hour or whatever it’ll take for Helen to run her errands. I’m tired of having people fuss over me.”

Sam didn’t want to leave him alone. He was right about that. But he could also understand Coach wanting a break from being watched like they were afraid he’d go heels up at any second. “You have the phone?”

Coach showed him the handset to the cordless landline, which was tucked next to his thigh. “I have the phone, a glass of water and the television remote. All I need now is some peace and quiet.”

“You better still be alive when Mrs. McDonnell gets back or she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

Coach chuckled. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Oh, and one more thing before you go. You’re going to need this.”

When Coach held out the silver whistle on the blue nylon cord, Sam felt himself balk and couldn’t make his feet move toward the recliner. It wasn’t just a whistle. It was
Coach’s
whistle.

“Don’t be making that face,” Coach said. “I’ll take it back from you when I’m ready.”

Sam swallowed hard. “It means a lot to me that you called me.”

“Not as much as the fact you came means to me.”

A few hours later, Sam stood on the sidelines, watching the team run through some plays. Dan, the school custodian and new dad, had shown up a little late, but his mother-in-law had flown in from somewhere out west and he’d have more free time for a couple of weeks. Him being there to direct the action gave Sam a chance to stand back and watch the boys at work.

Jen had been right about Shawn Riley. When the quarterback was on the field, he was like a totally different kid. Still quiet, but with an air of confidence everybody on his team could feel.

When Dan called for a water break, Sam caught Shawn’s attention and called him over. “You look good out there, kid.”

“Thanks.”

“You may have noticed the coaching staff’s a bit of a shit show right now.” He was surprised when the quarterback chuckled. “I’m doing my best to nail down the playbook because I can’t depend on knowing who else will be with me on the sidelines, but Coach has a way of making football on paper look like advanced geometry.”

“I’ve got no problem with calling audibles on the line.”

Sam gave him an approving look. “I didn’t think you would.”

Back when he’d played ball, it had been important to Coach that the players out on the field could think for themselves. No amount of experience would sharpen a player’s
instincts if he looked to the sidelines for directions on every single play.

“So you and I will figure it out as we go along, then,” he said.

“Yup.”

“Okay. Back to work.”

While the team hydrated and took a breather, Sam ran through some of the things he’d noticed while watching. He had a short list of things he thought they could improve on, but he also complimented them on some plays they’d executed really well.

When they went back onto the field, Sam got a little more hands on. He moved around, focusing on different parts of the line with each snap. They were definitely one of Coach McDonnell’s teams, he thought with pride as he watched them. There was some laughter and some friendly trash-talking, but when push came to shove, these guys lifted each other up rather than putting each other down.

As he watched, Hunter Cass broke a tackle and headed for the end zone. It was a hell of a run, but the kid playing safety ran him down just shy of the red zone. Cass hadn’t done anything wrong—he didn’t try any fancy moves or try to showboat too soon. The other kid outran him.

Stewart Mills didn’t have a track team, but Sam made a note to talk it over with Coach. The male body went through a lot of muscle changes in the teenage years, and they might need to back off some of his weight training and focus on his speed this year.

Hunter bent over, resting his hands on his knees and panting. Sam grabbed a towel and started toward him. “You trying out to be our new
jogging
back, Cass?”

The kid lifted his head enough to glare at him. “That’s so funny. Really.”

“It was when Coach McDonnell yelled it at Chase Sanders back in the day.” Sam paused, and then chuckled as he tossed the towel to him. “Yup. Still is.”

Hunter straightened, still trying to catch his breath, and looked at some spot past Sam. “Your girlfriend’s coming.”

Frowning, Sam turned and saw Jen making her way toward them, a sheet of paper in her hand. “You feel like running laps until you puke, Cass?”

“Isn’t she?”

“Miss Cooper and I are friends, not that it’s any of your business.”

Hunter gave him a thumbs-up. “Hey, Miss Cooper.”

“Hi, Hunter.”

When the kid walked off to rejoin the team, Sam turned to Jen, wondering what if any of that conversation she’d heard. He was fairly sure she couldn’t have heard the girlfriend remark, but the part about them being friends might clue her in to the fact they were the subject of gossip.

Not that that would be a surprise in Stewart Mills.

“Basically your entire weekend next week is shot,” she said, handing him the sheet. “The parade starts at seven on Friday night, but it takes an unbelievable amount of time to get ready for it. Then there’s the bonfire. The game Saturday afternoon, and then the dance.”

“Okay, wait. So everybody’s going to be out until all hours of the night, and then they play the biggest home game of the year. And
then
they dance?”

Jen laughed. “It’s been this way for as long as there’s
been a Stewart Mills High. You rode in the parade and then did who knows what with who knows who at the bonfire until the wee hours. Then you played—and won all four years, if I remember correctly—and then danced.”

“I was like seventeen at the time. And we lost the homecoming game my freshman year.”

“I was still at the middle school when you were a freshman. And you guys weren’t all together on varsity yet, were you?”

“No. It was about halfway through my sophomore year season that we got our shit together.”

They wandered back to the benches, keeping an eye on the practice drills. Sam noticed Dan kept his cell phone in his hand at all times and checked the screen frequently, but he wasn’t about to give him a hard time about it. Having a new baby
and
his mother-in-law at home had to be hard on the nerves.

“They look pretty good,” Jen said after a while. “It’s interesting to see them out there without Coach. They must like you.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think it has much to do with me. I’m not sure these kids need anybody on the sidelines at all.”

“I don’t know about that. Blow the whistle.” When the boys all looked, she pointed at the freshman safety—Danny something, Sam thought—and then beckoned him over. “You can’t keep up with the wide receiver if he’s looking forward and you’re looking behind you.”

“I gotta play the ball, Miss Cooper. If I don’t know where the ball is and I touch him, that’s a penalty.”