The Bridge to a Better Life (32 page)

“On your mark,” Jordan called out, staring down at the stopwatch he’d snagged from the camp’s supply table. “Get set. Go.”

Blake darted off with the wide receivers, and sure enough, he felt like a sack of old bones as their athletic shorts rippled in the wind a few yards ahead of him. Blake had been considered a passable runner in the NFL. He could run for the first down when necessary. But they smoked him, just as Logan had predicted. If the burn of his muscles and the clearing of his mind hadn’t felt so good, he might have been embarrassed.

“All right,” he said, sucking in deep breaths and heading over to the coach’s table where his clipboard was resting. “Let’s run through some last minute details and questions before our coaching partners arrive.”

He’d paired all of them up with a coach who had experience running a flag football camp for kids with intellectual disabilities. That way, everyone would be bringing their A game for the kids.

“The other coaches will arrive at three with the rest of the volunteers. Including our camp mom.”

“You didn’t talk Mrs. Garretty into coming, did you now?” Brody asked, giving Sam a pointed glance.

“Mrs. Garretty has retired.” Divorcing Coach had pretty much ended that. “But Natalie’s mom volunteered to help, and I can’t think of anyone more fun, maternal, or tough. She had five kids, after all.”

“Awesome,” Hunter said, twirling the whistle hanging from his neck. “She and I did the Electric Slide at your wedding.”

The guys laughed, but Blake found it hard to join in. He thought back to opening Natalie’s hope chest all those weeks earlier and finding her dress and their favorite wedding picture inside. Those memories were sweet, but now they felt tainted by everything that had followed. Their wedding had become something for them to get beyond. His hands clenched the clipboard.

“Maybe if you get your guys to run the drills right,” he said, “you can teach them the Electric Slide after practice.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Hunter grinned. “Cool.”

Great. He couldn’t wait for that scene to make it onto YouTube.

They ran though the rest of his agenda and took a water break. The other coaches arrived, and he introduced everyone to their partners. Once that was finished, he left them alone to get acquainted. When he saw April cutting across the football field, dressed in his old Raiders jersey, the one he’d signed and given to her at her request, his chest tightened.

She pointed to her shirt. “I hope you don’t mind me wearing this. It’s one of my favorites, and I so rarely get to wear it.”

He kissed her cheek, and she hugged him tight. “It looks good with capri pants. Maybe I should have worn those instead of football pants.”

She punched him in the gut, something Natalie would do. “How are you and my daughter doing?” she asked with a knowing gleam in her eye.

Okay, so apparently her earlier silence on that subject was over. “We’re talking. Things are…good.”

“I’m so happy to hear it. Does this mean you’ll be coaching our high school team this fall?”

Lead filled his stomach at the talk of the future. “No. The position didn’t feel right for me.”

“I see,” she said, studying him intently. “Well. Thanks for catching me up. Why don’t you show me who I’m supposed to be mothering now?”

He led her around to everyone, grateful for the reprieve from her questions. Some of the guys hammed it up and lifted her off the ground, making her laugh. He let them get all the playful antics out of their systems. When things had finally settled, a hush fell over the field. He headed to the center and turned to face everyone on the sidelines.

“As you all know, this camp means the world to me, so I’ll keep this brief. I hereby officially open The Adam Cunningham Flag Football Camp.”

Everyone clapped. Tears popped into his eyes.

He wished Natalie had been there to hold his hand.

Blake’s opener to the kids and their parents after registration wasn’t much more long-winded than the one he’d given to the coaches and volunteers the day before. He introduced Touchdown first, making everyone laugh, then April, and finally all the volunteers and coaches. He told everyone to have fun. And encouraged them to ask questions—nothing was too silly or stupid. After that, he told them the story about how he and his buddies had attended football camp together for years when they were younger, and they were still best friends all these years later. He encouraged the boys to make connections with each other. He didn’t talk much about football. They were here to play. Though he mentioned Adam only in passing—to do more would cost him too much—he told them his brother had possessed the heart of a champion.

After the kids had been split up into age groups, he joined his team. He had asked Sam to pair up with him and Frank, a volunteer from Denver, to guide the youngest age group. He’d chosen to work with them because they still crackled with the sheer joy of playing football. Whenever he’d hit a pocket of pressure in his career, Adam had always been there to remind him of why he played. Sure, he didn’t need the reminder anymore now that he’d retired, but he rather liked hearing the boys giggle on the field.

They ran the Run and Catch drill first to assess both running and hand-eye-coordination skills. He and Sam took turns in the quarterback box with Frank working the sidelines. The kid they were assessing would line up even with them, and when Blake blew the whistle, the boy would run out to one of the five catching spots marked on the field. If he caught the ball, he would sprint to the finish line. Each kid received a score, and the top three scorers would become the quarterbacks for the next drills on passing accuracy. While Sam passed the football, Blake worked with Frank to help the kids who were receiving the ball refine their catching technique.

There were high-fives, whistles, giggles, cries of frustration, and fists pumps as the morning progressed. At lunch, he, Sam, and Frank huddled to compare notes. They ranked the kids by skill level, something they would continue to do at the various breaks. Blake left Sam and Frank to continue their chat and grabbed a smoked turkey on wheat sandwich from the lunch station. The other guys were huddling as well, so he took a few minutes to check in with them.

He noticed April making her way through the folding tables they’d set up for the kids so they could sit and eat comfortably. She was laughing as she watched one kid throw his arm back like he was about to launch a pass. Blake found himself grinning even though he didn’t know the story. After lunch, when they called the kids back to their drill groups, Blake made his way over to April.

“So, what’s your take so far?” he asked, pushing up his sunglasses so she could see his eyes. Natalie had always preferred for him to do that when he was talking to her.

“Well, they’re still pretty much in the awe mode. All they could talk about was how cool you guys are. You have some big fans here.”

Coach Garretty always nipped those sentiments in the bud with his Once Upon A Dare speech. Blake had elected to run on fun and inspiration in this camp, not hard work and fear.

“I’m glad you’re here.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I need to get back to my team.” Man, how he loved that word.

“I’ll be here,” she said with a wave.

The afternoon continued with more drills, ones they repeated over and over again. He saved the Agility and Speed Handoff drill for last since it required more concentration and teamwork. The kids in his group now knew one another’s names, and they easily called them out during the drills when needed. After being in the sun all day, he wished he’d dabbed on more sunscreen, feeling the burn on his nose and cheeks left exposed under the brim of his Raiders ball cap.

When he called it quits, he, Sam, and Frank huddled with the boys to talk about the day and give high-fives. One bold kid asked if he could have his autograph. Blake ruffled the boy’s brown hair and said they’d all be giving autographs at the end of camp. Coach Garretty hadn’t allowed it. Blake had decided to provide the opportunity, remembering what it had felt like to come to a camp where he was coached by some of the NFL’s greatest players.

The camp volunteers escorted the boys back to the dorm. Spirits were mostly high, but he saw one kid moping all by himself, trailing behind the others. Jogging over, he fell into step with the kid. So abject was the boy’s misery, he didn’t even notice Blake.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s got you so long in the face?”

The kid’s mouth dropped open, and then he grinned, showing a space where he’d lost his front tooth. “You’re Blake Cunningham! I mean Coach Blake.”

That was another thing he hadn’t wanted to model from Coach Garretty, so all the coaches were being called by their first names.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you have a tough day?”

He lifted his shoulder. “I didn’t catch most of my passes. I usually do better, but…”

“But you were nervous, right?” The kid slowed down when he did. “Is this your first camp?”

He nodded, kicking at the sidewalk. “Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Paul.”

“Well, Paul, I was nervous the first time I went to camp too, and usually the first day of every camp after that. I
really
wanted to do well.”

He remembered those days with fondness. The first camp had been the hardest because he hadn’t known anyone. Coach Garretty only took kids who’d been nominated by their school coaches. He’d been nominated for the youngest age group—the ten to twelve year olds—since his arm had shown incredible promise.

“I wanted to prove to everyone I could do well,” he told the boy.

This time Paul nodded his head vigorously. “Me too.”

“I’ll tell you a secret it took me years to learn.”

The boy’s eyes brightened, and he leaned in when Blake crooked his finger.

“If you have fun and play to make yourself happy, everything else will fall into place.” He clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Once you stop worrying about impressing other people, it becomes a lot easier. That other crap…it messes with your head. Now, go on in and have some fun.”

“Thanks, Coach Blake.”

He held up his hand for a high-five. Their palms connected. The kid gave him one last beaming smile before running inside.

“You’re a good coach,” Sam said, appearing at his side. “I always thought so. You have the leadership to raise them into good men, not just football players,” Sam said, taking off his ball cap and running his fingers through his hair. “We need more coaches like that.”

“I appreciate you saying so. We’ll have to see how that shapes up, now that I’ve turned the high school job down,” he said, even though he’d told Sam about the rationale for his decision.

“That guy was a pain in the ass. I told you that you don’t want to work in that kind of environment.”

He didn’t. And he had faith he could figure something out.

“Are you thinking about coaching when you retire?”

Sam refitted his Warriors ball cap on his head. “It’s a possibility. We’ll see when the time comes.”

And the time was coming, they both knew. Sam was no spring chicken in the NFL. The early retirement age was something all of them dealt with in their own way.

“Okay, let’s go find the guys and play some games of our own before dinner. I’m ready for a little friendly competition.”

Sam and Blake found the rest of their buddies in the game room. Logan and Zack were already involved in a heated foosball match, complete with a stack of dollars on the side of the table. He played a few games of foosball when the table came open and lost a round to Jordan, who buffed his nails on his Rebels jersey afterward, like beating him had been a walk in the park. That naturally led to a head-lock and some wrestling—all of which felt good.

After dinner, the kids gathered into the dorm’s main lounge with the coaches to hear Sam give a talk on mental conditioning. Blake had asked a few of the guys to talk about the physical and mental aspects of the game, which he believed was as important, if not more so, than the drills and scrimmages.

That night, the guys went back to competing in pool and darts while a baseball game played on ESPN. Blake sat on the couch and watched Brody and Hunter laugh like crazy over Zack’s scratch ball at the pool table.

For Blake, being back amid football—even flag football with a bunch of kids—was like walking on a sidewalk riddled with cracks. He wouldn’t be returning to
his
team.

Sam sank onto the couch next to him. “You’re brooding.”

“Yep. Being on the field today…it kinda got to me.” He picked up his water bottle and chugged it. They’d all agreed to a no-drinking rule around the kids. Coach Garretty had been right on that score.

“Well, that’s perfectly understandable. It’s been part of your whole life.”

“One of the best parts,” he said, making a basket with his bottle in the recycling bin.

But there was another best part, and he could go visit
her.
Being with Natalie reinforced every reason for the sacrifices he’d made. Rising from the sofa, he leaned over so only Sam could hear. “I’m leaving. Don’t tell the guys.”

He rolled his eyes. “Like they don’t know where you’re going.”