No Boundaries(13)

“I’ll run long and you throw it. Just put your whole body into it. Got it?”

He looked at the ball in his hands as if I had handed him a bag of candy. I’d seen that look before.

I took off in the opposite direction. It had been a long time since I had been on this end of a throw. I waited while the boy positioned his fingers on the laces. His chewed his tongue, concentrating on what his move was going to be.

“I’m open, Hunter,” I called.

He stepped back and then propelled the ball forward. It spun perfectly, landing against my chest. I gripped it tightly with my swollen fingers and then sent it flying back through the air to him. Kid had one hell of a fucking arm on him.

I gripped the ball and sent it soaring toward him. He caught it effortlessly with a gigantic grin on his face and jogged to my side. I felt like I had apologized and he accepted it in the lost language of men. But to appease the woman inside and to make sure my ass didn’t end up in jail tonight, I figured I better make it official.

“Good catch, man.”

“Thank you.”

“Everything good between us?”

“Yeah. Definitely,” he replied, kicking up the dry grass at the field's edge.

“Sweet. Go long.”

I backed up a few paces as he darted down the field as fast as he could. After about ten yards he glanced back at me and juked to the left. I sent the ball flying straight to him.

Some kids have to work every day on a certain gift that they want to pursue later in life. They strive every day to make it better, to become stronger, faster, greater.

And then you have some that are born with all the talent they will ever need or want already inside of them. All they need is a little guidance and someone to believe in them.

This kid was born with talent. Pure talent.

Now he needed guidance and someone to believe in him.





10





Julie





I watched from the window in my classroom as Hunter rolled across the ground after being tackled once again by Kane. I watched as he pointed and directed each kid, yelling over the loud excited noises that come with coaching boys.

He was a natural with them.

Which I supposed made sense. He played professional ball after all, but sometimes you can play a certain sport and know everything there is to know about it and still not be able to teach it to a soul.

Or you could be like my dad and love the sport, but have no athletic ability. I laughed to myself.

Daddy loved football since he was a little boy, no older than three or four. He liked to joke and said there was a crossfire somewhere in his brain between the stage of knowing what to do and making his body actually do it.

It didn’t change his love of the game, though. He watched it religiously every single time the Sharks had a game. If the Sharks were home, then he was at the stadium, cheering them on. If they were away, then he had the grill fired up and the television blared pregame to postgame.

In a way, football had always been a part of my life too. Without my mom, it was how Daddy and I spent our time together. I bet that drunk driver didn’t think about that when he got behind the wheel. He didn’t realize how he would change my life. My dad’s. End my mom’s. My fingers tingled with the anger. I stopped to take three long breaths.

She had been gone twenty years. My dad did the best he could. He was an awesome dad. An amazing dad. A dad who played both parenting roles and was one of the best judges in DC. But it didn’t make the pain hurt less. It didn’t make the memories fade. I missed her.

I pulled myself out of my funk when I noticed two of the kids on the field shoving each other over God knows what. I rushed through the main center and down the hall to the back door. When I flung it open, I was surprised to find that Kane had already handled the situation. Both boys were running a lap around the field, each one holding onto opposite ends of the football.

I walked across the field, careful not to let my heels sink into the grass, and joined the kids as they observed the two boys jogging inside the perimeter of the fence.

“What is this?” I asked. I didn’t want him to know that I saw the fight, or that I already guessed at the meaning of his exercise.

“Something an old coach of mine used to make me do whenever I fought on the field,” he answered. “When we are here on this grass, we are our own family, we look out for one another. We don’t fight. If we have a problem, we talk it out.”

“I see. Did those two forget how to talk?” I prodded.

“Temporarily. But after a lap holding the ball, they should remember. That or they will be too exhausted to even care what they were fighting about to begin with.”

I tried to hide my smile. “And what happens if they drop the ball?”