The One & Only(113)

“Okay, then,” he said. “Go do your thing. Go fuck Miller.”

“Fuck you,” I said, pointing at him, jabbing at his chest with my finger as he’d done to me outside the restroom at the Third Rail. When I got no reaction, I jabbed harder. He blocked me, and I swung. It was as if I wanted him to hit me. To prove Blakeslee’s claim true. To justify my decision to end things with the great Ryan James.

But when I got my wish, and he reached out with his crazy-quick reflexes, easily catching both of my wrists in his hands, then pushing me down onto the bed, I regretted it.

“Get off me!” I said, breathing hard, struggling as he held me down with more force than was necessary. And then, suddenly, I was scared. Really scared.

“Get off me!” I said again, moving my head from side to side, crying. “Get off me, Ryan. I mean it!”

He loosened his grip just enough for me to start struggling again, and I might have screamed something, too. I can’t recall exactly what happened after that, and have no idea if several seconds or several minutes passed. All I remember is looking up and seeing Coach Carr in the doorway of my bedroom, his silhouette backlit.

I don’t know what he saw or heard, but it must have been clear that I wasn’t a willing participant in whatever was happening because he then yelled, “What the hell’s going on in here? Get off her!”

Ryan leapt to his feet and headed for the door, but Coach blocked him like a scrappy defensive end, his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Ryan said, in so many words, that he begged to differ and pushed his way past Coach, toward my living room. I sat up, and Coach looked at me for a beat, as if to determine if I was okay. Then he turned and followed Ryan. I stayed put, frozen on my bed, listening to Coach shouting, “What the hell were you doing in there? You might as well tell me, because she’s going to tell me!”

Ryan said something in response, but I couldn’t make it out, other than the word liar.

“Shea Rigsby is not a liar. You’re the liar, Ryan. And I’d take back that Cotton Bowl championship and sit your ass if I could.”

Ryan said something that sounded like “Sure you would, Coach.”

Then I heard sounds of two grown men fighting, followed by a loud crash of furniture hitting the wall. That’s when I got off the bed and ran down the hall and saw Coach on top of Ryan, pounding him amid an overturned end table and a scatter of magazines. He hit him three times, maybe four, until Ryan said, “So I guess you’re sleeping with her, too?”

Coach popped him once more for good measure.

Ryan didn’t throw a punch back. He just laughed, the same way he’d laughed at me in the bedroom, as blood trickled down his face. “You know what, Coach? It’s what I’ve always thought about you,” he said, sitting up, catching his breath. “You’re a hypocrite. You see what you want to see when you want to see it. It’s all terribly convenient, isn’t it?”

“You’re a disgrace,” Coach said, grabbing his knees to catch his breath. “An absolute disgrace.”

“Well, maybe I am,” Ryan said, now on his feet and almost to the door. “Maybe I am. But then what’s that say about you? Huh, Coach?”

He looked at me over his shoulder, shook his head, and was gone.





Thirty-four





“Are you okay?” Coach asked after he had righted my table and we’d both found our way to my sofa. He was still winded and disheveled, his shirt untucked, wrinkled, and a little bloodstained.

“Yeah. I’m okay,” I said, staring straight ahead, both hands tucked under my thighs. The only light in the room came from the hallway and the orange glow of a streetlamp working its way through the slatted plastic blinds covering my windows. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My first fight in thirty-five years. If you can call it that …”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure you can call it that,” I said. I made myself look at him, taking in his shell-shocked expression. It was as if he was still processing everything.

“He never took a swing back at me …”

Coach seemed to be talking to himself, but I offered a theory. “Maybe he was afraid of you.”

He snorted. “Yeah. I don’t think so. An NFL player in his prime? And an old coach?”

“You’re not old,” I said reflexively.

“Feel old now,” Coach said under his breath, staring down at his knuckles, a cut on his middle finger.

Several long seconds passed before he spoke again. “Well. He deserved what he got.”