Fuck me, I’m screwed.
All week I’ve been fucking up on offense at practice, missing passes that I should have easily trapped…sending balls flying at inappropriate angles. I look like a damned amateur out there half the time. Now I show up in the locker room and the woman I can’t get out of my head is apparently joining our coaching staff?
Coach is beaming, talking to Lucy, introducing her around. She keeps darting glances away from me, running her hands through her ponytail and acting like she wasn’t pressed against me in the dark a week ago. Coach sees me squirming and I watch as he sends Lucy on out to the field with the guys.
As if that weren’t bad enough, now I have to go meet a lawyer. Another man who could potentially be my father. I’m like a kid searching for the Tooth Fairy, but in reverse. Every man in his 60s could be my dad, and I feel myself recoil away from each of them ever since I set foot in this city.
I hold my breath until Kioko opens the door to his office. The lawyer guy is waiting, and he doesn’t look too much older than me. I instantly relax.
“Hawk Moyer, I presume,” he says, hopping to his feet, one hand smoothing out his tie as he straightens out of Kioko’s couch. He extends a hand. “Tim Stag. Pleasure to meet you.” He’s tall and slim with dark hair and grey eyes. I take a minute to size him up, noticing the wedding band glinting on his left hand.
I’ve always been comforted by the sight of wedding bands. It doesn’t take a psychologist to tell me that’s related to my abandonment and commitment issues. I shake Tim’s hand, appreciating the firm grip we offer one another. Kioko thumps him on the back and sits on the couch next to him. “How are your little ones, Tim?”
Stag grins. “Triple trouble, just like their dad and uncles before them. Are yours doing Phenom soccer this fall?” I sit awkwardly on a chair listening to the two of them gush about their sons. Whoever this guy is, I’m guessing he’s not related to anyone who’d be having unprotected sex with a teenaged drug addict. He’s wearing cufflinks, for fuck’s sake.
Tim turns to me and smiles. “Sorry about all that chatter, Hawk. I’ll just have to see Kioko more often to catch up.”
“On the sidelines of the Phenom pitch, right? Isn’t your youngest about four, too?”
Tim nods, rifling through a folder in his briefcase. “Okay, Hawk, I sent these forms to your agent to look over last night. Everything is standard here. No individualized endorsement add-ons here, just your agreement with the team sponsors.”
“Yeah, Brian says it all looks good?”
“All standard fare. You’re committing to using Pittsburgh University healthcare and will appear in a few of their print ads for now, and we will pretend you drive a Toyota.” He reaches into his shirt pocket and extracts a very fancy pen, which he uses to sign the papers before passing them to Kioko, who then passes it all to me. I like the weight of the pen in my hand. It feels symbolic somehow. Like this team and this city is heavy, but somehow fine? I don’t know. I sign my name at the bottom and blow out a breath, sitting back in the chair.
“Is that it?”
Tim smiles. “Should be. From my perspective anyway. If all goes well I won’t even see you again until you’re up for renewal.”
Kioko stands and claps another hand on my back. “All will go well. We have had enough scandal for the Forge.” He squeezes my arm and I try to decide if he’s making any sort of reference to me and Lucy making out. Now that she works here I guess she’s even less likely to actually call me. I hate how irritated I feel about that. I remember that I’m supposed to be out on the field with the team and I make my way to my feet.
“Well, it was nice meeting you I guess.” I shrug.
Tim grins. “It’s fine. Kioko has my info if you run into any issues with hookers and blow.”
I know he’s joking, but I don’t like thinking about drugs and sex workers when I’m busy brooding on my mom and my own conception. I must glower at him by accident because he holds his hands up. “My apologies. In my line of work I’ve had to bail a lot of athletes out of legal issues for…unsavory behavior.”
“No worries.”
Kioko waves me out of the room and I make my way down the stairs and out the tunnel to the field, where I can hear Coach blowing his whistle. I walk into the sunshine to see Lucy’s ass as she leans on the fence, watching the team run sprints, with a look of extreme concentration on her face.
I have to consciously look away from her round, tempting behind as I shed my hoodie and join in with the other guys, trying not to think unprofessional thoughts about my new coach.
“Moyer!” Coach Todd frowns at me after practice. “Meet me in my office.”
I nod, wordlessly, and follow him in, shutting the door behind me. It’s never a good thing to get an unexpected invitation into the coach’s office. I sink into the chair at his desk. He leans back into his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, pressing into the lanyard of his whistle.
We stare at each other for a few beats before he says, “What’s going on in that head of yours, son?”
I blink. What am I supposed to tell him? That my game has sucked because I’ve been staying up all night searching the internet for evidence of the man who sired me? I have nothing to go on, not really. I just sort of…look at old newspaper articles about homeless guys to see if anyone looks like me.
Coach leans forward and folds his hands on his desk. “Moyer, I know you’re new here. We’re not expecting you to automatically gel with the guys. That takes time. But this past week…that’s your head, and you got to tell me what’s going on in there.”
“Look, Coach, I know I haven’t been playing my best. I’ll up my time in the weight room. Direct my focus.”
“Mmph.” Coach makes a noise like a moose or something. “Moyer, listen to me. I’m a fixer. All you guys out there, you’re delicate despite your fantastic physique. Whatever it is, I promise I’ve heard it before and I can help.” He stares at me. I look at the ceiling. “Moyer, I’ve arranged for custody and visitation for guys from a bathroom stall in Louisville. I’ve made calls to get tattoos removed right here in the locker room before someone’s wife caught sight of a mistake. Spit it out.”
I pull on my hair and groan. “Shiiiiiit this is so fucking predictable.”
Coach nods. “It’s okay. It’s affecting your game so it warrants discussion. Hit me.”
I close my eyes. “I never met my father. I don’t even know his name. But he’s here in Pittsburgh and I can’t fucking concentrate because I keep expecting to run into him in the hall or something. Like, what if he’s the guy mowing the grass out there?”
My mom keeps trying to encourage me to be less angry at my father as a concept. When she met him they were both addicted to substances. Neither of them was in any sort of position to take care of a child. She couldn’t even find him when she found out she was pregnant and took that as a sign from the universe that she was meant to get her act together.
I can’t get past the fact that he got a free pass to carry on doing…whatever he was doing, while she was saddled with a kid and living in bum-fuck-nowhere Ohio.
“Okay.” Coach claps his hands. “Deadbeat, absent father. I can work with this, Hawk. I can work with this. You ever do therapy about it?”
“What? No.”
“Don’t act like that. Mental health is hugely important for athletic performance.” Coach points an index finger in the air. “And of course your overall well-being. But we can get you set up with someone. At minimum, you know, get Coach Lucy to write you a workout plan incorporating the punching bag.” He shrugs.
I have it on the tip of my tongue to tell him Coach Lucy is the other half of my problem, that the woman I thought I’d get to take home to clear my head actually just invaded my thoughts and is now sort of my boss.
But I realize that Coach knowing that could be a pretty bad thing for Lucy, employment-wise. So instead I say, “What’s her deal anyway? Coach Lucy?”
Coach grins. “She’s got a stellar resume, kid. And most important, she was available on short notice.” He flips open a binder on his desk. “Kioko hired her for the rest of the season as a trial run. Things work out, and she gets to keep the job and we get to not invest all our damn energy into a search for a replacement.”
He leans forward conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I’m more than ready for the press to stop hounding me about you guys and your conditioning regimen. They act like we’ve been Rocky IV up in here, and not the barn stuff.” He shakes his head. “Lucy already started plans for each of you, customized, all that. She’s sharp.”
I nod. Of course she’d be sharp and focused. Is his message that I am not? “Coach, I’ll get my head together. Tomorrow’s training will be better.”
“I look forward to that, Moyer. What are you going to do about the father situation? Your mom give you a name or anything to go from? Aw, crap, I should have asked. Your mom still in the picture?” He leans forward in the chair like he’s ready to spring over the desk.
“Mom’s great,” I tell him, watching as he relaxes.
“Good, great. Get a name for me and I’ll find the guy. Two hours and I can get you a father in here, Moyer.” He holds up two thick fingers. Coach used to play defense back in his day. He’s a large, intimidating man. I find myself trying to calculate his age, and then I realize there’s no way he’s my father. He doesn’t have a gap in his resume for alcoholism and vagrancy.
“She won’t speak his name,” I mutter and sigh. “It always bothered me, but never so much as when I’m here, you know?”
He nods. “My advice? Call your mom. Get a name. Look this guy up and have it over with. Pull off the bandage, Moyer. There’s a lot of games left this season. That’s a lot of time with you scanning the crowd instead of reading your teammates. You hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Back at my apartment, I stare into the empty living room. So far, I’ve got a starter kitchen set for the food I don’t cook, two stools at my counter that I think came with the apartment, and my bed. The rest of my shit is heaped around in boxes. I haven’t had a chance to order anything or go shopping yet, and it’s not going to happen this evening.
I pull out a box of the meals I get delivered—one of the guys on the team gave me a name of a chef that prepares everything. I just have to heat it up. While I wait for the microwave, I call my mother again.
“Hawk! I’m so excited to see you this weekend, sweetheart.”
I smile, despite myself. “I’m excited to see you, too, Ma. Though I wish you’d let me get you someone to drive you here.”
“Pish. I can drive a few hours on the highway. Remember, I’m going to listen to a steamy audiobook.”
“Please don’t, Ma.” She laughs. I sigh. “Hey, so, Coach called me into his office today.”
“Uh oh. Did something happen?”
I shake my head but remember she can’t see me. “Not really. I’ve just…I’m not playing my best here.”
“Well, you haven’t even played a game yet, sweetheart. I’m sure you’re just finding your feet.”
“It’s not that. It’s…Ma…it’s killing me knowing my father is here somewhere, roaming around.” She makes a sound halfway between a sob and a groan. “I know you don’t like talking about it, Ma, but I have to know who he is.”
“Who he is, is my past, Hawk. I don’t have to remind you how hard I’ve worked to change from the person I was before I had you.”
“You work harder than anyone I know, Ma. But…every man in his 60s, every one I see on the street, I wonder if it’s him. It’s making me insane, not knowing where I come from.”
“Oh, baby, I had no idea.”
“Well I’m telling you now. Ma, I know he’s part of your past, but he’s half of my history. Hell, I can’t even answer half the doctor’s questions when I get a physical. Am I at risk for heart disease? Cancer? I have no fucking clue.”
I hear her start to cry and I feel bad, but I’m not telling her anything I haven’t said to her a thousand times before. “Let me think about it, Hawk, okay?”
“I…it’s not okay. But you think about it.” I hang up with her before she can get another word in.