Rock Bottom Girl(16)

I even remembered what they looked like one second after I’d kissed the hell out of her all those years ago.

Yeah, I remember you.

“I am well aware,” she said, snapping me out of my trip down memory lane.

“Good. Now, let’s go.”

“You’re really bossy. You know that?” She made it to her feet, and I had to give her credit for not immediately collapsing back into the chair.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Am I fired?” she croaked.

“How the hell should I know? Come on.”

I led the way out of the locker room and toward the glass doors. This was the main entrance for the gym. The girls’ locker room was on one side of the gym and the guys’ on the opposite. I pushed the door open and surveyed my ragtag bunch of students. “Who wants Italian ice?”

A cheer rose up, and I felt like a damn hometown hero. It was little moments like this that made the hard work and frustrations of teaching and coaching worthwhile.

Marley trudged out of the door behind me sucking on a water bottle.

“Let’s go, troops.” I hooked an arm through hers to keep her on her feet. We made a pitstop at my SUV for my own water bottle, phone, and wallet.

I fired off a text to Mariah.

Me: Got a small army coming. Ready the electrolytes and pickle juice.





She responded immediately.

Mariah: God I love the smell of preseason.





“Where are we going?” Marley asked.

“To rehydrate.”

“Will there be beer?”

The desperation in her voice made me laugh. “Not on the clock, Coach.”

We trooped down the hill that the high school sat on, staying on the treelined sidewalk to soak up the shade. Mariah’s Italian Ice Shack was a glorified shed she plopped in the backyard of her row home across the street from the high school. She’d held down some administrative job at a local hospital before being downsized a few years ago. With her fancy severance package, she opened up the shack and supplemented her income with work-from-home gigs. She kept students and faculty cool in the summer with crazy flavored slushies and warm in the winter with the best hot chocolate in the county.

When we turned down the alley, I could see the rows of paper cups already lined up. The bright green of the pickle juice ices against the red, blue, and orange of the sports drink ones. Mariah knew how to do preseason right.

“One of each,” I told the kids as they descended like sweaty, pimply locusts.

Snagging two of each, I directed Marley to one of the picnic tables Mariah had positioned under the big oak trees that crowded her tiny backyard.

“Here.”

She sniffed at the cup. “What is this?”

“Pickle juice.”

“No way.” I expected her to wrinkle her nose in disgust, but her pink tongue darted out and sank into the green ice. My reaction was instantaneous. It wasn’t like I’d handed her a banana and told her to go to town. I was still royally pissed at her total lack of regard for the well-being of her team. But I was also turned on.

Huh. Interesting.

She was less pale now. The summer heat was bringing a pink flush back to her cheeks. She had a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. They spread out more on her cheekbones. Those brown eyes were warier now, less dazed.

“Wards off muscle cramps,” I said, gesturing at the sinus-infection-colored ice. “And this one’s got electrolytes.”

“Mmm, come to mama,” she murmured, scooping the orange-sports-drink-flavored ice into her mouth.

All around us, high school athletes snickered and chatted. I noticed there was a definite divide right down the middle of her team. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the leader of Team A was Ruby, and Team B belonged to Sophie Stoltzfus. And then there was godawful Lisabeth Hooper who worked her demon magic on both sides. I worked my ass off to keep the drama out of my team. A slightly easier feat with the mix of the sexes. I didn’t envy Marley with the brewing disaster she had on her hands.

“What’s going on with King and Stoltzfus?” I asked.

Marley looked up, brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Ruby making eyes at Ricky and Sophie with the hair.” I waved my hand around the back of my head to call attention to Sophie S.’s twisted braid bun thing.

Marley looked in their direction and took another spoonful of slushie. “Hell if I know.”

“Look. It’s your second day on the job. I’d cut you some slack, but you coulda put your entire team in urgent care making them run like that today—”

“Your team was running,” she interrupted.

“Yeah, but my team is used to this. And in deference to the weather, we took it slow and stuck to the shady route with water breaks,” I said pointedly. “What are you trying to prove?”

“Apparently that I’m nothing but a hot mess,” she huffed.

“No need to get snippy. I’m just being honest with you. Don’t push ’em so hard when it’s this miserable outside. You’ll get more out of them when they’re comfortable. And from here, it looks like you need to focus more on the team thing than the training.”

Sophie S. was glowering hard at Ruby. If I were Ruby, I’d be feeling around between my shoulder blades for a knife.