The Game

Chapter 5-1

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Took ya long enough.”

I walked over to Coach and automatically went to extend my right hand, but caught myself at the last second and offered my left. Coach’s right side had been impaired since his stroke a few years back. It was also the reason he used a wheelchair.

We shook. “How’s riding the bench treating you?” he asked.

I patted him on the shoulder with my free hand. “I like it about as much as you like riding this chair, old man.”

Coach chuckled. Marvin “Coach” Barrett and I had been busting balls as far back as my pee-wee football days. He’d been my first football coach, but he was also the father of John Barrett, one of the greatest football players of all time and the owner of the New York Bruins. Well, John had been the owner until he passed away from pancreatic cancer two years ago. Now the organization was apparently being run by a woman who thought I was the pizza delivery guy and lectured me on s****l harassment.

“So what’s going on? How’s the recovery?” Coach asked.

I’d had surgery to reattach a torn ligament to my knee a month ago, after being injured in a game. “I feel good. I’m killing it at physical therapy, and my knee hasn’t been this limber since my college days. But Doc won’t sign off for me to come back for at least three more weeks.”

“I’m sure they know best. Remember that time you cracked two teeth in the third quarter of a game in middle school? You didn’t tell anyone until the game was over because you were afraid they would make you sit out the last eight minutes. And if I remember correctly, your team was up by more than twenty points, too. You had to get nine stitches because you cut up the inside of your mouth so badly. It looked like you ate a razor blade. Doctor’s right for not trusting you to make the decision yourself.”

I waved him off. “You want to go outside and get some fresh air?”

“Yeah, why not? Walking around with you is better than walking around with a puppy. All the ladies want to stop and coo, and I get a good visual from where I’m sitting—right at chest level, if you know what I mean.”

I chuckled. “Still a dirty old man.”

Outside, Coach and I walked around his little neighborhood. After his stroke, he’d moved into a continuous care retirement community. He had his own townhouse and lived pretty independently, but there were healthcare workers and others on staff to provide extra support from time to time. We walked around the lake and into the park, where we often played checkers when I visited.

“Should I kick your a*s again today?” He snickered.

“You got lucky last time. I was still on painkillers, so don’t let it go to your head. Besides, even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.”

Coach cackled. “Still a sore loser, I see.”

“You want to put your money where your mouth is?”

“Okay, but I don’t need your money. If I win, you’re bringing me a pastrami on rye from Katz’s deli.”

“Fine.” I scratched my chin, thinking about my wager. “When I win, you’re going to wear a T-shirt with my face on it and sit in the visiting team’s bleacher seats at the next home game.”

“That’s just cruel.” He grinned. “I like it.”

I positioned Coach on one side of the concrete checkers table and set up the board. “Age before beauty. You go first.”

Coach slid one of his black checkers forward into a square. “So have you met my granddaughter yet? She was supposed to take the helm this week.”

“I did. Yesterday. She’s…interesting.”

“She’s the whole package, that one. Smart and pretty. Graduated first in her class at Yale. Too bad I couldn’t be proud when it happened, considering I didn’t know she existed at the time.”

When I visited Coach, our talks almost always centered on the game, not our personal lives. So I only knew what most people knew from reading the papers—that his son John Barrett had left the team to a daughter he’d never acknowledged while he was alive, and not to his two daughters who already worked for the organization. The newspapers had followed the story for more than two years while his family contested the will, and the final appeal decision had only come down a few weeks ago. So I was definitely curious about Bella Keating.

“Have you met her?” I asked.

Coach nodded. “She comes to visit almost every Saturday morning. First time she came was a few weeks after the will was read. She was looking for answers I didn’t have. Like why my dumbass son didn’t acknowledge her existence while he was alive.”

I’d had no idea. “How do you think she’s going to handle running the team?”

“I think Bella’s going to surprise everyone.” He wagged his crooked finger. “You know, she used to develop algorithms to determine the buying patterns of millions of people. She’s not going to have a problem learning a sport that two blockheads like us could master. Bella just needs to get out of her head and work on her people skills. She’ll get there.”

People skills like recognizing the players on her team might be a good place to start. I kept that thought to myself. No good ever came of criticizing another man’s family, even if the person was a new addition.

People skills like recognizing the players on her team might be a good place to start. Coach pushed a checker forward. “She doesn’t look much like her sisters, does she?”

Definitely not. Tiffany and Rebecca were tall and rail thin, with olive skin and dark hair and eyes like their father. They were attractive, but there was something harsh about them—maybe it was their angular jaws or their eyes; I wasn’t sure. But Bella had porcelain skin with bright green eyes and auburn hair. Her full lips curved into a cute little V at the top center, almost forming a bow. She was probably only five foot three at best, but she had curves in all the right places. Thinking about her thick-rimmed glasses, slightly crooked on her face, made me smile. “No, I didn’t notice any resemblance,” I told him. “What’s the story about why John left the team to her and not Tiffany and Rebecca, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Coach shrugged. “Only thing I know for sure is what he wrote in the letter he left with his will—that those two are spoiled enough. I couldn’t agree more. And he apologized for leaving Bella to struggle after her mom died. Bella’s mother was Rose, a real sweet lady. She worked for Bruins Stadium as a hospitality manager in the luxury boxes. That’s a fancy title for putting up with a bunch of rich people’s s**t and serving drinks and whatnot to guests who probably didn’t even say thank you. I met Rose plenty of times over the years, but never had any clue that something was going on with my son. I suspect the reason he left the team to Bella was because he had a lot of guilt he wanted to get off his chest in his final months. Rose and Bella didn’t have an easy life, especially after Rose died when Bella was only a teenager. But don’t worry, unlike my son, Bella is as stand-up as they come. Do you know she offered to sign the team over to me? I had to talk her out of not handing it over to her bratty damn siblings, too. She didn’t feel like it should have gone to her because she hadn’t done anything to earn it.” He shook his head. “Can you imagine the other two thinking they needed to earn anything? I love ’em, but my other granddaughters think it’s their birthright to inherit the Earth.”

earnI didn’t know Rebecca that well, but Tiffany was definitely entitled. A few months back she’d decided she was entitled to some of my d**k and called me into her office to take it. She’d started to strip out of her clothes like she was the only one who decided if we f****d. But I wasn’t going there. Don’t get me wrong, she was attractive. It wouldn’t have been a hardship to give her what she wanted, but a woman like that is never satisfied with just a lay. She’s waaayy more work than I was up for.

waaayyOver the next hour, I beat Coach at checkers three times. He now had to wear a T-shirt with my face on it, hold up one of those big foam fingers with my number on it, and hang my jersey from a pole attached to his wheelchair, flying it like a flag. I’d still bring him his damn sandwich from Katz’s deli next time I stopped by, though, because the guy was more like a father to me than my own ever was.

At the end of my visit, I made sure he was settled back in his living room in his electric recliner before I said goodbye. “Anything you need before I go?”

He shook his head. “I’m all good. But can you do me one favor?”

“Name it.”

“Check in on Bella for me from time to time. I can’t imagine too many people in that ivory tower are happy with her steering the boat. She could probably use a friend.”

I patted his shoulder. “Sure. I’ll see if she likes pizza and bring some by…”

Two days later, I was upstairs at the arena for a meeting with Carl Robbins, VP of Community Relations. I was scheduled to toss the ball around tomorrow afternoon with some of the kids from the youth league the team sponsored, but my coach was being a stickler about my restrictions and had pulled the plug on me even doing that. Instead, they wanted me to give a talk about the hard work it took to get to the NFL. Carl had written some bullet points, as if I couldn’t figure out what to tell kids even though I was the one who’d managed to get here. Whatever. I knew he meant well, and some of the guys on the team would’ve made him write every word they were going to say for an appearance.

WhateverCarl liked to talk, so he was still rattling on as he walked me to the door of his office at the end of our session. I stepped out into the hall and tried to cut him off politely, but did a double take upon finding a certain green-eyed beauty heading right toward me. Bella’s steps faltered, giving Carl someone new to yammer at.

“Bella,” he bellowed. “Have you had a chance to meet Christian Knox yet?”

Her eyes jumped to me and back to Carl. I figured she was trying to figure out how much to say, so I decided to have a little fun and answer first.

“We actually met the other day.” I grinned. “Bella asked me for some recommendations on local places to order lunch. I suggested Three Brothers’ Pizza, though I told her she might want to pick it up because their delivery guy has been having some issues lately.”