Caught running, p.3
Caught Running, page 3
“Coaching is a full-time job,” Jake murmured softly. That was one of the things most regular teachers never understood. They had the kids from 7:30 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon. Most left it at that. Some sponsored clubs or did tutoring, but then they wiped the school smell from their shoes and headed home. The coaches spent nights, weekends, and summers with their kids. They helped them shop colleges. They fielded phone calls from drunken parties and gave advice on love lives. They kept in touch with kids long after they walked and got their diplomas. When Jake had been in college and come to the realization that he might be bisexual, his football coach from high school had been the first person he had called.
“Not married,” was Brandon’s only quiet comment as he considered the practice time, the weekend games and tournament trips. He’d already committed himself, he knew, so there was nothing to do but give his best. He quickly calculated the amount of sleep he’d be getting and inwardly winced though outwardly he looked calm. Long days. Even longer days. He started each weekday at 4:45 a.m., tutored from 6 to 7 and carried a full class load from 7:30 to 2:30 p.m. Now, instead of working on his doctorate research in the late afternoons, he’d have baseball practice and games, and another skim of the schedule convinced him that his personal classwork would have to shift to after 9 p.m. – after daily planning, grading papers, writing up tests – and with several Saturdays gone, his only free day, Sunday, would be taken up as well. Exercise, he had no idea when he’d fir that in. Maybe after the doctorate planning, late. He could run around the lake at home.
“Where do you want me to start?” he asked the coach.
“You look a little green,” Jake observed without answering. “Practice is actually fun after you weed out the whiners,” he said, trying to offer some condolences as he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the desk.
Brandon had to chuckle, and he relaxed a little. “Whiners, huh? Whining about what? Taking ground balls in the groin?”
“That’s what cups are for,” Jake answered instantly, his standard retort to any complaints about impact pain in that particular area. “And if they get knocked in the nuts it’s ’cause they didn’t have their glove down and they deserved it. We don’t baby these guys,” he insisted vehemently. “I know you academics think we treat them with kid gloves, but if they don’t pull their weight on a report card they’re off the team. If they get hurt, they play through it. If they get sick, they show up anyway. I guarantee you my boys are some of your only students with perfect attendance. And I guarantee you any day of the week you have at least one kid in at least one of your classes with taped fingers, ankle brace, knee brace, or some sort of hellacious bruise they’re trying to cover up.”
He was bristling protectively now. He knew what student athletes went through. They got labeled with the ‘jock’ title, put in the easy classes even if they should have been honors students, and when they did do something spectacular academically it got chalked up to luck. Not to mention the injuries, grueling practice schedules, and heartbreaks that could only come with loving a sport. Jake snorted noisily through his nose to calm himself and rocked back in his chair, rolling his sore neck and closing his eyes.
Brows rising as Jake seriously soap-boxed, Brandon knew he’d hit a sore spot, one possibly dating back to their own time in school. And the more Jake talked, the more he made sense. The biology teacher nodded slowly. The coach was right. As much as the nerds had felt put down and razzed for not being athletic or good looking – the jocks had been razzed about grades and attendance. He thought maybe both groups had gotten the short end of the stick. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Jake stared at the man for a moment and then broke into a disarming smile. It was another thing he was good at, glazing over bursts of emotion and pushing it back until it was quickly forgotten. He was also good at playing up the dumb brute image when he needed to. The everyday game face. "I get carried away,” he offered, his usual wry smirk back in place and his eyes warm brown again. “It usually happens when they don’t give me my juice at lunch,” he joked with a sheepish grin, reaching behind himself to rub the back of his neck and roll his head, forcing his spine to crack loudly.
The phone on his desk began to ring demandingly, and Jake glared at it. He held up his hand, indicating for Brandon to wait, and removed his feet from the desk to reach for the speaker button. “This is the Literacy Self Test Hotline,” he drawled in a deep, businesslike voice. “After the tone, leave your name and number and recite a sentence using today’s vocabulary word. Today’s word is supercilious.”
“Is there a student sitting with you?” Troy Peterson’s voice asked warily over the phone.
“No,” Jake laughed with a wink at Brandon.
“Go fuck yourself then,” Troy muttered. “Did you send in this announcement to be read with the morning report tomorrow?”
“What announcement?” Jake asked in an attempt to sound innocent, barely able to keep his voice from wavering in amusement. Brandon tilted his head and smiled at the change in the other man. How bizarre that he could switch so quickly from one mood to the other.
“I quote,” the speech teacher and fellow coach responded, obviously reading from something, “At precisely 11:42 this morning, maintenance will be blowing the dust out of the phone lines. All teachers should cover the earpiece of their classroom phones with a bag to catch the dust.”
Both Brandon’s brows rose, and he stifled a snort. Jake was laughing quietly as he listened, shoulders shaking and hand covering his mouth, hissing a little as he tried not to laugh out loud. “Wasn’t me,” he managed finally.
“I’m running with this,” Troy said accusingly. “All blame will be placed squarely on your impressively built shoulders, darling,” he warned before hanging up.
Jake practically guffawed. Brandon joined in with a chuckle. “That was funny,” he commented, eyes dancing. He was quickly discovering there was a lot more to Jake Campbell than the jock stereotype.
“Hey, I’ve got to entertain myself somehow.” Jake snickered as he grabbed his clipboard and stood. “Now the real fun will come when we see how many people actually do it,” he practically giggled as several sheets of Sudoku puzzles fluttered to the floor.
Brandon leaned over to gather up the papers, looking at the filled-out puzzles. “God, I hate these things! I have the worst time figuring them out,” he said as he offered them back to Jake. “You must have more patience than I do. I get frustrated with them. Give me a crossword instead.”
Jake laughed a little uncomfortably and nodded as he took the papers back. “Crosswords require a bit more knowledge than one through nine,” he murmured as the bell rang for last bus – that meant it was 3:10. “Shit, I gotta get dressed,” he huffed, putting his clipboard back down and moving around Brandon in the small space to grab his bag.
Frowning slightly at Jake’s awkward and self-deprecating reply, Brandon stood up. “I’ll wait outside at the main diamond.” The school complex had three fields, two baseball and one softball, as well as the football field and track, two soccer fields and six tennis courts.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re all meeting there this week. Then the teams get split,” Jake answered distractedly as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it into his chair. “Hey,” he said quickly. “Thanks,” he added softly as he looked up at Brandon and began to undo his shorts.
Brandon stopped, surprised – not to mention blindsided by the ripped chest suddenly bared to his eyes – but he managed to give Jake an honest, open smile. “Sure thing,” he said. He closed the door behind him and moved outside, a little bemused on how seeing that chest had surprised him so much ... and why he was still enjoying it now. Oh man.
Chapter 2
Several minutes later Jake was tucking in his shirt as he jogged toward the fields. He made it there before any of the kids, and found the three college guys who were assistants this year standing with Brandon and the freshman team coach, Jonathan. They were waiting for someone with a key to the storage room off the home dugout, and the head coach grumbled as he jogged up and fished the key out of his bag.
“I swear, my office gets further away every year,” he growled as he jammed the key in the lock and opened the door. The assistants began to drag the equipment out and set up the field, and Jake turned to Brandon and glanced around the complex with narrowed eyes. “Where the hell is Troy?” he asked with a frown as he pulled a pack of sunflower seeds out of a bulk sell box and shoved it into his back pocket. A stream of blue-clad kids began to filter out of the building in the distance, and Jake growled softly. “He’s gonna get a bat up his ass if he’s not here before they get here.”
Brandon decided right then and there that keeping his mouth shut was probably the best idea, although the thought of Jake going postal on golden boy Troy was funny as hell. Golden boy Troy – the other popular king of the castle – homecoming king when Jake couldn’t be, the known ‘playboy’ of the school, light to Jake’s dark. The unholy duo. Brandon shook his head and stood to one side, watching the college guys in case he needed to know how to set up sometime in the future. They were quite friendly, not knowing Brandon from anyone else. None had been Parkview students, they said.
A squeal of little bitty tires and the clink of the electric golf cart shutting off signified Troy’s arrival, and Jake growled under his breath as he watched the man hop the chain link on the other side of the dugout and jog out to where Jake stood at home plate. The man was grinning as if he’d somehow dodged a bullet, and Jake smacked him on the side of his head with his glove. “Ow,” Troy huffed as he rubbed his ear and sulked. “Is that Bartlett?” he asked suddenly in surprise, looking over Jake’s shoulder at the suited-up science teacher.
“That’s the new member of our coaching staff,” Jake answered in a hard voice, all of his usual good humor gone the second he had stepped onto the grass. “If you want to stay on it I suggest you get your ass in gear,” he warned seriously. Troy looked at him, sighed, and nodded, head down as he moved to help set up the equipment. Troy knew how Jake got when he was on the field, whether it was football or baseball. He was like a different person. There was no bullshitting out here. The fun wouldn’t start until the teams were set.
Jake stood there and met the boys as they jogged out onto the field. “Take your laps!” he boomed in a voice that carried over all three fields and made the freshmen flinch. The older boys immediately ducked their heads and started into a warm-up trot around the field, leading the new kids by example. There was no first day of practice greeting. There was no explanation of what Jake expected of Parkview’s baseball players. There was no lecture about being on time to practice or remembering their gear every day or grades or attendance. The kids already knew all of it. And if they didn’t, they’d learn or quit within the next two days. Jake’s seniors would make sure of that.
The coach watched them with intent black eyes as he stood like a king at home plate, seeming to tower over the entire complex. He picked out the kids who were lagging at the end of the lap. He remembered them. He picked out the kids who were talking as they ran, and he remembered them. He watched with narrowed eyes as he mentally began weeding out the kids who were already proving themselves to be JV material and no more.
“Who wants to take the running today?” he asked his coaches softly, pointing to his heel in explanation of why he couldn’t do it himself.
Brandon looked around at the other coaches. The three assistants were shuffling their feet, a younger coach he didn’t know looked unsure, and Troy was oblivious – or at least acting that way. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered. How difficult could it be?
Jake raised an eyebrow at Brandon and looked him over carefully. He certainly had the look of a runner, but looks could be deceiving. Hell, if Troy could look like he knew what he was doing, then Brandon could look like an athlete, right? “All righty,” he said as he waved Brandon closer. “To warm them up we make them run suicides against a coach,” he informed the man as the first of the herd of ballplayers began to come down the third base line. “If they beat you, they get bragging rights. If you beat them...” he trailed off and smiled wickedly as he waved his hand at the field.
“Suicides?” Brandon murmured.
“Oh, yeah,” Jake answered as he pointed down to the third base line. The assistants were setting up cones marking lines across the field as the older players filed up obediently at the painted white line and instructed the younger boys to follow suit. “Start here at the line, run to the first cone line and back, run to the second line, then back, and so on with all five lines,” he told Brandon as he pointed out the cones. “I can make one of the kids do it,” he added in a lower voice as he waved his hand at the college kids. “That’s what they’re here for, after all. $9.50 an hour for me to torture at my whim.”
The science teacher chuckled. “No, I don’t mind. So is the point speed or endurance?” he asked curiously. “Do I just do it once the fastest, or over and over?”
“Speed,” Jake answered immediately. “If you beat them, they know what comes next. So they’ll be gunning for you,” he warned as he wagged a finger and walked toward the dugout to grab his bullhorn.
“He thinks he needs that thing to be heard,” the freshman coach murmured from Brandon’s side. “What a joke, man, he could whisper and these kids would hear him. Hey,” he said as he stepped up next to Brandon and offered his hand to shake. “Whatever you do, just don’t let them win. Don’t pull your punches, right? He hates that.”
Smiling, Brandon shook his hand, then grabbed one foot at a time, stretching a little by pulling them up behind him. “I’m Brandon. New assistant coach. Of some kind,” he said with a half grin.
“Jonathan,” the man offered. “Freshman head coach. I go by ‘hey you,’ mostly,” the man offered as Jake’s voice boomed over the field. The bullhorn hung unused at his side.
Leaning over at the waist to stretch, Brandon chuckled as he looked over toward Jake. “You were right about the bullhorn,” he said, standing and turning his waist each way in a slight warm-up. He saw the kids trotting in their direction. “Do you teach?” he asked as Jonathan walked with him over to the starting line.
“Over at Trickum, the middle school up the road, yeah,” Jonathan answered as he watched the boys line up. “Here we go. Good luck, Coach,” he offered with a pat to Brandon’s hip as he jogged away from the starting line.
Brandon blinked at the familiar touch, but didn’t say anything as he moved to stand at the line. At least there was someone here who wouldn’t judge him by his past, unlike Jake and Troy. And as the students lined up around him, he realized he would be new to some of them, too. He only had one class of freshmen this year, whereas most upperclassmen he’d taught sometime in the last three years.
Some of the older students and seniors nearly matched him in size, and they were in great shape. Brandon hoped to be able to at least keep up with them. This sort of running was new to him. He glanced over to Jake, squatting slightly to keep his weight balanced. Just like starting any other race, he told himself. Take deep, even breaths.
Jake stood near the plate, his eyes scanning the line to make sure there were no cheaters leaning forward. He placed his whistle in his mouth, met Brandon’s eyes briefly, and blew a sharp blast.
Whether it was because he was a teacher or something else, none of the kids crowded him, so Brandon got off to a swift start, reaching out with one foot to touch the first line as he stretched back into the run, trying to use his long legs to his advantage. At the second line, he was keeping up. By the third, most of the younger kids had fallen behind. As Brandon ran for the fourth, he hit his stride, his breathing settling in, and he was hard put not to laugh as he swiftly ran back toward home plate, matching a handful of seniors.
Jake was momentarily shocked at the quick burst of speed from Brandon, and he watched the man in astonishment as he displayed that – in this case – looks were not deceiving at all. The man could run. He pulled his attention away enough to observe the boys, which ones ran well, which ones looked like Bambi on ice, and which ones were lagging too far behind. When the lead group came close to the finish, he dragged his eyes away from Brandon one last time in order to watch the finish. A couple of the boys, his speedsters, beat Brandon to the painted line by a fraction of a second, and Jake blinked again.
“Damn, that was close,” he muttered to the man at his elbow, who happened to be Troy, standing there to watch the finish.
“Dude can run,” Troy muttered in return. “Shit, who’d a thunk it, huh?” he joked softly, and Jake shook his head and smiled as the stragglers passed the line.
Brandon was grinning when they finished, only slightly winded, even more pleased when several of the older students who knew him came over to compliment him. “Wow, Mr. Bartlett, I didn’t know you could run.” “Mr. Bartlett, you the man!” “Good job, Teach.” “How can you run when you spend all that time in the lab?” Brandon just laughed, pulling his feet up behind him again to stretch a little more.
“You all have Marshall and Tyler to thank for your sorry asses not having to run any more!” Jake boomed as he walked over and gave Brandon’s hip an absent-minded pat, just like Jonathan had. He began to separate the boys by grade, sending an assistant or coach to go with each of them. When they had all dispersed, Jake turned to Brandon and grinned widely. “Nice run,” he said to the man with a smack to the arm, the compliment a rare and sincere one. “Stick with me today, you’ll get a feel for it,” he went on.
