Page 14 of Necessary Roughness

“I’ll be running by the next time you see me,” he called out as she rounded the corner to leave. He could have sworn she was laughing as she went.

***

TANNER GOT THE thumbs-up from his surgeon to leave the rehab hospital four days later. This may have had something to do with the fact that he promised he’d hire a live-in nurse for a few weeks. The thought of it pissed him off, but he had no other choice. It was that or spend the next month asking friends to smuggle food in that didn’t come out of a blender. Harrison picked him up from the rehab hospital.

“My mom called this morning. She wants to move in for a month. I told her no. I love her, but I’m not down for that,” he told Harrison.

“Listen, dipshit, you wouldn’t be in this position if you’d actually listened to the doctors the first time around,” Harrison said.

“I’m fine. Mom has other things to do than babysit me.” Tanner frowned at his smartphone’s screen. His ex, Star, had sent him yet another text. He deleted it without opening it.

Harrison pulled into a parking place a few feet from the local high school’s football field. Tanner glanced up from his phone to see the late-afternoon sunshine highlighting a group of little kids on the field.

“They’re early. Come on,” he said.

“Huh?” Tanner said.

Harrison grabbed the set of crutches out of the backseat and rounded the car to Tanner’s side. “Remember when you told me that you wanted to coach after football? I’m about to make all your dreams come true. We have some folks to meet.”

“Oh, hell no. I thought I was going home so I could relax on my own couch.”

“It’s time to get started with the rest of your life. Let’s go.”

“I don’t know what you have in mind right now, but I’m not interested,” Tanner said. “You call this coaching?”

“Gotta start somewhere, bro,” Harrison extended the crutches to Tanner. “Move your ass.”

Tanner fucking hated it when the motivating strategies he’d used on his old teammates were used against him, dammit. He hobbled through the parking lot and maneuvered onto the football field sidelines. There was a currently unoccupied metal bench; he could sit down for a few minutes while Harrison did whatever the hell he came here to do.

He heard Harrison’s voice again. “You all know who Tanner is, right? Maybe you kids could talk him into being our assistant coach. He needs a job.”

Tanner bit back yet more four-letter words. Harrison had talked to him before about coaching a local peewee flag football team. Tanner thought he must have been hallucinating or something when Harrison mentioned he should help out with it when he was lying in a hospital bed. He didn’t have anything against little kids, but maybe he wasn’t the best guy for this. Kids must have had the same sixth sense as every cat he’d ever met; maybe he had “sucker” stamped on his forehead. They were heading in his direction, and he didn’t have candy or anything else to ward them off with.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m still in rehab.”

“PT doesn’t take twenty hours a day. Don’t be a chicken,” Harrison said.

A little boy with no front teeth was tugging on Tanner’s pants leg. “We can’t play unless we have another coach. It’s in the rules.”

“Yeah,” another little boy said. “My dad told me. He can’t do it because he works all the time.”

Seconds later, Tanner was surrounded by fifteen kids pulling on his clothes, interrupting each other and trying to knock him over. He braced his crutches in each armpit and made the “time-out” hand signal. “Okay. One at a time,” he said.

A little girl with a long red ponytail and wearing a “Girls Rule” T-shirt, shorts, and soccer shin guards edged her way into the group. “You want to play football?” he said to her.

“I’m a quarterback,” she said.

He perched on the edge of the bench so he could look into her eyes. “Are you sure? Boys can be rough. You might get hurt.”

“That’s dumb,” the girl said. “I can be the quarterback if I want to be.” She was already indignant. “My dad says quarterbacks have to be smart and ’lusive. I’m ’lusive. And I’m smart. My teacher says so.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. She tried to look tough, but he noticed her chin was quivering. Her eyes were brown instead of blue, framed by long lashes tipped in gold. Her hair was a bit more copper colored than his woodland nymph of a physical therapist’s, and she had a few more freckles scattered across her button nose, but it was obvious: she had the same kind of self-confidence and refusal to acknowledge the word no. She was a miniature version of Jordan, and he was doomed.

Goddamn it. He couldn’t handle grown women who cried. He didn’t have the emotional depth to comfort a six-year-old girl. He knew she wouldn’t know how to protect herself from a bunch of little boys who wanted to tackle everything in sight, whether they were supposed to or not.

He attempted to look scary. It didn’t seem to bother her.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play wide receiver instead?” Tanner said. “They get to score. People clap and stuff.”

The mini signal caller wannabe stomped her foot. Even a confirmed little-girl avoider had to admit it was kind of cute.

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